Jessica Jones, Season 1, Episode 6: AKA You're A Winner
Who's a winner? This episode is a winner! Though none of the characters involved walk away happy except Kilgrave. He definitely walked out of that poker game a gigantic winner.
While the first episode was content to just delve into multiple sex scenes and more foul language than what you'd expect in a Marvel movie -- which honestly is on par with most TV shows on air right now -- subsequent episodes have involved racial profiling, twincest, culpability of a mind-controlled murderer and a couple of others I probably didn't quite catch. Here we talk about abortion, and how someone who's raped and impregnated by a monster of a human being like Kilgrave (who, as Hope points out again, not only rapes her but also made her kill her own parents) might feel. There's no big speech, though Jessica seems to want to start one before Hope just swallows the drug. It's impulsiveness, the sheer revulsion she must feel towards the Kilgrave-spawn, the need to just get it over with. It's definitely going to bring out different arguments depending on your personal beliefs and I'm not going to talk about it, but good job at portraying it as something that's so ambiguously gray.
We also get Malcolm's poignant speech in his support group about how he sometimes wonders whether all the shit Kilgrave's made him do has always been inside him and only awakened by Kilgrave, and how for better or for worse these things might be inside of him.
And there's the whole plot about Luke Cage hiring Jessica Jones to find what, to him, is the first in a string of clues that would lead to facts about the death of his wife. Now it's absolutely predictable that Jessica will be forced to confront Luke and it will end in tears. There was no real surprise when it happened, and honestly it could've been handled better... but in the same vein the sheer rage that Luke displays when he finally confronts Jessica and calls her a piece of shit, ironically mirroring his encouragement earlier on that she's not one... yeah.
We also see the flashback to Reva's death in more detail, and we see Kilgrave and Reva watching Jessica dig up a box containing a yellow USB, and Jessica was forced to kill her in order to hide the evidence or something. And apparently Reva left behind instructions for Luke to look for something... well, something that Kilgrave already took.
The main plot with Jessica and Luke trailing a missing person, who is also hunted by loan sharks and have disappeared to create a weed plantation, ends up in a fight with the loan shark's men, and Luke ends up going to confront the bus driver. The information that was promised turns out not to detail Jessica's involvement, but instead to tell Luke that the bus driver involved was drunk... which leads to the confrontation between the two.
Well, while all of this is going on, we get some absolutely fun moments from Luke Cage with another well-timed sweet christmas, and he's just full of win. It helps that I actually like Luke Cage a fair bit even though I've only seen him in bits and pieces in Marvel video games and the Civil War comics. Jessica herself is no slouch in delivering moments both emotional and hilarious, with the titular 'you're a winnarr' super-perky act and scowling immediately afterwards being a highlight.
Meanwhile, the side characters continue their life. I think this is the first episode not to feature Trish, though, and likewise officer Simpson is nowhere to be seen. Malcolm shows up slightly less druggy and bonds with Jessica (who's still an asshole as usual) over their experiences with Kilgrave.
Hope, meanwhile, hired the other inmate who beat her up in order to get a miscarriage, and that's seriously fucked up. She ends up recruiting Jessica's help to get her abortion meds... and while Jeri's quest to find dirt on her soon-to-be-ex wife is fruitless (though Jessica doesn't seem all that enthusiastic in actually putting down poor Wendy) she's apparently spirited away the aborted fetus of Hope... to find Kilgrave's DNA? Or something more sinister? I know she's based on an actual character from the comics, but I've not done much research into the world of Jessica Jones (or Iron Fist, rather) in order to enjoy this series more. Is she in league with Kilgrave all along? Who knows?
Kilgrave, meanwhile, is made up of pure win. We know he's a murdering, mind-raping sick son of a bitch, but we get two rather awesome scenes. And there's the one where he just tells an entire restaurant to SHUT UP. That's definitely a useful power to deal with such a mundane problem. But we get to see Kilgrave play poker and basically talk his way out and get everyone to basically go all in and fold, plus showing a small sign of decency when she tipped the random lady with a wad of cash... in the same breath that he gets one of the other dudes to whack his head onto a pole.
And then there's the strange way he dealt with the man who owned the house. He could've just forced the entire family to evacuate it, but he made it a legitimate sale, paid the man with the money from the poker game and even visibly restrains himself from going all "you will accept my offer". It turns out to be Jessica's childhood home, of course, and it's located in the streets that Jessica keeps repeating when she's stressed. Why does Kilgrave do this? Is there some ulterior motive beyond being a creepy-ass stalker? Why was he so relatively nice with the owners of that house? Does his power consume energy and he's saving it for actual important things? Is it just his creepy obsession that he needs to legitimately (as legitimate as those poker money can be considered legitimate) own everything about Jessica Jones?
A lot of questions, and despite the basic episodic plot it definitely builds up the story more and leads to a powerful confrontation between Jessica and Luke, whereas main antagonist Kilgrave and side characters like Hogarth and even Hope continue to impress.
No comments:
Post a Comment