Furious review: Emmy Rossum’s vicious drama is a brutal reckoning with women’s buried rage, violence and power

On Halloween, a woman dons a cat mask on her porch steps, her eyes the only visible feature. Behind her, in the house, a man lies dying. The woman, clad in sequins, approaches a trick-or-treating child and offers candy before returning inside to finish her intended task. Watching this opening scene, it's easy to focus solely on the man on the floor as the only victim, but the series "Furious" doesn't adopt such a simplistic view.

The real question posed is whether the dying man or the woman standing over him, driven to her actions by the trauma inflicted upon her, are the true victims. As the series unfolds, Catherine Grace, portrayed brilliantly by Lola Petticrew, emerges as a woman haunted by rage, a remnant of her past as a trafficking survivor. She is a woman who has lost her sense of self and now seeks to unravel the lives of the powerful men who contributed to her degradation.

Catherine's journey intertwines with that of FBI agent Alice Black, played by Emmy Rossum, who is determined to bring Catherine to justice. Alice, a former NYPD officer, struggles with her own history of domestic violence, casting doubt on her credibility when she reports the abuse she endured. "Furious" delves deep into the lives of women grappling with their emotions, challenging the notion that women are the emotional ones while men are perceived as stoic and logical.

The series portrays how women's anger is often dismissed or criticized, questioning whether society's disapproval of women's emotions is the real issue. By portraying women's rage as a legitimate response to years of oppression and abuse, "Furious" seeks to challenge the cultural script that women should be emotionally restrained and rational, arguing that the real problem lies in the dismissal of women's emotions as unreliable and untrustworthy.