It’s toxic masculinity ahoy in “AKA The Sandwich Saved Me,” as Jessica teams up (rather grudgingly) with Simpson to track Kilgrave down and tranq him with Jessica’s newly acquired sufentanil. Simpson usefully discovers an old CDC facility with a hermetically sealed soundproof room where Jessica can keep Kilgrave once she’s got him.
On my first watch-through of this show, I hoped that Jessica and Simpson were enjoying the kind of enmity that would later grow into grudging respect and then total trust. I can’t tell you how excited Whiskey Jenny and I were for Jessica to make use of Simpson’s exfiltration army guy skills (perhaps even his quote-unquote boys?) in a glorious team-up. And yes, this may have blinded us to what was really going on with Simpson. In our defense, Trish liked him.
In Trish’s defense, she sleeps with him and enjoys it, but she never likes him enough to let his opinion take precedence over Jessica’s (or her own).
Nor does she like him enough to not call him on his bullshit, such as when he reassures her that the getaway van she’ll be driving is an automatic: a remark I missed the first time around (I was cooking and also drinking and that is why), but which on a rewatch made me howl with rage.
Can I tell y’all a real story from my real life? When I lived in New York (a town of relatively few drivers) and it would come up in conversation that I can drive stick, very often dudes would first say, “Wow!” and then they would say, “I mean, it’s a completely useless skill at this point.” And I want to take this opportunity to say to all those dudes that while you covered super smoothly, I nevertheless managed to deduce that I had made you feel less manly, AND I LOVED IT.1
Anyway, the team’s plan to follow Malcolm to Kilgrave (while wearing super-stealthy hoodies to conceal their identities) and then tranq him works perfectly, except that Kilgrave has failsafe thug bros standing by, plus a tracker in his jacket to assist his thugbros in finding him. Not for nothing, but if Simpson’s boys had been permitted to come on this mission, they’d’ve been awfully useful in the ensuing fight. A fight which, I may add, Jessica’s very small, Simpson’s-boys-less team loses, and Team Thugbro wins.
The scene where they’re driving away from Union Square with Kilgrave’s unconscious body in the back of the automatic-transmission van is the first time2 that I howled at the screen “WHY DON’T YOU JUST KILL HIM JESSICA.” The answer, as we’ll find out, is that it’s all for Hope’s3 sake, but not for her sake in the sense that Jessica ever asks for Hope’s opinion or provides a satisfactory explanation for why Hope’s freedom is more important than the freedom and safety of all the other people Kilgrave will compel, injure, and murder going forward.
Speaking of which, since Kilgrave got Malcolm hooked on heroin in the first place, in order to ensure his cooperation in taking photographs of Jessica, Jessica feels she should help Malcolm get off the drugs. She handcuffs him to the toilet and gives him a tough love speech about fighting real hard and making good and moral choices, then leaves him a whole bunch of heroin. Get it? Cause if he takes the heroin that’s a good choice, but if he doesn’t it’s a bad choice?
Like the g.d. hero of a future social worker we all knew him to be, Malcolm flushes the heroin down the toilet — but, hey, show? You know that addiction doesn’t equal moral weakness, right? I am sure you do know that. And you just did not make it super clear in this one moment. Good talk, show. I am happy we are on the same page about this and many other important social issues.
There are also some flashbacks, which are interesting but not particularly integrated. Some things we learn about pre-Kilgrave Jessica:
1. She used to work for basically the tiny angry Wallace Shawn character from The Incredibles.
2. She did not appreciate it when bros disrespected Trish.
3. She was permitted to sit with her boots up on Trish’s khaki-colored sofa. I love my sisters a lot, but nah.
4. She didn’t want to be a superhero nearly as much as Trish wanted her to be a superhero. Nor as much as Trish wanted (and wants) to be one. Trish even made her a superhero costume.
I’m going on recapping hiatus for the holiday, but I will be back in the New Year to complain about the Hope thing and the Jeri thing but to sing all the praises of Trish and Jessica and Luke Cage.