What’s that you say? It’s time to talk about Mike Colter now? YES OKAY.
Up to now, we’ve mostly seen Luke Cage in a state of chilly calm, whether he’s offering Jessica free drinks or fussing at her for sending cops his way. And don’t get me wrong; Mike Colter is amazing at chilly calm. But in “AKA It’s Called Whiskey,” he and Jessica are getting to know one another, and it’s fun to see both of them a little more relaxed and getting to know each other. Mike Colter’s cheekbones are just really really on point.
Plus, how often do we get a smile this genuine out of Jessica? It’s nice, right?
If Mike Colter’s considerable charisma weren’t enough to get me excited for the Luke Cage show (it is), and if I didn’t care that Alfre Woodard is also in it and it’s got a black showrunner (I do), the fact that his superpowers are the result of an experiment would do it. If I’m very, very good and eat all my spinach, can the Luke Cage show please, please, pretty please be as incisively critical of America’s history of medical exploitation of black bodies as Jessica Jones has been of rape culture?
Sadly, their chemistry/true love isn’t meant to be, because the picture in the medicine cabinet is of his dead wife, and flashbacks reveal to us that Jessica — under Kilgrave’s influence — is the one that killed her. By the end of the episode, Jessica realizes how messed up this all is, and breaks things off with Luke Cage. Good call, Jess. I mean, a better call would have been NOT GODDAMN SLEEPING WITH HIM IN THE FIRST PLACE, but I understand we’ve moved past the point where that was a possible outcome.
Speaking of medicine and black folks, Jessica’s still on her quest to score some sufentanil.
And on this quest, she does the purely shittiest thing we’ve seen from her so far: She makes it look like Malcolm (remember him? her peanut-butter-loving junkie neighbor?) has attacked a hospital nurse in order to create a distraction that will allow her to swipe the anesthetic. Dude, come on. You couldn’t think of literally anything else that would create a comparable distraction?
(Oh, before she does that, she tries to get Jeri’s wife Wendy to score her some drugs. Wendy doesn’t believe the story Jessica’s telling her about Kilgrave, and she writes her a prescription for an antipsychotic. Which — dick move, Wendy? And also, I’m pretty sure it’s unethical to write prescriptions as a punchline?)
Jeri — sharky lawyer that she is — uses Trish’s radio show to put out a call for more Kilgrave victims without making it seem like she believes in mind control. Smart, Jeri. When she ridicules the notion that Hope was telepathically controlled, Trish completely loses her temper and talks all the shit about Kilgrave that she can before Jessica stalks into her recording booth to break her microphones.
Trish: So he gets to run around, destroying lives, destroying your life, and I have to just sit here and shut up?
I mean, yeah, sort of, hon. But I love that you’re this pissed off about it. A running theme in Jessica and Trish’s relationship is that Trish is the one who truly wants to be a hero, and Jessica’s the one who’s actually equipped to do it. When Kilgrave, inevitably, sends a brainwashed cop to kill Trish as a punishment for her mouthiness, Trish fights like absolute hell, but Jessica still has to show up to rescue her. (Poor Trish.)
Thinking fast on her feet like she do, Jessica convinces the cop he’s killed Trish, slips Trish’s phone (which has a tracking app) into his pocket, and then tracks him to his rendezvous with Kilgrave.
The full flashback happens with Luke Cage’s wife now. Kilgrave told Jessica to “take care of her,” and Jessica punched Luke Cage’s wife so hard that some combination of the punch and the fall killed her. Then, as Kilgrave called her back, Jessica continued to walk away from him. So it seems that Jessica has at least some measure of resistance to Kilgrave’s compulsion powers?
Though she’s now armed with the sufentanil, Jessica has to put off drugging Kilgrave in order to stop the poor Kilgraved cop from jumping off a roof. Then she has to fight off, but not kill, the three residents of the house where Kilgrave’s been staying, all of whom have instructions to stop her from following him. When they’re finally all unconscious, Jessica finds a large room that absolutely plastered with recent photographs of her. It is truly the murderiest of murder walls.
Next time, we’ll be dealing with the fallout of this time, particularly with how it’s affected Trish. (Trish!) And also with the question of who the hell’s been taking all those photographs.
Jessica breaks things: A pane of glass in her apartment, while sexing Luke Cage (so that one’s on both of them!). Luke Cage’s bedframe, also while sexing (ditto). Trish’s recording equipment, to stop her from badmouthing Kilgrave on air. The new lock on her newly-repaired door. Luke Cage’s heart a little bit. A bunch of miscellaneous items in the house where Kilgrave’s staying, as she fights off its brainwashed occupants.
Drinking game rules: Drink for super-obvious product placement! Such as Jessica’s Acer laptop. (This is a universal drinking rule in fact. Except maybe don’t do it when you’re watching Jane the Virgin, because I don’t want you to ruin your liver.)
Jessica, private-investigating: “He teaches in the biology department, or chemistry, I don’t know, is biochemistry a thing? I don’t know which one, it’s science.”