Marvel's Jessica Jones S03E04-06 Review: Work It Out

Jessica Jones, Season 3, Episode 4: AKA Customer Service is Standing By; Episode 5: AKA I Wish; Episode 6: AKA Sorry Face

Episode 4: AKA Customer Service is Standing By
After three episodes of mostly set-up, "AKA Customer Service is Standing By", our fourth episode this season, finally throws things into the main plot of the season. It's a lot more grounded than the far more fantastical secret super-soldier-conspiracy storyline of Jessica Jones's second season, and while, again, it doesn't quite draw me in as the first season, it's still a pretty solid one... at least its first half is. Again, I watched the entire third season in a couple of sittings so some parts of my review might bleed into the episode before or after it, but what can you do.

Episode 3's ending and the first part of episode 4 does seem to cast Erik as seemingly another villain, someone similar to Killgrave as a handsome, winsome man who sweet-talks his way into Jessica's life, but turns out that while there's something more to Erik Gelden than meets the eye, it's not that he's arranged for Jessica to be stabbed. Erik is apparently a metahuman with the ability to psychically sense good or evil in a person, which is an interesting ability... and he's been using it to blackmail people who are morally evil. It's a bit odd and a bit of a narrative convenience to literally have someone whose powers is an 'evil radar', but the show kind of makes it work?

And so, this episode basically goes through Jessica and Erik's attempts to accost Erik's many former blackmail targets to figure out which one attempted to stab Erik and accidentally stabbed Jessica instead. Again, I keep saying in these reviews that the third season of Jessica Jones shows a lot more scenes dedicated to Jessica being a private investigator and doing general P.I. stuff, and while none of it make for particularly interesting review material, they are all very entertaining. It also interestingly raises the question of morality itself. Sure, that pedophile photographer that Jessica beats up (is he connected to that one pedophile photographer from Punisher's second season) is totally evil, but what about the lady who's been embezzling her co-workers' retirement funds to pay for hospital bills? Or Erik himself, using his powers to 'punish' bad people into giving him money, but then proceeds to waste them on gambling and put him in the sights of a particularly angry mafia lady? Or, well, the grayness of everything involving Hogarth's law firm? It's a theme that runs along the season and while it's a bit odd that they didn't use this for the plot of Daredevil or The Punisher (or at least have cameos from either one of those protagonists) it's still an interesting avenue to pursue.

I really didn't think too much of Erik when I first watched this episode, but I do appreciate him a lot now. The performance of actor Benjamin Walker is pretty great, and how easily he swaps around from his 'mask' of a confident, self-sure huckster and when he drops his mask and shows just how tortured his powers can make him be, it's all very well-done. Eventually, though, they come across the third mark, Gregory Sallinger, who initially just seems like just a regular, unassuming dude... until he starts showing a bit more of his hand, figuring out Jessica in the span of an afternoon, and preparing a bunch of contingencies -- cameras that will prove that a powered person has entered his house and assaulted him, and a 911 call where he very expertly acts and pretends to be trembling and assaulted in fear. And, as the audience learn later on, Sallinger is actually a serial killer -- who's using blackmail and a lack of proof to stop Jessica from bothering him.

Perhaps one of my bigger complaints this season is going to fall to Hogarth's storyline. And Carrie-Anne Moss is a fantastic actor, and it's credit to her that the storyline works at all, but I just really find it puzzling that this ends up becoming a side-plot in a serial killer and superhero investigation TV show. The backbone of the story itself isn't terrible, and I've seen the rest of the season so I know how it ties in with the rest of the cast, but the scenes in this episode of Hogarth attempting to reconnect with her ex feel just kind of disconnected from everything that's going on. Hogarth delving immediately to blackmail and sending Malcolm to do her dirty work is pretty on-point, but, again, it feels like a B-plot that's taking up too much of the show's screentime. It's a pretty classic Jeri Hogarth move, and it's a pretty scummy, selfish move, but ultimately... I just find myself not really caring? At least not in this episode. So it's pretty important setup, but I just kinda wished that it was perhaps a bit more tied into everything else that's going on.

Trish Walker's storyline is a good example of a B-plot running along that still ties into the rest of the episode. Skulking around the background and stuff, her hero games end up with her hunting down Sal Blaskowski by sneaking into Malcolm's files, but the eventual fight, while it does rescue Erik from death-by-pool-drowning, ends up with Blaskowski stabbed through the gut by her own weapon, and the panicked vigilante can only escape. This is still early in the show and Blaskowski didn't die thanks to Trish's actions, but it does bring into contrast just how fatal a careless vigilante can be. Ultimately, a pretty fun, if procedural, episode. A lot of it is just build-up, and the slow build-up of Sallinger does highlight just how effective of a villain he can be, due to just how unassuming he is compared to the rest of the world he's in.
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Episode 5: AKA I Wish

One thing that I kinda wish was done a bit better is perhaps showing just why Jessica isn't quite as gung-ho on taking down Sallinger with her usual methods. The justification is there, of course. Sallinger (and the show) rubs it in our face at every given opportunity. He's got a law degree, he knows the ins and outs, he knows how to make a case basically inadmissible if they go about the investigation wrong. Which is why for a majority of the season, Jessica and Trish have to skirt around the edges in their little team-up, but the fact that Trish is oh-so-ready to jump in and bash the villains' heads in is just a mite of a complication. Granted, there's perhaps a bit of an inconsistency here, particularly since Jessica isn't above using her super-strength to threaten people. Just a couple episodes ago, Brandt or whoever his name was ended up being threatened with a car, didn't he? Of course, apparently Jessica still isn't averse to breaking into Sallinger's house and taking photos and stuff. '

Also, even though he's ready to quit all of this (being around bad people gives Erik a splitting headache), Erik gets drawn back into the whole Sallinger investigation because his estranged, angry sister Brianna, a sex worker, is somehow involved, with the implication that Sallinger is threatening Brianna to get at Erik. There's parts of the episode where I feel that Erik is framed like he's behaving in a pretty suspicious manner (like the fact that he has an interaction with Sallinger and didn't think to tell Jessica) but Jessica is extremely blase about the whole thing and decides to trust Sallinger almost unconditionally after his explanation. It's a bit too roundabout, I feel.

Far more interesting, however, is Jessica and Trish's little fractured relationship. They retread a lot of the same ground in their arguments as they stalk Sallinger, but in this mission, the two sisters do have a common goal -- stop the psychopath. And the arguments are repeated. Jessica doesn't trust or doesn't want Trish to do the front-line work (Jessica's constant justification is that Trish is the huge 'unknown' and a secret weapon, and Sallinger can't know that), while Trish is angry that she isn't even given the chance to prove her worth... and around the mid-point of the episode, the argument runs back to the crux of the rift between the sisters -- that Trish killed Jessica's mom. And while Trish is sorry about that, she's still glad that she did so because Jessica's mom was an evil person.

This all, of course, leads to the big climactic moment of the episode. Following Sallinger to a fuel tank or something in a train track (really should have had their phones out and film Sallinger, huh) Jessica finds a bunch of body parts in the tank, but ends up getting trapped there by Sallinger and she can't get out despite her super-strength -- the suffocation will do her in. And Trish ends up choosing to save Jessica's life instead of taking down Sallinger. And after this huge, dramatic moment, we get a great scene between Jessica and Trish, with Trish telling Jessica "I wish I didn't kill your mom" and Jessica telling Trish that "I wish she wasn't a mass murderer". It's a pretty good moment, and despite the clunkiness of the Sallinger investigation in this episode, I did really like the focus of the sister duo.

Which leaves the B-plots of the episode. And I always assumed that I missed a scene, but episode recaps on wikis and other sites assured me that, no, I didn't -- we never actually see Hogarth implement his plan to distract Peter Lyonne happen, it just sort of happens off-screen, which I thought was weird considering the previous episode seemed to be highlighting Hogarth getting a lot of self-doubt on whether she wants to use the information. But things move abruptly quickly in this episode when Kith ends up picking Hogarth over Peter in her grief, seemingly as Hogarth plans... only for Peter to release a suicide video, and, uh... talking shit about Hogarth and also pointing out that she protects dangerous vigilantes? It's a bit bizarre and a bit hard to swallow. The suicide part to spite Hogarth, okay, I get. But the random bit of him yelling at how vigilantes are unjustly protected to complicate Jessica's life in the later episodes? While watching, I had thought that this was going to lead into something regarding Sallinger's master plan or whatever, but nope, turns out that Peter's just loco.

Ultimately, I do like the concept of Sallinger as this just regular schmoe-joe serial killer who's somehow able to use his brains and his knowledge of the law to weasel and squirm his way out of justice despite facing two super-powered heroes. But I really do feel like we probably could've used another episode in-between 4 and 5 to really highlight just how dangerous Sallinger is, because throughout the episode I do feel like part of why Sallinger's so effective is because of plot reasons.
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Episode 6: AKA Sorry Face

At the end of the previous episode, while the investigation is going on, Sallinger ends up kidnapping Erik. And we get to see Sallinger's whole "Foolkiller" deal. He ties people up and basically tortures them while taking photos of them, wanting to 'capture' their purest, truest form or whatever. And next up on the menu is Erik.

Jessica, meanwhile, goes off to track Sallinger and it's a race against the clock, while the rest of the police is caught up in red tape. Costa helps out, of course, although their investigation ends up being caught up in red tape because Sallinger knows to cover his tracks (again, really should've been a lot more photo-happy about the things she found in Sallinger's apartment). Jessica does end up tracking down one of the surviving victims who apparently thought Sallinger's weird tie-up thing was a BDSM kink, and manages to track Erik and Sallinger's location from there, eventually teaming up with Trish to take down Sallinger and rescue Erik. And that seems to be job well done, right? The serial killer is captured, the dude-in-distress is rescued, and no one among our main cast had to die for it to happen. Hell, even Jessica and Trish's relationship is repaired a bit.

Except... well, the episode's final scenes tell us that apparently Sallinger can't be charged with anything. Erik can't testify because that would involve him spending the night in police custody and that'd ruin him thanks to his superpowers; and the tank of body parts are so expertly done that there's no evidence linking it to Sallinger. I'm not sure why they forgot about the cook earlier in the episode, but let's just assume they covered their bases. It's, I think, the huge win that made Sallinger a rather credible threat in my book. Jessica, Costa, Trish, Erik and everyone else knows that Sallinger is the killer, but there's no evidence to put him away. Which, of course, fits with the whole theme of the episode... that, well, the justice system kind of sucks balls, and can be played by someone smart enough, and probably shouldn't be respected if it somehow ends with people like Sallinger back on the street. But Jessica respects it, and their whole deal is that they have to build a case against Sallinger that will stick, while the dude runs around free, a wolf pretending to be a sheep. Jessica's expression at the end of the episode as she basically goes from tired-happy at the victory and tired-scared is well-done.

(Clearly, in a different show, the Punisher would be waiting to deliver some proper justice to Sallinger the moment he walks out of the police precinct.)

It's also pretty interesting that we finally get some proper buildup for Sallinger in the episode. In the previous two episode, he's just a creepy man that's played by a pretty outstanding actor that ramps the creep factor up, but in this episode, in his interrogation with Erik, we get to see just how fucked-up he is in the head in how he treats Erik and is so obsessed with 'apology' and 'cheater'. Sallinger does give us a sob story about how he's always the un-favourite compared to his brother, and his father was a piece of shit who made him feel worthless, but, again, that really doesn't excuse any of the evil shit that he did. More importantly, though, he feels like people with Jessica and Erik are cheating because they were born with extra advantages, and he thinks that this unfairness turns them into people who wronged him, since they didn't 'earn' them the way he did.

In addition to the Sallinger hunt, we do get a particularly great episode for Trish, and honestly, this season is very good for Trish as a whole. Dorothy confronting Trish for bouncing away from her job multiple times is fun, but the best part of the episode has to be Jessica grabbing Trish and tossing her out of the window, trusting her Hellcat powers to save her, leading to the most hilarious coming-out-as-a-superpowered-person scene to Dorothy. And Trish's dynamic is interesting to Dorothy, because as much as she talks shit about Jessica's own mother for being a psychopath, she's still trying, in some way, to not do any wrong to her own asshole of a mother. Granted, Dorothy is many steps removed from being as horrible of a killer as Alisa, but still, I do realize that the hypocrisy is there on Trish's part, and I do like the show for not shoving it down our throats. We do get a very good scene between them, with Trish noting that he loves her mom no matter what, but she's also resentful for all the emotional abuse. (I also really liked the fun handwave -- Dorothy doesn't hate superpowered people, she just dislikes Jessica because she's a bitch)

Meanwhile... the rest of the cast... doesn't really work out all that well. Hogarth continues to grapple with the fallout of Peter Lyonne's suicide and the fact that all of her clients are leaving her (including Rand Enterprises, who, in a neat continuity nod, gets taken over by Hogarth's ex-partners Benowitz and Chao), and it... it sure is a thing that happened. Hogarth is also rejected by Kith's son because, whatever the case and whatever funds-skimming Peter did, the kid's life basically got absolutely fucked-up by Hogarth's meddling.

Meanwhile, Malcolm, in hiding at Hogarth's orders, ends up having to try and make up excuses to his girlfriend Zaya, in a plotline that barely registers for me (and has been vaguely playing in the background for the past couple of episodes). Also, Malcolm is told to look out for Brianna, and his method of doing so is to let Brianna go with her pimp, and when Erik gets kidnapped, he beats up the pimp and tells Brianna that her brother has been kidnapped or something. Malcolm is kind of a weird mess throughout the season, really.

Ultimately, this set of episodes have had its share of weak points -- most evidently in everything involving Hogarth's B-plot and Malcolm's B-plot. I also really would've liked a bit more emphasis on Sallinger's methods... but ultimately, I still really did enjoy these set of episodes -- a good marker for how much I actually do enjoy this season despite its weaker parts is how swiftly I devoured the season. I basically watched all six first episodes in a single sitting, and the next six in a couple of sittings, and that really didn't happen for the last couple of Netflix/Marvel shows. This season isn't a perfect season of superheroing by any means, but it sure is fun to watch!

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Jessica quickly believes Erik's claims by noting that the last person who claimed he had superpowers and was dismissed by Jessica immediately wound up dead -- that's Whizzer from the second season's first episode. 
• Rand Industries, a.k.a. Iron Fist's company, is mentioned throughout episode 6. The fact that Danny Rand is on a 'sabbatical', which happened at the end of Iron Fist's second season, is also brought up. 
• Erik Gelden in the comics is a minor villain with mental capabilities known as 'Mind-Wave', although this version of Erik Gelden doesn't really share much with his comic-book counterpart other than the name and powers. 
• Gregory Sallinger in the comics is the second person who called himself the Foolkiller, a person who is so convinced that he has to rid the worlds of fools and people who are deprived of a certain quality in their souls -- for Sallinger, it's anyone without 'poetry' in their souls, while other incarnations of Foolkiller picked their 'fools' with different qualities. In the comics, Foolkiller used a 'purification gun' to disintegrate people before being stopped by Spider-Man.