Critic’s Rating: 4.1 / 5.0
4.1
It must be quite a reckoning when you’re confronted with the lingering effects and damage your actions or inaction leave on a person.
That’s a major takeaway from Furious Season 1 Episode 5, namely when it came to Marshall and Hal’s roles as they relate to Alice and Catherine.
These women are just so irreparably damaged, but the exciting part about the final moments is knowing that they’re finally in the same space and could be coming head-to-head.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
Furious‘ “Pick a Sticker” balanced so much of its darkness with humor that it made consuming it pretty entertaining.
But the darkness is still unflinching at times, and maybe that’s why it was the arcs that surrounded Marshall and Hal that felt the most striking in the long run.
Because these are men who never have to think about the consequences of their actions or the impact they have on others because they’re too self-absorbed for all of that.
These are men who make themselves the heroes, and at times the victims, in their own story but skate around accountability.
But when they’re forced to be in confinement with the women whom they’ve harmed, it’s confronting and not something they know how to process.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
It was the most obvious for Hal, who had to spend most of the hour tied up in Alden’s guest room while Catherine tried to piece together what happened to Isabel and the role he may or may not have played in all of it.
As a lawyer who works for powerful people, like Jay Easton, Hal never has to think beyond the bottom line of what he’s doing to secure his payment. The job ends when he gets Easton off or spares him from facing consequences.
Anything outside of that, he tries to go through his luxurious, privileged life without thinking about. But with Catherine there — him being in close confines with her — he had to think about his impact all the while bargaining however he could for his life.
When he broke down crying at one point, it was likely genuine fear for his life, no doubt, but I’d like to think that part of it was also seeing this adult woman completely stuck in this mindset of a child.
She was lighting candles and had posters on her wall, bringing out sparkly, glittery stickers like she was 7 years old and prancing around in Alden’s mother’s wedding dress and veil as if she was playing dress up in front of her dad.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
It’s heartbreaking and horrific, and it forced him to actually SEE the child she was when he sat back and watched Jay Easton have sex with underage girls and did nothing.
It’s hard to rationalize that these young teens were mature, or capable, or professionals with free will and choice, when you see this emotionally and mentally stunted and stagnant woman now, permanently trapped in her own trauma.
And amid all the childish things she does, she’s also a ruthless killer, too. All because of what so many grown people did to her.
It’s confronting to see the monster one helps create.
And yet, he still couldn’t quite take accountability for his role. He opted to hail Jay Easton as a monster and attempt to bond with Catherine, giving the illusion that they were on the same side—crusaders in taking down an evil man like Easton.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
Hal had all of this evidence and footage, most likely his security in case he needed it to protect himself from Easton and his power.
He could fill in some of the blanks of what happened to Isabel when she died, and he actively worked toward redirecting Catherine’s focus on Easton just to spare himself.
But he forgot that Catherine is rightfully appalled by the whole infrastructure. It’s not just Easton but the entire culture, of which Hal was a part. His turning a blind eye — his complicity — makes him just as bad as the men who had sex with kids.
He knew what was going on and did nothing about it. That doesn’t make him a hero, and it ultimately doesn’t spare him from punishment.
Getting stabbed in the eye with the needle felt poetic because of that. Because he saw things but acted as if he didn’t at his convenience. And Catherine’s right in that there should be punishment for that.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
Similarly, Marshall was navigating everything as the most self-absorbed person imaginable but still having brief moments where he had to face his role in things.
He’d get right to the cusp of recognizing how badly he’s screwed up Alice, but then he’d divert before he had to sit with anything for too long.
For Marshall, it was jarring and disturbing to learn that Alice wasn’t plotting against him or trying to set him up, showing up at work with a black eye.
She was legitimately dealing with her issues via her unhealthy form of sex with strangers. Marshall couldn’t even process the news when Danny told him that.
You could see the exact moment when he had to process that maybe, just maybe, the reason Alice was engaging in risky, violent sex with strangers was because of him — because he taught her that was the only way to love. Now, she can’t get off sexually without experiencing a similar harm he caused her.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
But before he could so much as let that truly sink in, he grasped at anything else to deflect, like Alice never sharing her past with him, or how “confusing” it is for him to hear that she likes rough sex after also telling people he was abusive to her.
As if he was consciously roughing her up for her pleasure or would’ve done it because of that.
His demand that she retract her statements was infuriating. Alice hearing Danny say that maybe she should (even if it screwed him over) and Nora telling her that she ruined her chances to help because of the Marshall thing pushed Alice into action.
The moment she was searching for a place to speak to him that had cameras, I suspected she had a plan in motion to set him up.
The sad thing about those two is that there is some twisted form of love there. He couldn’t seem to resist her when he got over there, even though he saw so many things that served as evidence of how much he broke her.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
Alice’s apartment is bleak; she has a full-length mirror on the wall that’s completely shattered.
And then from there, she was wearing clothes he bought her years ago, pulling out old shirts of his that she said she still wore to feel close to him, and let him know that she drinks whiskey now solely because it made her think of him.
It’s all so twisted, and it resulted in one of the most uncomfortable near-sex scenes, not because it was evident that Alice was setting Marshall up from the jump, but because everything about it was filled with toxicity, ugliness, and awkwardness.
Regardless of her methods, she seemed to get Marshall out of the way, and it’s amusing to see the lengths she went to for that. Why? Because she and Nora are kindred spirits, and they have a similar desire to close cases.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
It took little time for Alice to piece together that it wasn’t Nora who was the issue when it came to closing out Isabel’s case, but Ed, and Nora’s hands were tied. Nora leaving all the case evidence with another bright agent, Carter, spoke volumes.
She’s been wanting someone, anyone with a similar drive to take the initiative and figure this out for years. Now, she has Alice. It reaffirms the poignancy of their specific dynamic, and given that it’s my favorite of the series, I love that.
Nora knows that the key to figuring out the case with Catherine is resolving things with Isabel and ensuring that Jay Easton and people like Ed who must be covering for him go down.
As a big boss, no one seems interested in going after Ed or looking into why he’s trying to control this case so much. Most of them are like, Choi, an ass kisser.
But Nora and Alice could make for a formidable team, and I love how they’re working together.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
Nora in general is a hoot. Her mimicking how Ed walked had me laughing out loud, and I loved her exchange with Danny in the elevator, indirectly telling him to release the photo, Catherine.
She’s used to playing around red tape and dealing with the worst of the worst like Ed.
Having someone as clever as Alice on hand must be a relief. It’s Alice who figured out that the wristband Nora had obsessed over belonged to a women’s shelter, and it was evidence that Isabel had gotten an abortion.
From there, it puts her directly across from Catherine for the first time, and the prospect of that is exciting.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
It comes just as Danny and Choi have found Hals’s body in Alden’s house and will likely have to take Alden in to figure out more information about Catherine and what happened.
That Catherine left Alden alive tells me that she genuinely does love him. He may be the only person she has loved since Isabel, whom she admits she was in love with.
She can’t even lie to Alden when he asks her direct questions, and her excitement over his proposal was like that of a woman who never thought anyone would ever be capable of really loving her.
There’s a sweetness there, even when he’s slowly coming to grips with her darkness.
(Disney/Sarah Shatz)
You get the sense that Alden truly loves Catherine for exactly who she is, and that makes him quite an ally given she’s on a full-blown crusade to kill band people whose feelings are connected to Isabel’s death.
What this impending collision course between our two leads has me pondering, however, is how motivated Alice may be to actually bring Catherine in, given the larger sex trafficking and other aspects at play here.
Over to you, Furious Fanatics. Is this the last of Marshall? Are you excited about Alice and Catherine finally coming face-to-face? Let’s discuss!
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