Furious: Season 1

6

It’s weird that nobody seems to recall the film Black Widow. Not the 2021 Marvel movie, but the 1987 erotic thriller starring Debra Winger and Theresa Russell. Like it lives in some black hole or Mandela Effect. I could picture the poster in my head, and even recall the trailer. So, in my memory of it, I’d actually seen the film. After reading a short synopsis, I became less convinced of that fact, however. And then I realized, out of nowhere, that I was conflating it and the 1985 film Kiss of the Spider Woman. Another movie I didn’t actually see, but the film names and the weirdly similar person-in-silhouette construct of the poster art just mashed up the memory in my head. Point is, Furious is based in part on Black Widow, but not even the film nerds seem to remember that was a thing. I thought I did, but like our main character in the show itself, perhaps my memory is just not that reliable.

Despite its origin story somehow being memory-holed by an entire generation of filmgoers, Furious has broken out as its own female-centric original crime drama that seemingly emerged from nowhere. Even though it was created by serial TV creator, Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl, Bless This Mess, The Dropout.) Perhaps that’s on the Hulu marketing team, or maybe they didn’t quite know how to market a series about a young female serial killer hunted by a severely damaged FBI agent all wrapped up in sex trafficking and the psychosis it creates in its perpetrators, victims and prosecutors? Yeah, not exactly sunny stuff. Not exactly New Girl or light rom-com like the Meriwether penned Natalie Portman / Ashton Kutcher vehicle, No Strings Attached. Which is a movie, unlike Black Widow, that I actually did see. Unless, of course, I’m thinking of Friends with Benefits. Nope, I know both films came out in 2011, star the two women from 2010’s Black Swan (who were cast in that film to be confusingly similar) and are pretty much the exact same movie, but I’m sure I saw both. Maybe on the same day. Sorry, I could do a whole thing on the Portman / Kunis / Rossum of it all, but it would involve an entire treatise about a formative San Fernando Valley teen tour and familial expectations and… Well, nobody wants or needs to peer into my head.

Nor does anyone want to peer into the heads of our two female leads in this show. The aforementioned serial killer, Catherine Grace (Lola Petticrew), and NYPD-detective-turned-FBI-agent, Alice Black (Rossum). Because, if we were to look into their brains, we would uncover some dark, dark shit. Catherine Grace, a young woman who, as a young girl, was sex trafficked to rich men and is on a revenge spree to tick each and every man connected to her trauma — and the murder of her young friend — off her list. And Alice, who left the NYPD after being abused by her childhood sweetheart cop boyfriend, Marshall (Jake Lacy), choosing to not report him, but rather leave the force and join another to prosecute the types of abusive men she sought to escape. Left behind in all this is her very close buddy from the department, Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy), and a whole team of good-old-boy dudes from the old neighborhood. Enter her new FBI boss and the head of the NYC sex crimes unit, Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), who loves to day drink and warns Alice about the mental sacrifice it takes to work sex crimes. But, she’s down. Sending her and our serial killer on a collision course, as is to be expected.

Alright, now that we have that set, where do we go? Well, we get to watch Catherine Grace work her serial killer magic. She ensnares men in her web, ironically using her sexuality to put them in vulnerabe positions and then continually drugs them with what I believe is ketamine and basically tells them why they’re terrible people and ultimately kinda, sorta starves them to death before she gives them a lethal dose. I can’t say she’s terribly careful with hiding what she’s up to — you’d think these dudes would have decent camera systems in their buildings or be missed more than they are — but being a child who was sex-trafficked, she never really had much of a footprint for them to trace. Meanwhile, it becomes clear that her killing is all in an effort to work her way to the guy at the top of the ring. The one who bankrolls and plans the web of abuse. On the other side, Alice is dealing with her own stuff — her own abuse causing trauma that is clearly lasting and scarring — but is determined to stop this killer because that’s her job. Thing is, she’s a very good liar. In some ways, she’s more of a liar than the serial killer ever is. Never copping to why she’s determined or why she’s detached. Even to her friend, Danny, who obviously harbors feelings for her and worries about her as he watches her spiral.

And, yes, I know this all sounds super-bleak. But, weirdly, the woman who generally makes sitcoms somehow injects some humor into the proceedings. Because, once again, life is not all misery and darkness. Even when dealing with such a heavy subject. The most sitcom-adjacent character is Frank Choi (Rob Yang), who, at first, seems like he’s going to be Alice’s foil at the Agency, but essentially turns out to be a relatively lovable dufus who just wants to be in on the action. Dude is funny. But, by far the most complicated and LOL funniest character is Quincy Tyler Bernstine’s Nora. Driven to alcoholism by the awful shit she has to witness each and every day — and being a black woman in an organization filled with overbearing white men — she is beyond jaded and over it. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen her in anything, but she steals every scene she’s in. She’s smart and sad and cocky and, well, drunk. She just absolutely kills it. Granted, she gets a lot of the zinger lines, but manages to float between the lighter, more comedic, but tense interactions with her boss, Ed George (Danny McCarthy) — who is also awesome — and dealing with Alice’s mishigas. All in all the acting is solid across the board. With that I must bring up McNairy’s accent. I think he’s maybe trying to do New York borough of some sort? But, no, that nonsense is straight-up Boston. It’s one of the more egregious attempts at a regional accent I’ve heard in recent history. He really should have just skipped it and done a flat Texan accent, or whatever his real flavor is. Nobody would have cared. Granted, Petticrew, being a super-Irish woman, rocked what I could only call a… well, a non-specific weirdo American accent that sounded like nobody in the US I’ve ever spoken to. That aside, I did appreciate the inclusion of Steve Way, who, as a disabled actor, brought a wrinkle that added some real energy to the role and to the story. He too is a pretty funny guy.

I believe what we have here is a so-called cat and mouse thing. One where the parallels between the cat and mouse become closer and closer as they get closer to their ultimate collision. It gives big Killing Eve vibes, before that show went off the rails. I mean, Killing Eve was a way more heightened Guy Ritchie-like, Brit joint, but the psychological bond and dynamic between the two women felt very similar at times. The enforcer of the law moving ever closer to the one breaking it. Is it obsession or jealousy or something all together different? Whatever the case, like that other series, we aren’t forced to like Alice. The writers do an effective job of slowly unravelling her background to garner sympathy for a character who, on the surface, feels pretty unworthy of sympathy at times. Or, not unworthy, but just not a terribly sympathetic person. Not judging, just sayin’. I suppose Danny acts as our audience avatar, wanting so badly for her to tell us/him why she is the way she is, but her refusing to share and just stubbornly running headlong into walls. And not showering. At all.

I was a fan of like 90% of the show. Again, great acting. Good writing. Excellent, unique characters. Except, that is, for the big bad. The weird rich guy who seemingly lives in a sprawling house in Connecticut that has absolutely no windows. At least the set on which they filmed didn’t. His scenes with Hope Davis just clanked. He’s an old-ass man who is just really, really into rape and child porn? They spent quite a bit of time letting us into the world of the victims of all this, and how it has affected those victims, and the people who have to investigate this terrible stuff, but the actual perpetrator feels like a cardboard cutout of a rich dude with an unending appetite for evil. And, look, maybe Meriwether and crew didn’t want to humanize the guy, but it just felt incongruous with the rest of everything else. And that house and his hidden sex room and… I don’t know, it seemed like they kind of offboarded that whole thing to the b-team. Because, as I mentioned, the rest of the characters are so nuanced and interesting and round. It didn’t ruin the show for me, but it certainly dented it. I have a few other quibbles and nit-picks — like how Catherine Grace’s drug formula seems to conveniently wear off for Alice, but not for some other grown-ass men — but overall, this was a solid, entertaining show that will be interesting to see what they do in season two. Let us watch Alice break bad.