After the mesmerizing two-hander episode from last week, AKA Sin Bin is a bit of a letdown. It’s a perfectly serviceable piece of television in that it gets Jessica and Kilgrave from point A (he is captured) to point B (he is freed) without too much of the lagging and lying around that plague this show.
(Jessica Jones would have benefited by being ten episodes, rather than thirteen. Discuss.)
Compared to last week, which was nothing but beautiful character notes for Jessica and Kilgrave, while also advancing the plot in wonderful and surprising ways, AKA Sin Bin sets character-building to one side and focuses solely on the plot. Jessica has Kilgrave now, and she hopes to beat a confession out of him, for the camera. Of course this backfires, because Jessica — as we’ve seen before — doesn’t have it in her to play the long game, and Kilgrave plays nothing but.
He knows that he has nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by revealing the truth to Jeri or the camera, and he behaves accordingly. And in any case, as Jeri explains icily to Jessica, the confession won’t be any use if it occurs under duress; it has to be witnessed by an officer of the law.
This sounds like a case for: LESTER HOLT.
Lester Holt (okay okay his real name is Detective Clemons) is disinclined to acquiesce to Jessica’s request. He is two years away from retirement with his full pension, and he doesn’t have time to be chasing after ghosts.1 But Jessica gets him to come to the Cage Warehouse and handcuffs him to a wall so he can watch Kilgrave reacting to the other half of Jessica’s plan, which is:
HIS PARENTS. Using clues from the video of Kilgrave’s tragic childhood, Jessica’s able to track down his parents. As extraordinary luck would have it, they are currently in New York. His mother has been attending Malcolm’s survivors’ group anonymously, and Jessica recognizes her from her picture. This is exceptionally convenient as plot points go, but since I don’t want this to be dragged out any more than it needs to be, let’s say it’s fine.
The Official Plan is to let Kilgrave’s parents in to talk to him, have his mother betray him by stabbing him suddenly, and then watch as he mind-controls them for the camera. But oh no! When Jessica punches the electrocute-everyone button to stop Kilgrave’s mother from stabbing herself to death with her Knife o’ Betrayal, nothing happens!
GUESS WHY.
Okay, here is my problem with this. My problem is not that it was foolish of Jessica to leave the Neutral Evil Jeri alone with Kilgrave.2 It’s not even that I don’t believe Jeri would be stupid enough to trust Kilgrave.3 It’s that I find it absolutely impossible to believe that Jeri couldn’t think of any other way out of the Wendy situation.
The premise of Wendy that we are asked to buy into is that she is so extremely good and virtuous that Jeri has no way of blackmailing her out of the proposed divorce settlement.4 And we are asked, further, to believe that Jeri cannot think of any single alternative method of stopping Wendy from doing exactly what she wants.
Y’all, before I continue, I want you to understand that the following gif is an accurate depiction of the inside of my brain.
Jeri, by contrast, is supposedly the sharkiest lawyer in town. And yet: Threaten Wendy’s friends (you know who they are). Threaten her pet projects you’ve been funding (she cares about those). Threaten her relatives (they can’t all be living blameless lives). See how easy this is? Are you seriously telling me that Jeri Hogarth was able to think of zero of these ideas? There aren’t elements of Wendy’s life that she’s unwilling to live without that Jeri can hold over her head? BULLSHIT.
Anyway, whatever. Because of Jeri’s signal failure of imagination, Kilgrave is able to murder his mother and escape from his cage. Jessica grabs him to stop him from leaving; he orders her to let go; and she doesn’t. This triggers a flashback to when Kilgrave ordered her to come back to him after she killed Reva, and she didn’t do it, and it’s like, a big revelation moment.
Except, I mean — didn’t we already know this? We have seen that flashback a few times now. Is Jessica only just now realizing that she has some measure of immunity to Kilgrave’s powers of persuasion? BECAUSE WE ALL ALREADY KNEW THAT.
All in all, a frustrating episode, which brings to a head a number of the plot problems this show has been struggling with along, while doing very little of the character and theme work that I enjoy.
Oh, and Simpson heals mysterious quickly from his bomb-induced injuries, with the help of a mysterious doctor and some mysterious pills. Snore.
Jessica breaks things: NOTHING. Jessica breaks NOTHING in this episode, if you can imagine such a world. By contrast:
Trish breaks things: The glass cell where Kilgrave is being kept, in an attempt to stop Kilgrave. This does not work. It opposite of stops him. Good try, though, Trish. Your heart was in the right place.
Lester Holt breaks things: His goddamn wrist, trying to get out of his handcuffs to obey Kilgrave’s command to come with him. Oh Lester Holt. Oh honey. Stay with us, baby. We love you, stay with us, stay aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive.
- Hands up everyone who heard this line and immediately knew Lester Holt was going to die. ↩
- It was, but Jessica has a lot on her plate right now, and I’m not surprised she didn’t think of that. ↩
- I can maybe buy that she would, although it’s a stretch. ↩
- Never mind that there’s nothing stopping Wendy from releasing the damning emails after she takes the divorce settlement — a consideration absolutely nobody ever mentions. Ugh I can’t with this plotline. ↩