Jessica Jones, Season 1, Episode 11: AKA I've Got the Blues
This is a great episode that's honestly a bit hurt by its position in the season. We're fresh of a series of big moments that starred Kilgrave in a huge fashion, where he's easily the second most prominent character in the show in the past few episodes and eclipsing anyone not named Jessica Jones. They've traded away the big mystery of the main villain in favour of having him confront the main protagonist, which usually leads to a huge thing between the two of them. Thus it's a strange position to explore the two main plot points of this episode -- the focus of the episode deals with the whole Crazy!Simpson plot, and there are a couple of flashbacks showing Jessica's origin and Trish's abusive bitch of a mother. In a vacuum both parts are really strong, but its location here, right after Kilgrave makes his big move in a string of fast-paced events that killed at least three supporting characters... we take a break and fight this secondary villain whose rise to villainy is dubiously handled at best.
Kilgrave himself doesn't appear throughout the entire episode, up until the final shot where he blows up Luke Cage's bar in the dude's triumphant return to the show. Granted the man himself is invulnerable, but man, that bar. Also, if I'm a betting man... either Simpson or Luke Cage will end up mind-controlled for Kilgrave to use against Jessica, because if Jessica and Luke go up against Kilgrave...Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed the interactions between Jessica and Trish in both present and past, and the episode is another in a string of really solid episodes, and this particular plot point really needed to be resolved... but it really just felt odd that this distraction which was really more suitable on episode 8 or 9 took place in, well, the third-last episode. I honestly thought Simpson's role would be far more involved in the conflict with Kilgrave, making him relevant as the show reaches its end... and instead, we get this oddity of an episode. Which is odd, since I really liked it... but I came into this episode expecting more Kilgrave-vs-Jessica, and for the first fifteen minutes or so we get a bit of a slower detective work as Jessica hunts morgues for Albert's body (and finds Clemons instead) which is nice. Slower episodes are okay because we really needed one after all that excitement, but then we take a detour to revisit the whole Simpson thing and that's just weird.
Let's talk about the flashbacks first, because it's shorter. It's nice and sweet seeing how Jessica discovers her powers, which felt like something out of the X-Men movies. Still no explanation as to how she gets them at all, and I honestly have given up hope on the series actually telling us. Dorothy Walker is a horrible excuse for a parent, and while we've gotten hints of this before when Jessica confronts her in the present day, Dorothy thinks that taking in Jessica as basically a ratings stunt to cover up Trish "setting fire to a nightclub" and honestly is more concerned about how Patsy is going to save Jessica as those are the words she says to Jessica the very moment she shows signs of consciousness. Compare that to Trish, who, while totally inappropriate in her flippant manner, is more concerned about telling Jessica that her family's dead.
And then the point where Trish finds out Jessica has superpowers -- in a fun display of strength as Jessica accidentally destroys a marble sink, though one must wonder just why young Trish knows exactly how heavy a sink is. As this goes on, we hear Trish and Dorothy arguing, and Dorothy is downright abusive both verbally and physically, cutting Trish's shoulder with one of Trish's awards to boot. They make a nice little sister-y deal that Trish doesn't tell anyone about Jessica's powers, and Jessica doesn't "save" Trish. Of course, when Dorothy tries to get Trish to vomit out a pizza (holy shit, woman!) Jessica saves Trish from the abuse by, well, throwing the abusive mother against a wall, thus rather cutely making them even in breaking their promises. Also, Dorothy is a piece of shit of a woman.
My question is, well, while this juxtaposes nicely against Jessica and Trish's focus on their sisterhood this episode, it just really feels a bit odd that this takes place in, again, the third-last episode of a series you're meant to binge-watch. It would've fit better earlier in the season.
Jessica's awesome. All the detective work isn't anything you can't get from the thirty dozen other cop/detective shows out there, but she actually does show emotion here -- a rarity in the series. The grief she had over Hope's corpse, the evident distaste she has against covering it up, the grief she had when Trish apparently dies... yeah, she may "hate the world" and all that, but she's not a woman made of ice. Good for you, Jessica.
I also liked the need to 'nerf' Jessica to make the drugged-up Simpson feel like a legitimate threat, and having her get hit by a truck when her paranoia led her to chase some random dude with a purple suit is a great way to show how stress is getting to her (a point mentioned by Trish multiple times earlier in the episode) and to show that, even injured, she's still tough as hell since that truck seemed to be in as bad a shape as she is.
Trish is awesome too. Most of her character moments I think came from comparing how much she's grown from the flashbacks to the present-day scenes, and at the same time seeing how at core she's still sarcastic yet not harmful... she just learned to lean more towards cheerful now that the abusive mother is out of the picture. She gets some interaction with Simpson, who acts like a less harmful version of the stalker boyfriend as compared to Kilgrave... well, up until he eats those drugs. Trish manages to be resourceful, not only saving the wounded Jessica from being strangled to death but eventually braving the red pill and fighting toe-to-toe with Simpson. Hellcat go! And, yes, she ended up almost asphyxiating from the side effects of the red drug. Panicking and wounded and all, but Jessica honestly couldn't try and track down the blue pills? You'd think it would be more effective than waiting for an ambulance.
Simpson is a great threat as he just shows to be beyond reasoning, and his big motivation is just an exaggerated version of the 'we need to kill Kilgrave, Jessica is hindering me' spiel he's been talking about throughout the season. We thought it was just to provide a differing POV compared to Jessica, but alas it's grown into a full-blown one-dimensional psychosis. To some degree we see a bit of the old Simpson's personality and protectiveness of Trish show up, but well, I was totally cheering for Jessica and Trish to beat the crap out of him. And they did! I was pleasantly surprised how big of a role Trish played in beating Simpson down.
Sadly they don't confirm the kill, and Kozlov's men decide to round up Simpson's body. Whether he'll show up later this season for Kilgrave to mindfuck or it's just hints of more to come when we get to Defenders, we'll see. Maybe someone will actually call him Ruin, though don't let him paint the American flag on his face. That's just dumb.
Overall, though, while the fight between Jessica, Trish and Simpson is perfectly shot and extremely tense -- especially since there's no guarantee Trish will survive the overdose -- again, Simpson going off the deep end with the cheap shrug of a justification "he took some drugs that muddled his mind" really felt too cheap for a show like this. Oh well, at least it's entertaining.
Still don't see the point of Robyn and she's annoying. She's really overstaying her welcome and the whole point of her seemed to just be a bitch to Malcolm, whose big worldview of people being good in the world having been shattered by, well, everything Kilgrave. And Robyn playing devil-on-the-shoulder and being such a huge bitch. And, well, let's be honest, Jessica's a dick to Malcolm at times. Though I honestly don't see why Malcolm and Robyn got so much screen time in this episode. Padding out time?
To note is that joining Kilgrave in absence is Jeri Hogarth. Is she done for the series with last episode? I wouldn't be surprised.
Overall, though, while a confusing entry to the series, taken in a vacuum it's still a great episode -- it's just that positioning and their handling of Simpson this past couple of episodes is relatively poorly thought-out. But since we're getting back to Kilgraving and we're definitely going to stay on track for the next two final episodes, I guess we might as well tie up all loose ends. I just wished the sideplots were tied up earlier so we don't have this oddity of an episode.
No comments:
Post a Comment