TV Recap: "Furious" Episode 1 — Alice Black Discovers a Serial Killer
Hulu’s Furious premiered with three episodes, and we’ve got you covered with recaps of each. In the first installment, we meet FBI agent Alice Black and get a few teases about her past. We also meet the unnamed serial killer, who seems to be working through a specific list of targets. What’s her endgame? Why is Alice so intrigued by this case?
Episode 1: “The Gorgon” — Written by Elizabeth Meriweather
It’s Halloween night in New York City. A young woman with strawberry blonde hair wearing a plastic cat mask (Lola Petticrew) sits on the steps of a brownstone. When a boy dressed as Dracula (Elliot Rodriguez) approaches for a treat, she excuses herself inside, promising a big candy bar. Inside the brownstone, she looks around for candy that doesn’t seem to exist.
Upstairs, a man (Clark Moore) who seems to have lost control of his motor functions has escaped from a bathroom where he was trapped. “Where are you going?” the cat woman calmly asks as she retrieves a bowl of candy corn. The man can’t respond. She promises him she’ll be right back.
Back outside, the cat woman offers the trick-or-treater some unwrapped candy corn. His mom (Caroline Grogan) refuses. The cat woman heads back inside. “That was stupid,” she tells the struggling man, covering his mouth. She pulls out a small metal case covered in stickers, producing a syringe. “It’s probably time, right?” She injects his arm. He groans, the last sound he makes before his breathing becomes labored and soon stops. The cat woman looks into his still eyes, her fingers tracing his lips. After admiring her work, she sits up and treats herself to some candy corn.
At the FBI, new duty agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) fields incoming calls. Her colleagues bond over laughing at some of the outlandish calls that come through, while Alice takes each one seriously, no matter how farfetched they may seem. But her phone duty is cut short when her boss, Mason Adkins (Alex Morf), summons her to his office.
Mason Adkins is angry that Alice Black has been requested to help her former NYPD partner on a case. He reminds her that she needs to stay in her lane, silencing her protest that she’s overqualified for the work she’s being assigned. She came to the FBI to work in the sex crimes division, and despite it being amongst the bureau’s least sought-after positions, she’s being tested on calls. Adkins asks Black if her former partner, Danny Kelly, is the officer she disclosed having a relationship with. “That was someone else,” she cuts him off, refusing to give him any additional details when he probes. Adkins dismisses Black to the crime scene to assist, asking her to stop for snacks on her way back to the office.
Black arrives at a street of brownstones, finding her old partner, Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy), enjoying a cigarette, a bad habit he resumed recently. Another officer, Mikey (Justin Adams), tells Black, “Marshall says ‘hi,’” goading her. Kelly tells Black that the other officers don’t like him anymore, either. “Because of me?” she asks. He doesn’t answer.
Inside, Kelly catches Black up. The deceased is Caleb Easton, son of billionaire Jay Easton. The cause of death seems to be a drug overdose, but Black notices lacerations on his fingernails and says the needle marks are too neat for drug use. “It’s staged,” she tells him, a fact he already knew, but his boss, Marty, refuses to be responsible for catching the person who killed Jay Easton’s son. “So you dumped it on me?” Black asks. Kelly offers to work the case with her, like old times.
Examining upstairs, Black notices that the bathroom has been freshly bleached. “Someone really wanted this room clean,” she observes. Kelly has learned that Caleb had a new girlfriend, one his family hadn’t met yet. As Black gets on the floor to investigate, Kelly apologizes for the way the boys reacted to seeing her outside. She ignores it, noticing damaged wood on the bathroom’s sliding door. Pulling it out, she finds nail marks that match Caleb’s lacerations. In another floor, she finds a sparkly prismatic sequin.
After sunset, a line has formed outside of a family center — women hoping to spend the night sheltered rather than on the street. A shelter worker (Daniella Rabbani) walks down the line, spotting a repeat guest named Jinny (Lily Autumn Page) and sending her to sober up before letting her in. The rest of the women in line are told there’s no room for them. In line is a woman with strawberry-blonde hair, a face mask over her nose and mouth, and a prismatic sequined purse. She takes off after Jinny, offering her some alcohol. Jinny is interested, but then the unnamed woman gives her the terms: she has to hit her to get it. Jinny starts to beat her up. The shelter worker rushes over to try and stop it, pulling Jinny off her. Rather than stay, the strawberry blonde woman grabs Jinny’s backpack and bolts away.
The camera follows the woman, who removes her face mask a few blocks away and pulls out a phone to call a domestic violence hotline. Physically, she’s dancing and carefree, while her voice puts on the act of a battered girlfriend in need of a place to stay. She’s given the address to a secret, unlisted shelter.
Becky (Chloe Troast) is working intake at the secret shelter when a strawberry blonde woman walks in. She tells her she doesn’t have her I.D. on her, only having time to grab her backpack when she fled, but she has a SNAP card with her name on it — Jinny. Becky tells her she is eligible to get a new ID there if she stays long enough. She also consoles her with the fact that no records will be kept of her stay, which is completely anonymous.
We see a close-up of the bed that “Jinny” will spend the night in. A hand raises the mattress to hide a sequined bag underneath. And then a strawberry blonde wig drops on the mattress as its tenant gets comfortable for the night.
Alice Black arrives at a bar, distracted by a news story on her phone about Jay Easton’s son passing away from a drug overdose. The person she came to see, her sister Amy (Elise Kibler), waves Alice over. Amy is getting married and introduces Alice to her bridal party, but Alice seems disinterested in the whole affair. When she tells her sister she has a first date and can’t stay long, the women are all excited for her.
Alice’s “date” was really a hookup. We see her with Neil (Ari Blinder) in her apartment, where things seem intense. He picks her up, slamming her back against a mirror in the hallway, cracking it. He drags her into the living room and slams her on the ground, but then checks in, asking if this is too much. It’s all consensual, although Neil is confused when Alice stops their physical fight before taking things to the bedroom.
Unable to think of anything else, Alice calls Danny, having remembered a case at the NYPD shortly before she transferred to the FBI. Adrian Murado was a similar overdose case to Caleb Easton. She remembers that the crime scene had been cleaned up before they arrived, that he had lacerations on his nails, and that his associates also knew of a new girlfriend they had never met before.
An insomniac and a workaholic, Danny Kelly is still at the NYPD when Alice joins him in his cubicle in the middle of the night. She asks why he moved his desk. He tells her things have been tricky for him since she left, and their lieutenant demanded to know why he missed several days of work after her departure. He came clean, telling him it was Marshall’s fault. But Danny isn’t ready to talk more about this, printing out hard copies of information on the case. Security cameras pulled up pictures of Caleb’s girlfriend, who always wears a face mask covering her nose and mouth. One of the clips shows her talking to a teenage neighbor. He also pulled up the Adrian Murado case. He had served jail time for dealing drugs, but had been sober and out of trouble at the time of his death. Neighbors remembered seeing a girlfriend who always wore a face mask. As Alice looks at photos of the crime scene, she sees scratch marks on the bathroom door, just like at the Easton brownstone. Danny questions what a lowly drug dealer and the son of a billionaire had in common if they are, in fact, victims of the same killer.
Back at her apartment, Black spends more time on the case. She watches videos online of Caleb’s wealthy family doing charity work. Reading through the Murado case, she sees that it was handled by SA Nora Washington.
The next morning, Black visits the FBI’s sex crimes division, headed up by Washington. Her receptionist, Yara (Layan Elwazani), tries to dismiss Black, but when she sees Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) exit an office, she pushes into her office. Washington has heard of Black, questioning if she hates herself since she wants to be on her team. Black brings up Adrian Murado. Washington remembers suspecting that he was trafficking girls. “I think it’s possible that one of the girls he trafficked might’ve killed him,” Black tells her, filling her in on the Caleb Easton death. Washington reminds Black that they’re the FBI, not homicide detectives. But Black is so persistent that Washington invites her to join her on a ride, asking her to help move boxes of snacks from her office to her car.
At the undisclosed shelter, “Jinny” sits in a group therapy session led by Becky. Another woman, Kiki (Sofía Ko), cries as she talks about the physical abuse her ex put her through. Jinny gives her some advice: “You can just pretend he’s not real,” she suggests, smiling. Later, Becky talks to Jinny in private. Jinny complains about the 60-day residence policy to get a new ID, saying it prevents her from getting a job and getting out. She’s flirtatious with the employee, praising Becky as her savior and getting her to agree to fudge the numbers. Jinny also asks to borrow her laptop.
Washington and Black wait in a car under a bridge waiting for an informant to meet them. Black asks why Murado’s trafficking case never went anywhere. Washington says those cases rarely stick. Victims lose all sense of time and have a hard time verifying dates, plus the system wants to treat them as criminals for being sex workers. They’ve learned not to trust anyone, and feel that there’s no way out of their situation. Washington claims to not remember Murado specifically. With a snarky attitude, she reveals that in order to survive in this job, she disassociates from every case.
A teenager, Tina (Milan Marsh), knocks on Washington’s car, asking who Alice is. Washington opens her trunk, offering Tina snacks and giving her clothes to wear in court tomorrow. Tina has decided not to go, but Washington uses her age against her, vowing to tell her employer that she’s a minor if she backs out. Tina likes Black’s blazer, and Alice offers it to her. Washington seems impressed with Black’s instant rapport with Tina.
We see “Jinny” in her bed on Becky’s laptop, a freshly opened temporary driver’s license for Jinny Allen opened nearby. Online, she finds a catering company whose partners include the Ashcroft & Charles Law Group, which seems to be what she was looking for. She pulls out the sequined bag and pulls out a picture of a man that’s covered in doodles. After confirming that his face matches Oliver Charles on the law group’s web page, she places a glitter heart sticker on him.
Black and Kelly have tracked down the teenage neighbor, Leo (Cole Tristan Murphy), bringing him in for questioning with one of his dads, Jim (Joshua David Robinson). Leo is resistant to talking until Black says she knows he was smoking pot on the stoop when he was talking to Caleb’s girlfriend, saying that’s one of the places she used to hide doing it from her cop father. Leo lets his guard down and tells the agents that he never knew her name, but she flashed him once. He remembers seeing a tattoo of a red flower on her hip. Alice hands him a piece of paper, and he draws a rudimentary flower. After they’re dismissed, Black tells Kelly that she thinks the flower is meant to be a poppy. But he’s more confused about why she lied about her father being a cop. “He needed to feel like we’re on the same side,” she justifies it.
Adkins isn’t happy with Black when she returns to her desk, frustrated that she’s spent so much time on the Easton case. He tells her she’s off the case, that leadership isn’t going to pursue it further. Before walking away, he warns her to stay in her lane.
“Jinny” returns to her bed after a shower, a towel wrapped around her midsection, to find Becky sitting in her bed, holding her sequined bag. “I had to confiscate the drugs that were in the bag,” Becky reveals, asking who Oliver Charles is, having grown suspicious after seeing Jinny’s search history on her laptop. As a diversion, Jinny drops the towel and sits next to her. “I hope you’re not mad at me,” she pouts, seducing Becky into a kiss, even after she reveals she has a girlfriend and shouldn’t do this.
Jinny Allen signs her employment contract with the catering company at her first gig. With a tray in hand, she moves through the party and finds the man she’s looking for: Oliver Charles (Rob Delaney). She instantly turns on the charm to seduce him.
That night, Black’s phone wakes her up. She follows up on the call, arriving at Tina’s bedside at the table, finding Washington at the girl’s side. She got the call because her number was in her blazer pocket. Tina isn’t breathing on her own, and Washington fills Black in. The 15-year-old was a trafficker herself, part of a cruel system where finding new girls means less work for herself. Tina was going to help expose this ring, but will never be able to now.
Washington gives Black a flash drive with everything she had on Murado. She gets philosophical about how male serial killers tend to murder for power and control, while women are different. She talks about Greek mythology. Medusa was a beautiful woman who was raped by Poseidon in Athena’s temple. Athena blamed Medusa for her own rape, transforming her into a gorgon, a creature so ugly that she could turn someone to stone with just a look of her eyes. “She’s a victim, but it doesn’t make her a good person. It turns her into a monster.” Washington talks about how being a victim of violence often makes a person colder. “Victims of violence are the most violent; don’t you think so?” And then Washington reveals that she looked into Black’s history, adding that she was in this same exact hospital a year ago. “Your cop boyfriend knock you around a little?” Alice is stunned, apologizing to Nora as she gets up to leave. Nora stops her, saying that no matter what they do, they’ll never catch anyone who matters.
Oliver Charles snorts cocaine in his penthouse apartment, waxing to the catering waitress he brought home about his recent divorce and longstanding sex addiction. After a brief makeout session, Charles pulls out an NDA. The strawberry-blonde waitress is confused about what it’s for, but signs it anyway. Things progress to the bedroom, where she has noticed security cameras all over his apartment. She pretends to be shy, asking him to turn his back so she can undress. When she returns and they get physical, she hurts him. He gets rough right back. She tells him that’s what she likes, giving him permission to do anything he wants to her.
Back in her apartment, Alice plugs the flash drive into her computer. Among the files is surveillance footage from a bodega. A disheveled teenager rushes in wearing a dress, panicked. A man, Murado, chases her in. Cornered, he overpowers her, picking her up over his shoulder and dragging her out of the store. Alice pauses on a moment where the girl’s dress rides up, exposing her right hip. A grainy red tattoo is visible on her hip. She compares it to Leo’s drawing. It’s a match.
The episode ends with Oliver Charles lying in bed, post coitus, cuddling with the catering waitress he brought home. We see her bare hip. There’s a tattoo. A red poppy.
To be continued in our recap of Furious Episode 2, “My Life Had Stood - A Loaded Gun.”