I really like Emmy Rossum. I’ve been a fan of hers since her performance in the TV series ‘Shameless’ and I find her to be such an arresting onscreen presence. She’s very good at portraying characters that are tough and fragile at the same time. In the new Hulu show on Disney+ Furious, she uses that to full effect to play an FBI agent who is after a serial killer while dealing with her own demons.
Furious, created by Elizabeth Meriwether, is a crime show that follows Alice Black (Rossum), an FBI agent who left the New York Police Department over tensions between herself and a co-worker with whom she was romantically involved. That tension her pushed out of the force, and the people she once called her friends are no longer speaking to her, except for Detective Danny (Scoot McNairy). She’s drawn into the murder of the son of a billionaire, whose death resembles an earlier case that Alice and Danny had worked on together. Now, they are on the hunt for a young woman (Lola Petticrew) who is out to kill more and more people connected to her past as a victim of human trafficking.
There’s an air of darkness and heaviness with each episode – it’s probably a show you’d want to watch once a week – and while the detective work is happening, we are also seeing the killer in action. We watch how she plans, schemes, avoids detection, and leaves no trace.
What the show does is pit these two women against each other; two women who have a lot more in common than they think. Because Alice Black is not some cookie-cutter FBI agent. You wouldn’t get Emmy Rossum for that. She’s a broken woman; traumatized by what her ex (Jake Lacy) has done to her, who uses that trauma to fuel her desire to work in a FBI unit focused on victims of violent crimes, specifically children and women. Alice is neither nice nor kind. Early on in the series, we see that outside work hours, behind closed doors, she prefers her sexual exploits to be violent. She barely sleeps. She’s also not above lying during witness and suspect interrogations to get the responses she needs.
From the first four episodes of the show, we get the feeling that this is a world that is unkind, even cruel, to women and that the most affected have to fight back at full force. Alice, and even her mentor in her new department, Nora (Quincy Tyler Bernstine), are constantly on the offensive. But so is the killer, who steals the identity of Jenny in episode two.
The story of “Jenny” is revealed piece by piece with each episode, both through her own actions and through Alice’s own investigation. By centering the show on these two women who are propelled forward by their trauma, what we get is a dark and heavy procedural drama with a very strong feminist narrative about women’s rage. The title itself is apt, even if the anger is one that is slowly building. Each episode pushes both women further and further to a point of no return, and it’s interesting to see how this eight-episode series will end.
The inclusion of a billionaire along with themes of misogyny and feminine rage all seem so topical that its story can feel like a hard sell. But what keeps it moving and interesting to watch is how insightful the show is in depicting the many ways women have been treated over the years and are still being treated today, especially in male-dominated fields such as this. Rossum and Bernstine are excellent at embodying this, while McNairy provides great support for Rossum’s Alice. Petticrew feels like the weakest link here; she is never quite scary enough to fully sell the character, though she improves by episode four when we see more of who her character is and her backstory. As a mystery, she isn’t interesting enough, but with a past, she’s giving it her all. It’s a dark, heavy show that checks all the boxes – women-centered, police procedural, hard-hitting, unapologetic – anchored by a great cast led by the incredible Emmy Rossum.
My Rating: 3.5 Stars
Ready for a hard-hitting mystery led by Emmy Rossum? Catch the premiere of Furious on Disney+. starting July 27!
