And there will always be more victims. Jay Easton may be on his deathbed, hooked up to an oxygen tank and wheeled from room to room by his daughter Emma, but he can still have girls brought to his home to be abused. It’s a pitiful sight, seeing this frail old man demand access to trafficked adolescents like a petulant toddler, but they’re also handed to him on a silver platter. After all, who’s going to stop him? He gloats about being unrepentant in his crimes, so bolstered by his own arrogance that he can keep tapes of evidence in his safe even after Emma tried to destroy them all.
Hope Davis is one of our finest performers of WASP-y nerve, and as the dutiful daughter/accomplice, she is forceful in her steeliness. She treats her culpability with the weariness of an overworked PA, cloistering herself in her opulent greenhouse while her father commits rape. But even though she could knock this terminal patient down with a nudge, she is clearly terrified of him. Victims often become perpetrators for a reason. In maybe the episode’s most chilling moment, she thanks the latest victim for making her father “so happy” while trying to ignore the obvious pain in the girl’s scowling face—and the wounds on her wrists.
The jokes aren’t as plentiful in this episode, although there is a cracking line about an, ahem, taint bone that elicited a guffaw, and Nora’s sarcastic fatalism gets a moment to shine through the fine art of karaoke. Yes, even someone as broken by the world as Nora can still put on a stirring performance of Meatloaf’s “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That).” No word on whether she did the radio cut or the full 12-minute version from the album, but one wonders what it is she wouldn’t do for love, given that she told Alice she should have let Marshall die in favor of catching Catherine. Still, she does know the cost of justice, and Alice must bring her all to make it happen. Enter Bad Cop Alice.
And boy has she earned the right to commit a couple of civil rights violations. Her bosses left her to die in the field. Marshall’s mother called her a slut. Her naïve half-sister judges her for continued bitterness towards their mother. And Danny confesses his true feelings but also cannot get close to her after seeing videos of her being abused (bless Scoot McNairy for his ability to be both tender and brash, the cop with a dented heart of gold.) Trauma has caused her to splinter into parts of a person but never the full picture. So, when Rossum goes full Vic Mackey, you can’t help but feel it’s been a long time coming. She’s the one of sheer brute force now, not Catherine, and like Catherine, she’s unafraid to use it on those who need her protection more than her scorn.
Furious has spent much of its running time confronting the impossible bind of a criminal justice system that might be irrevocably broken. When the odds are stacked against you and the other side is full of open cheaters who openly discuss killing a culprit and making it look like suicide, is it your duty to break the rules for the right reasons? Are they still justifiable if you have to hurt a few victims along the way, or set a dangerous precedent? Either way, the collateral damage caused is mighty and has long-lasting effects. What it creates is a bunch of traumatized people running into the fire—or, as Alice does when she sacrifices arresting Catherine for nabbing Jay Easton, one traumatized person instructing another to drive into the heart of the inferno. Perhaps, at the very least, the monsters can rise up from the ashes.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.