Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 6: AKA Facetime
Yeah, this episode... not very good. Was there a reason that this episode's storylines couldn't have been compressed alongside the bare-bones episode 5, or have some scenes be removed in Jessica's clue-hunting story? Beyond obvious episode quotas, obviously. I don't really feel like this episode added much, and it didn't even have the fun moments of Jessica trying to be nice like the previous episode. And actually contradicts the previous one considering the amount of morally ambiguous things Jessica does here (throwing the golf security dudes around; threatening the son of one of her 'clues').
Jessica and Trish essentially follow some clues into a sexist golf range, Trish continues to struggle with the withdrawal effects of the superhero steroid inhaler, Malcolm visits his alma mater, Malcolm and Trish have sex (I didn't even catch that Malcolm was into Trish), Jessica and Oscar have sex on paint (seems unsanitary), Oscar paints Jessica, Hogarth interrogates Inez about IGH. There's really not much here to last an entire episode, especially since a lot of the sccenes are just barely-different repeats of scenes we've seen before.
Basically the entire episode is just a long stopgap until we get to the final revelation when Jessica finally tracks Karl Mallus and the Killer into their shared abode, after realizing that Karl is the Big Bad (he drugs the Killer!) and then Jessica realizes that... the Killer is her own mother! Of course, it's a bit of a stretch to believe that Jessica wouldn't recognize her own mother. I get that next episode reveals why she visually looks different from how Jessica remembers her mother, but they literally sat down and talked for an entire scene, and it feels rather odd that Jessica didn't recognize her or at least find something familiar in that scene.
The other big payoff is the existence of a powered person from IGH that has healing powers that could heal Hogarth's ALS? Eh.
Jessica Jones has always ran at a slower pace compared to her other Netflix cousins, but in the first season it really worked because there's a distinct noir feel and a lot of neat horror themes surrounding Killgrave, as well as a lot of themes explored about abuse and manipulation that really made each slow-burning episode feel as a whole. This second season of Jessica Jones tries to use IGH as its central pillar, but it can't really disguise how a good chunk of these episodes are just 75% filler. Viewed as a whole season, it's not quite as bad, but reviewing these episodes individually, it really becomes apparent just how much filler there is in this second outing.
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