Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 11: AKA Three Lives and Counting
Another fun episode for Jessica Jones, if only for the unexpected and very welcome return of David Tennant's Killgrave, albeit as a snarky literal "devil on your shoulder" in Jessica's psyche. Jessica knows Killgrave is dead, but in this vulnerable state, whatever self-doubts and self-loathing that's been cluttering up within Jessica manifests in the image of Killgrave, who continues to nag on Jessica, egging her to sink into her anger and become a villain like him. Between the accidental killing of Warden Dale (who Jessica covers up as a suicide), and how Alisa, who understands what is happening, tells Jessica how she's so proud of her daughter, the doubts and confusion are just piling up. Also interesting is the decision to make Dale such a reprehensible bastard that even his co-workers badmouth him after his death, which isn't just a way to make Jessica's death more excusable, but a way to get Jessica to wonder if maybe some killings are justified after all.
And it is so, so entertaining to see Jessica and Killgrave "trade banter". Of course, it does leave me somewhat nostalgic for the first season of Jessica Jones where the entire season was far more coherent and well-written (and has a far, far more interesting villain than Alisa and Karl combined), but eh. This is what we got, and at least the latter half of this season isn't that bad.
And the Jessica/Killgrave stuff are clearly the highlight of this episode. It could've been so easy for hallucinations to be a cheap way to fill up the episode or to justify a gratuitous cameo (I can think of many other TV shows that did this) but the fact that Killgrave only really shows up after 10 episodes and thus giving Jessica's mental breakdown a fair amount of buildup, and the fact that Killgrave manages to be entertaining while still doing his job of being the manifestation of everything Jessica fears is true about herself ("I'm a killer like mommy" "I'm a villain" "I can't control myself") bubbling up. Also Killgrave sometimes breaks into Patsy's silly song. It also makes the solo run Jessica has through this episode a lot less of Krysten Ritter skulking alone.
Speaking of which... yeah, most of Jessica's allies are sort of in their own alliance. Trish is cray-cray herself, and has kidnapped Karl Mallus to repeat the power-giving experiment with her. Malcolm is still in the trunk and wow, poor man. Jessica ends up tracking Malcolm, Trish and Karl via Malcolm's dating app, Malcolm frees himself and confronts Trish, who clearly is just cray-cray at this point. We get a bit of a huge fight between Malcolm and Jessica, ending with the two of them walking away from each other (although considering the shitstorm both characters have been in, it's hard to blame either of them, honestly).
The climax of this episode is Karl performing the dangerous procedure on Trish, while Jessica barges in and interrupts it, and flies into such a rage that she very nearly kills Karl with an oxygen canister... but stops herself before dealing the final blow. That part of the climax? Very good. But I really don't think we spent enough (read: any) time with Karl Malus as a character that I actually understand just why did he go from "I am soooo in love with Alisa and I will do anything for her" (and we even get a pointless flashback to their first kiss at a beach or whatever in this episode) to suddenly be consumed with regret and deciding to blow himself and his research up. I really wished that the show writers have explored this a bit more, because I never really got the feeling that Karl was remotely conflicted with his experimentation.
But hey, Karl's dead, Malcolm is seemingly out of the picture, Trish is knocked out (and possibly have cat-related superpowers down the line), and Alisa Jones, after spending this episode stable with a nice new warden, goes into a gigantic rage and breaks out of jail. But most importantly? After having enough restraint to not kill Karl, Jessica finally realizes that, yes, she is strong enough morally to realize that she is not a killer, and that is the point when the Killgrave hallucination disappears.
Overall, it's a great character introspection with an interesting little gimmick of the Killgrave hallucination. Unfortunately, while there are a bunch of other stuff that happen in this episode and moves the plot along, neither Trish nor Karl's actions really make sense and are handwaved away with "Trish is having a withdrawal" and the fact that for all of Callum Keith Rennie's charismatic performance, Karl's more plot device than character.
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