Furious Is a Feminist Manifesto of Rage

The Emmy Rossum-led crime series is righteously vengeful—and the best television drama of the year so far , a character makes note of the fact that 'victims of violence are the most violent. ' This concept, an update on the 'hurt people hurt people' adage, is not novel, but it takes on new relevance in a show that dares to question whether the infliction of pain and suffering onto another can ever be deemed virtuous, so long as the target has inflicted pain and suffering onto someone else first. Rare is the show that gives women the space to be truly, unapologetically angry, and even rarer is one that treats their rage with a sense of understanding, allowing all their messy contradictions to spill out while still inviting sympathy. But, which confronts the wrathful indignation of women who refuse to be the final link in a chain of violence, is a rare show. It's also the best new drama of the year so far.largely centers on the ever-evolving chase between Alice , a former NYPD homicide detective now relegated to a grunt job at the FBI, and Catherine , a wig-wearing, identity-swapping serial killer whose targets just so happen to be high-powered men with connections to a widespread pedophilic sex-trafficking ring. As predator and prey slowly encircle each other, both doing work they believe is vital, it becomes increasingly clear that these two women have a lot more in common than one might expect. , which similarly pitted a female law enforcement officer against a female serial killer in a psychosexual game of cat and mouse. But whereseemed to murder for the fun of it, Catherine does so out of a sense of righteous purpose. As it is eventually discovered, Catherine is a victim of the same sex trafficking ring she's now seeking to eradicate on her own terms. Her targets are men who raped her when she was underage; chief among them is Jay Easton , a powerful billionaire who she believes was involved in the murder of her best friend. Naturally, it's his influence that has allowed the ring to thrive for years. For Alice, who was dismissed from the NYPD after she suffered abuse at the hands of her former coworker and ex-boyfriend Marshall , finding Catherine and figuring out how her murders tie into a bigger sex crimes conspiracy becomes an intensely personal crusade—despite the efforts of her misogynistic superiors at the FBI doing everything in their power to sweep it under the rug. Alice is lucky to find an ally in Nora , a weathered fellow agent whose years in the basement-dwelling sex crimes unit have hardened her into a no-nonsense loner . Together, they, along with Alice's old NYPD buddy-cum-love-interest Danny , dare to take on a case that threatens to put them in direct opposition to the very people signing their checks. 's everyday appeal stems from its adherence to classic procedural crime drama beats, but what separates it from that already oversaturated market is its insistence on centering steadfastly determined women who have been forced to take matters into their own hands. It's no coincidence that all three women at the show's center have been wronged by men—and while a lesser show might settle into the inherent sadness of that reality,resists the urge to indulge any kind of 'victim' narrative. True to its title, the series instead taps into the rage that manifests as a result of that gendered abuse. Catherine, Alice, and Nora refuse to give the men who've harmed them the satisfaction of sitting back in silence. They may still suffer in their individual ways—Alice has a tendency to rope strangers from dating apps into physically sparring with her as foreplay; Nora drinks all day to numb herself to the horrors she's been forced to witness for years—but they also refuse to internalize their trauma. Rather, they push it outward, sharpening themselves into weapons that won't stop until they've drawn blood.certainly isn't the first feminist show to highlight the evils of men in a post-#MeToo world, but it does feel like one of the first to truly reckon with post-Epstein life. Beyond the monstrous nature of the crimes themselves, the Epstein Files reinforced the troubling notion that harrowing atrocities can happen right under our noses, as long as the people perpetrating them wield enough outward influence. The revelations made clear the dramatic distance at which justice too often sits out of layman's reach, even in the face of demonstrably incriminating evidence.one try to do good in a world where men don't merely get away with heinous crimes, but are actually emboldened by a system that openly supports them? In one of the show's most disturbingly revelatory sequences, Jay throws a fit when asked to dispose of hard drives containing CSAM, even after he's been tipped off by a corrupt cop that authorities are en route to his house. 'No one is going to do a fucking thing to me,' he venomously spits, with all the menacing bravado of a man who sees himself as above the law. 'Whatcould have backed itself into a corner. After all, there is no real, definitive way to 'do good' in a world wholly committed to protecting evil. Despite the presence of villains as morally corrupt as Jay, the show never tries to suggest that vigilante justice is theresponse. But similarly, it doesn't try to depict the ultimately futile effort to earnestly seek justice through the law as uniquely virtuous. Rather,focuses on the humans at the center of these moral quandaries; all three women are forced to come to their own conclusions about how best to move forward when they can feel the walls closing in around them—and none of them reach the same answer. By season's end, the once tireless Catherine seems exhausted by her own killing spree. Alice, on the other hand, has just experienced her own first taste of murder, and from the looks of it, she might be hungry for more. The scripted crime genre has long primed audiences to expect easy answers and satisfying resolutions, where every crime is perfectly solved and good always conquers evil. By design,steers clear of such a remedial denouement. When all is done, the only person that's been thrown in prison is Catherine. Sure, Jay Easton is dead and no longer capable of abusing young girls, yet from another angle, his murder at the hands of Alice also prevents him from ever truly being brought to justice. But these half-wins are what makesuch a compelling, eerily realistic watch. (And who knows: maybe we'll get some other kind of justice in the