PEL Presents PMP#230: Gettin' Furious

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

The hosts of Pretty Much Pop dive into Hulu's crime drama 'Furious,' a revenge thriller centered on an abused detective and a female killer

Key takeaways

• The show's resonance stems from its timely engagement with systemic abuse and revenge fantasies tied to high-profile cases like Epstein's.
• Despite strong thematic connections, the creators' intent may be more broadly about societal justice than direct commentary on any single figure.

Main topics

• Revenge fantasy in modern media
• Jeffrey Epstein parallels and cultural relevance

Notable quotes

"It's not your traditional kind of propulsive killer. It's more meditative than anything I thought, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit."

Conclusion

While 'Furious' succeeds as a powerful, character-driven revenge drama with

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:08) You're listening to Pretty Much Pop, a culture podcast addressing the most distressing topics of our day with haste and whimsy. Today we're discussing about Elizabeth Merriweather's Hulu crime drama, Furious, in light of its massive popularity. If you haven't watched the show, fear not, we will tell you before we get into serious spoiler territory. I'm Mark Lintemeyer, recording in the ominous bleak room used to review sensitive materials. Speaker 5 (0:31) This is Al Baker, high-functioning alcoholic. Speaker 1 (0:35) I'm Sarah Lynn Breck, and I'm really looking forward to the three of you mansplaining furious to me. Speaker 3 (0:41) That's kind of not fair, Sarah. Like, I would never do such a... I don't know if I agree with you, starting off... Speaker 1 (0:46) Lawrence, don't get hysterical. This Speaker 3 (0:49) is Lawrence Ware, and I am not going to mansplain anything to Sarah. I'm going to listen to what she has to say intently because I'm afraid that she might kill me. Speaker 4 (0:59) So we are rather rushing this out. We had already recorded a supposed season opener back to school episode, but we're putting this out first because this show just finished its last episode this week. And even though it's, you know, now for you folks, it's like two weeks later, but still for us, this is up to the minute. We're following the trends. We're Speaker 3 (1:20) on top of it. We're on top of it. Speaker 4 (1:22) I'll write us. Every other pop culture podcast that's sponsored by a magazine has to come out the day after the thing. But that's not the world that we live in. We're too cool for that. But don't think that means this is more well thought out. Definitely not. Who suggested this? Maybe me. I don't even know. Speaker 5 (1:40) I think it was that all of you were watching it except me. Speaker 3 (1:43) Yeah, I think all of us suggested it. Speaker 4 (1:45) So I'll binge this whole thing. Speaker 1 (1:47) That's quite a binge. In one week. Speaker 5 (1:49) I'd already seen like enough to be spoiled because my fiance was watching it independently because if there's anything remotely woman-centered crime shape, I'm going to hear about it very quickly. But yeah, I binged it all over the last couple of days. What Speaker 3 (2:02) was it like binging it? Because watching it week to week was one experience. Was the binge, like, was that fulfilling? Did it lend well for binging? Speaker 5 (2:10) It held up pretty well as a binging experience with, I think, the notable exception of the finale, which I have some strong feelings about. Given our justified stance on spoilers, I think we should wait for that. But overall, the show is basically a picture-perfect version of the thriller miniseries kind of format a la Killing Eve or whatever it was, fantastically in a binge. Speaker 3 (2:32) As far as like a propulsive show that really sucked me in, it felt a little off kilter. Like I enjoyed it, but it's not your traditional kind of propulsive killer. It's more meditative than anything I thought, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit. Speaker 4 (2:47) I thought we should give some kind of brief summary for people that just don't even know what this is or why we would be covering it. given that it's not a major movie event that was announced for months and months or anything like this. In fact, I'm just finding out right now, looking on Wikipedia, that it was based on a past film from 1987 starring Deborah Winger. But, you know, of course, I didn't review that because I probably even saw that film. It sounds vaguely familiar. But in any case, there is a female serial killer who is wreaking revenge upon old white men for things that they have done to her when she was and to her friends when she was underage. So this is really maybe the reason that it's so popular is because even though the Epstein scandal has been with us for quite a few months here, I feel like this is the first thing that really directly gets at that rage that people still feel about this. And the fact that the purpose traders have not been frog marched through the public square and flogged. So like we have to have a bunch of art pieces to do that for us virtually. So we've got the killer and then we've got the cop who has her own problems and has reasons to be sympathetic with the killer. Speaker 1 (3:59) It is so connected, by the way, that Jay Easton, who is the bad, bad. Speaker 5 (4:06) Man, he Speaker 1 (4:06) has the same initials as Jeffrey Epstein. So I think it is a very, very clear, clear connection to what's happening right now. Speaker 5 (4:16) Yeah, I mean, clearly the reason that it's made the impact it has is it is very, you know, on the nose, not all in a bad way, but a very on the nose revenge fantasy for the many, many people who feel rightly that there has been nothing like justice for the victims of Epstein. Honestly, I didn't know it was based on a previous film. That makes a lot of sense. It makes it extremely depressing that a film that came out that many years ago can be so very relevant and of the moment right now. But yeah, it's not hard to see why it's made the impact that it has, as well as the fact that it's a very well-made piece of TV. It's incredibly well cast. There's a brilliant set of performances. The way that the show looks and kind of feels is really, really cool and engaging. Speaker 3 (4:58) I don't know if I agree with y'all at all. I mean, I... Do see that there is intent behind the people who are making the show to tie it to Epstein. Like that's without a question. I don't know if the show is hitting because of Epstein at all, honestly. I have not seen very much engagement by regular people talking about Epstein and the connections between the show and Epstein. I've just seen people talk about how it is a good show. And it is a show that is definitely in the wake of Me Too. And it is very well thought out. And it's... offbeat and very different and very innovative and very much in conversation with not necessarily just Epstein, but the entire Me Too movement. I haven't seen very many people at all talking about the Epstein connection. Now, I picked up on those connections, clearly, but I don't know that the everyday hoi polloi average viewer of the show who's just trying to find something to watch and it just happens to be what everyone's talking about, if they're connecting that to Epstein at all, really. I just, I don't, I haven't seen that. Speaker 1 (5:59) I think, though, because we're still in early days since the finale, there is so much... to unpack in this show. There are so many things that... the showrunner and executive producer is hitting here, that I think the Jeffrey Epstein thing is only a piece of it. It's only a piece of it. And I think that people are starting to write about it. But even in my research this week, and I didn't have a ton of time to do research, you know, I was thinking, oh, I want to read some essays on how this connects to the three Furies from the Greek mythology. And I'm not seeing a ton of stuff just yet. And I think maybe it'll come out. But because I think there's so much in this show itself that is just touching on all of these little pinpoints that I think it might take a little while for us to really fully unpack what's here because there's a lot. Speaker 5 (6:48) That's a really good point because all of the righteous revenge fury in the kind of more general societal Epstein kind of case does really come to a head at the end of the series. And so much of what was going on at the beginning and in the middle of it is so much more, I guess, personal and intense. Like that was the stuff that was hardest to watch. for me, was all of the main characters dealing with their own stuff rather than the stuff that they did to one another. Speaker 4 (7:12) I feel like we are getting close to spoiler territory, but let's maybe talk about the cast before we completely... make half the audience turn the episode off. Speaker 1 (7:22) Oh my God, they were so good. So Speaker 4 (7:24) Emmy Rossum, I was very familiar with from Shameless and she was already familiar by that point. I'm looking at her wiki page. It is actually pretty absurd how lengthy and praising this wiki page is that she sang happy birthday in all 12 keys and so was welcome to join the Metropolitan Opera Children's Chorus as a very young child. Like who wrote this? Did her mom write this? It's Speaker 3 (7:51) clear that like a fan, a fan wrote that. Maybe her mom. Speaker 4 (7:56) But yet, you know, it was 2019 that she jumped off that show, Shameless. But before it, I mean, it had already been going on, yeah, nine seasons. And that was enough. It should have just stopped at that point. It went another season or two without her. Apparently she did some other things, but I was not aware of them. So this was the first one. I guess she's also done Broadway, whatever. This is the first one thing that I've been aware of since then. And man, she was good. I mean, I'm not sure. She just had to portray this very damaged internal person yet who could just freak out at. Speaker 3 (8:32) Honestly, I've never really seen her perform like this. I've really never really seen her do her hair like this, embody a character like this, be so internal and introverted and repressed. I was really impressed with her performance. I didn't watch Shameless a lot. I watched a little bit of it. But she is such a different character in that show and just in everything else that I've seen her in. And so I was very impressed with her performance here. Like, she was really, really good in how withdrawn she was. But it's hard to kind of articulate because she's doing a lot with her eyes and her face, but not much with her words. And that is just a hard thing to do. And I was really impressed with her in this show. Speaker 5 (9:13) She's doing something incredibly impressive, which is taking... a hugely complicated internal life for the character and expressing it in a really thorough performance. And it feels so new and unique because of that. It's not a performance of a damaged person. It's a performance of this very specific person with these very specific traumas. Speaker 1 (9:33) Yes. And I thought all three of the leads were all three very specific characters. And I thought that Emmy Rossum's, I would not have thought of her for this role. I would have almost thought, oh, that sounds like a miscasting if I hadn't known anything, you know, really going in. And it made me think of the book that was by Liz Moore, Long Bright River, that was turned into a miniseries and it starred Amanda Seyfried in the lead role, who also played a very complicated law enforcement officer. I thought she was terribly miscast. And I think she's a great actor. And in fact, I think the showrunner for Furious has worked with her in a previous project. I just thought she was terribly miscast and it really kind of ruined the show for me. I don't think it's her fault necessarily, but you have to get the cast. just right in order for this to work. And all three of these leads were excellent. And they really brought something to the writing, which was also excellent. But all three of these performances really just leveled up this show for me. Not Speaker 4 (10:45) since Dragon Ball Evolution from 2009 has Emmy Rossum given such a performance. I'm just looking at the list. I will close her page now. All right. And then I was not familiar at all with Lola Petticrew, who is Irish, and all the things she's listed as doing are British things. So I... Yeah, Speaker 1 (11:04) I wasn't familiar with her either. I'd never Speaker 4 (11:06) seen her before, Speaker 3 (11:07) honestly. I watched quite a few British-Irish stuff. I think I've seen one or two things that she's been in, but she never stood out to me. But she was really good in this show. Yeah, I've never seen her in anything, and I've got no excuse. Speaker 4 (11:18) I guess I could picture various people doing that role. Emmy Rossum so inhabited her role that I just can't actually at this point. Picture anybody else doing it. That's right. Speaker 1 (11:29) I know. Me too. Me too. You'd have Speaker 4 (11:30) to get her wig to put on somebody else. To do exactly that performance, I guess, is all I'm saying. But yeah, what did we think about the complicated? Are we supposed to like, I suppose, this serial killer? Speaker 3 (11:45) No, I don't think we're supposed to like, but we are supposed to understand. I don't think we're supposed to like any serial killer, really. But we are supposed to understand why she's doing what she's doing. Be very sympathetic to why she's doing what she's doing. Or Speaker 1 (11:58) even empathetic. Speaker 3 (12:00) Empathetic. I think that's probably the better word. Like, I'm hard pressed to like any serial killer. Like, I don't. Speaker 4 (12:04) Killing Eve is a comparable series. It is. So Jodie Comer was the killer in that. But she just did that in such a wacky way that you kind of, you know, she's a really attractive woman and actress. And so, like, you can see that sort of the point is, in fact, that the killer and the cop, Sandra Oh, basically fall in love because of the weird attraction. But that's such a weird, Speaker 3 (12:28) that's such a Speaker 5 (12:29) weird show. It's Speaker 3 (12:30) clearly Speaker 5 (12:30) an influence on... furious as well but i think the point is that there's definitely versions of this show which are more in the vein of killing eve or like uh uma thurman movie the kill bill you know kill bill yeah like the straightforward like Speaker 3 (12:45) action revenge Speaker 5 (12:45) fantasy Speaker 3 (12:46) thing or sucker punch even oh sucker punch i haven't thought about sucker punch in a