Jessica Jones S02E02 Review: Not the Supervillain You Were Looking For

Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 2: AKA Freak Accident

Huh, that episode's quite good as well. It's definitely a slower episode, with a rather... strange subplot of Jeri Hogarth and finding comfort in the debauchery of an orgy with a bunch of random ladies she finds off the streets. I mean, I get what the show was going for with her -- she's dying and she's really confused about what to do -- but did we really need that much screentime taken up by that?

Jessica and Trish are both going on their own ventures to hunt down the mysteries behind the spooky government organization IGH. Jessica goes to infiltrate the funeral of Dr. Kozlov -- the evil, shady scientist from the first season -- and it's a neat little scene. Meanwhile, Trish meets up with her horrible mother Dorothy (played by the wonderful actress Rebecca De Mornay who does an amazing job at amping up the character's unpleasant self-obsessed 'groom' parent tendencies) in order to hunt down one of her old movie contacts, one Maximilian Tatum. Who was 40 years old when he fucked a teenage Trish -- something that he has the gall to say that he's the "victim" of when Trish tries to blackmail him with the fact in order to further her investigation. I mean, I won't really say that Trish comes off as particularly altruistic in her arguments with Dorothy and Maximilian (we, the audience, know that she is, but the character doesn't really show that in her interactions) but at the same time... yeah, it's definitely very cathartic when Malcolm whacks the fucker in the face. 

Jessica, meanwhile, goes on another relatively long sub-plot where she has to deal with cops trying to implicate her in Whizzer's death, and her argument with her newly-introduced-this-season-so-he's-going-to-be-relevant neighbour Oscar, but honestly? Beyond finding that video on Whizzer's computer and deciding that Trish's show is the connection, there's really not much interest in the very slow investigation.

The story doesn't really pick up much -- even if Krysten Ritter and Rachel Taylor are both extremely entertaining to watch -- until the final act. We learn that apparently Will "Nuke" Simpson's trailing of Trish isn't actually super-evil, although Trish, Jessica and the audience are certainly conditioned to believe otherwise. Simpson has apparently reformed, though, and has been shadowing Trish for the express purpose of protecting her, not resisting when Trish shot and bound him, and warning Jessica of another, sinister force hunting down Trish -- even if he doesn't actually have a name to give her. Simpson ends up facing off against this mysterious threat as Jessica and Trish book it... only for the mysterious threat to ignore them, but leave behind Simpson's mangled body. Including Whizzer, that's three characters dead in two episodes, so the bodycount for this season seems to be pretty high.

It's a bit sudden, for sure, but Will Simpson is definitely one of the weaker parts of the previous season and tying him into the plot and giving the character a somewhat graceful exit is definitely preferable to not mentioning him ever again. It's a neat bit, and although this whole huge conspiracy storyline is decidedly less engaging than the first season's far more personal and character-driven storyline, it still manages to hold my interest enough to want to continue to the next episode. Overall, definitely a slow episode that really could've been paced a bit better. This episode could've easily been cut to around half its length.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Whizzer quotes "with great power, comes great mental illness" a couple of times in his videos, which is, of course, a corruption of the classic Spider-Man motto. 
• Whizzer's pet mongoose actually makes a brief offscreen in this episode.