Furious Recap: Eyes on the Subject

“He talked his way out of it, of course.” This infuriating sentence is basically the thesis of the most recent episode of Furious. In direct context, it refers to Marshall. He was pulled over by the cops after his honeypot encounter with Alice, but talked his way out of a DWI and is still on the street. When Marty, Marshall’s boss, tells this story to Danny, he shrugs it off like it’s no big deal, and like Alice is the true problem.

In a larger context, the idea of “he talked his way out of it” refers to bad actors, specifically men. It sure does seem like men are able to talk their way out of almost anything relating to the abuse of women and girls, especially if they have oodles of money and power to back up their abhorrent behaviors (see: Jay Easton), and oftentimes even when they don’t (see: Marshall). This is certainly not a new idea, and in a world where one in three females experience sexual or physical violence, usually perpetrated by men, it’s very clear that the wrinkles in the patriarchal systems meant to protect are meant to be features, not bugs. This horrible, stomach-turning truth comprises the emotional and logistical crux of the standoff between Catherine and Alice at the climax of this episode, and Furious makes us confront it head-on. Is there justice for Catherine? For Isabel? For Alice? For Nora, even? What might that look like? Does it exist? Can it ever exist?

So much happened this week, so let’s cycle back to the beginning, and let’s start with Nora because, damnit, Nora! I love this woman so much. In a show with many likeable characters, she might just be my favorite. But! She truly let her tipsy pride go before the cart in her confrontation with her boss, Ed George. Her journey up to the 32nd floor whipsaws us through a whole host of emotions. At first, her escapades to slow down reporting Alice’s monumental find provide a good deal of levity. The idea here is that she has to delay reporting to Ed because she wants to give Alice a chance to bring Catherine over to their side before she’s arrested.

With all she knows about Ed, it’s unfortunate that Nora never suspects that he will completely sabotage her entire operation, and her underestimation of just how incompetent, arrogant, and self-involved he is ends up being her downfall. She seems to have forgotten what she said to Alice days earlier: if you’re trying to take someone like Jay Easton down, you wait until your gun is against their temple. Here, her gun is certainly loaded, but it’s not close enough to take Ed down quite yet. That said, her speech, in which she reveals everything she knows about his connection to Jay Easton, is absolutely epic.

As Nora finally confronts Ed — having raced up to his office via the stairs so she could be waiting for him like a total boss — she updates him on the case, assures him she has it under control, and then drops her bomb: she knows about his connection with Jay Easton. Nora’s delicious monologue interweaves her anger at Ed’s blatant racism by calling her a “DH” or “Doh” or “Diversity Hire” when she started at the FBI, with the acknowledgement that she is now a “lioness” who knows better than to take shit from the awful men in her orbit. Ed doesn’t like any of this, especially not Nora’s insubordination, and when she brazenly tells him about Hal’s laptop, he visibly freaks out. Nora tells him she owns him, and while this beat feels victorious, we come down hard from that high when Ed eventually tells Nora that he’s pulled her team off the mission and that he’s also sidelined her for her drinking. Also, Hal Hartford’s laptop has been “scrubbed clean” of evidence. Uh oh.

Meanwhile, Alice is doing the absolute most inside the shelter. We have to wait a moment before we get to the exciting cliffhanger from last week, but we learn some pivotal information about Catherine in the process. She heads to the shelter because she knows Jean (Marcia DeBonis) will help her. Jean is wonderful, a fiercely loyal and maternal figure who sincerely wants to help these women untangle their traumas and get back on their feet. (Let’s hear it for the Jeans of the world, y’all.) In the brief conversation she has with Catherine, we find out that she hasn’t seen her in two years and that she’s been worried. She also guarantees Catherine that she won’t call the cops — most women on Furious seem to know the unspoken rules — and she allows her to stay the night. Coincidentally, she also gets Alice a bed, and she and Catherine are roomies.

Alice puts on a tough exterior with Catherine at first, and the ruse works. Despite Nora’s instruction to keep the conversation to “Do you like rain, do you like cats, do you like rainy cats?” Alice tries to trick Catherine into sharing about Isabel by telling her she’s muttering her name in her sleep. Catherine is disarmed enough to allow Alice to come with her for some fresh air out in the recreation yard. When Catherine asks about Alice’s boyfriend, Alice shares the truth about Marshall, and ends the story with a tidbit about how she thought she was going to die with shampoo still in her hair. This is how female friends talk, sharing small details of their encounters, things that no one would think were important or interesting unless they truly cared or intimately understood the situation.

Catherine doesn’t share about her life right away, instead choosing to chat about Jean’s canning abilities. These two women love Jean because Jean is awesome, but then, after dinner, Jean tells everyone that they have to go shower. Of course, this causes Alice to freeze up. Catherine notices this and kindly keeps talking with her to help keep her comfortable. She revisits information that we learned when she visited Elena: Catherine tried to get her own place, to care for Elena herself, but her trauma just kept resurfacing in ways that didn’t allow her to hold down a job or provide a stable home for a teenage girl. The big twist here is that Elena isn’t actually Isabel’s sister: she’s her daughter. When Alice invokes Isabel’s name, Catherine gets suspicious, swaggering over to Alice, considering her, and then telling her that she doesn’t have to shower, just get her hair wet.

Tragically, Alice’s shower trauma turns out to be a big handicap for her in her pursuit of Catherine’s trust. First, while in the shower, another woman tells Catherine that she knows Alice is a federal agent. Yikes. So, when Alice tries to buddy up with her new friend again after shower time, Catherine says she’s going to bounce. She lures Alice into the showers, turning all the taps on, taking advantage of her weakness to entrap her. When Alice starts to have a panic attack, Catherine slams her syringe into her neck. Then, these women stop being polite and start getting real.

It’s clear that Catherine doesn’t want Alice dead. She’s conflicted about what to do with this sympathetic FBI agent at her disposal, and she feels like she can’t get the result she wants by herself. But she also believes that entering into a deal with the FBI will end with her being discarded as soon as she’s not useful to them anymore. She forces Alice to look at the reality of things by admitting why she didn’t report Marshall for abusing her. Alice, a member of the law enforcement system, almost can’t even admit to herself why she didn’t report the abuse, choosing instead to say that she didn’t want to make Marshall mad and that people would say she was weak. If the whole system is broken, then there really is no reason for Catherine to trust her.

Lola Petticrew and Emmy Rossum are exceptional in this scene. Their emotions are cranked to eleven as both women allow themselves to be honest and raw, exposing their vulnerabilities to one another even when it’s risky to do so. They see one another, traumas mirrored in each other’s eyes, and Catherine truly wants to believe that Alice can help her in some way. As she begins to ask Alice for what she wants — Elena’s safety in exchange for the information she has from Hal’s laptop — she begins to dissociate. “This isn’t even my body. These aren’t even my fucking hands,” she says, flexing from palms into fists. But then, a realization brings her back down to earth: No one has come for Alice. No one is surrounding the building.

Catherine’s survival instinct kicks in, and she runs out the door, Alice’s drugged body pinballing through the shelter after her. The second she hits daylight, Marshall snatches her up. He’s been stalking her on the NYPD app (she’s in the FBI now, so I’m not sure why she’s still findable on this app, but okay), drinking in his car all day, and now he has what he wants. He slams her on top of his car, set to punish her for what she did to him the night before, when Catherine races up next to them. “Don’t touch her!” she screams, pointing Alice’s gun at Marshall’s head.

“You want me to kill him?” she asks Alice, cocking her head ever so slightly to the side. Alice’s face is inscrutable, a thousand emotions flitting across her fentanyl-blurred eyes. And then Catherine decides for her, or maybe for herself, and shoots this abusive man in the side before fleeing off into the New York City streets. Moments later, Ed George and his team arrive on the scene, too late to prevent what happened or even catch their woman.

I have a lot of questions (and emotions!), but the one I’m most concerned about is if Ed will have to answer for the huge effing mess that he caused at the end of the episode. The emphasis on the “men get away with all sorts of awful shit” storyline, and just general history, tells us no. But he left an agent completely unprotected, and let a literal serial killer get away while shooting a cop on the case. Is it too much to hope that this brash, brazen man will answer for his incompetence? (This is rhetorical; I know the answer is yes.)

If all of this wasn’t enough to process, Furious throws us one final curveball at the conclusion of the episode. After spending a (very hilarious) day at the FBI, Alden says goodbye to Danny. Much like Catherine could tell that Alice was a genuine person who was telling the truth about her situation, Alden can tell that Danny is one of the good guys. So, he gives him the USB drive with the information from Hal’s computer on it. Danny heads out to his car so he can check it out on his laptop (smart), and finds folders upon folders of women’s names with dates attached. Somehow, he stumbles upon the name “Alice” with a date of March 2004. He clicks on it, gasps, and slams his laptop shut. I’m not sure I love this twist, but I’m excited to learn more about it next week. That is, if I can get my heart rate back to normal before then.

• Alden’s “fuck the police” scene is golden. I rewatched it several times, and I am always glad for the comic relief Steve Way provides in every episode. I’ll be very sad if this is the last we see of him, especially because I live to watch him torture Frank Choi.

• Now we’re all wondering if Elena is Jay Easton’s daughter, right? And if the baby that Alice gave up was also, somehow, Jay Easton’s?

• My favorite moment of the episode was when Alice asks Catherine about her sparkly bag. Catherine admits that it was Isabel’s, and Alice says, as dryly as possible, “And she let you borrow it?” This exchange alone is so telling of the teen girl mentality that they both are frozen in, but Catherine’s response — that Isabel would put little notes in the bag for her every day, even though they were both ostensibly in hell — is such a heartbreaking detail. Love always finds a way, even in the darkest places.