And now, the case of Luke Cage’s dead wife. In “AKA You’re a Winner,” Luke hires Jessica to investigate what appears to be a missing pothead but actually it’s stealthily about Luke trying to find out what happened to his wife. You remember Reva? Kilgrave ordered Jessica to kill her? And then he got hit by a bus right afterward, and Jessica’s failure to double-tap in that moment is what led us all to the events of this show?
The first problem with centering an episode on Reva is that we are all tired of the trope where the superhero is motivated by the brutal death of his wife. Since Reva’s one of a very small number of black ladies in this show, it’s particularly frustrating that she’s so unpresent in this show as a character, even though she is very extremely present as a plot device. “AKA You’re a Winner” brings all those issues to the forefront, and even Mike Colter’s flawless face and cuticles cannot unscowl my scowl.
The second problem with centering an episode on Reva is that we, the viewer, have already solved the mystery Luke is trying to solve, and that means that the tension has to live in the question of when and how Luke’s going to find out that Jessica’s the weapon Kilgrave used to kill his wife. The easiest and most sensible way for this to happen, of course, would be for Jessica to tell him. There is, in particular, a moment when Luke comes to her, all sorry and guilty that he didn’t believe her when she one time tried to sort of tell him about Kilgrave, and strongly emphasizing that the things she did under Kilgrave’s control aren’t her fault.
Believe me when I tell you that this scene was the death of Whiskey Jenny. “I’m a piece of shit,” says Jessica. “You have no idea what I’ve done.”
I HATE THIS TROPE, howled Whiskey Jenny.
“It doesn’t matter,” says Luke Cage. “It was him, it wasn’t you.”
THIS TROPE IS THE WORST TROPE IN THE WHOLE WORLD, Whiskey Jenny screamed.
Then Jessica still doesn’t tell him the truth, and then she and Luke have sex, and Whiskey Jenny died of rage, and now she is dead and I’m going to have to find a new podcast partner. Any volunteers?
Eventually, Jessica does tell the truth, like you always knew she would have to, and it is awful. Luke Cage says this:
and my whole binge-watching team went “ewwwwwwww.”1
While the A plot is grinding its tedious way to its inevitable conclusion, Hope Schlottman tries to procure an abortion in the B plot, Kilgrave having evidently impregnated her. This is remarkable mainly in how little anybody tries to talk her out of it (though the show seems to think we will need to be talked into siding with Hope, which I did not), but also because it gives us revolutionary new information about Pam and Jeri. Please help me parse this, friends. I missed it the first time around, and I fear I am misinterpreting it now.
Jessica calls Jeri to ask her to get an abortofacient for Hope, and she is rude to Pam when Pam answers the phone. Pam is wearing another wrap dress that made me go “Boobs! Boobs!” so drink, I guess, for that. When Jeri gets on the phone with Jessica, she defends Pam hotly, insisting that she wants to spend the rest of her life with Pam.
Now. On my first watch,2 I laughed at this scene and said we should just append “‘s boobs” to anything Jeri was saying about Pam because there was no way Jeri was for real that in love with Pam, or if she was, the show had signally failed to show it or make us care for it. But here’s what I missed.
After Jeri (having made this declaration of love) gets off the phone with Jessica, she reaches out for Pam’s hand in a sexy manner, and Pam says, “I want to. I really, really want to. But first, the divorce.” As she leaves the office, she looks back and says, very adorably, “I’m Catholic!” Am I interpreting this right? These two are not having a sexy sex affair, as I had been assuming? Jeri wants to have an affair,3 and Pam’s keeping it to kisses and snuggles in the limousine.
Y’all, I have misjudged Pam all this time. Pam is playing the long game with Jeri, Anne-Boleyn-style, and I LOVE IT.
Meanwhile, Kilgrave takes more minutes of screen time than are strictly necessary to buy Jessica’s childhood home. The one on Birch Street (the Birch Street of the cognitive behavioral exercises Jessica has been doing all this time to calm her PTSD). Not cool, Kilgrave.
Jessica breaks things: The padlock on the pot warehouse door. Some pot tables in the pot warehouse. Luke’s heart for real this time by not just GODDAMN TELLING HIM THE TRUTH IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Drinking game rules: None to add. Except if you are watching anything with me, drink when I comment on how attractive someone’s hands are. Mike Colter, for instance, has exCEPTionally well-tended cuticles. He has nice hands generally, but then his cuticles are like, really on point. It’s distracting. No wonder Jessica can’t get any work done when he’s around.