Jessica Jones S02E08 Review: Mom and Daughter Bonding Session

Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 8: AKA Ain't We Got Fun

I sit down to type this review and as I read up the summary, I looked up at the episode number and scratched my head. "Wow", I think. "This is episode eight?" As a Netflix series, I watched the show in two or three huge sittings, but sitting down and looking back at the fact that this is the eighth episode, I really, really have to take a step back and note just how slow-burning this season of Jessica Jones is. We're more than halfway through the season, and I honestly think that this is where things just begin to get somewhat interesting. I've complained in my reviews of the past few episodes how I really wished things could've been smooshed together into a far more concise first half of the season, and I stand by that.

After the flashback given to us in the previous episode, we find that Jessica is forced -- quite literally, by a locked room designed to hold superhumans in -- to talk with her mother after 17 years of thinking that she's dead. The episode quickly gets rid of Karl Mallus, the clear 'Big Bad Villain' of this piece, and quite smartly centers on the emotional core between the two volatile women that are Jessica and Alisa. While it is jarring that Alisa from this point onwards is a far, far more stable character who's just prone to bursts of violent temper instead of the straight-up crazy murderer that she was in the scenes she had prior to episode 7, it's definitely to the show's advantage because, well, now we know just what the second season of Jessica Jones is trying to go for -- reconnecting with your parents, who might sometimes be evil. Or misunderstood, in this case.

And while the focus of the episode is Jessica and Alisa, Karl Malus does gets his share of things. He's an interesting villain, as it's made ambiguous just how much of his love for Alisa is real and how much of it is a facade to manipulate her. While clearly not as bad as Killgrave was in the previous season, Karl did 'create' Alisa and basically lived with her for years partly via manipulation. Jessica and Karl's scenes are pretty neat, as unlike Alisa, Jessica refuses to acknowledge Karl as doing her or her family any sort of service other than manipulation. I really love how Jessica just rebutts every single thing that Karl tries to say to justify himself with what amounts to a "fuck you, don't paint yourself into a hero". Of course, Karl ends up escaping thanks to Alisa's help, leaving Jessica and Alisa to bond.

After the huge exposition as to what Alisa's been doing in the previous episode, the two of them are left to stew. Jessica has called the cops on Alisa, and this could be the last moments that they have to talk to each other. And the two bond first by the stupid wine (which was foreshadowed earlier in the season because Oscar drank the same shitty brand), and then Jessica and Alisa reminisce over old memories -- a memory in the Ferris wheel where Jessica was being a bratty teenager, and Alisa talks about the harshness of Jessica's not-so-perfect childhood. It packs a lot more of an emotional punch compared to last episode, and this is a scene where telling is actually far more impactful than showing.

Plus, if there is one thing that is common between mother and daughter, it's their glorious sarcasm. And it's just fun to watch Jessica and Alisa connect while still passive-aggressively taking potshots at each other. And while Jessica was ready to call the police on Alisa earlier in the episode when she thought of Alisa as 'the Killer', after several minutes of bonding (which is spent amazingly well -- in a show with lesser actors, this could have easily felt like an asspull) Jessica decides that while she doesn't want to suddenly be a happy family again, she's not quite ready to give mommy up.

Jessica and Alisa escape before Detective Costa's people arrive, and Jessica takes Alisa back to her apartment, clearly unclear just as what to do with her, and the 'we'll wing it' mentality really works. There was an interesting bit of 'does Alisa really mean it?' when she seems to have escaped while Jessica was explaining things to Detective Costa, but apparently she just snuck out of the fire escape and made friends with Oscar off-screen. And then, of course, random sniper bullets break their attempt at trying to have the barest hint of a normal life. Of course.

The B-plots of this episode are... neat, but not the most engaging. Hogarth continues to talk to Inez, and tries to get Shane Ryback, a metahuman with healing powers (who, as far as I can tell via google, isn't based on any pre-existing Marvel superhero or supervillain) out of jail to heal her. After a brief bit of panic in locating Jessica, Malcolm has taken over the investigation into Hogarth's associates, and there's a neat bit where he ends up causing the two of them to basically think of the other as enemies... and then Trish, naturally, loses her temper dealing with a bunch of goons that assault Malcolm, and then gives the Nuke inhaler to Malcolm -- and then Malcolm walks away, realizing just how dangerous of a drug that is.

Ultimately, though, despite the pacing problems of the first half of the season that this episode sort of brought up in me, "AKA Ain't We Got Fun" is an actually pretty neat episode of Jessica Jones and one with a very strong emotional core with amazing performances from Krysten Ritter and Janet McTeer. Great stuff.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Alisa mentions the Raft as a prison for powered people, a place where she is likely to end up in. The Raft first appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain America: Civil War, where the members of Captain America's splintered group of Avengers were momentarily imprisoned in that movie. It's interesting since other than mentions of the original Avengers movie, the Netflix shows have been really, really insistent on keeping themselves more or less its own thing.