Jessica Jones, Season 1, Episode 8: AKA WWJD?
Another pretty awesome episode, messy letter-filled title aside, and it really shows the quality of writing when most of the episode is just Jessica living in her old childhood house alongside Kilgrave. We see all the nice, romantic (and extremely stalkerrific) gestures Kilgrave did for Jessica like basically recrafting the entire house as Jessica left it, up to finding the proper CD's with a magnifying glass. Yeah, dude just upped the bar for what's considered too stalker-y.
For his part, Kilgrave never once resorted to using his powers at Jessica, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have insurance in play. There is Hank the bodyguard, of course, useless as he would be against Jessica in a fistfight. The two poor workers, Laurent and Alva, go from being happy at the high salary to being shocked at Kilgrave basically using them as insurance, having the hold razors to their necks, being ordered to tear each other's face off if Jessica and Kilgrave don't come back from their little trip, et cetera.
And the show really makes it great, showing good Kilgrave moments and jumping to something horrific he orders the two workers to do or him just casually saying how much of a sociopath he is. We get him humiliating the "I knew something bad was going to happen" neighbour that Jessica clearly hates, which was honestly an awesome moment. We get him showing Jessica the contents of the mysterious yellow USB, which contains videos that presumably detail just how Kilgrave got his power -- his utterly abusive childhood videos of his scientist parents basically using him as a human guinea pig is heartbreaking and horrifying to watch and even Jessica manages to feel sympathy for the fucker.
Granted Jessica brings up the point that Kilgrave basically raped her, mind-control consent or no. And Kilgrave can't just hide behind the "I was not taught morals as a kid" excuse to justify everything he does, like Hope's parents' death. Though granted, Kilgrave displays that, yes, a good chunk of why he's so fucked up is because his childhood is so fucked up. He literally has no idea how love or morality works, and we see him expressing genuine frustration at waiting for someone to do what he wants. It was a power he lived with ever since he was a child, and he has never known a world where he can't just command someone to do what he wants. Plus, y'know, Kilgrave is funny! "I WANT CAKE!!!" and "once I told a man to screw himself..." and all the lines when he's not being a sociopath is absolutely made of win.
And then, y'know, just as we're about to get some sympathy for him he flippantly tells the two nice people working for him to tear each other's face off. And as Jessica points out, even if Kilgrave is somehow redeemed -- a mammoth task and not one I see happening in this show -- it doesn't automatically justify all the shit he's done in the past.
Though the show does display how Jessica might harness Kilgrave's power for good, with the two of them basically Obi-Wan Kenobi-ing through the police barricade around a hostage situation, then Kilgrave basically stopping the insane dude from shooting up his family. Kilgrave just wants the dude to shotgun himself in the head, though Jessica stops him. Could Jessica teach Kilgrave morality, make him turn over a new leaf, make him realize how he's wrong? After all, Kilgrave did express satisfaction and gratification at the grateful faces of the people he's helped, and that's at least a reason for him to try and be good and not consider everyone that's not Jessica as "fungible".
Nah, this is Jessica Jones we're talking about. In a more optimistic show, maybe Kilgrave will be redeemed. Redeemed as a guilt-ridden anti-hero or some shit. Yeah, that would sound great. But this is Jessica Jones. We're not having that kind of shit, and Jessica's absurdly simple way of getting Kilgrave knocked out, which was to drug the food of all his victims and then stab Kilgrave while he's unawares. Drugging the food of the two workers is a great move too, because with them knocked out as well they'll have no way to respond if Kilgrave shouts out "kill yourself" or something along those lines. Also the delicious, delicious irony that Jessica manipulates events to get at Kilgrave, which is what Kilgrave is doing throughout the entire season -- manipulating events to get at Jessica.
Her initial plan to record Kilgrave confessing to being involved in Hope's murders is rather ill-planned and Kilgrave catches on to it within like two minutes, though it's still not as bad as the supermax thing.
Also, getting Hope free and not have her spend her whole life behind bars is a pretty great motivation and justification for Jessica to not just punch a hole through Kilgrave's chest. Convenient plot device? Yeah, but it still works. (Also, Hope's totally going to die, isn't she? I don't watch ahead while doing these reviews, so I dunno)
Simpson doesn't share the same priorities as Jessica, though, and his plan, which is first to try and blow Kilgrave up with a bomb in the basement (which comes back brilliantly at the end) and later on shows up as the cavalry to bail Jessica out from Hank the guard... who really should not have given Jessica trouble at all. I mean, Hank's carrying a gun and Jessica's not bulletproof, but a bullrush charge from a powered superhuman would definitely knock the wind out of Hank. Or using Kilgrave as a shield. Or doing the oddly-shot jumping trick earlier. It's a bit odd that Simpson has became so obsessed with killing Kilgrave, but on the other hand we do need to show someone taking the opposite side of the argument, which is cool.
Granted Simpson's an absolute idiot for actually looking into the bag when the nosy neighbour walked up all "Kilgrave told me to give you this", though I suspect he's not dead. The shot was ambiguous enough, and I think a show like this would make his death pretty final. As far as I know he doesn't have a comic-book counterpart like Trish Walker or Jeri Hogarth, though, so he's more disposable than them... though certain characters' fates in Daredevil's two final episodes means this is honestly quite up in the open. I don't care enough about Simpson to wish for his survival or death, though that bitch of a neighbour definitely doesn't deserve a bomb to the face.
The fact that Kilgrave planned for all this to happen also probably means that he anticipated it, somehow? I wouldn't put it past him.
Also, Kilgrave's name is apparently "Kevin", which is a whole lot more generic-sounding than Zebediah Killgrave from the comics, but okay. Why not?
We get to see Jessica's flashbacks to when her family was killed, partly because Jessica and her brother were fighting over a Game Boy (it's yellow just like mine!) which distracted their driving father. It doesn't really add much to the story, but it's also quite short so whatever.
Both Hogarth and Trish have minimal roles in the episode. Hogarth continues with her divorce and Wendy is not backing the fuck down, and actually gets a couple of nice verbal jabs in during their short scene. Kilgrave knows that Hogarth is looking for dirt on Wendy, though, and considering how Hogarth's all happy to be all 'Kilgrave's power on our side' a couple episodes back, we might have a pretty unconventional team-up soon. Trish shows up to argue with Simpson for a bit which is honestly uninteresting, and far more powerfully when Jessica shows up at her doorstep, their sisterhood and friendship absolutely showing as she's the only person that Jessica turns to when she's confused as all hell.
Perhaps the only part of the episode that felt weak to me was Jessica's super-jump, which looks so comically silly that it really looks like she's just jumping to the side conveniently off-camera.
Yeah, definitely a grand episode. Jessica's pretty awesome in this episode especially when she's conflicted about what to do. Kilgrave just steals every damn scene he's in, showing the sociopathy pretty well, and both he and Jessica play absolutely well with each other. Lots of brilliant scenes, and cutting out the side characters to focus on these two is an absolutely brilliant move.
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