TV Recap: "Furious" Episode 4 — Alice Discovers the Killer's Name

Alice Black just flashed a gun at her abusive ex, Marshall Connelly. That’s how Episode 3 of Hulu’s Furious wrapped, and Episode 4 picks up right where things left off, without missing a beat. “When it rains, it pours,” the old saying goes, and that couldn’t be more true in this week’s episode, fittingly titled “Flash Flood.”

Episode 4: “Flash Flood” - Written by Hailey Hall

Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) sits in her car outside of Marshall’s house, still shaken, still holding her gun. She tries to call Danny. He doesn’t answer.

Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy) visits with his son Liam (Andrew Downey) at a center for kids with special needs where Liam lives. The aide, Adam (Leonidas Ocampo), cuts the visit short when visiting hours end. In the hallway, he reminds Danny that he’s late on his copay. Danny laments that his finances are still being sorted out after his divorce. Adam offers that he works for cash in off hours if they need to take Liam out. 

At a restaurant, a young man named Blanchard (Nicholas Podany) is on a date with “Marta” (Lola Petticrew) at a restaurant. He takes up all the oxygen in the conversation, but after praising her advocacy as a former sex worker, he asks for juicy details about what that was like. “It made me really angry,” she whispers, changing the topic to his family, having seen that he still lives with his parents on his socials. 

We see Alice arrive back at her apartment with another man she met online, Cole (Alexander Roberts). Like the last guy she brought home, things are aggressively physical, but Cole gets turned off when Alice asks him if he’s ever seen somebody get shot. “What would you do if I hurt you?” she asks, after kicking him away from her.

Blanchard’s date has gone so well that he’s brought Marta home. While having sex, he uses derogatory language that upsets Marta. She uses this to get him to sympathetically cuddle her as he falls asleep. Before he drifts off, he asks that she leave the house before his parents wake up in the morning.

Nora Washington (Quincy Tyler Bernstine) picks up the phone when Alice calls her at 3 am, asking to show the photo of Isabel around Hell’s Point. Shortly after, she’s sitting in Alice’s passenger seat, pouring some booze in her thermos. Nora notices that Alice has some bruises, asking what happened. “A guy I met on the internet,” she confesses. “I asked him to.” Nora reveals she’s into that, too, but suggests that Alice make sure they don’t leave a mark next time.

On the drive, Nora ponders why the killer left this specific photo for them. Alice thinks the killer wants them to pay closer attention to Jay Easton, and that it’s a warning that she’s coming for him. Alice’s theory is that the killer is doing to these men what they did to her. “She’s stuck playing and replaying the things that happened to her, but switching roles,” she believes. Nora argues that it’s public knowledge that Jay Easton is dying. Alice thinks that could be why the killer is doing this right now, wanting to kill him herself. Alice asks Nora if she’s ever had Jay on her radar for trafficking. Nora admits that there had been rumors, but a man like Jay Easton doesn’t get his hands dirty. 

Nora printed close-ups of faces from the photo, but not the whole photo. She tells Alice that at the bureau, you don’t give away information for free. She warns that with a target like Jay Easton, you can’t pull the trigger until the barrel is on the forehead. After a night of asking around, Alice and Nora stand in the sunlight with no new leads, but Nora respects Alice for doing what she calls “brickwork.”

Marta wakes up next to Blanchard, who is still asleep, as she hears soft noises from the kitchen. Leaving the bedroom, Marta follows the sounds through the luxury penthouse apartment. She startles Blanchard’s mom, Raquel (Janel Moloney), in the dining room, before making herself right at home at the table. Marta asks if Blanchard’s dad is home, and when Raquel tells her he already left for work, Marta says she has work to do, too. She pulls a laptop out of her bag and searches for a wall outlet to plug in the power.

In the FBI’s basement C20 offices, Nora emerges from the locked room where the most sensitive data is stored, having used facial recognition software to see if Isabel Luna’s face was a match in their child pornography database. Nora groans to Alice about that room, calling it “the darkest pit of Hades.” But Nora has found some records on the girl, who was living at a group home in Albany before all records of her stopped at age 15. Alice wants to visit the home today, and also brings up a wristband Isabel is wearing in the photo, which looks like the kind hospitals make patients wear. Nora gets a thought. We see her at her computer, zooming in on the photo of the wristband. In a digital archive, she pulls up a report from March 3rd, 2012. We see that Nora herself closed the report. Alice, who can’t see Nora’s screen, asks if she found something. “Nope, not yet,” Nora lies, looking somewhat guilty. When Alice gets a text that Emma Easton and her lawyer are there, Nora asks her to handle it while Nora stays at her desk.

Marta pretends to be on a Zoom call with imaginary coworkers in the dining room, as Blanchard encounters his angry mother in the hallway. Blanchard tries to interrupt Marta’s “call,” but she tells him it’s really important. 

On her way to the meeting room, Alice passes Marshall Connelly (Jake Lacy), who sees her bruise and asks if that happened at his house. Frank Choi (Rob Yang) interrupts before Alice can answer, sharing that Danny called the Easton’s with information to share, which is why they showed up. Danny is defensive, saying he thought they could help identify the victims. When Frank and Danny see Alice’s face, they both look at Marshall, but Alice says it’s nothing. She updates them about canvassing the streets with Nora and wanting to take Danny to check out Isabel’s last known foster care placement. As they head to the meeting with Emma Easton, Frank warns Danny and Alice to play chess, not checkers, explicitly asking them not to show the photo. Alice gets approval to tease that they have something to see what they reveal.

“Your Mental Health Matters,” reads an email at the top of Nora’s inbox, as she adds more alcohol to her thermos. The email came from the Office of Counseling and Support, and it seems to offend her. She gets up, going to Yara (Layan Elwazani) to ask if she could sign her up for it.

We see Ed George (Danny McCarthy) in his office at the FBI, being interrupted by his administrative assistant, Cynthia (Megan Robinson), with news that unsettles him: Nora Washington just signed up for his seminar.

Frank and Marshall watch Alice and Danny meet with Emma Easton (Hope Davis) and her lawyer, Hal (Campbell Scott), via a video feed. Alice starts by apologizing for getting off on the wrong foot, adding that they have information that suggests the Easton family is a target and they want to help keep them safe. Emma is irritated, saying that her father is undergoing cancer treatment and doesn’t want to stress him with an investigation, suggesting that the FBI look in the right direction instead of the wrong one. That’s when Danny goes rogue, showing Emma and Hal the photo and informing them that the girl on Jay’s lap is a minor. Emma glances at the photo, saying she doesn’t recognize the girl and thinks the photo is a fake. As she gets up to leave, she leaves them with a vague threat about the difficulties they’ll face if they go after her family. After Emma and Hal leave, Alice tells Danny that she thinks Emma recognized Isabel. 

Things have escalated at Blanchard’s family’s apartment. Blanchard tells Marta that he has to leave for work, but rather than leave, she decides to take a shower. Raquel threatens to call the cops on Marta, but Blanchard comes clean, telling his mom that Marta is a sex worker, suggesting they call dad instead. A short while later, we see Blanchard’s dad arrive home, having already been alerted to the situation. “Hi. I’m Marta,” she says with a smile. We see Blanchard’s dad’s face, a look of shock and recognition. It’s Hal, Easton’s lawyer.

On the drive, Danny asks Alice who hurt her, and she finally comes clean about her kink. She then gets defensive about Danny not answering her call. He tells her he was visiting Liam. “At your old place?” she asks. Danny doesn’t elaborate.

Hal convinces Raquel and Blanchard to leave him alone with Marta so he can talk to her. Once alone, he goes to her. “You know who I am,” she says, knowing that he can’t call the police or they will ask him questions he can’t answer. She agrees to leave his apartment willingly under the condition that he goes with her, saying if he doesn’t, she will tell his wife and son everything. Hal sighs as he agrees.

In the elevator ride down, Hal asks Marta where she got the picture of Jay Easton. She looks up at him, resting her head on his shoulder, not explaining herself. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, and you’re going to end up dead,” he warns. She produces a syringe from her coat sleeve, injecting Hal in the leg, ushering him into a van in the building’s basement parking garage.

Girls look suspiciously at Alice and Danny as they arrive at Bright Fields Group Home as it begins to rain. The woman who runs the place, Jolie (Amy Hohn), warns them that she just heard that there’s a flash flood warning. She’s been running the home for 25 years. Before that, she was a pediatric nurse, and she’s inspired many of the girls in her care to pursue nursing careers. Alice tells Jolie that a place just like this once saved her life.

Jolie always encouraged the girls to keep a memory box while at the home, and she pulls out Isabel’s, which is decorated with stickers like so many of the killer’s items. Inside, Alice finds a drawing of Isabel with a man with a bear, with “I heart Adrian” written between them. Jolie can’t remember Adrian’s last name, but remembers that Isabel loved to draw, was very girly, and a natural leader. She had run away several times before the last time Jolie saw her, but when she bolted at 14, Jolie feared she might be pregnant. 

Alice asks Jolie if Isabel had any close friends when she lived at Bright Fields. “Catherine Grace,” she immediately says. Catherine was bullied by other girls for being strange, but Isabel became her protector. Catherine worshipped Isabel and wanted to do everything she did. Jolie digs deeper in Isabel’s memory box and finds a picture of the two of them. She remembers how Catherine Grace would stare at people in a way that made them uncomfortable. Anytime Catherine Grace was placed with a family, she would act out so that she could be sent back to be with Isabel.

The rain is coming down so heavily that Danny can barely see as he drives. When they almost get in an accident, Alice asks him to pull over. Stopped, he asks if Alice was lying when she told Jolie she had lived at a home like Bright Fields. Alice reveals that her dad kicked her out when she was 14. She tells him that she was in love with someone, but decides she doesn’t want to say any more. Danny reveals that he put Liam in a home. His son is big and tough to manage. That’s where he was last night when she called. Changing the topic, he asks Alice to explain her abuse kink. She can’t. When Danny implies that he’s having difficulty with his feelings for her, Alice asks him to explain more. Instead, he gets out of the car to smoke… in the pouring rain. They both laugh about his inability to smoke in a torrential downpour.

Nora sits in the back of Ed George’s seminar as he talks about the sacrifices agents make for the job and the need to make space to discuss it. He introduces a guest speaker and, when they ask if there are any questions, Nora waxes about the different ways the Ancient Greeks defined anger. Ed declares a 10-minute break. 

Nora follows Ed to the elevator, sarcastically saying how she wishes she had this idea when he was her supervisor. Ed mentions that he technically is still her supervisor. She tells him about the police cooperation case involving Caleb Easton’s homicide. “It might be tied to this cold case. An overdose from 2012. A 15-year-old girl found dead in a river. Do you remember that?” Ed looks Nora directly in the eye, deliberately not blinking: “No.” She tells him both of their names are on that report, and there may be new questions about it. As Ed gets out of the elevator, he brings up Nora’s drinking. “Wasn’t Dionysus the god of drink?” he asks as the doors close, separating them.

When Nora returns to her office, she finds Marshall outside, asking to speak with her.

Catherine, aka Vanessa, returns home to find Aldan (Steve Way) waiting to confess his feelings and ask her to be his girlfriend. He had Yuti (Regina Ohashi) help with his proposal, with the other aide playing music on her phone and handing Vanessa a bouquet of flowers. “I love you,” Aldan tells her. Vanessa starts to cry, genuinely touched. “I can feel my fingers,” she gasps, almost in a state of shock. “Ok,” she agrees, taking his hands as they laugh and smile.

When Danny stops at a gas station, Alice pulls out her laptop and connects to the FBI database to look up Catherine Grace. Danny wonders if Jolie taught her some nursing skills since she seems to kill her targets by injection. “Maybe she’s working off the books,” he guesses, seemingly inspired by his own situation with Liam. Alice had the same thought.

Alice gets a call from Nora. She immediately starts to fill her in on everything they’ve found out. The other girl in the photo is likely Catherine Grace, Isabel’s best friend. When Isabel left Bright Fields, she was in love with a man named Adrian. “Murado,” Nora connects the dots. Alice adds that Isabel might’ve had a child, which could help with the Jane Doe search. As Alice was talking, she found a report in the FBI database from 2012, a Jane Doe who matches Isabel’s description… who is wearing the same dress Isabel wore in the photo… who has the same type of medical wristband on. Alice tells Nora she wants to go to the location of the death right now.

“You’re not going to do anything more with the Jane Doe,” Nora informs Alice. “When you’re back, I’m taking you off this for a little while.” Alice is shocked as Nora explains that Marshall came to her to report their interaction last night. “He claimed you showed up to his house unannounced. He says you were aggressive and you took your gun out.” Alice protests, but Nora cuts her off. “It’s a chance I never got when I was in your shoes,” she says. “Just take a step back.” 

Alice notices that the Jane Doe file is currently being read by another agent — Nora. “It was your case?” she asks. Nora reminds Alice that the FBI is a paramilitary organization. To her, Nora is a general. She demands that Alice send everything she has on the case to Frank and return to the bureau. Danny gets back in the car, asking if she’s ok. She is not ok.

The episode closes with Hal waking up in the back of Aldan’s van in shock.

Hulu’s Furious returns next Monday, August 9th, with Episode 5, “Pick a Sticker,” and we’ll be back with another recap, too.

Alice and Catherine take extreme measures to get what they want.