What happened to Alice in Furious? Emmy Rossum calls episode 5 the moment "the beast has been unleashed"
What happened to Alice in Furious episode 5? Inside Alice Black's most shocking hour of the Hulu thriller so far — and what Emmy Rossum has said about filming it.
Through four episodes of Furious, Alice Black was your standard-issue Brilliant But Damaged FBI agent: chasing serial killer Catherine (Lola Petticrew), ignoring her boss, generally vibrating at an illegal frequency. Episode 5, "Pick a Sticker," is where the show stops pretending she's the stable one.
The setup: her abuser gets her benched
Quick recap of the mess. Alice's ex, Marshall (Jake Lacy, once again weaponizing that nice-guy face), reports her for pulling a gun on him — conveniently leaving out the whole "abusive relationship" context. Her boss Nora yanks her off the Catherine case. So Alice, a professional investigator with a working knowledge of consequences, does the following:
- invites Marshall over to her apartment;
- seduces him;
- pours bourbon into her recovering-alcoholic ex until he breaks his sobriety and nearly chokes;
- reveals the whole thing was a trap — their earlier conversation was caught on camera;
- has the neighbor call the cops the second he storms out.
The cast and crew had a name for that centerpiece scene, Rossum told Mashable: "We called that the whiskey waterboarding scene." They rehearsed it for days with an intimacy coordinator and a fight coordinator, which tells you everything about how it plays.
So is Alice the hero or the problem now?
Yes. Rossum — who's also an executive producer — has been very clear that this episode is the point of no return, telling Gold Derby that Marshall is costing Alice her job, her sanity, and her one shot at something good with Danny. Her verdict on where that leaves her character:
"The beast has been unleashed."
Which, fair. Meanwhile Catherine spends the hour torturing lawyer Hal (Campbell Scott) for answers about her murdered friend Isabel, and the episode ends with the collision the whole season's been teasing: Alice walks into a Safe Surrender site chasing a lead and comes face to face with Catherine herself. The hunter, the hunted, one waiting room. See you in episode 6.
