FURIOUS: Abused? Unprotected? How To Take Back POWER?!

Used? Abused? Unprotected? That’s Catherine and Alice in Elizabeth Meriwether’s agonizing, trauma-filled miniseries, Furious. Sex trafficking. Abuse. No one protecting you. What does that lead to? Severe Trauma. And trauma has many reactions. One is fury. But sometimes that fury is blocked. You’re numb and can’t feel anything. You couldn’t “be there” when it was happening. And you “don’t remember,” because you can’t.  But. When you can’t any longer tell yourself it didn’t really happen, you’re Furious. And you have to do something. Something extreme …

Catherine. We see her first. A girl. Young. Looking younger than she is, because she’s never grown beyond being used. Abused. Unprotected. She’s stuck there. It happens. And she’s turned into a methodical killer. Trying to kill any feelings she has. She lets her victim suffer and crawl. Then she shoots him up with more drugs to kill him slowly. This is retribution. She has her reasons. Then there’s FBI Agent Alice Black. She’s a traumatized woman too. Traumatized as a child. And by men. Now, choosing abuse. Tough as nails. Yes. These are two very traumatized women. They look different. But Catherine and Alice are much more alike than we think at first glance. It’s only that their very similar traumas express themselves differently. And here’s how:

One (that’s Catherine) torments the other. One (that’s Alice) tortures herself. 

Early Trauma: Abuse & Absent Moms 

Sexual abuse is one of the worst traumas. It’s a terrible violation. Talk about being used. Talk about an adult who doesn’t protect you. A predator who has no thought for your feelings or how it’ll affect you later. He (or she) doesn’t care. It’s all about them ...What they want. Their pleasure. They’ll hurt you for it. And keep doing it too. That’s what Jay Easton (Peter McRobbie) did to both Catherine (Lola Petticrew) and Alice (Emmy Rossum). But something else happened to them too.

Catherine and Alice had absent moms. And when you don’t have a mom who puts you first, that begins your life with significant trauma. Furious doesn’t tell us anything about Catherine’s life before she was sex-trafficked. But the longing for a mom comes through loud and clear in her love for Isabel (Larissa Campos). It’s a confusion of romantic love and the need for a mom.

Catherine’s longing is clear as a bell. Vicious killer, she’s not. Not underneath. It’s not who she really is. She’s still a child. She has to be as dead as she’s making her victims with those drugs. She has to put herself out of the misery she’s suffered her whole life. And Isabel’s bag? The one with the sequins. Alice notices that Catherine keeps it close. “She let you borrow it?” “Yeah, and she put notes in it like it was my mom putting notes in my lunchbox… like, have a good day, honey.” There it is: the loss of a mom. The mother wound. Living, oh so quietly, in Catherine. But Alice? Her mom’s abandonment? Her mom’s selfish lack of care? That brings pure fury encased in a cold rejection of the mom who rejected her, who’s still alive.

She says it to her half-sister, Amy (Elise Kibler), who Alice wants nothing to do with because she’s the product of the affair that caused her mom to leave. Amy says, “I need to talk to you about mom.” Alice replies, “Who?” She’s written her off.

An eye for an eye.

The story comes out when Alice is in the hospital after Catherine drugs her and Marshall (Jake Lacy), her abusive ex-boyfriend, assaults her. And then, Catherine, identifying with Alice, shoots him with Alice’s gun. To Catherine, abusers must be killed. So, Amy comes to visit Alice and brings her pears. Not to Alice’s liking. She tells her, “Mom always gave me pears when I was sick.” Alice likes that even less. Especially because, as Amy reminds her (as if she needed to): “Mom had an affair and had me. Can you ever get over what happened between you and Mom?” Alice tells her, “I got pregnant when I was 14. Didn’t you know that? Dad wouldn’t let me come home. And Mom said she wanted nothing to do with me. So.  I didn’t get pears. I have no interest in being your sister. I don’t care what happens in your life, and I want you to go. And I want you to take those pears with you.”

Alice wants no reminders of being shut out and abandoned when she needed her mom. She can’t; she won’t let herself feel anything about her. That’s what happens when you’re abused. Hurt. Neglected. Unprotected. You go dead inside. At least you try.

Trauma Defense #1: I Really Feel Nothing 

Alice has wild curly hair, but she keeps it tightly pulled back. It’s her hard, severe FBI self. Really, her traumatized self. Going cold to her feelings. Traumatized as a child. Traumatized by Marshall, the man she’s loved since she was a teenager, when she had no one. She’s so traumatized by him that she can’t go near a shower. That’s where he beat her up. Even looking at a shower makes her panic. Because you can’t really feel “nothing.” As hard as you try. So, Alice takes things into her own hands. Hating herself for feeling. She chooses to be beaten up by men and then have sex. Both her traumas, wrapped into a sadomasochistic dance of control. She can’t let Danny too close.

He’s kind. And loving.

Catherine kills to feel nothing. She kills the predators. Tortures them. Shoots them up with drugs. Drugs that make you go dead. Really dead. And then, she frantically cleans. Emma Easton (Hope Davis), Jay Easton’s abused daughter, cleans too. Cleaning everything out of themselves. All the pain. The memories. All the betrayal. All the “bad things” you have to do. Yes, have to do. For revenge. Or to keep your abuser happy. To keep yourself safe. You have to clean away everything. Tell yourself it isn’t real.

You’re really not here.

Trauma Defense #2: I’m Not Really Here 

When you’re being severely traumatized, you have to go away. Far, far away, from your body. To some other place in your mind. Far away too. Jean (Marcia DeBonis), at the trauma center, tells Catherine, “You are here. Remember. Depersonalization. Derealization.” But when it’s happening, you can’t be here. You find ways. To disconnect. Detach. Not be in your body. It isn’t your body, right? That’s what Catherine had to teach herself. And, at the shelter, while one girl is sobbing about her boyfriend, Catherine tells her she can pretend he doesn’t exist. That it never really happened (she wasn’t there). But it did happen. Saying that it didn’t doesn’t stop the feelings (or fury).

Catherine keeps trying to detach. Maybe she’s not really a killer. Not if she isn’t here. Not if these aren’t her hands. Her numb hands don’t kill, do they? But she’s killing Oliver Charles (Rob Delaney), one of her abusers. One of Jay Easton’s lawyers. She’s got him. He’s scared. (Not her. Not this time.) She’s trying to find out who killed Isabel. She says, “I know you were drunk, but there was a girl with me. Do you remember that?” He doesn’t. She says, “You know what I used to do when I was scared? Look at your feet and say, ‘They’re not my feet.’ Look at your legs and say, ‘They’re not my legs.’”

“Say, ‘I’m not here …’”

And no, she “wasn’t there” when she gave Isabel the injection of the fatal drug. To kill Isabel’s pain. Because Isabel told her to. No. Catherine loved Isabel. Someone else must have killed her. She wouldn’t do that to her best, loved, most needed friend.

Later, she screams at Alice, who is trying to help, “I don’t fucking remember. We were going to his (Jay Easton’s) house, and then she was dead, and that was fucking it, ok?”

 Trauma Defense #3: I Cannot Remember 

Isabel. The only one she ever loved. The only one who ever loved her. The “mother” she didn’t have. Catherine had to forget. To survive. The horror. Of being: Used. Abused. Unprotected. No. She certainly can’t remember that. Or killing Isabel. That’s what Catherine’s red poppy tattoo means. Opium poppies bring sleep and death. And a trauma victim must go dead. Not be here. Not feel anything. And definitely not remember. Turn into a ghost. A zombie. “It didn’t really happen, did it?” So, Catherine’s method of killing her victims is what was done to her and what she had to do to herself. Go dead. It’s what she had to do to Isabel. To put Isabel out of her misery.

Catherine can’t remember how Isabel died. But she can’t forget Isabel’s baby. Elana (Chloe Carillo). Catherine tried. But she couldn’t take care of her. She didn’t know how; she didn’t have a mom herself. “And I let her go, and she’s on the fucking street with some guy named Big Man. I was doing good. I was talking to Jean. And then I just fell through the floor again, like always. It’ll always come back and never go away, no matter what I do. I’m worthless. I’m nothing. I’m nothing. This isn’t even my body; these aren’t my legs. They aren’t even my hands…” No, she can’t feel her hands. The hands that didn’t want to kill Isabel. She can’t feel her sadness. She can’t feel her guilt.

She can’t remember.

She tries to wipe away the evidence. She kills the ones really responsible for what happened to Isabel. But as hard as Catherine tries to forget, it always comes back. Yes, you really can’t forget that you were abandoned. Abused. Alone. Hungry. Powerless...

Alone. Abandoned. Hungry. Powerless 

Alone is everywhere. In Catherine. Alice. Nora Washington, FBI (Quincy Tyler Bernstine). In Emma, too. Women who’ve endured abuse. Women who were abandoned as children. Abandoned by the ones they needed. Women who had no one to turn to as little girls. As teenagers. Who can’t trust anyone to turn to now. Women who’ve had to bottle up their feelings. By dissociating. By having “no feelings.” By asking to be beaten up. By not being there. By forgetting. By turning the tables on abusers.

But feelings are there anyway. Loneliness. Terror. Abandonment. Hunger for love. Hunger for power. Yes, when you’ve been: Used. Abused. Not protected. You want power over your powerlessness. Over how helpless you’ve been made to feel. Over the violence and sexual violation inflicted on you by the abusers. The ones you hate.

Nora talks to Alice about why some women become serial killers. She tells Alice about Medusa. “One look at her killed. Her hair was snakes. And you know how she got that way? Poseidon raped her in Athena’s temple. She’s a victim, and it turns her into a monster. Victims of violence are the most violent.” That’s what Nora says …

But is Catherine a monster? Is she a cold-blooded killer? She’s not. Her feelings break through. Her longings for love. We see it with Alden (Steve Way), the patient who loves her and wants to marry her. With Hal Hartford (Campbell Scott), a lawyer for Jay Easton. She twirls around, showing off her wedding dress. Hal cries, as if he is her dad.

Catherine longs for what she never had. She’s hungry for it. But she kills Hal. Because he knew what was happening and did nothing. He knew and let Jay Easton continue his abuse. Does collecting evidence matter more than allowing innocent girls to be hurt?

When People Know & They Do Nothing

Catherine asks Hal: “Do you know what happens to people who know what’s going on and do nothing?” Catherine kills them. But something else can happen if you’re capable of love. And that something is GUILT. Catherine knows. Because Catherine isn’t the cold-blooded killer she looks like. In her cat mask. Covering her face. Hiding her feelings from herself. Catherine suffers a lot because she abandoned Elena like she was abandoned. And now Elena is controlled by Big Man (Jeremy Sample), just as Catherine fell into the hands of Adrian Murado (A.J. Paratore). The one who sold her off to Jay Easton. Catherine knows who is responsible and who is not. And she knows that she’s responsible for Elena, who was just a helpless baby when Isabel died. 

Alice, who’s trying to track Catherine down, uses that information to get Elena to turn on Catherine. Alice tells Elena the truth that her mom was 15 and “fucking left you at a shelter a day after you were born. So, you owe Catherine nothing. She did nothing to help you. Nothing to protect you. You need nothing from her. You need nothing from anyone. That’s how you’re going to get through this. You do what you need to do to get through this.” Which is exactly how Alice has lived her own life. Alone. Needing nothing.

(But so, so scared!) 

I’m Scared! I’m So Scared! All The Time 

Alice and Catherine are two peas in a pod. Both are scared as hell. All the time. Their protection against that fear just shows up in different ways. Catherine is the killer. Alice, the agent. Catherine asks Alice: “Have you ever killed someone? It’s power. Watching someone die. Right before they go, you’re not scared at all, and I was always, always, always, scared.” She still is. So is Alice. And they need to do something about it.

Alice has her gun. It’s with her all the time. That doesn’t mean she feels safe. Or protected. Not at all. Especially when it comes to taking a shower. Every time she stares at the showerhead, she clutches her gun and walks away. She’s having a flashback. It has everything to do with Marshall, the cop boyfriend who beat her up. When Marshall tries to talk to her, Alice storms away fast. Really, she’s terrified of him.

She clearly has PTSD. So does Catherine. She’s never felt safe. Never. And. Nowhere. “I didn’t get to decide a fucking thing in my life. Who gets to decide that I should be hit and starved and strangled and fucked…?” Alice replies, “A bad person who you killed.”

“You don’t think that’s wrong. I know you don’t. I saw your face,” Catherine confronts her. And also, about Marshall, after she shot him to protect Alice: “Didn’t you want that man to die outside the shelter? “Yes. I wanted him to die. I wanted to hurt him. I wanted him to be scared.” Just as scared as Alice is. “Did you file a report on your boyfriend? Why not?” “Because I was scared that everyone would say it was weak.” Catherine confronts her again: “Because you knew it wouldn’t work. It never works.” She’s afraid in the same way of Jay Easton.

There’s no safety anywhere. No one will listen. Everyone’s out for themselves.

Unsafe. Numb Girls. Longing for Love 

Even when you’re an unsafe girl who’s been used, abused, and unprotected, that doesn’t mean you don’t long for love. For someone safe. Even if your guard’s up because you can’t really trust anyone. That’s Alden for Catherine. That’s Danny (Scoot McNairy) for Alice. Alden says, “I love you.” And killer-Catherine has tears (yes, tears) in her eyes when she says, “I can feel my fingers…”  Fingers that went numb the day that Isabel died. Does she love him? Well, she feels for him. She doesn’t want him to be alone. She knows exactly what it’s like to be alone. It’s like a brand burned right into your skin. Aloneness. Absolute aloneness except for Isabel. She tells him she was in love with Isabel, and Isabel put up with it, let her stare at her. Called it eye fucking. Really, Catherine isn’t cold and tough. It’s a brutal exterior. She’s deeply sensitive, lonely, hungry for love. And so, so, so scared.

Alice is so, so, so scared too, that she hasn’t taken a shower in who knows how long. She and Danny (a long-time friend and a Detective) are sleuthing at the Eastons’, and Danny tells her she smells like shit: “When is the last time you took a shower?” He has no idea why until her sister tells him, “Marshall used to pull her out of the shower and beat her up. The last time, she passed out, and he just left her there with the water running ...”

Danny takes Alice home. He tells her he’ll just sit there and not look at her if she wants to take a shower. He’ll just sit until she’s done and she can keep the door open. He looks so, so sad for her. Alice gingerly gets into the shower, starting, maybe, to feel a little safe. Danny’s been in love with her a long time. But when he says he wants her to come down to Florida with him, Alice has tears in her eyes, but “I gotta go.” He asks, “What did I say?”

It's not what he said. It’s that Alice still goes into dissociation and depersonalization when she gets too scared. She doesn’t trust him. Or anyone. Not to hurt her. So, she runs from her feelings. She won’t trust Danny until she gets in touch with how really Furious, she is.

Dissociated. Depersonalized. But. Furious 

Dissociation and depersonalization are ways to manage when you’ve been abused. Tracking Catherine down, Alice ends up at the shelter where Catherine and Isabel stayed, where Jean helped them. Catherine’s there in a terrible state with Jean: “Derealization and depersonalization, remember? Breathe. You are here. You are OK.”

Catherine’s been trying to be ok. She’s been listening, on and off, to healing-from-trauma tapes. A woman’s voice echoes: “You are safe and in the present. You are safe and in the present ...I’m here to tell you, girl, you got this.” Catherine repeats, “I got this.” She takes a photo of a man (her next victim) out of her bag. Online, Catherine calls herself Miss Mask. Dissociating from her real feelings. Hiding them. Being in the present isn’t possible when you’ve been abused. Have flashbacks. When you can’t feel: Sad. Scared. And. Furious.

Cut to Catherine, driving and laughing hysterically, because Hal is drugged and helpless in the backseat of the car. She gets more hysterical as he pleads that he wasn’t there when Isabel died. Jay called him to clean up the mess. Frantic, he repeats, “Do you not remember? Do you not remember what happened?” Catherine keeps saying that Jay Easton killed Isabel. Hal tells her, “No, he didn’t. Do you not remember? You were there the whole time. Is that why you killed all these people, because they’re in the photo? “

Helpless? How To Take Back Your POWER?!

Yes, Catherine killed all those people. She kills because she’s Furious. At what was done to her. At losing Isabel. At how helpless she was. No. It isn’t just revenge. It’s to take back her power. “I’m killing someone, and it’s like ... everything he’s ever done is disappearing inside me, and I have all power in the world, and they don’t. They want to take that from us ...”

Taking back her power is what Alice does too when she goes looking for sadomasochistic sex. It’s not that she likes being beat up. She has to choose it. If she chooses it, it’s under her control. But. She turns her fury upon herself.

So. When Alice finally draws her gun on Marshall, it’s the first time she knows that, under her panic, she’s Furious. Being Furious and determined is what it takes to entrap Jay Easton. Sex Trafficker. Abuser of both Catherine and Alice. A man they must finally take down. Together.

Catherine has Alice’s gun. And a note from Isabel: “Have a beautiful night.” That makes Catherine stronger. She hears a voice in her head: “Catherine.” Isabel’s voice. And. Catherine’s no longer numb. She walks towards the house where she was abused. Where Isabel died. And. She’s FURIOUS.

Later, after Jay Easton is dead, Alice visits Catherine in prison. Catherine tells her that she read all the documents. “I wanted to see how Jay Easton died ... Did you like the way it felt?!” Alice smiles a knowing smile.

Yet is killing their real power? Alice watches Jay Easton’s child porn video of her at age 14. She faces what happened. So does Catherine. Catherine remembers how Isabel died. She doesn’t dissociate. She doesn’t tell herself she wasn’t there. She doesn’t go numb. Catherine knows that she is the one who killed Isabel. By injecting her with drugs the way she killed their abusers. But it was out of love, at Isabel’s request - to save her from way too much pain.

Now. Neither Catherine nor Alice has to be so scared of remembering. And both can accept love. Alden’s love for Catherine. Danny’s love for Alice. And. They can also accept that they did “some bad things to survive.” But. As Alden says, “Nobody’s perfect.”