Jessica Jones S02E01 Review: Whizzing Around

Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 1: AKA Start At The Beginning

Jessica Jones probably ranks pretty highly as a character who I have no idea about before watching her show, and right now she's probably one of my favourite superheroes in Marvel comics. Embodying "damaged" and "doesn't take shit from anyone" amazingly well, Jessica Jones had probably one of the best and most psychological series I've seen out of these costumed superheroes. And frankly, it's a hard sell to even call Jessica Jones a 'superhero' show instead of a thriller that happens to star people with superpowers. 

So yeah. Jessica's easily the best thing out of the rather volatile Defenders mini-series, for the simple fact that she doesn't give shit about anything and plays off  the rest of her cast-mates really well. But now she returns back to her own little corner of New York, and the season premiere does a great job re-introducing us to the characters. Jessica's still the largest tsundere in the world, trying her damnadest to not give a shit. Her adopted-sister-slash-best-friend is on a bit of a crusade to try and get Jessica to face her past, but with the added caveat that she wants to try to spin it into a news story -- not for glory or anything, but to try and make the world a better place. And maybe to get Jessica to properly move on? We get a bit of Jeri Hogarth, trying to monopolize the market on PIs or something. Oh, and Malcolm is so doggedly trying to be a good friend to Jessica and learn how to PI off her. 

And the episode works pretty well, with Krysten Ritter's performance carrying a significant chunk of what makes the episode so good. The conflict is quickly set up for Jessica. Trish goes on her little personal crusade (and that scene where she's forced to sing as her hated 'Patsy' persona is delightfully funny) to try and get Jessica to embrace the past by digging up the fact that the mysterious government organization IGH is responsible for some missing time when Jessica is unconscious after her childhood accident. Trish ends up not figuring out that much in this episode, beyond being an always-supportive sister to Jessica to bail her out, and we're also introduced to Trish's new boyfriend, Griffin Sinclair. Nothing too interesting about him yet, though he likes Jessica's dark humour. Good man. He's also probably evil or going to be evil, isn't he? I felt that it was a bit too on-the-nose.

What's definitely evil is what I think is Simpson stalking Trish. Someone is stalking her, but we don't really get that good of a look on whoever he is. 

Jessica is quickly beset by more problems than just her past, because she faces competition in Pryce Chang, who's the founder of a big PI organization that initially seems to want to edge Jessica out of business as the 'starter villain'. Jessica ends up losing her temper and punching Chang into a wall. It seems like everything goes relatively well for Jessica when she gets bailed out by Trish. We learn that Chang is hired by Hogarth for the seeming purposes of being a thorn in Jessica's side... something that Hogarth might have to reconsider when she's apparently informed that she's suffering from some disease or other? This part of the episode is honestly more 'eh, s'cool'  than anything. Both Chang and Hogarth are well-acted, but I can't say they're the most engaging part of this episode either. There's a bit about Hogarth being a bit of a hypocrite, going from a huge 'women rule!' speech to slut-shaming her ex, but that's not particularly that exciting. 

The thing that ties IGH and Jessica's whole "I just want to be a PI" thing ends up being Whizzer. Initially introduced to us in a montage of Jessica's wacky clients, it turns out that Whizzer actually does have super-speed, and is likely created in the same mysterious IGH laboratory that made Jessica into her new super-powered self. Whizzer claims that someone is after him, and it's kept ambiguous whether this is real or not, and if his eventual death in the third act of this episode was just misfortune or predetermined murder. (Spoiler alert: it's 100% murder)

And, of course, Jessica ends up finally giving enough of a shit to really go and investigate, finding out that she remembers bits of her past. Enough to at least show us that, yes, this was the very facility that she was given powers and tortured, and that there's "something worse" that probably hunted and caused Whizzer's death. And I do like how this exploration of Jessica Jones's origin story is treated as something that's absolutely personal for the character, and while the whole "oh noes the ashes of Jessica's dead family is spilled on the floor" bit was a little too on-the-nose, the episode does end up with a huge running theme of facing your past. 

We'll see if the second season of Jessica Jones will end up being unfocused the way that Daredevil's second season was, but it's certainly a pretty interesting and engaging pilot episode. Above all, it's very fun to just watch. The writing's top-notch, the acting's top-notch, and it's not bogged down by continuity while simultaneously building up on what happened in the first season. Neat.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Whizzer, a.k.a. Robert Coleman, is a Golden Age superhero for the Marvel comics with super-speed. From what little I can find out, he doesn't actually have much to do with his comic-book counterpart other than having super-speed, since the comic-book Whizzer is more of a retired WWII superhero instead of a young geeky teenager.   
• Jessica off-handedly note that Whizzer has a 'pet mongoose', which is a reference to how comics!Whizzer had his superpowers come from mongoose blood. Um, yeah. 
• One of Hogarth's big clients is Rand Enterprises, the company belonging to Danny Rand. The two met in Iron Fist's first season. 
• Another one of Jessica's clients talk about "lizards in human skin-suits" taking over the government, which is a reference to the Secret Invasion arc in the comics, where the reptile-like alien Skrulls have been kidnapping and impersonating important members of human society for years.