Jessica Jones, Season 1, Episode 13: AKA Smile
Well, that's an... unconventional way to end the series. Of course, I don't expect something conventional with such a different take on a superhero story, but still. A good chunk early on in the episode is just spent on Jessica panicking about getting Luke Cage some medical attention, with needles not working on his superhard skin. It's an interesting, novel concept, but honestly it took way too much time even with the totally-unfeasible "drain some of the leaking cerebral fluid via a gruesome MacGyver operation and call it a day" improvised method that they did. I guess Luke has some accelerated healing going on? Because medically speaking, that procedure, even if a nurse knew how to perform it perfectly and not injure any part of Luke's brain, would merely delay Luke's death, not cure it. But whatever. It's a superhero show, not a medical show.
And a huge chunk of the first half of the episode revolves on a cross-show cameo, Claire Temple, hailing from this show's older brother, Daredevil! And it would be cool if she just shows up and be the nurse that Jessica enlists to treat Luke, but no. She had to eat up so much screentime and talk and talk and talk to Jessica. I mean, I get the "I have this friend" conversation that refers to Daredevil is basically mandatory, and there's nothing wrong with Claire and Jessica talking for a bit, but after a while, it gets rather odd that it goes on. And on. And on. It would be okay if this didn't happen in the freaking finale, where we're tense about the Jessica/Kilgrave confrontation but instead we get a gigantic distraction.
There's nothing wrong with the Claire scene per se... she's cool, but wholly unnecessary. And would totally throw off anyone who come watching Jessica Jones without first watching Daredevil, and as much as I adore cross-continuity references, I also hate if the cameos and references take too much of a particular episode or movie and become the focus without any actual justification.
Add to the fact that the confrontation between Jessica and Luke last episode, with the situation remaining ambiguous whether Luke truly forgave Jessica over Reva ended up left hanging in the air, and Claire sucking away so much screentime really is wholly unnecessary. Jessica and Luke's relationship has been a huge part of the series since episode one (two?) and it's a shitty cop-out that they left such a huge cliffhanger last episode -- granted Luke himself is getting his own TV series and it's a fair bet Jessica will show up there, so it won't be left unignored, but it's still crappy for the conclusion of this series to leave it up like that.
What does get a conclusion, however, is Jessica and Kilgrave. And to a lesser extent, Jessica and Trish. Basically for the two adopted sisters, it boils down to the fact that they, like, love each other. Which is treated like some big, big emotional moment when Jessica chooses 'I love you' as her password, but really it isn't. Trish has been Jessica's morality pet since day one, and we've already got 'you're the only person I want to protect' thing during the Simpson episode, so it really kinda feels rather weak.
Having Trish participate in the climax is awesome, though I'm honestly not sure what role she could possibly be. The scene where she pretends to be Jessica with gigantic headphones to drown out Kilgrave's orders (literally no one thought to do this before?) is cool... but then you realize that beyond distracting Kilgrave for like ten seconds it proceeded to do absolutely nothing. If Kilgrave had told the mind-controlled policemen to shoot Trish instead of Jessica, I bet they would feel like total idiots.
And Trish totally did nothing in the final confrontation in front of the yacht, where all she managed to do by running up is to get herself trapped in a damsel in distress state. Granted all the gloating that Kilgrave did ended up giving Jessica her opening, but still, Trish's role really felt weak in the climax.
The stuff leading up to the climax is cool, though. As weak as the 'I love you' bit ended up being to me, Jessica acknowledging that Trish can come with and help her out despite shutting out practically everyone when she goes after Kilgrave is cool. If only Trish had actually done something substantial in the climax. But oh well.
We also get a pretty gruesome scene of Jessica finding what remains of poor, poor Albert. Not content to do the 'cut out your heart' thing to his father like he did before, Kilgrave has his other thralls chop off Albert's limbs and fucking put them through a blender. That's waaaay overboard, yet chillingly shows how Kilgrave has dropped all pretense of being a lovable psychopath and just be, well, a psychopath. Kilgrave's personal rants into thin air shows just how unhinged he has become, as he rants about how best to torture Jessica -- straight death, forcing her to want him yet denying her the chance to, all that -- and all the speeches via hospital intercom are pretty great.
For all it's built up to be, though, Kilgrave's enhanced mind-control powers really don't do much. Yes, he has the ability to take control of an entire hospital just by talking through TV screens and have them go on a witch hunt for Jessica, but it ends up resolved by Jessica shoving people out of the way. Kilgrave also controls a lot of policemen to shoot Jessica and force a lot of people to kill each other... which really didn't feel any different from how he normally operates.
In the same vein, while I do appreciate not falling into the superhero cliche that the final battle of the season/story arc/movie needs to involve the entire city being in danger and having the stakes just be around Jessica, Trish and the random dudes told to kill each other, it also feels quite less epic. Maybe have a bigger crowd scene or extend the hospital one a bit? Dunno.
And as a final kicker, having Trish be temporarily immune thanks to the loud music on her beats really makes Kilgrave's power upgrade seem shitty. And showing such an obvious cheat to get away from Kilgrave's mind-control powers when the entire season has been about trying to find loopholes and whatnot makes it really ring hollow.
I do love how apparently Albert powered Kilgrave up by using Hope's aborted fetus, though. Injecting more stem cells and whatnot instead of random pharmaceutical drugs (as last episode seemed to imply) is far more believable as far as superhero power-ups go, and it's nice to acknowledge that little Chekov's gun.
The final confrontation between Kilgrave and Jessica as Kilgrave takes Trish hostage (where did her beats go to?) and delivers a suitably creepy description of how Kilgrave will basically rape Trish everyday and force Trish to 'love' him just to torture Jessica. The obviously loveless kiss is perfectly shot, with the mind-controlled Trish looking passionate while Kilgrave can't give a shit and is more concerned with Jessica... and then Kilgrave randomly just goes "you really would do it, would you?" and just walk towards Jessica and go all "we can start over again, you will love me"... and it doesn't really make sense just why Kilgrave thought this time would be any different. If he had given Jessica a command, or if Jessica's facial expression showed something... I rewatched the scene like two or three times, and I still don't understand how Kilgrave went from "I will turn your sister into my sex slave and you will never find us or she will kill herself" to "oh you actually do love me." I mean, Kilgrave is insane, but the sudden leap of events really could've been handled smoothly. Hell, maybe throw the "I love you" earlier during this sequence to both fool Kilgrave and tell Trish and the audience that she's fully in control.
Of course, that didn't happen. Kilgrave walks up to Jessica talking his rant about loving each other, Jessica pretends to follow his orders to 'smile' (a nice callback to the first episode) and say 'I love you' (which really doesn't have that strong of an impact) before just grabbing Kilgrave by the face and snapping his neck.
Yeah, a classic hero, Jessica Jones ain't. Anyone who really wished for Jessica to do anything else is fooling themselves after the entire season has been building up to Jessica trying and failing to bring down Kilgrave within the system, so it's just putting down a rabid monster now. It's definitely cathartic and borderline anticlimatic, but I think it's kind of a suitable way for Kilgrave to go out. As much as I griped about the specific circumstances that led to it, it's still a suitable end to Kilgrave -- for all his bullshit about control and Jessica loving him, Jessica shows who is truly in control by simply pulling a Henry Cavill Superman and snapping his neck. It's a far more suitable and expected end for Jessica, as pyrrhic as it feels. The couple of online reviews I read before typing my own is undivided whether this ending is an absolute anticlimax that destroys the "I can be a hero" mindset that the story initially starts with, or a suitably dark and melancholic ending to one of Marvel's darker stories. I think neither are wrong, and as messy as it is, I appreciate the ending for what it is -- putting down a rabid psychopath of an animal.
With Kilgrave out the way, we tie up the rest of the B-cast and outstanding plot points. Thankfully Robyn doesn't show up. Luke wakes up, of course, talks to Claire a bit before buggering off to do his own TV show. We get Dorothy Walker sending Trish even more documents about IGH (yep, definitely sequel hook) without her asking, though there's still the emotional abuse thing going on with her promising more. Earlier in the episode Trish tells Jessica what she discovered about IGH, but in typical Jessica fashion she doesn't give two shits about it.
Hogarth gets called by Jessica halfway through to be confronted about the fetus, Jessica forces her to represent one of Kilgrave's thralls, and while Jessica is realistically arrested for the murder of Kilgrave (couldn't she just chunk Kilgrave's body into the river like she did Reuben's?) Hogarth ends up bailing her out with her unethical shark lawyer ways. Her life is in deep shit thanks to the whole divorce arc, though, as she elaborates... though she at least helps out hero out this one time.
Marcus... shows up and talks to Claire about halfway through the episode, a conversation about sidekicks that really is wholly unnecessary. Couldn't he have discovered this on his own, or have the conversation with Robyn actually make sense last episode and lead to his character becoming what's basically Jessica's conscience? It's handled rather poorly, and Marcus has been all over the place this season.
The episode ends with Jessica sitting in the ruins of Alias Investigations, cleared of charges by Hogarth. Kilgrave is dead, but apparently everyone knows about the P.I. with superpowers and we get a nice little monologue about how she's deluding herself by thinking that she's a hero as she deletes a lot of voicemail of people begging her for help. Marcus, who sticks around, ends up picking up the phone and presumably helping Jessica actually find her own hero sense, and like the Kilgrave ending above reviewers are conflicted about whether this ending makes the whole 'I can give a shit and be a hero' motivation initially moot and turn Jessica into an unlikable character that turns a blind eye to other people's problems, or if it's totally in character for her after being so emotionally drained about everything to just give a middle finger.
One could make an argument about Jessica's character arc being a subversion of your general superhero origin story. Just compare Jessica Jones with her Netflix predecessor, Daredevil, who has a more conventional story. Daredevil starts off being a relatively violent anti-hero (despite being a nice dude out of costume) and eventually mellows out throughout the season into someone more idealistic and traditional. Jessica, on the other hand, starts with all the optimism about being a hero (despite being an asshole to people in general) and tries to be idealistic, wanting to bring in Kilgrave without resorting to murder, butends up being forced into a violent anti-hero. It really depends whether you find the subversion clever, or just plain destroys the concept of superheroes. Jessica Jones is a odd beast of a character herself among a throng of more traditional superheroes that having a different outlook is actually quite welcome to me, so I don't mind the ending as much.
Overall, though, despite the nice melancholic feel that all this has, there's still something that's just lacking with the ending. Claire sucking away so much screentime and stuff like Luke Cage being deliberately left as cliffhangers in a later show definitely hurts the episode, but the fact that this episode really didn't feel as tense or emotionally charged as the previous four or five episodes really doesn't help either. Plus all my gripes about stuff like Trish being bait or Kilgrave's sudden change in mind not really making much sense. Sadly the ending really feels like one of the weaker episodes of the season, and I wished they could've put this through the editing process a little more. As it is, it's a barely satisfactory ending which makes this otherwise-awesome series not living quite up to its full potential. The series as a whole is still great -- it's an unconventional superhero story that tackles a lot of mature themes, most of all abuse (sexual, mental, drugs, emotional, parental) and accountability, and it really doesn't deserve to be called shit just because it didn't quite deliver its ending as well as it should have.
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