‘Furious’ Episode 7: Revenge, Rihanna, Repeat

The Prestige TV Podcast

Joanna Robinson and Rob Mahoney dive into the penultimate episode of 'Furious,' exploring emotional stakes, character arcs, and finale anxie

Key takeaways

• The show's narrative tension centers on survival versus emotional connection, with characters facing existential threats that undermine hope for a happy ending.

Main topics

• Finale fears and emotional readiness for the end of season two
• Alice and Danny's love confession under duress

Notable quotes

'Are the characters I care about going to be okay?' – Jo Robinson on finale anxiety.

Conclusion

As the season nears its end, the hosts reflect on emotional investment and

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) you Speaker 2 (0:19) Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV podcast. Me and I'm DeWitta Robinson. I'm Speaker 1 (0:22) Rob Mahoney. We're Speaker 2 (0:23) here to talk about Furious. What episode are we on? Speaker 1 (0:25) Episode seven, I believe. Okay, Speaker 2 (0:27) me too. We're nearing the end. Yeah, it's tough. We only have one more episode to go. But in Speaker 1 (0:33) some ways, the plot feels like it's at the end game. Are we emotionally ready for the end game? I'm going to say no for me personally, but how are you feeling about where we are? Well, where are you feeling? Speaker 2 (0:42) Yeah, because like all of our characters are converging. Yes, the race Speaker 1 (0:46) to Jay Easton's house. Some Speaker 2 (0:47) days it don't come easy. Ain't that the truth. A little meatloaf lyric as the title of the episode. Our characters are converging on one location. But I guess my, so I feel like we know roughly what the finale is going to be. It's some, I don't know how long. There's like a code afterwards or whatever. We are here to talk about this episode, not that episode. But I guess my question for you right now is season two. Do you see like a possibility for a season two? How could I know that? I don't know. Who survives? Speaker 1 (1:17) You know, I. I think that is what if it's Speaker 2 (1:19) just Jay Easton. Speaker 2 (1:23) Season two Speaker 1 (1:23) is just into Jay Easton's like dying dream state. You know, the last flickers before he dies. Absolutely not. But really what we're setting up as we go into the finale is will there be a season two as an open question, but also will there be a season two that could in any way involve a character like Catherine, which I think would be an extreme long shot. Speaker 2 (1:46) Right. That's a great question. Something, you know. Behind the curtain, Malarub and I just finished podcasting about Lanterns episode two. And on that episode, I was talking about something that I want to talk about in this episode, which is... Speaker 1 (1:59) Who's the Manhunter on Furious? Speaker 2 (2:01) Absolutely. Who is the Manhunter on Furious? Don't know. Speaker 1 (2:03) I Speaker 2 (2:03) think it's Marshall. Choi. He is Speaker 1 (2:07) the least human character, but also sometimes the most human character. In Speaker 2 (2:10) that room with the NYPD and Ed, the bar was in hell, but he was the most human character. Speaker 1 (2:15) Isn't that the most Lanterns moment we've had so far? It's like... The furious equivalent of like, where did Harry Potter go to school is like, wait, so what is the joint task force of your taint? Speaker 2 (2:24) Your taint as a joint? The thing that I'm most concerned about for the finale is not who killed whomst or whatever. It's... Are the characters I care about going to be okay? Speaker 1 (2:38) Well, no. Is anybody on this show okay? Speaker 2 (2:41) And inside of this episode, in the scene, the devastating scene between Alice and Danny when they like finally confess their love for each other, but it's not in a joyous context. It's in a devastating context. Again, that tension is not... There is the like, are Alice and Danny going to survive? That's a question that we can all ask ourselves as they head towards race towards danger. But like now I'm more like. Because they said, I love you. And earlier in the season, you might have thought, okay, when they can figure out how to say I love you, they'll be okay. But that was not the case. So can they emerge through sort of an emotional hellscape to the other side of okay? Speaker 1 (3:30) I really hope so. I just am not holding onto that hope too tightly. I think in part because so much of this show is about how doing this sort of work and being in these worlds. is basically incompatible with being a normal human being. You have to steal yourself. You have to grow your wings. You have to find a way to survive. And I don't Speaker 2 (3:49) know Speaker 1 (3:49) that Speaker 2 (3:49) - Speaker 1 (3:49) Is that how Speaker 2 (3:49) you get through podcasting? Speaker 1 (3:50) Sometimes. Not the wings part necessarily, but maybe I should embrace it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe that's what's been missing from the formula this whole time. But it's certainly how I steal myself for a line like, did you watch it? Which Alice has to ask Danny in this moment after they've just, or in the process of professing their love for one another. And it's like- this is the show that this world, like the world that we reside in with Furious, a show where you have to ask that question and be devastated of the answer and basically any possible, like there's no good or bad answer, just like all horrible. And Speaker 2 (4:22) I think my, I do want to circle back to the beginning and go back to that scene, but I do think my, I was on tender hooks for that scene because of something I said from the beginning of the season, which is like, don't disappoint me, Danny. You know what I mean? And I think he mostly didn't. I Speaker 1 (4:37) think he came through. Pretty well in this episode. Pretty well. Speaker 2 (4:39) But like, I was very nervous. All right. So let's go back to some emails we got from listeners. Sure. Press THTV at Spotify.com if you want to email us before the finale. We got a lot of, we had a lot of emails about Schaefer beer. We Speaker 1 (4:53) did. Speaker 2 (4:54) Which is the beer that Marshall was sucking down right before he got shot in last week's episode. A lot of people sent us through the jingle of Schaefer beer. Speaker 2 (5:06) It's the, what is it? It's like the beer you want when you want more than one beer, I think is something like that. Something to that effect. It's the one beer to have when you're having more than one. In other words, the beer to buy when you want to get shit-faced. Yeah. It's cheap. Speaker 1 (5:18) Yes. And Speaker 2 (5:18) you can get trashed. We got a lot of emails from people who were like, we got an email from one listener who was like, here is my... fridge in college and it was just full of Schaefer beer. You Speaker 1 (5:27) know, we've come a long way to please drink responsibly. Yeah. The fact that that used to be the built-in slogan for a beer brand and now Schaefer is the official beer of abusive cops or maybe soon to be ex-cops everywhere. Speaker 2 (5:38) I just have, I have a question for David, who's the one who sent us the aforementioned photo from 1999. David. Tremendous. What's your photo cataloging system like that you could pull up this photo of your college fridge from 1999? Is it? framed on your mantle. Speaker 1 (5:52) Reveal the scrapbook. Yeah, Speaker 2 (5:54) exactly. I'm just astounded. This is what our listener Paul said. Schaefer Beer Review from East Coast College Boys Circa 2007. Speaker 1 (6:01) Me Speaker 2 (6:02) and my housemates were on a year-long quest to sample as many different brands and flavors of beer as possible. When we finished a pack, we would cut out the side of the box and tape it to the wall, resulting in a kind of douche bro wallpaper. Sometimes people would see the wall and ask, what's the worst one? More often than not, the answer was Schaefer. My friend described it as a fresh fart in my mouth. So what Marshall was sucking down in the car while listening to 311. To Rob's point, yes, we were listening to Red Hot Chili Peppers and Incubus when we drank it. And our beer pong table had the cover art of 40 Houses of Freedom painted at the center court. By the way, I'm 10 years sober now and not a police officer. So thanks, Paul. Speaker 1 (6:38) I mean, an illuminating story. I have a lot of thoughts on it. But my visceral thought is we got to stop using sucking down for beverages or if you're... What about if Speaker 2 (6:48) you're sucking on chili dogs outside the Tasty Freeze? We got to also not Speaker 1 (6:52) do that. I Speaker 2 (6:52) think the only time you can't use it is when you're sucking on chili dogs outside the Tasty Freeze. We Speaker 1 (6:58) will allow that one exception, but no other sucking down any foods or beverages. Fair Speaker 2 (7:02) enough. I'm going to say this into a microphone, even though I already admitted to you off mic. Carpetbagging is the term you were looking for in terms of... Setting up residence in a different district so you could get elected there. This is the Speaker 1 (7:14) nicest thing you've ever said to me. You're Speaker 2 (7:15) welcome. Thank Speaker 1 (7:16) you, Joe. I Speaker 2 (7:16) think one of our listeners suggested that you should coin the phrase jerrycandering, like for canning, but gerrymandering. I Speaker 1 (7:25) saw the pun. But you hate puns. I have a mixed relationship. Let's Speaker 2 (7:29) go back to charcuterie. You hated that. You hate puns. That just Speaker 1 (7:31) threw me for a loop. Yeah. I didn't know where you were going with charcuterie. In Speaker 2 (7:35) terms of the state fair. Speaker 2 (7:38) does one taste the canned or jarred goods? Yeah. Speaker 1 (7:42) The Speaker 2 (7:42) answer was it depends entirely on the state fair is what we found out. In the New York State Fair, for example, it's 50 % of your score is taste, but some places they don't taste at all. I Speaker 1 (7:52) think as it should be. Yeah, well, I thought you were saying Speaker 2 (7:54) you Speaker 1 (7:55) don't taste it. I'm saying, as I understood it, there were some competitions where you do not, where it's purely an aesthetic and seal-based exercise. Speaker 2 (8:03) It should be taste-based, though. We got a lot of State Fair emails. Thank you guys all. You're all very strange and we love you so much. Incredible. Speaker 1 (8:12) Thank Speaker 2 (8:12) you for following us down these various rabbit holes. More on topic, less whimsical emails. Speaker 1 (8:20) Oh, we get those? Speaker 2 (8:21) Yeah. Marina wrote in to say, this may be obvious, but when you guys were discussing Alden and Catherine's relationship and the sincerity of her reaction to him asking her to be his girlfriend, etc., I think it's notable that Catherine seems to feel safe around Alden, especially because he physically cannot touch her. It's like she's the only one who has that power in the relationship, and that is why she's able to relax and be vulnerable with him. I thought that was a great observation. I Speaker 1 (8:46) thought that was incredible. I mean, just... The ways in which someone like Catherine would be eager for any part of her life that she can exercise on her own terms after everything she's been through makes total sense that that would be a kind of magnetism for her. Speaker 2 (8:59) Absolutely. Our listener Allison wrote in this incredible email. Allison literally wrote a book called Female Detectives on post-network television, colon, mother maiden cough. Allison said that she did not write in to sell her book, but I'm going to say buy Speaker 1 (9:15) that book. Speaker 2 (9:17) But I thought her insights were really interesting. She wrote, I'd categorize many female detectives from the last eight to nine years as emblematic of the post-MeToo era. The crimes they investigate are often gendered. The narratives often parallel the lines of the detectives with the lives slash trauma of the victims. And there's often some criticism of male detectives within their precincts. Think Catherine Kay would have Happy Valley at Great Show, Mayor of Easttown, et cetera. However, there's often some desire to hold out hope for the ability of the system to solve a crime via the empathy and insight of the female detective. Unbelievable exemplifies this tendency. Unbelievable Great Show. In other words, there's still hope for a systemic reform. Furious strikes me as a post-Epstein television show, which builds on the investigations of trauma and gendered violence within the earlier wave of female detective television. However... It seems to, at least so far, be even more deeply cynical about the institutions of policing, whether they are FBI or NYPD. Female detectives are still more empathetic, but not necessarily more moral than anyone else. And the institutions are even more deeply corrupt, no longer just one bad apple. And I thought this was most interesting. The detectives' parallel is no longer to the victim, but to the killer. I thought that was extraordinary insight. Anything you want to say about Allison's email or insights there? Speaker 1 (10:37) I mean, I think a lot of it is the navigation of those systems for me. And that's something that, I mean, we got those conversations pretty overtly last week between Alice and Catherine, but you can also see it just in the way that Alice and Nora go about doing their job. And how much of their job is like, we need to engineer a thing that is sort of beyond reproach so it can have any hope of navigating the system in one piece. It's like the ways in which everyone is kind of collectively. giving up on even trying to link Isabelle's murder, for example, to Jay Easton or Emma Easton in any way. It's like, you need this tape or you're cooked. Like that is the only hope of proving anything in a case like this, it seems like. Speaker 2 (11:15) I think that, especially inside of this episode, thinking about Alice as a pupil of both. Nora and Catherine. What is she learning from Nora in terms of like we use people, all that sort of stuff like that. But what is Catherine teaching her as well, I think is really fascinating. And like, are they sort of. Speaker 2 (11:34) warring for her, you know, like, not as binary as a devil and angel, but sort of like, are they, you know, is there a pull towards, you know, vigilante justice, Catherine style, or a pull towards what Nora does inside of the system, you know? And Speaker 1 (11:50) do those people like what they see? I thought it was really interesting that Nora... is telling Alice constantly about using people. And like, this is what the job is. This is what we do. And then as soon as she starts, Alice starts squeezing Isabel a little bit. Yeah. It's Nora that's saying, whoa, like there is, there is a line here still versus Catherine. I mean, she's revved up and ready to go. Yeah. There's a lot of, a lot of mystery to unfurl in terms of how someone like Catherine, who is such like a, like a cold, a stone cold killer, but a slow methodical. get in your trust and good graces and then inject you with fentanyl kind of killer is going to assault a compound. But that's for next week. That's something she's thinking about as she's driving. Speaker 2 (12:29) A very Catherine Light episode. Yes. But a very Speaker 1 (12:33) good episode nonetheless. I think thinking Speaker 2 (12:34) about, I need to think about it a bit more and I'd be curious if we get emails from listeners about this or it might just be about whatever idiotic beer we talk about next or something like that. But like, I love all those emails. The Me Too movement versus like... the post Epstein reckoning and what that means about systems versus holding individuals responsible. The meet, the me too movement era, whatever you want to call it. Um, and the way in which it was like this hope that we could all come together and call out individual bad actors and there would be reprisal. It would be like Harvey Weinstein goes to jail, et cetera, et cetera. But then seeing how. when certain people were held accountable for their actions, how much did that accountability stick to them at the end of the day? And that was like one of the harder lessons of the Me Too movement is like, even when we all have decided to agree and speak truth to power and all this sort of stuff like that. And put yourself Speaker 1 (13:30) in vulnerable, you know, positions of attesting to those things. Speaker 2 (13:33) Absolutely. Sometimes, and I would say often, does not stick. And then... In the Epstein, in the sense of sort of the post-Epstein idea is like. Yes, Jeffrey Epstein went to jail, but in terms of the Epstein files and holding everyone accountable and how systemic this was and how high up it goes and how you can't have faith that there will be justice for anyone. I really understand those two sex crime associated reckonings would feel very different and how this... the stories would reflect them differently back at us. You know what I mean? Speaker 1 (14:16) Completely. I think it's one of the quaintest parts of watching older detective stories in particular. Clearly, everyone's relationship to like cop-oriented media has shifted a lot over the last couple of years and maybe the last decade or so in particular. That's one thing. But then there's the like, oh, they got the guy, but what would, in the rewatchable style, what would happen the next day? Right. These charges would never stick. crazy murder or sex pest or whoever is like going scot-free because the systems are not actually built very well to be airtight. They're built to be navigated. And by Jay Easton in particular and people around him, navigated so smoothly. Speaker 2 (14:53) On this sort of like vigilante justice front, I think we got a really interesting email from Gary who said, what really separates Catherine from someone like Eric Draven, a.k.a. the Speaker 1 (15:02) Crow? I mean, there's one critical distinction. Speaker 2 (15:04) What would Speaker 1 (15:05) that be? He's dead. Oh, okay. Hard to hold a dead man to too much justice in my experience. Speaker 2 (15:10) Sure, she didn't Speaker 1 (15:11) come Speaker 2 (15:11) back from the dead, but Catherine does have these assumed personalities and she's set on vengeance for everyone who was at the party where her best friend died. And the Crow, he's a hero for doing this. Granted, in The Crow, every one of these people is still actively robbing, shooting, sticking, killing, etc. But apparently, at least Jay Easton is doing some harm to people. He certainly is an innocent. So what's the real difference? The narrative framing of vengeance as heroic versus framing as a crime is worth examining. If only Ernie Hudson worked for the FBI or the NYPD, maybe Catherine could get away with it. So that email helps if you've seen The Crow. I Speaker 1 (15:42) was going to say a difference Speaker 2 (15:44) in terms of the way that we respond to these reactions is gendered. You know? Speaker 1 (15:49) Of course. Speaker 2 (15:50) At the end of the day. Speaking of gendered fury, Speaker 1 (15:53) should Speaker 2 (15:54) we talk about the furies? Speaker 1 (15:55) I think we must and certainly you must. Speaker 2 (15:59) How disappointed me are you that the text of the show got there before I got there? I'm Speaker 1 (16:05) slightly surprised, but also it's one of those things that like etymologically speaking, don't we all know what we're doing here? I didn't know that one of the characters was going to say, I have to become a fury to survive this job. Right. Speaker 2 (16:18) Um, the Furies, uh, from Greek and Roman mythology, born from the blood of Uranus as he was castrated by Cronus. Uh, tough to hear it. Uh, our listener Kim wrote in to say the Furies are sometimes described as winged. She said winged, but I said winged. Sometimes as having snakes in their hair, but always as hateful, relentless in their work associated with night and death. Uh, Speaking of consequences for people, Neil Gaiman described the Furies in his graphic novel. The Sandman is sometimes taking the form of maiden mother crone, which would fit pretty well with the ages of our three main female characters. I'm pro-crone personally, so I'm not considering that an insult to Nora. But I do think that like, yeah, in terms of like age. brackets we've got three at least micro generations working between these women honestly i aspire Speaker 1 (17:08) to a bit of a crone lifestyle myself zone baby let's do it that's that's really the especially as we enter into fall and winter i'm in my crone space it's Speaker 2 (17:15) crying it's Speaker 2 (17:18) So anyway, the Furies, the show made it text, but we had gotten several emails about it. I just hadn't gotten there yet. So yeah. It's a clever bit. Speaker 1 (17:25) And look, if the whole point of Nora having