Furious

Just finished watching Furious after a whole lot of social media influencers went bonkers and praised the series as a frontrunner for next year's Emmys. This series is redundantly written, grossly acted, and pretentiously shot. Furious is yet another reason I don't consider Hulu a worthy streaming platform; its original series are always mundane and lackluster.

The series deals with a very real plague that wedges between crime and sensibility: pedophilia, but the subplots (regarding the characters) dilute the show's main focus, turning it into what feels like a network drama with a sprinkle of expired grit.

Alice is a DV survivor and also someone who loves to partake in S&M. Research does not support a correlation between DV and S&M. By making Alice an S&M enthusiast, the writers distract the audience from ever feeling bad about Alice's past with Marshall. Alice's trauma feels like a giant episode of her gaslighting the audience about domestic violence. I would've liked Alice to be grey, but her being the polar opposite of her trauma is confusing to grapple with across mere episodes. Throwing Alice's past with a child predator into the mix feels appalling; the past does nothing but give the writers a convenient excuse to have her kill Easton and have the audience look at her crocodile eyes.

It feels like the show wanted desperately to earn brownie points. A disabled love interest to show that a serial killer antagonist has a human side and can indeed be nurturing; a cop taking care of a disabled child alongside his ex-wife; Marshall having a terminally ill mother; the antagonist being a lesbian; a random gay couple. None of these were necessary. With or without them, the plot would've remained the same. This series is a masterclass in what forced inclusion looks like — painful, because you can't seem to read the point the writers are trying to make.

The series tries to portray Catherine, the antagonist, as an anti-hero. I do appreciate the efforts taken to mould a ruthless, drug-giving assassin as an anti-hero; it doesn't quite land, especially when you realize that Catherine's sole motivation was a confabulated memory and that she had a part to play in the person's suffering, whose death she is trying to avenge.

For the life of me, I can't seem to understand how the FBI got jurisdiction on this case. I think the writers think that their audience is averagely dumb. Well, this ain't the age of network television. The series keeps showing how the FBI strong-arms the local NYPD, and I kept wondering how and when this would happen for a local murder of an NYC resident. The writers are so busy with their subplots that they don't bother explaining the actual logistics of the story. Nora, Alice's supervisor, is a liability who needs to be fired immediately. Her tactics and motivation to sound cocky don't actually help anyone in the show. Without her, everyone had a better chance at getting the job done. With her in the picture, covers get blown, and lapses cost evidence. Yet, she has the nerve to hold her head high. She is worse than a rookie. I doubt the writers consulted with actual FBI agents to write this show.

For people who claim to run a ring of child predation and be influential, none of the victims have bodyguards or guns. A five-something-foot-tall girl is able to get super close to you with nothing but a fentanyl-laced needle. I am not saying that these filthy men need to do better, but the writers need not have made the victims appear so stupid and gullible. The writers want us to believe that Catherine knows just what buttons to press, and these people automatically fall in line. C'mon now.

The series has the weirdest soundtrack. The title score is enough to make me forget the seriousness of the show's subject material. The soundtrack seems like it was meant for a state fair and not a show about an FBI investigation.

Finally, don't waste your time on a show that could've been a brochure. Rather, watch films like Spotlight and Silence of the Lambs, or shows like The Mare of Easttown.