Jessica Jones, Season 1, Episode 7: AKA Top-Shelf Perverts
Unfortunately, the title of this episode is said not in reference to Killgrave, as appropriate as it would have been.
This episode is kinda... off. It's still pretty good, following the previous formula of taking a single conflict and making it tie into the larger Kilgrave plot. But this one kinda struggles to maintain some sort of coherence, in no small part caused by Jessica's downright moronic plan to land herself in supermax and use it as a trap to get Kilgrave. And, well, it's a dumb plan that's also noted various times by Malcolm, Trish and Hogarth. And by the audience, no doubt. But it's still pretty eye-rolling as the tone of this episode seemed to go from noir mystery spiced with superheroes into something zanier... which doesn't really fit the tone of the series.
There are still some pretty great moments in the episode, though, chief among them Kilgrave's scene in the police station (more on that later) but also the beginning with the sudden Reuben death. I honestly don't care about the characters of Reuben and Robin, with them being absolutely annoying. Reuben's point seemed to just to give someone to be a hopeless suitor to Jessica, and he gets absolutely ignored and killed off unceremoniously because with his addled brain he had the misfortune to say "I love her" in front of Kilgrave. Woop.
Anyway, Jessica tries to use Reuben's death and frame herself to get herself to supermax, basically blackmailing Hogarth to try to represent her -- another dimwitted move as Hogarth immediately spouts something about her being a lawyer who doesn't lose cases when Jessica tries to recruit her. Yeah.
And Jessica seems to take the "you're a piece of shit" thing a bit too hard and actually does become a piece of shit to poor, poor, abused Wendy. Jessica isn't supposed to be the most likable of characters or whatever, but that was still absolutely mean and heartless of her. Thank goodness that despite how she looks Wendy isn't about to give in to Hogarth's demands, and tries to blackmail her -- proving to be far more effective at digging dirt on someone who's actually dirty. The divorce plot is a bit of an odd distraction but I'm firmly on Team Wendy here.
The rest of the supporting characters all show up but most of them don't do much beyond pointing out how stupid the supermax plan is, which probably helped in making this episode feel not quite as solid as the ones preceding it. Hogarth shows up in her requisite scenes for her plot, then shows up again to tell Jessica she's an idiot. Trish fucks Simpson, and the two of them are apparently doing their own investigations that they're keeping secret from Jessica. Malcolm's just there to bounce dialogue off.
We also get the rather random introduction to Dorothy Walker, Trish's mother who was implied to be physically abusive to Trish. We see a short flashback near the end where she adopts Jessica and is basically kinda dismissive, not wanting to waste time to look for Jessica's missing journal and kinda enforcing that Jessica address her in the super-polite "thank you ms Walker" way. It makes present-day Jessica's accusations that she's "pimping" out Trish to get royalties and adopted her as a publicity move far more believable, especially when Dorothy herself is absolutely defensive and refuses to admit that she might've done Trish wrong, something that apparently involves what she waves off as 'the doctors prescribing too much medication'. It's far more chilling and hits home harder than Dorothy's comic-book counterpart who I've been told apparently tried to sell Trish's soul to the devil for youth and beauty. Yay comic books!
Anyway, one thing leads to another and while Malcolm and Trish try to clean up the evidence and dump Reuben's body into the river -- Malcolm giving a nice, short prayer -- Jessica stops it, rips Reuben's head off and just marches to the police precinct all crazy-like... and after Hogarth's beautiful scene where she just tells Jessica off that she doesn't lose cases, Kilgrave comes in, and has the entire police station basically point guns at each other nonchalantly. An absolutely chilling and well-executed scene.
And Kilgrave's grand monologue absolutely makes this episode. We see just how much he 'loves', or, rather, desires Jessica, since he doesn't really seem to understand the concept of how love works. And he wants Jessica to love him back, not just follow his orders. Again, it's another example of how truly demented and sick Kilgrave is, and how he backpedals about describing Jessica as the 'thing... sorry, person' that he truly loved is absolutely well done. Some appropriate scenery eating like when a telephone disturbs his 'declaration of undying love' and he threatens to forcefeed anyone whose phone sounds next, before he picks up Reuben's head in that plastic bag and just merrily goes on his way while the entire police station bursts into laughter because Kilgrave tells them to laugh and forget it as a joke...
But Jessica, notably, doesn't. So either it's a bit of a writing flub, or Kilgrave can selectively pick who his commands go to, or maybe Jessica's gotten some immunity against Kilgrave's orders, something which we see her display after Reva's death (though this scene certainly doesn't shock Jessica as much as being forced to kill someone would). Her being able to resist Kilgrave's Kilgraving would definitely make a control freak like him desire her more, and that might be the reason why he's practicing other forms of control -- money, sweet-talking, et cetera.
And at the end of the episode, well, Jessica ends up falling to Kilgrave's demands and returns to her old house, witnessed by officer Simpson. And it's honestly rather odd why she just doesn't punch Kilgrave through the chest right then and there (Hope, yes, but you'd think leaving her in jail would be the better alternative than having Kilgrave going around killing people). I dunno. Could've been executed better, in my opinion.
We get a couple of nice Easter Eggs that I was able to spot this time around. We get a short cameo by sergeant Mahoney from the Daredevil series, a.k.a. the only polieman who isn't in Kingpin's pocket. Dude really deserved more scenes in Daredevil other than being the friend in the force that they can safely count on dispensing justice. We get a photograph of Stan Lee in the police station which apparently also appeared in Daredevil, but I didn't quite catch it. Also we get a bit of a nod-nod-wink as the subsitute bartender asks Jessica if she's going to have Luke's baby... which the two actually did in the comics. A cute little baby girl. But, well, that's the comics and this is the show.
This episode's multiple plot strands don't quite weave a coherent story like previous episodes did, though, with the divorce and mommy issues being completely divorced (hee) from the whole Reuben's death and Kilgrave plot.
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