Furious Season 1 Episode 4 Review: Everything’s Coming Up “Trauma”

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

Alice may be closing in on Catherine, but it’s not without stepping into tangled webs and bureaucratic red tape.

After the Furious three-episode premiere dove into Catherine’s seemingly psychopathic killing spree and Alice’s own darkness, things slow down a bit for Furious Season 1 Episode 4.

The hour spends more time delving into some of the other characters and how their own demons could impact this investigation, and while interesting enough, some of the intrigue dies down a bit, at least for now.

At the center of Furious is just a deep exploration of trauma and what it looks like, how people cope with it, and even how they fail to.

The more obvious displays of that are with Catherine and Alice, who serve as fascinating parallels to one another despite Alice being in heavy pursuit of her.

But this hour was interesting in that it also dug a bit deeper into some of the supporting characters.

Presently, two of the most compelling dynamics with Alice are that of Nora and Danny.

While one bond got deeper after the events of “Flash Flood” with the climate forcing them to confront some of their issues, the final moments of the hour may have strained what Nora and Alice had going on.

In many ways, it’s evident that one can’t work in the division that they do without losing a bit of themselves or being just a bit screwed up.

Each new piece about Alice we learn reveals a deeply troubled trauma survivor who is still trying to navigate the world the best way she knows how after some terrible experiences.

In this case, especially her fixation on Isabel and, by extension, Catherine, is so important to her in large part because the more we learn, the clearer it is that she could’ve easily ended up just like them — either of them.

It sounds like she fell in love with someone inappropriate as a young teen, and her father kicked her out of the house instead of helping her. Alice was in a home just like Isabel and Catherine at one point.

Searching for some semblance of home is how she crossed paths with Marshall and his family, and it’s probably why she clung to that relationship well into adulthood, until very recently.

Alice is the troubled girl like the ones she’s searching for, and it makes her great at navigating this world, but it also speaks to how fundamentally broken she is to be able to do it.

It’s what makes her relationship with a seemingly hardened Nora so great. They’re women with their own darkness and demons with a passion for this job, but you don’t get to stick it out in the field without it taking bits of your soul or seeking out vices.

Nora is someone who clearly has cared too much over the years, so she copes with the darkness by trying to distance herself, and she adopts a laissez-faire attitude that she doesn’t care much at all.

But her drinking says otherwise. She’s a full-blown, functioning alcoholic. She’s been slipping things into her drinks for the entire time that we’ve seen her.

Maybe drinking and singing oldies tunes is the only way she knows how to function when her job can entail slipping into a private room to review child pornography to solve cases.

Nora remains one of my favorite characters and one of the most interesting. Which is why I have to believe there’s more to her closing out that case of Isabel’s death.

Someone likely murdered Isabel, but it was simply easier to dismiss her death as some accident, close it out, and move on because she was a sex worker, and people have a tendency of treating girls like Isabel who slip through the cracks as if they don’t matter.

As if they didn’t matter in life and matter even less in death, and justice isn’t something they’re due.

No one seems to pay attention to the fact that she was an underage sex worker — clearly someone exploited and trafficked — that a girl at her age couldn’t legally consent to some of the horrific things she likely was doing.

Nope. They just focus on her being a sex worker at all, and never examine the entire infrastructure that made her one of society’s invisible victims.

Isabel was her case, and that of her superior, Ed. So, it’s likely he was the one really behind closing out this case and not looking further into the circumstances surrounding her death.

Their interactions were charged, even when Nora was going bold and intimidating.

You could tell that Ed rattles and unsettles her — that she overseels her bluster and that instead she’s likely bumping up against a bureaucratic system that keeps her in the basement buried under cases and rarely asking questions as Ed ascends.

Nora is brilliant, passionate, and a force, but her Achilles Heel is her drinking, and Ed has her number there. I wonder if she would’ve told Alice what was really going on if Ed wasn’t potentially holding her drinking over her head.

Her alcoholism is her pressure point that anyone can push, and it’s unfortunate.

I do wish that she and Alice could’ve had a conversation because they’ve built up enough of a rapport and seem to get each other in a twisted way.

Nora isn’t someone who stands in judgment of Alice. She may not have all the details about Alice, but she can see through her regardless, maybe because they align in ways, and she sees herself in Alice.

Her reaction to Alice’s battered-up face was telling.

Danny can’t fathom how Alice could get off on someone hitting her as part of this sexual ritual, but Nora seems to get it. Her only reaction was to remind Alice never to allow these men she hires online to hit her in the face.

Don’t leave evidence of it, don’t invite questions, don’t show your cards or your emotional wounds in such a flagrant way.

It seemed like one of those moments of Nora recognizing that to cope through what they see daily, it may consist of dancing with some darkness.

That’s why it was so interesting when we circle back around to Nora doing what she was subtly warning Alice about in the first place: weaponizing her darkness.

Nora gets that, professionally, everything is a game for them. There’s a lot of power and red tape, and they already have their cards stacked against them as women in the job as it is. Others will jump at any chance to stomp on them to climb the ladder.

Marshall is very much Alice’s version of Ed in that way. Alice is a threat to Marshall because of their history, his abuse, and the fact that he clearly is still capable of that ugliness no matter how much he suggests otherwise.

Her pulling that gun out on him was in direct response to him getting aggressive with her, but her showing up with bruises rattled him and caused him to jump the gun. I doubt he would’ve reported her without that.

But he didn’t want things to fall on him, and he wanted to cover his tracks.

Ultimately, what Alice does in her off time is something she has to be mindful of to avoid it getting dragged into her professional life.

Once Marshall brought it up with Nora, she had to do something to address it, and the fact that it also means Alice won’t call her out on her role in closing Isabel’s case is just a bonus, of sorts.

Nora’s understanding of that situation comes from something deeper and relatable, whereas Danny’s comes from a genuine place of hopeless love for his friend and partner and not knowing what to do with it.

Danny: You think I like this? You think I like feeling the way I feel about you? It’s a nightmare. Black fucking hole.

I sympathize with him so deeply. Loving someone who is a bit of a hot mess is exhausting. It’s its own traumatic experience, except it’s not kosher to admit or acknowledge that.

He describes loving Alice as a black hole, and it wasn’t even harsh — just really raw and honest. Alice is secretive, broken; he’s seen her at her worst; she’s still not coping with things well, angry, self-destructive, and totally self-consumed.

He’s expressed his hurt and frustration that she hasn’t checked in with him much. She doesn’t tell him things, which is hard enough, but she also doesn’t ask him things either.

Alice is in so much pain all the time that she doesn’t really see when he’s struggling too.

And she’s in that weird space of resenting him for still loving her and always trying to “save her,” and needing him to, despite that, as her most trusted person.

Their fight during the flood was a great way to lay some things on the table for both of them and clear the air. It also was amusing.

I also noticed that they never fully circled back to the fact that he, in so many words, told her that he’s in love with her. And boy, it’s difficult to process when someone loves you despite everything.

Poor Danny can’t really make sense of just how bad Alice’s past was or why she’d want some guys to hurt her, and Alice feels so judged by Danny even though she knows he cares about her.

It’s such a tough situation. It sounds like Alice’s most fundamental romantic relationships her entire life are rooted in abuse.

If an abusive love is all she’s really known — if that’s been her only real experience with love at all– it sadly makes sense that she’s taken traumatic experiences with Marshall and tied her entire sexual identity to them.

I can appreciate how messy that is because on the surface, someone will look at that and what she endured as something she invited or wanted just because it’s how she gets off NOW.

We could unpack the shame that accompanies that for days.

It juxtaposes nicely with how Catherine is battling her own issues, too. Her strategic hookup with Blanchard made me uncomfortable because he came across as privileged and performative.

He talked about her being a sex worker like she was a science experiment or something.

There was a gross way he glamorized her experience, and then he easily fell into the same exploitative nature when they had sex.

He easily fell right into treating her exactly like a sex worker, calling her “slut” with ease and being as gross and exploitative as any other guy. And all while being the typical overgrown guy who apparently mooches off of his parents.

But clearly Catherine was strategic in moving in on Blanchard, getting into that house, and ensuring that she got to come face-to-face with Hal.

He must be next on her list of revenge kills, and it was interesting to see that he recognized her instantly — which is more than we can say about the other guys she killed.

But her method of getting to Hal was a bit strange, and now he’s at a new location — was that Alden’s house? So I’m curious to see how she’ll approach things with him, and why this feels so different.

He also warned her about Easton, and it just reeks of a larger cabal, with Hal maybe being just one tiny cog in it.

And Isabel’s death is the impetus for Catherine’s revenge streak. Speaking to the lady at the group home revealed just how close Catherine and Isabel were, so that’s clearly driving her.

What’s endearing is seeing how easily Catherine reverts to being a relatively sweet girl when it comes to Alden. She’s not simply using him for a place to stay or to earn money.

She genuinely seems to care about him.

When he told her that he loved her and wanted to be with her, you could see how she took it as a sign because it made her feel good, literally, since she appears to have some level of dissociation or something.

Alden loves her just because, no strings attached, no exploitation, no sexualizing her or expecting physical stuff in return — he doesn’t leer at her or only see her as a sexual commodity, and that may be one of the first times in her life she’s experienced that.

Alice has random guys on the internet hitting her to make her feel, and Catherine has Alden. It’s fascinating that the serial killer finds peace and safety in the stillness of Alden, and the law-abiding justice seeker only finds control in darkness and violence.

Over to you, Furious Fanatics. Do you trust Nora? Are you shipping Alice and Danny? What’s Catherine’s game plan? Let’s discuss.