Marvel's Jessica Jones S03E12-13 Review: Vigilante Justice

Marvel's Jessica Jones, Season 3, Episode 12: A Lotta Worms; Episode 13: Everything

Episode 12: AKA A Lotta Worms

So yeah, last episode's exploration that 'killing villains isn't the right thing to do, even though they did horrible things' was a very well-done one, but it really doesn't end up solving the fact that Sallinger knows how to blackmail and game the system, and that he brutally tortured and killed Trish Walker's mom. And it's not that I don't get the arguments that Jessica makes for vigilantes not taking life and death to their own hands. But I have to admit that Gregory Sallinger has been such a literal piece of shit and such a gigantic smug psychopath that I cheered a bit when Trish actually does end up catching up to him, scared shitless, in that elevator, and beating him to death literally to a pulp. Honestly, the tragedy here is less about Sallinger dying because seriously, fuck that guy, but more of Trish Walker herself descending into villainy.

I do feel that while I did enjoy this season and I did enjoy Sallinger (more than most, anyway), he is still a problematic villain in that the show doesn't really quite sell him as the terrifying chessmaster that Jessica treats him as. There were many points where it felt like the only reason he's succeeding is the writers ended up writing Jessica as a dum-dum in the episode, or general plot armour. He did end up sticking around for perhaps a bit too long without too much to show for it, and I honestly wished that maybe the show could've perhaps fit a bit more of the "I kill fools" parts of the Foolkiller moniker, which I felt would've at least given us a more consistent motivation to Sallinger's rants. When he was alternating between emotionally detached and ranting about 'fairness' and 'showing your truth' monologues before, when Sallinger ends up being forcibly protected by Jessica in this episode, he ends up with a dry wit in the vein of someone like Lost's Ben Linus or Kilgrave from earlier this season, and while it's entertaining to see the actor ham it up, it's another mark of Sallinger's not-quite-consistent writing.

With Jessica exonerated from being suspected as Nussbaumer's killer and good ol' morality-radar Erik on Jessica's side, they end up wanting to protect Sallinger from Trish less because they wanted to protect the serial killer, and more because it's a battle for Trish's soul and Erik talks about how Trish's soul is becoming dark and stuff. And... I dunno, I felt like that's perhaps a bit too much? The fact that Trish's descent to antiheroism and potential villainy is actually told next to a person whose superpower is literally "I can tell if you are good or evil" and properly quantify the 'good' and 'evil' within you feels like backwards to the message that the show is trying to hammer home that Trish's black-and-white worldview is naive.

After fighting off Trish's attempt at killing Sallinger by tossing her to another building, Jessica basically tries to take Sallinger down legally, but ultimately it's just dragging Sallinger around town while Sallinger continues to be smug and confident that Jessica will totally protect him. Hogarth ends up being scared shitless of cray-cray Hellcat and isn't able to provide help. Later on, while pretending to beat up Sallinger in his apartment (and also multi-tasking and destroying the hidden camera) Jessica causes enough of a distraction for Malcolm and Erik to sedate Trish and, uh, tie her with chains in her apartment.

Malcolm and Trish are left in the apartment and they start talking about 'balancing the scales', something that both characters have struggled with all season long. The problem, though, is the fact that the argument ends up with Malcolm talking about what a scumbag boyfriend he is to Zaya because he lied to her and destroyed her self-esteem and also cheated on his girlfriend, and asked Trish whether he deserved to die for that, because he might've "destroyed lives"... and then Trish's response is a long and genuinely sad story about domestic abuse and whatever happened to Mr. Walker -- Mr. Walker beat up Dorothy a lot but Dorothy was too proud to go to the police, and at one point Trish used the blood from her bleeding mother, rubbed it on her own face and ran to the neighbour and made them call the police and caused Mr. Walker to be arrested. Trish's argument for "what I did was wrong, but also right" is interesting and layered, but then Malcolm goes into an argument about the ends justifying the means and how Trish will become 'the evil'... and I dunno. If Malcolm actually did some more terrible shit or used the Hogarth/Kith event as an example, maybe the argument would feel a bit more poignant, but this little argument end up falling flat and ends up just highlighting how shitty Trish's childhood is.

Also, when Jessica reached home, turns out that her whiskey is drugged by Sallinger, because of course Sallinger is a lunatic who ties Jessica up and goes into his "tell me your truth" routine, and Sallinger ends up giving a summary of the show's premise -- how Jessica's antagonistic and anti-people deal is a fake act, and deep down she wants to find purpose in being a proper superhero. But then Jessica ends up ranting about Dorothy, telling Sallinger that Dorothy lived in the truth, that she was sometimes cruel, but she owned it all and Sallinger killed her anyways with some fucked-up logic to justify that he's not a simple murderer who likes to murder. Sallinger ends up going into a rant about how he's actually delivering 'punishment' and showing the truth... but turns out that it's all an act to catch Sallinger's confession on camera, Jessica was faking being drugged, and Erik was even in the other room waiting as backup. And while I do feel like this sequence does feel abrupt, it does feel like the obvious conclusion. Jessica outsmarts Sallinger on his own game, confronts him with the fact that his psychopathic justifications are all hypocrisy, and with Costa's help and some extra bits of evidence, manages to send Sallinger into jail. And, hell, Trish even admits that she might be wrong, and reconciles with Jessica.

...except, of course, just like that random doorman, Trish's co-star Grace ends up making small talk about how people like Sallinger are scum and would be better off dead and he could probably game the legal system, which sends Trish Walker into full angry Hellcat mode again. And, to be fair, Sallinger did manage to call Jessica to taunt about how he had extra plans to 'test' Jessica eventually or some shit. But of course, Sallinger ends up being scared shitless as he's brought up the elevator and gets absolutely murdered by Hellcat. And he honestly had it coming... but, again, the cost was Trish's "soul", for lack of a better term, and it ends up setting up the next episode. Good riddance to Sallinger, though, he's an asshole.

Interestingly, the previous two seasons of Jessica Jones focused on whether or not Jessica would kill the main villain, with her deciding to kill Kilgrave, her deciding to spare Karl Malus (and freeing herself of the guilt), and also not killing Alissa. Here, the decision that Trish makes is essentially an interesting twist in that Trish is far, far more brutal than Jessica did, plus the whole fact that they actually had other options and Trish refuses to admit it. 

I feel like the problem with this episode is that it's kind of inconsistent, and Trish vacillating between the extremes feel kind of... not the most well-written and well-paced thing. Rachael Taylor is amazing in her scenes for sure, but I felt like the pacing in this episode was off, and that perhaps there was one too many scenes of her seemingly accepting that Sallinger going to jail was for the best. I've also already discussed the weaknesses of the writing around Sallinger so I won't repeat myself, but while, again, it's not a terrible season or episode, it definitely could've been a lot stronger.
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Episode 13: AKA Everything

And so we have this final episode of Marvel's Jessica Jones, and, indeed, the final episode ever for the quintet of Marvel Netflix shows. And... and it's actually a far, far better outing than it would if the season just ended with Gregory Sallinger being arrested, so definite kudos for the show-writers for setting up this more epic and emotionally charged showdown between Jessica Jones and her sister-gone-crazy. With everyone from Jessica to Hogarth to Detective Costa agreeing that Hellcat needs to be stopped, that's basically the crux of the episode. We also start off this episode with a delightful cameo from Luke Cage, and bringing up his own evil brother Willis, Luke notes that sometimes the right thing to do is also the hardest thing to do. His position as a new crime boss notwithstanding, Luke basically makes a deal with Jessica that they will trust each other to take the other one down if they should 'go too far'. And I do like it. Luke Cage's second season does end with the rather sour note that's certainly meant to be a cliffhanger before the whole cancellation, but this meeting ends up far more positively, showing that, hey, presumably, in the background of this world, Jessica would eventually drag Luke back if he ever actually became full-on villainous instead of just hanging around to keep the crime in check. That's a neat little coda to Luke Cage, meaning that for the most part, we do have all of the Netflix superheroes in a relatively good spot.

We get a neat little confrontation in Trish's apartment, where Trish talks about how it was worth it, how she's protecting the people Sallinger might kill in the future (fair), but she refuse to turn herself in because she needs to maintain her cover and protect people and she can't do it from behind bars. Erik, a.k.a. our convenient morality sensor, even shows up to grab Trish and he bleeds out from his eyes, confirming to the audience and Jessica that Trish has gone off the deep end. And it's something similar to her denial earlier in the season about the murder of Jessica's mom last season. There's an interesting bit here where Erik's power of morality has been one of the benchmarks that Trish ends up using to make sure that Nussbaumer and Montero deserved to die, and if said powers turn against him? Trish pretends to submit and escape, intent on continuing to be the Hellcat, protector of justice.

And this is where the huge Hogarth storyline comes in, and I honestly really do felt like this was a bit of a distraction... but it is a pretty interesting distraction. Hogarth reveals that she's dying to Kith, and right just as they are reconciling, Trish demands to know details about Dmitri Patseras, Hogarth's assignment to her. Partly to impress Kith and partly because she's scared shitless of Trish, Hogarth sics Trish on Patseras and Trish naturally beats him absolutely bloody... right in front of his little girl who Patseras desperately tries to protect. Not everyone can be easy targets of 'yeah they most probably deserve to die' like Sallinger.

We later get a bit of a stand-off as the episode moves pretty quickly, with Hogarth setting herself as bait by threatening to reveal Hellcat's identity. However, Kith shows up at the moment that they're trying to spring the trap, and we get this fun little bit of hostage situation and 'what can you give me' bit as Jessica and Trish yell to win the opportunistic Hogarth to their side, and to protect Kith from being held hostage, Hogarth shoots Jessica in the leg and arranges for Trish to be shipped out of the USA. Also, after this bit, Jessica finally makes what Trish calls the 'ultimate sacrifice' and publicly outs Hellcat as Trish Walker, forcing Hogarth to ship Trish out via a coffin smuggling route. Okay, sure. All of this moves very, very quickly.

And then we get the brutal showdown because Hogarth ends up calling Jessica, and we get the sister fight in the smugglers' hangar. Jessica gives this speech that she had tried to excuse this because of what Sallinger did to them, or a side-effect of the Hellcat powers... but Trish always had that self-righteous resolve (unlike someone like Frank Castle, Trish really thinks that what she's doing is the best thing) all along, something that has been evident throughout this season's early part when they're dealing with the fallout of Alissa's death. And her denial remained even as she charges Jessica, aiming for her chest with her knife and yelling about how she's willing to do 'what it takes' for her vaunted justice. Jessica ends up allowing her arm to be stabbed and clonks Trish in the head... and we get a pretty great scene as Costa reads out Trish's long, long list of crimes that she ends up dumbfounded and realize that "I'm the bad guy". Great scene. Trish ends up willingly be shipped off to the metahuman prison of the Raft, and we get a great scene of the two sisters just looking at each other as Trish is being shipped away, sharing an understanding nod as they are separated.

Of course, before the actual final ending of the episode and the series, we do get a bunch of wrap-up scenes. At some point in this episode Malcolm and Zaya broke up (oh well) and Brianna is also there sort of and I don't really care, but ultimately Jessica leaves Alias Investigations for Malcolm. Erik shows up with the revelation that New York hails Jessica as a 'bona fide hero', but Jessica rejects any further involvement with Erik. Erik, meanwhile, gets sent off to The Bar where he and Costa sort of become a bit of a fun crime-fighting duo. And as the final Hogarth scene seems to lead to Kith actually accepting Hogarth because of some of the heroics she did in this episode, turns out that Kith's not a moron, and Kith leaves Hogarth with the pretty unkind words that she's a manipulative bitch that caused almost everything that fucked her over, leaving Hogarth a bitter, lonely woman, and that's a fitting end for Hogarth, I feel.

And the final scene is Jessica, cutting ties with almost everyone in town, having handed over her P.I. job to Malcolm and having no real family left, buggers off to Mexico... before we get the glorious vocal cameo of Killgrave as the scene becomes cast in purple light, and Killgrave mocks Jessica about how she's right to give in, to give up, how it's someone else's job now... and that it enough to cause Jessica Jones to turn around, not run away from the superhero life and finally embrace it. And this sort of 'and the adventure continues, they are superheroes' doesn't serve as just the perfect send-off for Jessica Jones, but to Daredevil, Luke Cage, the Punisher and Iron Fist and their cast as well -- the Netflix Marvel saga might be over, but they have had a good run and this is a pretty well-done, if bittersweet, ending to the whole shebang. Ultimately, this was not a perfect season -- very few really ended up honestly living up to the near-perfect first seasons of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Punisher -- but it's still a pretty solid season, and wrapping up such a long part of Marvel's live-action history since 2015, it's a honestly pretty solid run.

Marvel's Jessica Jones S03E10-11 Review: One Bad Day

Marvel's Jessica Jones, Season 3, Episode 10: Hero Pants; Episode 11: Hellcat

Episode 10: AKA Hero Pants

So it's interesting that the past 9 episodes of Jessica Jones can technically be broken up into little arcs, without any of them really standing alone. There's the 'Hellcat Rises' arc that just basically establishes the new Jessica/Trish dynamic. There's the initial Sallinger arc (where he gets captured at the end after holding Erik hostage) and the second Sallinger arc (where he outsmarts Jessica and Trish). And so it seems like after the relative downer ending of the ninth episode, this is basically starting the final arc where everything sort of comes to a head. And while I do see a lot of complaints about Gregory Salinger as a villain... at least they're trying to give him screentime, y'know? The actor is actually allowed to deliver an interesting psychopath that does exude a sense of menace, and comparing him to someone like the Pilgrim from the final season of The Punisher, or Jessica's mom in the previous season of Jessica Jones, Sallinger is at least an interesting love-to-hate antagonist. (And Sallinger, interestingly, is more or less absent in these two episodes, which is a nice breather) Sure, he's no Kingpin or Killgrave, but he's at least pretty interesting. Episode 9's big cliffhanger is that after Jessica wraps up the whole mess around Sallinger's blackmail, she ends up being accosted by a bunch of police officers investigating the death of Officer Nussbaumer, the asshole cop that Jessica and Erik blackmailed into letting them enter the police precinct. And, unfortunately, Jessica was the last person that Nussbaumer met before he switched of his police body-cam thing.

And "AKA Hero Pants" itself serves as a belated send-off to Dorothy Walker, and it's a very, very interesting episode. Dorothy's death was sudden and brutal, and I would still argue that it's done essentially just as shock value, but I do like that we basically spend the entire episode sort of seeing Jessica and Trish mourn Dorothy in their own way. Sure, Jessica's investigation over who actually killed Nussbaumer does take place in the background, and both Malcolm and Hogarth's respective storylines get more room to breathe beyond being irritating footnotes in previous episodes, but I feel like at least until the final parts of the episode, a good chunk of the episode ends up being an interesting character study about grief and mourning.

See, here's the thing. Dorothy Walker, as a person, has certainly improved in this season. She's clearly worried for her daughter Trish despite her control freak attitude. She's willing to 'scrub down' and tolerate the hero stuff, and even helped out with the whole publicity thing to help Trish and Jessica flush out Sallinger's victim. Hell, even in her own passive-aggressive "your costume sucks" marketing mentality, Dorothy is helping out in Trish's new career. And she most certainly didn't deserve to die scared, alone and butchered in her own house. But at the same time, it doesn't excuse all the terrible shit that Dorothy did in her life. "AKA Hellcat", the next episode, fleshes this out a lot better by actually showing us the scenes of Dorothy and young Trish, but Jessica describes Dorothy as the first villain that she ever faced, and I really love it that this abusive control freak of a parent isn't actually just 100% easy-to-hate. It would've been so easy to turn Dorothy into a card-carrying evil parent, and there's certainly no excusing the emotional and physical abuse she did to Trish. But the fact is, Dorothy still loved Trish and vice versa, and I do really like that the episode highlights what a gigantic control freak Dorothy Walker is (she has her own funeral arrangements all set up, right down to the playlist and that memory board), what a nice person Dorothy was to her other clients (abusers can appear very friendly to the world outside their own families) while also showing how hard the death has hit Trish and even Jessica.

The moment that I felt was the most effective was Jessica pinning a random terrible shot of their feet from an old camera because the camera accidentally took a shot of a particularly ruined thanksgiving parade where they missed the parade and ended up hanging out at a terrible theater or something, and yet it's the sort of poignant memory about your family that you'll end up remembering. As Erik and Jessica discuss, death is a final chapter that definitively shuts out any attempt at reconciliation, and while people like Dorothy or Erik's incest-pedophile dad are pretty terrible, it doesn't make it any easier for the children to bury them. Hell, we even get to see a bunch of nice moments from Dorothy post-mortem, when Jessica realizes that Dorothy leaves behind not only her liquor (which could be taken as a jab) but also an armchair that Jessica always sat in as a kid -- and when Dorothy moved the armchair into Jessica's room, she had always taken it as a sign that Dorothy is banishing her from the rest of the house, not realizing that it's an act of kindness.

And then there's also Jessica trying to power through the police investigation around Nussbaumer's death throughout the funerary arrangements. And we've seen that Jessica's the sort of person who's able to compartmentalize things and leave most of the emotional stuff until later (or dull it with alcohol), showcased particularly well last episode where she tells Trish to grieve while she took care of everything. And not being as close to Dorothy, it doesn't make it too hard for Jessica to multi-task and try to figure out if Erik has somehow ended up going off and killing Officer Nussbaumer. And throughout the episode, I did suspect that Erik was actually a villain all along, because that's honestly the sort of twist that these sort of shows would pull; Erik himself has been drifting in and out of the cast -- plus Erik has been suspiciously nice to Jessica. And there's the misleading bit of the files that Jessica found in Erik's apartment after canoodling with him. But I just fully thought that Erik was essentially Kilgrave Mark II. Maybe Jessica's cynicism and paranoia has rubbed off on me a little. Either Erik was the villain, or Sallinger's somehow done some wacky super-smart Hannibal Lecter thing to somehow frame Jessica for the murder of the officer (which wouldn't make sense, and thankfully wasn't the case).

Turns out, though, it was Trish that killed Nussbaumer, and unlike Dorothy's shocking death in episode 8, this one is a twist that felt earned. Trish wasn't conspicuously absent throughout the episode, but you would totally believe that she's basically secluded and emotionally shut down after both her mother's death and the loss of letting Sallinger escape. And throughout the episode we learn that Nussbaumer was beaten to death with knuckles (something that made Jessica suspicious to the cops in the first place), which ends up actually fitting with Trish also being a super-powered metahuman. The gears in Jessica's head as she figures it out is great, and the episode ends with Jessica stalking Trish but she ends up getting arrested by the detectives investigating Nussbaumer's death.

And when I watched this episode, a lot of it clicked into place even before booting up "AKA Hellcat", the next episode that is basically a recap of the events of episodes 9 and 10 from Trish's point of view, similar to the second episode of this season. Erik being morose and wracked by guilt makes sense from what we know about him, and Trish was already emotionally unstable throughout the season and she's always the sister that's more prone to impulsive, drastic actions. We don't quite get the huge scene of the speech set alongside the context, but Trish's speech about how Dorothy always valued talent and always feared that Trish would waste talent does encapsulate the sort of mentality that Trish had unfortunately gotten from Dorothy -- and while that sort of go-for-it attitude might be great in something like the show business, when applied to its extremes it can get ugly and result in a mother that emotionally abuses her daughter so she can be a superstar, or a vigilante that ends up resorting to beating a corrupt cop to his death.

The Hogarth storyline is something that I've expressed a lot of frustration about... mostly because it isn't anywhere as compelling as the show think it is, and this episode brings it back up in full force as Kith is desperate for anyone to help her out with one of her donors, Dmitri Patseras, who wants to sue her. Hogarth's clearly back in her manipulating game, showing a friendly face while also offering to help out pro bono, but we all know Hogarth's a scheming snake and despite all of her seemingly-nice things that she does here, she's got her own interests (i.e. 'getting' Kith as her woman) in mind. Also, being the lawyer that represents Trish, she's also trying to patch things up with Trish and it's tricky because Trish absolutely loathes Hogarth right now, and Jessica isn't fond of her either. And, sure, Hogarth finally made the decision to stop representing Sallinger, and she claims she's trying to fix her mistakes, but honestly Hogarth has became so unlikable that it's kind of interesting if this was the point that the show was trying to actually make -- that sometimes people do terrible things, like Dorothy and Hogarth (and even to a less obvious extent, Erik, Malcolm and Briana), and only when they are alive that they can actually try and change -- someone playing executioner would deny that chance. Or something along those lines. They don't at least try and justify that this is a reason to spare Sallinger, but at least the show is trying to argue for the fact that less-psychotically-villainous people can do change for the better. Or try to.

Malcolm... is kind of interesting? In the past couple of episodes he's sort of drifting in and out of focus, eventually settling in his own moral dilemma by deciding that, hey, the side that doesn't try to help a psychotic serial killer is the actual good guys. This episode has him break up with Zaya and, uh, basically sort of had to lie to her a bunch to not give up just how deep he is in with the vigilante stuff. I really don't care about Malcolm and Zaya's relationship, though it's nice that this didn't really take up a whole lot of time and it does give Malcolm's character some extra weight. Erik's sister Brianna also shows up and tries to basically start a new life, and tries to get a place to crash. Malcolm and Brianna end up fucking before the episode is over, but I honestly really don't give two shits about Malcolm's love life, so.

Anyway, a fantastic episode. The strongest part of Marvel's Jessica Jones has always been its mood and the powerfully subdued emotional acting that its cast members are able to do, which this episode and the next really explore in spades. The Sallinger stuff, while I did like parts of it, really does feel a lot rockier compared to this pair of very solid episodes.
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Episode 11: AKA Hellcat
This episode, as mentioned above, plays off similarly to "AKA You're Welcome", but where that episode is just essentially the reintroduction of Trish as a vigilante in this new season, "AKA Hellcat" does the double duty of explaining the behaviours of Trish, Erik and a bunch of other characters that ended up with Nussbaumer's murder between episode 9 and 10, as well as Trish and Erik's attempts at cover-up in episode 10. And while I do think that this season might've overdone it a bit with two 'what happened behind the scenes, boys and girls?' episodes, I feel like it's pretty effective, particularly with the duality between Jessica and Trish as one of the biggest themes of the season.

Just telling us how Trish went on a careless vigilante rampage isn't really enough weight for the episode, though, and I do appreciate the follow up from episode 10 of the episode showing just how actually terrible and demanding of a mother Dorothy is, since some of the scenes in this episode show a younger, aspiring-child-actor Jessica being emotionally abused with guilt-trips and being taught to manipulate adults around her and betray her friend to get the starring role of the show. Just because you're mourning her, doesn't mean that all of her past sins are automatically forgotten -- and as someone who has to write and give a speech about Dorothy at her funeral, I can totally see how Trish ends up remembering some of these terrible memories. And, again, I feel like, back-to-back, "AKA Hero Pants" and "AKA Hellcat" is a far, far better sendoff to Dorothy Walker as a character that sort of helps to end up giving the character a far, far better sendoff as far as the audience is concerned. Rebecca de Mornay is also absolutely fantastic in these scenes playing a terrible person doing terrible things 'for the good of my child'. And in-between moments of pressure telling her daughter about how she must perform perfectly or people working on the show will starve or cutting her off in her brutal tutoring of how to act, we get moments of genuine pride and love that a mother has for her daughter and it really ends up capturing the complex relationship between abusive mother and child.

And this mentality, from the aforementioned "don't waste your talent" and Dorothy telling young Trish that she needs to feel that "(she) got this" ends up being reflected in the night that Trish, seeing Dorothy's mangled body, decides that she 'got this' and ends up maiming Sallinger. We get some repeats of scenes we've seen in episode 9 -- but framed from Trish's point of view after seeing her mother die, we get to see just how much things are starting to pile on her from Hogarth's witch-hunt for Hellcat, the conversation with Malcolm, and how after Malcolm left, the seemingly-random detail of a dude arguing with his wife/girlfriend next door ended up with Trish going vigilante once more and beating the shit out of the abusive dude.

Apparently at some point during the timeline of episode 9, Trish even went into the hospital room where Sallinger is in, and we get to see some smarmy manipulation from Sallinger, who is protected by the police and also mocks Trish how if he killed Sallinger then and there, all the agonizing sacrifices Jessica had to made would be in vain. Sallinger then goes on a rant about how Trish killing is just a power trip, but Sallinger's own killing is a byproduct of his bizarre 'show the truth' nonsense. Yeah, dude's a lunatic. Interestingly, though, while the show doesn't really bring it up, Dorothy's own philosophy and motto about how she wants to share those with great talents (even if said talent had to be forced) needs to share the with the world does end up as an interesting foil to Sallinger's own philosophies.

And all it takes is just a little push, and I actually do like it that the push came from the random doorman in Dorothy's apartment, who gives one of those "evil wins when those of good heart stand idly by" quotes, which galvanizes Trish to do something. She ends up showing up at Erik's apartment and I do like that some of Trish's speech to Erik in trying to get him to help out ends up mirroring some of Dorothy's own speeches in the past about how those with talent have a duty and whatnot, which is an interesting way of showcasing just how much Dorothy's upbringing, for better or for worse, really ended up molding Trish Walker into the woman she ended up becoming. And as she ends up brutalizing Montero later in the episode, Trish repeats her mom's words almost as a mantra, that she could "make the world better with her talents".

And with Erik's connections and his files on the people he blackmailed before, Trish decides to go full-on vigilante on Officer Nussbaumer. Trish's plan, however, as most of her solo Hellcat act, is amateurish -- her plan is basically to vaguely beat up Nussbaumer into a confession, then release the video into public. And Nussbaumer is a scum that killed some troubled teenagers, and it's hard to really feel broken up that a child-killer is dead, but at the same time it's pretty disturbing when the death happened, and unlike Erik's bookie that Trish beat up earlier in the season, this 'accident' ended up with a death. A death that, unfortunately for the cast, implicates Jessica Jones, but something that Trish ends up actually feeling good about since it's a 'win', while Erik, being someone with plot-convenient powers, rants about how euphoric he feels now that his headache is gone... again, something that unintentionally fuels Trish's own ego, and her thinking that this is the exact make-the-world-better that her dead mom told her about.

We get to see the officers interrogating Trish from her POV, and while she's a good enough actor to shake them off, she feels bad that the officers are suspecting Jessica, and engineers the beatdown of a second mark, Jace Montero (he sets fires to buildings to claim insurance money, also a scum), at a time when Jessica's location is public, exonerating her. And I really do like this little argument of "should the superhero kill the villain?" because, well, it's a slippery slope. Sallinger is a scumbag who deserves to die for sure, particularly thanks to what he did to Dorothy. Nussbaumer is a corrupt cop who shot teenagers, he's also pretty scumbag. But Jace Montero claims that his pretty terrible crime of setting fires to buildings is an accident gone wrong, and while he certainly deserves to be arrested, I think the show makes its point very well  that Trish... doesn't know when to stop, and the sight of Montero being absolutely brutalized before Erik stops Trish is pretty horrific.

And what about someone like Jeri Hogarth? I've said throughout these episodes that Hogarth was definitely an unlikable, scummy bastard since around episode 7, and I would go so far that I would agree with Trish's assessment that she's indirectly responsible for escalating the situation and causing Dorothy's death indirectly. She's certainly the unintentional cause of death for Kith's husband for sure. But for Hogarth, we get to see more of her. We get to see that she's dying, that she's desperate to hold on to the few good things she has in life (her law firm, and, as twisted as it is, Kith) and no, that doesn't excuse any of her crimes, but does she deserve to get her throat crushed as Trish threatens to do? Again, it's a gray area, and I do like that "AKA Hellcat" manages to imply this without actually spelling it out.

That said, Trish isn't the most stable of vigilantes, and is apparently very, very easily swayed. Hogarth offers to drop the footage about Hellcat, but also wants Trish to help her out in stealing something from Dmitri Patseras, the man bothering Kith, in order to prove his tax evasion or whatever. And, sure, Kith hates Patseras, but is he really as evil as Kith (and ergo Hogarth) make it out to be? Trish's ever-slippery slope ends up basically being "is he a bad person?" which is a lot harder to quantify since the world is really in shades of grey. Sure, there are some truly bad eggs like Sallinger, but Trish's refusal to see anyone else in anything but black-and-white is actually shown pretty well here.

Ultimately, there are a lot of heavy questions being asked here. But this is less a discussion of morality and the validity of murdering villains or whatnot, and more of a deep character study of the skewed way that Trish Walker views the world after her mother's death. There are some parts of it that I admit felt a bit long and repetitive (Trish beating up Sallinger in full detail; Trish's conversation with Malcolm; the bit with Trish calling the cops on Jessica at the end of episode 10) but ultimately, I feel like episode 10 and 11 might be the highlight of this season. We still have two more episodes to wrap this season (and Netflix Marvel) up, and it's certainly interesting.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Young Trish had to dye her hair red to stand out for a role. Comics!Hellcat is a redhead. 

Marvel's Jessica Jones S03E07-09 Review: Foolkiller

Marvel's Jessica Jones, Season 3, Episode 7: The Double Half Wappinger; Episode 8: Camera Friendly; Episode 9: I Did Something Today

Episode 7: AKA The Double Half Wappinger

So this is, I feel, one of the bigger problems in writing a story in a larger universe. And I'm not even talking about the big daddy MCU umbrella as a whole either, but just in the scope of the Netflix Marvel series. In theory, a story about a vigilante that's trying her best to bring a villain to justice but thanks to a combination of the story that's being told to the public, the public's point of view on events, and the general flaw of the justice system would be an... interesting one. But in a world where Daredevil and the Punisher run around, it's always a little niggling question at the back of my mind that Jessica really should've called Matt to help out.

That said, though, taken on its own, it's a pretty fun story. Gregory Sallinger is well-written and while there's a significant amount of plot armour revolving around him to make him able to do all of this and some baffle Jessica and Trish and the cops all at the same time, it's a pretty interesting situation that this episode ends up giving us. Jeri Hogarth, ever an opportunist, ends up not trying to help Jessica to take down Sallinger but rather to represent him and use it as a jumping off point to salvage her career, ruined by the controversy that's of her own doing. Hogarth was already teetering into being a completely unlikable villain in the past couple of episodes, and at this point she's basically in complete 'you're scum, I don't like you territory'. There's also an interesting bit where Hogarth and Sallinger ends up spinning the whole deal into Jessica Jones using her superpowers to persecute a poor man living alone in his house, and essentially frame the story as the police and vigilantes unlawfully holding an innocent man without any clear evidence. And Sallinger even works in a 'I'm a white man, Jessica Jones is a violent angry feminist maniac' narrative into the whole deal, as if he's not already unlikable enough.

And... yeah, I suppose it's in character, I guess. Hogarth is an opportunist snake. But the episode and later episodes would frame this as Hogarth taking a risk and biting off more than she could chew, when it's clear that she's just being a complete moron and associating with the worst possible high-profile case ever. And by the time Sallinger spins it out into 'hate Jessica Jones' and less of a 'an innocent man unfairly held by the police' story, the damage is done and Sallinger correctly reads the situation as Hogarth's law firm desperate for a high profile case like his. Hogarth doesn't earn any brownie points with the audience when she and Zaya realizes that the mysterious second vigilante ("Hellcat", we'll just call Trish's alter-ego Hellcat) is actually picking off her asshole clients, like date rape guy. And, yeah, Hogarth's trying to defend her legacy or whatever, but god damn she's being more and more unlikable by the episode. And both Jessica and Malcolm's confrontations only cause her to double back even stronger. It's more of a case of love-to-hate, though -- the character feels authentic in that I totally buy that this is the decisions that Jeri Hogarth would take. It's just that in this episode and the next couple of bits, she's basically in full-on villain mode.

The rest of the episode ends up featuring some more procedural detective work, though, with Jessica and Trish trying to figure out if Sallinger's brother's death-via-tractor was actually an accident or a Sallinger murder. And... again, the procedural detective work is always fun, especially seeing how the Jessica/Trish team ends up working out. Trish falls into random distractions as a hysteric rich girl very easily, which really can't help her already mounting insecurities. There's an interesting bit where the local police officer really is friendly-yet-unhelpful, trying to protect Sallinger because she thinks she failed him when he's a kid... but is completely cooperative when Jessica breaks apart a gazebo and actually turns up results in finding the dead body of Sallinger's childhood friend buried under it. I actually kind of like the subversion of the brother's death actually seemingly be a real accident, and the scene where Jessica thinks to himself that he's going to tear this hopeful family's wounds right open if she's right about the dead body being buried there.

Jessica also got into a bit of a confrontation with Sallinger in front of his martial arts students, and... it's an interesting scene? Sallinger basically rants about how Jessica can't beat him without his 'cheating' superpowers, but all that happens is that Sallinger's trash-talk sort of ends up ringing hollow when all it ends up in is Sallinger being humiliated like a moron and Jessica coming off as being far more level-headed in the video that people are taking of the fight. It's meant to kind of be a contrast to Sallinger's earlier spinning of the story, I suppose, although the contrast wasn't particularly clear and the scene does feel a bit muddled other than giving us more of a confrontation between the main protagonist and the main antagonist, and a way for Jessica to also use publicity as her own weapon.

Finally, in an interesting twist that I didn't actually think about until I sat down to write this review is Trish basically calling in a tip to the New York Bulletin about a Hellcat sighting, and essentially jump off buildings to make sure they catch her on camera. And I didn't realize until this point that throughout the episode, we get to see Jessica bristle and get angry at the more visible part of her public persona, and avoids any sort of media exposure. Meanwhile, Trish isn't happy at not being able to claim credit for her superheroing. And it's not done in an obvious scene, but from her obsession with "you're welcome", the fact that she's constantly relegated to doing humiliating distractions or stand behind as reserve (under Jessica's not-unreasonable excuse that Trish is too hot-headed and impulsive) Trish ends up basically making Hellcat's existence public... at the worst possible time, because Hogarth is trying to hunt down Hellcat who she views as an enemy beating up her clients.

There's a B-plot of Malcolm's journey trying to hide things from everyone around him. Trying to hide his complicity in the Kith thing from Zaya, trying to hide the fact that he knows about Trish=Hellcat and the whole Jessica-vs-Sallinger thing from both Zaya and Hogarth... it's neat background stuff that ties into the other larger plots, and it's... interesting? I don't think the writing for this B-plot is the strengths of this season, but I do appreciate the effort in making Malcolm a more rounded-out character that is trying his best to balance pragmatism and being a good guy, and at least he's actively likable in that he's genuinely torn -- Hogarth does offer better employment offers for his future and his girlfriend Zaya is allied with Hogarth, but Malcolm's morality makes him Team Jessica.

Ultimately, I do think that this is one of the stronger episodes of the season. And sure, the season as a whole is kind of spotty at times, but I really do like how this episode ties together the earlier Hellcat debut episodes, the Sallinger/Hogarth unholy alliance, Hogarth's attempts to figure out who Hellcat is, and even Malcolm's story together in an interesting way.
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Episode 8: AKA Camera Friendly

Unfortunately, "AKA Camera Friendly" isn't as good of a follow up as I wished it was. Trish's ill-advised outing as Hellcat being caught on camera ends up with the police precinct being thrown into chaos as poor Detective Costa's credibility gets brought up into question, and that's without Hogarth fanning the flames later on in the episode.

And then Gregory Sallinger continues to be a comic book super-villain serial killer, and while Jessica and Trish discuss the Hellcat photo stuff, Sallinger strikes by sending Jessica clues via... Instagram Instayap, and I dunno, it's just something that I feel is hard to take seriously when parts of the episode is devoted to Trish and Dorothy explaining to Jessica that Instagram Snapchat Instayap deletes videos quickly and Jessica had to use a second phone to video the Riddler-style serial killer video sent to her. Sallinger, of course, ends up having escaped by paying some dude to stand in for him in his apartment (wouldn't that be grounds for arrest, really?) and at this point I feel like the episode itself is trying a bit too hard to basically protect Sallinger with copious amounts of plot armour. And, yes, Sallinger is very, very smart, but at the same time there are parts of this that I feel would've probably worked better or be a bit more believable with some extra manipulation on Sallinger's parts. Sallinger's meant to be a take on the classic "brains over brawn" villain, but the thing is... Jessica isn't stupid. That's been the whole point of her character, because throughout the three seasons she's been in we see that she's a pretty damn good P.I. in addition to the whole Jessica Smash thing. And I guess it's Jessica's own smartness and ability to figure out clues that ends up causing her to investigate so long, but I dunno, I feel like the tone of the episode is just off and Jessica just feels, for lack of a better term, impotent.

And it's kind of silly that the entire episode ends up being a gigantic red herring, because, even with the action scene caused by a misunderstanding, Sallinger's real target isn't even the people on the Not!Snapchat video, but rather Dorothy Walker. In typical 'dead asshole' method, Dorothy was starting to become just a bit more supportive about Trish's superheroism in this episode, too, before the huge, shocking reveal near the end of the episode that Dorothy's been brutalized, maimed and murdered... and I honestly don't think that they built up or earned this twist well enough. The episode spends way too much time with Jessica trying to use her newfound media presence (with Dorothy's help!) to try and save the person that Sallinger's targeted. And sure, there's the vaguely-defined 'clue' that Sallinger wanted to end Jessica 'where it began', but it feels like kind of random, and the twist ends up feeling like it's basically done for shock value instead of a tragic death or even the villain outsmarting the hero. I dunno. Jeremy Bobb plays Sallinger extremely well which is why a lot of his manipulations feel believable, but this episode just feels like it's kind of messy in its depiction of Jessica-vs-Sallinger, intelligence-wise.

The episode ends with a very angry and revenge-happy Trish going full Punisher mode, charging into Sallinger's apartment and about to slice him throat to throat and Jessica has to go there and stop Trish. And it's... it's honestly kind of an interesting twist on the superhero story of 'thou shalt not kill'. It's something that's admirable about these superheroes, that they are able to defeat their enemies without stooping down to their level of heinousness. And while Jessica's probably not someone who necessarily believes in that holier-than-thou stuff, the pragmatism of not wanting Trish (or Hellcat, really) be labeled as a criminal herself is understandable. On the other hand... watching this show (and, again, the aforementioned fact that this exists in the same universe as Punisher or Daredevil) and seeing all of the arguments for not killing Sallinger end up being false with the police and law system being either incompetent or easy to game ends up making it really, really hard to sympathize with Jessica at this point. Sallinger being a Grade-A asshole doesn't help Jessica's case either.

Again, there's a bunch of B-plot with the lawyer squad, but Zaya apparently loves Malcolm enough to edit his conversation with Trish out of the security footage she shows Hogarth; Hogarth continues to declare a war on superhumans and Hellcat in particular and she basically continues to be unlikable.

Ultimately, though, this episode feels pretty messy. I'm not sure if it's just me expecting a bit too much or something, but I feel like this episode really stumbled when the past couple of episodes have been pretty great at delivering and presenting Sallinger as a believable super-smart serial killer who covers his tracks that's a match for Jessica. I guess the takeaway is that Sallinger can only outsmart Jessica by manipulating her intelligence and by outright lying to her, but I dunno. The episode just feels pretty off. And while I've never been the biggest fan of Dorothy, the fact that she's essentially just fridged and killed off for shock value isn't something I'm a particularly big fan of. 

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Episode 9: AKA I Did Something Today
Thankfully, "I Did Something Today" is a bit of a smoother follow-up to the previous episode. It's hard to really think of a rationale to make Jessica stop Trish from killing Sallinger and still make her 'feel' like she's in the right, so after the bit where Jessica bops Trish and drags her away to a safehouse and allows the maimed Sallinger to be arrested, the show thankfully gives us a reason why Jessica is so willing to end up essentially dancing on Sallinger's strings after all the shit Sallinger has done. I mean, yes, sure, what a superhero's expected to do about killing is one thing, but when you've spent the entire show showing how terrible of a human being Gregory Sallinger is and how completely incompetent and incapable the police force in the show is (this is why Batman has Jim Gordon) it's hard for the audience to not see the heroes spare Sallinger and not come off as complete idiots.

Of course, Sallinger has plans. Sure, he might not have completely counted on Trish showing up on her apartment and near damn well killing him, but he's twisted it into a way to blackmail Jessica. Knowing that Jessica will do anything for her sister, and knowing that Trish is the sort of person who would go down if it means taking Sallinger down, Sallinger sets up a deal -- he has proof that Hellcat is Trish, and uses it to blackmail Jessica to get rid of the evidence that the police has on him from the gazebo corpse. And as if this isn't incentive enough, that prick Hogarth ends up throwing gasoline over a fire as she essentially sets up a manhunt for Hellcat.

And, well, things aren't quite in a nice headspace for Jessica and Trish. Especially Trish, whose mother, for all her sins, has been brutally killed. Jessica is essentially desperate to protect her sister, even if it means making a deal with the devil... and it's honestly far, far more believable that this is the way that Sallinger ends up manipulating her by giving her an offer she literally can't refuse without dooming her sister, something that I feel was particularly lacking about "Camera Friendly", where Jessica's essentially dumbed down to 'well, you got played'. Granted, there's still a bit of oddity that Sallinger somehow manages to catch a photo of an unmasked Trish beating him up, but we have long established that Sallinger has a lot of contingencies in his house and Trish is the sort of dramatic type (plus, avenging her dead mom, which means she's probably not in the soundest of minds) so I'll believe this as Sallinger taking the opportunity to twist events to suit his ends, and framing it in a way that Jessica has no choice but to help Sallinge rout .

That said, this episode does end up feeling procedural in its second half. With Erik returning in this episode to help out (between his evil-radar powers and knowing all the right people, Erik's the TV show equivalent of a video game exclamation point on your mini-map), Jessica and Erik ends up blackmailing a dirty cop, entering the police precinct, fuck over poor Detective Costa by causing a sewage leak and initiating a building evacuation and then Jessica blows the evidence away. And... I dunno, couldn't you have pocketed the hair as extra leverage, Jessica? And at the end of the episode, Jessica ends up doing Sallinger's dirty work for him, which means that the bad guy wins again... and Trish is absolutely livid at this. Jessica's retort is similar to something we saw earlier this season, that Jessica chose saving Trish over taking down the bad guy. And Trish is just devastated -- not only did this 'one win in a string of losses' get robbed from her, she's also lost her mom in a pretty brutal way, and we get this pretty somber scene of Jessica telling Trish to basically be visible so the media doesn't suspect her as Hellcat, while Jessica would do the dirty details like cleaning up the room of evidence. And the huge, crushing depressing feeling of loss is definitely felt near the end when all Trish can do is barely hold herself together and identify her mom at the morgue, knowing the scumbag that killer her is walking free because, indirectly, of her.

The B-plots... Hogarth continues to be a tit, Malcolm and Zaya's relationship are on the fritz, and Malcolm finally quits her job because he draws the line at Hogarth's law firm actively helping a serial killer. Good on you, Malcolm! It's just that at this point, any time the Hogarth law firm drama comes up on screen I just actively groan because I find myself so uninvested in this drama, particularly the bits of this episode that Hogarth is basically trying to help out Kith in something involving a lawsuit-or-other. Also, Hogarth finds evidence of Trish=Hellcat on her own anyway because her security cameras can catch reflections. Hogarth really is a character played by a great actress, but the writing for her turns her into such an unlikable twit that it's really hard to care about many of her scenes.

Again, something that's arguably lacking in "Camera Friendly" is the pretty fantastic character work. Trish is petulant, perhaps, and maybe a bit too absorbed about 'wins' and 'losses', but at the same time she's also just seen her mother brutally cut apart and essentially realized that Jessica was forced to work to help get him free. Erik's exposition story time about how he used his superpowers to rat out his incest-child-molesting dad causing his family to self-destruct is a bit shoehorned in, but it also helps explain why Erik is so reluctant to be a busybody with his powers. Trish giving Erik hell for being a coward and not testifying earlier is actually a point that I didn't consider, and that's actually a pretty valid point. Costa's quiet breaking of how the Sallinger case has been fucked up and him breaking the news to Jessica while Jessica tries her best to look offended and shocked despite she herself being the architect of said fuck-up is amazing.

That said, though, as a whole, the Sallinger storyline is... it's kind of frustrating, really. I realize that it's for the service of the plot, and if nothing else Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor and Jeremy Bobb are great to watch on-screen, but the logical hoops that they went to make Sallinger somehow evade jail and also evade being killed just because of vague ethical reasons is a bit convoluted. At least blackmail is involved in this one, which makes it a lot more believable from a character standpoint if not for a logistics standpoint. Again, this is ultimately a superhero show and they always come with the unwritten disclaimer that there's always going to be some acceptable breaks from reality, but I dunno. I feel like while episode 7 and 9 are extremely solid entries of Jessica Jones, episode 8 ends up just shoehorning in a huge twist without really earning it and it kind of hurts some of my enjoyment of the series as a whole. I still ultimately really like this season of Jessica Jones, but I do admit that there's a rough patch in making the villain and the plotlines work.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Raft, the prison for super-powered people, is mentioned several times in these episodes. It was first seen in the MCU in Captain America: Civil War, where members of Captain America's Avengers were temporarily imprisoned there. 

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.

Marvel's Jessica Jones S03E01-03 Review: Hellcat

Jessica Jones, Season 3, Episode 1: AKA The Perfect Burger; Episode 2: AKA You're Welcome; Episode 3: AKA I Have No Spleen

I've watched the final season of Jessica Jones in a huge binge, perhaps one of the few Netflix shows that I watched in the way that it's intended to... I think the only Netflix seasons I watched in huge sittings were the first seasons of Daredevil and Luke Cage. I'm not sure why I didn't have the same problem that I did when watching the second season of Punisher? I guess it's because the themes and the plotlines do feel more like chapters of a longer book as opposed to being a bunch of episodes? Eh. Anyway, season three of Jessica Jones debuted a while back, more than a year ago in June 2019, and I've watched it some time in April this year. There are going to be a bunch of superhero show reviews that I watched earlier during the early days of the quarantine that I only got around to writing reviews for (although, as usual, I did take notes), which is why it's probably going to be a bit shorter. Three episodes this time around, too.

Episode 1: A.K.A. the Perfect Burger
And that's not saying that these episodes are devoid of content, no. It's mostly because Jessica Jones, as a show, is more intent on setting up the mood and the vibe of a pessimistic detective with superpowers. And the first episode, "AKA The Perfect Burger", is sort of mostly a bit of a setup re-introducing us to Jessica, her lot in life, and gives us little bits and bobs of a recap of the messy end of the second season. Very helpful, because it's been around two years since I last saw the second season. Jessica's doing cases, including the one early on where she drags a girl back to her mother from Mexico after a bit of custody wars between the two, and... she's seen better days. Between bitchy clients and the fact that some of them doesn't really leave a sense of a nice, hero-did-the-right-thing feeling (the kid was evidently happier with her father, regardless of the law), Jessica's just not feeling particularly happy.

Also not feeling particularly happy being a 'hero' to assholes is Malcolm, who's now working for Jeri Hogarth. This episode's B-plot has Malcolm bail out a rich asshole athlete who's unrepentant in drunk-driving, and while he keeps things civil in front of his boss, Malcolm ends up taking matters into his own hands and ram the rich asshole's car with his own, sending him to a hospital and destroying his career... which perhaps is a bit too over-the-top even with the athlete dude being, well, a dick. The lines of morality and good-and-evil is something that is brought up in this show (a particularly unsubtle one is Trish's unsent email to Jessica), and it's easily arguable that Malcolm actually causing grievous harm to the dick athlete is just as immoral as the drunk antics of the athlete punk himself.

After a brief re-introduction to some members of the supporting cast, like her new assistant Gillian (who's sassy, and buys Jessica a couch that ends up being a running gag), the friendly kid Vido, and the helpful Detective Costa, Jessica gets dragged into a case by Trish's mom Dorothy, who asks Jessica to find Trish. As the episode reminds me, Trish shot Jessica's crazy mom at the end of the previous season, which is why Jessica is so reluctant to help. I also really do love-to-hate the portrayal of Dorothy here. She's clearly a smothering, passive-aggressive mother who, in her own twisted way, both wants to profit from Trish's popularity while also actually freaking the heck out that her daughter's, y'know, missing.

After a depressing intermezzo with Hogarth (who's starting to get heavier symptoms from ALS and at one point asks Jessica to kill her, and Jessica points out what a stupid request this is), a good chunk of this episode is spent with Jessica's investigation while the mood is set. And none of it is boring to watch, but it does take a bit of time and doesn't really give me much to talk about. Jessica goes off to try and figure out whatever the heck Trish is doing, and it's later made pretty clear that Trish is going off half-cocked on a vigilante crusade of her own. Jessica's monologues also work very well, noting that because Trish chose a vigilante life, she thinks she can essentially be a hero with a strong sense of right and wrong, in stark contrast to Jessica's more muddied morality. The classic Superman/Batman contrast, except the Superman in this equation has all of the moral high ground without the experience. It's interesting nonetheless, and it's explored in the next couple of episodes.

The huge action scene in this episode involves Jessica charging in to rescue Trish (or, well, "Hellcat" at this point, if we're going by their superhero pseudonyms) from the criminal whose house she has been staking out. Jessica sees this bit as rescuing her half-cocked sister who's not prepared for this vigilante business. Trish sees it as Jessica ruining her attempt to get the criminal to open the safe, which contains the evidence she needs. After and argument, Jessica goes off to a bar, ends up coming home with some dude called Erik who likes to talk about burgers a bit too much... and then gets stabbed bloody by some dude who knocked on the door of her office. It's a cliffhanger!

Overall, a very neat mood-setting episode. Not a whole ton happens here other than setting up the Trish/Jessica dyanmic, plus telling us what our old buddies Hogarth, Dorothy and Malcolm are up to. There's nothing particularly exciting here, but, again, the third season does fall back to the roots of what made the first season so effective with cynical monologues and basically selling the mood of this done-with-it superpowered private investigator.
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Episode 2: A.K.A. You're Welcome
Instead of continuing the cliffhanger, 'AKA You're Welcome' instead turns the clock back a bit to see the genesis of Trish Walker's transformation into Hellcat, and it's pretty neat. Rachael Taylor doesn't really get too many chances to show her stuff, and her sub-plot in season two has been... problematic. But putting Jessica in the background for most of this (which allows Krysten Ritter to direct the episode) and seeing the world from Trish's point of view is a fun one, showing that Trish doesn't just decide to suddenly go vigilante overnight, but actually went through some... training. We get a brief glimpse of her vague superpowers, including her cat reflexes (which, much to the dismay of her poor phone, doesn't work all the time) and some cat-night-vision. A good chunk of the first half of the episode is a montage of her training somersaults in a park, training to box from a trainer, and a bit of a costume-selection montage that's an excuse to pull a Luke Cage style wink-wink-we're-not-doing-this to the comic costume.

Trish also gets to do a bit of monologue in this episode, replacing Jessica's usual fare, and we get to see Trish's own reasoning on her more rigid codes of morality. Jessica isn't a terrible person when it comes down to it, but she is a lot more jaded in the things she does, whereas Trish is... a bit more naive? Optimistic? Inflexible? Either way, Trish's first attempts at vigilantism ends up in a hilarious subversion of a lot of comic book tropes. You can't just walk around like Spider-Man in a Silver Age comic and find crime all over New York, and by the time she actually does and runs towards the crime scene, the police has already handled it. And when she does beat up a phone robber, the fact that she's not wearing a mask and she's also a famous person ends up with a lawsuit up her ass, regardless of whether she's doing the right thing or not.

Trish ends up hiring Hogarth's law firm to help out, and, of course, is partnered up with Malcolm. Malcolm's 'help' does exonerate Trish and allows them to pay off the dude without much of a problem, but we get a very great performance of Malcolm himself reluctantly telling Trish how he got the other dude to essentially submit, by threatening (and going through with) calling up the dude's son and telling him that he's born out of wedlock... and Trish, with her rigid moral code, is clearly disgusted by it. A nice follow-up from Malcolm's own storyline from the previous episode also has Malcolm admitting that he doesn't feel anything when doing it beyond the triumph of 'getting' what he needed.

The most interesting parts of this episode is definitely Trish's mental state and monologue, part of which is part of the message to Jessica that she keeps writing and rewriting. The whole 'moral compass' version of the message that Jessica discovers on her laptop in episode 1 is certainly the harshest version of Trish's many monologues, with earlier drafts involving even an admission of fault and an apology for shooting Jessica's mom, and a call to maybe work together. It's pretty interesting, and at one point in the episode Trish tries to call Jessica while seeing her walk down the street and sees Jessica just ignore the call.

While less interesting, we also see the genesis of Trish's hovel-house, with Dorothy absolutely disapproving of her choices, and as hard as it is to see Dorothy smothering Trish and trying to take control of her life and stuff, both actresses play off each other very well. We also get to see Trish taking up the fashion-show gig just to give herself an alibi, after taking Malcolm's "people will be asking what happened to Patsy" advice. Also, due to her little snide-comment-war with Malcolm, Trish ends up finding a bit of a target... criminals who have weaseled their way through the legal system, which she gains some information of from Hogarth's law firm.

After a successful bit where she prevents a serial rapist from claiming another victim and successfully delivering justice to him, we get to see Trish pick out her next target -- Andrew Brandt, which is the man from the first episode. Andrew Brandt beat the hell out of her sister to claim some statue or other, but the law doesn't get to persecute him because of reasons. After that, though, we mostly just see something that's a bit procedural as we get to see Trish stake out Brandt, monologue about how the stakeout job fits the anti-people Jessica, before seeing the assault play from Trish's point of view, and, hey, she is trying to get Brandt to open the safe. It's just that she's so angry at Jessica's rejection, so sure that this is her purpose in life, that she ends up pushing Jessica away and telling her that she totally has all of this vigilante business covered when, no, she clearly isn't. It's a storyline that these Netflix shows really love to explore, with a significant amount of the different Netflix-Marvel leads (except maybe Danny) being loners at some point.

Trish hasn't been at this thing as long as Jessica (or Matt, or Frank, or Luke) has, however, and we get a great scene where she finally breaks down in front of her mother, even if she doesn't quite tell Dorothy the exact details of her Hellcat vigilante night career. Which, of course, makes it even more of a heartbreaking moment when the hospital calls Trish, telling her that Jessica has been asking for her... only to find out that Jessica, too, is pushing her away -- she doesn't care for any of the sisterly business, she just wants the name, using her as a lead. Both sisters are pushing each other away, and it's building up to be the huge theme of the season. Having the titular "you're welcome" be a recurring theme across the episode (with the ways Trish delivers it changing from being triumphant when catching the rapist to bitter when exiting the hospital) is also a nice touch.

Overall, while one that could've easily felt like a throwaway flashback/bottle episode (like that Karen-centric one in the final Daredevil season), this one was actually a very great one, and while it does lose some steam in the second half, it's still a very fun watch.
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Episode 3: A.K.A. I've Got No Spleen
What is it about the spleen that makes it so funny? You see it in cartoons and jokes all the time. "Ow, my spleen". And this episode does have its share of spleen jokes, from Jessica's perfect delivery of "a hero has a goddamn spleen" to the doctor's hilariously inappropriate spleen puns in ex-spleening Jessica's newfound lack of a spleen. And yet, the episode also shows that despite being a person of super-strength, Jessica stumbles and can't just power through everything after a night in the hospital and ripping off her IV's and stuff. She actually ends up falling down and has to be hospitalized a second time in the episode, which is an interesting bit of realism.

The theme of the episode, though, is less of Jessica's spleen or lack thereof, but rather of vulnerability. From Jessica flinching and getting angry at Detective Costa's usage of the word 'victim', her initial refusal to lock her door despite Gillian's attempts to protect her out of nothing but bullheadedness, and the flashbacks to how she got stabbed at the end of episode one... it's not said out loud in our faces, but Jessica's clearly not just reeling from simply being stabbed, but remembering the two huge times she has been, well, a victim. The long, terrible ordeal with Killgrave prior to season one, and being abducted by her mother in season two. And Jessica's instincts, like many other people in the world, is to ignore it and push forwards. Deliberately leaving her door unlocked. Going out of the hospital despite the doctor's orders. Refusing all of Gillian's advice and drinking her pills with alcohol. Keeping the people willing to help her like Malcolm and Detective Costa at arm's length.

And while people like Erik might assume that someone like Jessica is powerful and indestructible, with super-tough skin and whatnot (wrong Defender, Brandt), Jessica is not. She acts like she doesn't have any weaknesses in her attitude, but that doesn't mean that she is invulnerable... and the show is not just talking about the stab wound either. Her emotional state is at fritz, not just because of the trauma but clearly also because of everything surrounding Trish. Jessica needs to learn to accept these -- her cold relationship with Trish; her weakness due to her lack of spleen -- and work around them, which is pretty neat from a character growth standpoint.

To this end, Jessica goes around and tries to investigate Brandt as well, thinking that he's the one who sent the hitman after her. It does make sense, she has made a name of herself in-universe, everyone knows that she's the superpowered lady detective. This leads to an interesting bit where Jessica and Trish end up investigating the Brandt lead together from different ways, and while, again, it doesn't really make for particularly engaging review material, it's a lot of fun seeing Jessica's detective work. Jessica ends up bopping Trish in the shoulder at one point to steal one of her leads, but her quick hunt-down of Brandt turns out a dead end -- Brandt didn't actually send the knife man after her because he's actually scared shitless. Jessica does basically soften up a bit, leaving Brandt tied up at his base and leaving his case for Trish to close all on her own. As Detective Costa points out near the episode's end, it's nice that Jessica seems to have an ally. While they're not quite the Batman-and-Robin duo that Costa thinks they are, it is nice that at least Jessica and Trish are starting to be on the mend. Speaking of Jessica getting allies, Hogarth and Malcolm both have great moments in this episode where they show their gratitude and friendship to Jessica. Malcolm keeping the murder weapon and cheekily handing over a bill; and Hogarth berating Jessica about using her name as a cover to investigate only to quickly give her a list of art galleries and stuff? All very nice moments, and while the Jessica/Trish relationship may be rocky, her other allies are clearly more used to Jessica's attitude.

The B-plots running in this episode... is something? Malcolm's story works better than Hogarth's, for sure, mostly because I kind of like the whole 'treading the morality line' vibe of his story, and it seems to come to him as second nature. Telling himself and his girlfriend Zaya that all of his more questionable acts (that she will never know about) is just a way for his plan for a brighter future, Malcolm also has no qualms into hacking into Peter Lyonne's computers just to dig up blackmail material, just because Hogarth tells him to. Hogarth's storyline, meanwhile, is a bit more puzzling. It gets built up a bit in the first and second episodes, but it wasn't particularly interesting for me. Hogarth is dying, sure, and she ends up seemingly finding something worth fighting for when she sees her old sweetheart Kith, and basically tries to win her over. After a chilly lunch, Hogarth's attempts to use a cassette and an old sonata to seduce Kith works, but then turns out that the dirt that Malcolm dug out on Kith's husband (he's screwing his students) isn't even something Kith cares about and already knows, so Hogarth really wants to dig more dirt on him? To drive him away from Kith? Okay, sure? Hogarth's actress is certainly talented and plays off the rest of the cast very well, but I really find myself caring for this particular storyline.

Still, the rest of these three episodes are really fun and engaging, particularly the Jessica/Trish dynamic and their respective developments, that I can definitely forgive some of the weaker B-plots that is going on in these episodes. Speaking of which... turns out that Jessica's next suspect is Erik, who she figures is the actual target of the stabbing instead of her, and she confronts him about it. (Which... to be fair, considering the burger, apparently after Jessica got rushed to the hospital, Erik stuck around to make the burger and leave it in the fridge? Really?) Anyway, it's a pretty great set of episodes to open up this final season.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Captain America is mentioned by the girl that Jessica brings back to her mother in the opening scene of the first episode. 
• In episode 2, as Trish tries out a bunch of costumes for her vigilante alter ego, the first thing she tries is a cat mask, which, of course, is a reference to her comic-book counterpart's Hellcat costume. The final attempted costume she wears, which is a yellow body-suit with black gloves and sash, is basically her comic book costume sans mask. Her line at seeing this, "hell no", is likely just a fun jab at the Hellcat moniker. 
• A bit of a looser Easter Egg that I've seen people point out is that one of the costumes that Trish tries is a bomber jacket and leather pants vaguely in the colour scheme of Captain Marvel/Carol Danvers, who was Jessica's best friends in the comics and one whose role in Jessica's life was rewritten for Trish in the show.