Jessica Jones, Season 2, Episode 12: AKA Pray For My Pats
A bit of a strange episode, this one. As with most penultimate episodes, we're building up to the finale, but it's not a finale that's particularly obvious as it ends with Jessica confronting Alisa with a gun, unable to pull the trigger, and then Alisa kung-fu-chopping her in the neck and kidnapping her and drives off on an RV. And that's... somewhat interesting, I suppose? I dunno. This episode feels like it's just moving its characters around, although thankfully we do get the overdue Jessica-Trish confrontation. Trish is all angry that Jessica stopped the procedure and damns her for essentially squandering her superpower and not trying to essentially change the world into a better place. However, when Jessica gets a call from Alisa and gets absolutely furious with her mother for attacking her 'best friend' and 'sister', the look of shame on Trish's face is definitely well executed.
It's honestly such a shame that Trish has been mis-handled throughout the entire season. While she starts off with an interesting metaphor for drug addiction and withdrawal, the handling of her throughout these past few episodes aren't really driven that much by either addiction or withdrawal, but just by her acting all crazy because of, as we find out, superpower envy. It honestly feels like Trish's season-long story could've used a lot more time on the cutting room floor considering how messy it is.
Alisa, meanwhile, after breaking out of jail, goes straight to hunt down Trish and attacks her in the hospital. She fights Jessica for a bit, and then jumps out of a window with Detective Sunday (Costa's partner) in tow, killing a police officer and driving the NYPD into a frenzy. And then she apologizes to Jessica via phone and acts like her mother and everything, causing Jessica to hunt her down with the purpose of 'ending' her or getting her to go to the Raft... and, well, that's how the ending of this episode ends up happening. It's a bit inconsistent, honestly, and the whole Jekyll-and-Hyde storyline doesn't really work that well or make for a particularly compelling storyline in this episode.
Instead, I honestly found that it's the unlikely Jeri Hogarth that's the most interesting character in this episode. After breaking down in episode 10, a good chunk of the scattered scenes in the previous episode and this one has her just trying to track down her stolen items to the pawn shops, clearly a way to track down where Inez and Shane has disappeared off to. And considering what we know about Hogarth, there is never a question that she's going to get sweet, sweet revenge on the two scammers... it's the matter of how that's the question. And after a fun bit of interaction with a pawn shop broker and the glorious return of Turk Barrett (who has a Porsche now!), Hogarth buys a gun. However, she's too smart to just rush in and headshot the two of them, and does something very Hogarth-esque. Manipulate Inez into believing that Shane has multiple girlfriends and that Inez is just on of the many other 'broken bird' girlfriends Shane has outside the prison, with Hogarth having some 'evidence' (the show quickly makes it clear that any evidence is bullshit). After putting Inez in a very vulnerable spot, Hogarth gives Inez the gun, and then then sits outside as the two of the fight. Inez kills Shane, and Hogarth calls the police on Inez, leading to a very dark yet awesome ironic payback from Hogarth to these two shits.
Dorothy is another character who's surprisingly interesting this episode. She starts off at the beginning of this episode apologizing to Jessica in the face of her daughter's possible death, noting that the two of them are fucked-up people but are still technically family, but she's clearly still trying to 'protect the Patsy brand'. It's very interesting how quickly she whiplashes back to telling Jessica to fuck off when she realizes that there is a murdering super-powered villain trying to kill Trish -- and that villain is Jessica's biological mother -- and while Dorothy's certainly very bitch-y this episode, it's honestly not hard to blame just why she's so angry. I don't think she would've otherwise blabbed about Trish's stay at the hospital if Jessica or the police tells her that "oh, some criminal syndicate might be looking for her" or some easy lie like that.
Despite my complaints about Alisa and Trish's writing, though, the episode's still honestly a pretty strong one in terms of the "what". Whatever is going on in this episode is pretty interesting nevertheless, and the individual performances from the actresses involved are powerful enough that it's a compelling episode when I watched it. It's just a shame that when I sat back and tried to review this episode the motivations of Trish and Alisa, the two biggest characters in this season aside from Jessica herself, are somewhat muddied... something that really could've been fixed in the earlier parts of this season where we honestly waste a fair bit of screentime.
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