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.

The post Jessica Jones, Episode 5: AKA The Sandwich Saved Me appeared first on Reading the End.

The case of the week¹ reflects this. What seems — once Jessica finally decides that Jessica Hecht from Friends isn’t a Kilgrave henchman² — to be a routine infidelity case turns into a trap: Jessica Hecht lost her mother when the aliens invaded New York, and she’s looking for revenge on someone with superpowers. Jessica’s just the superpowered person she happens to be able to find.

Unsurprisingly, Jessica can’t with this.

Nobody on this show will ever again remember that Jessica is supposed to be a private eye. Jessica Hecht from Friends‘s bigotry and annoying voice turn out to be functionally the last nail in the coffin of Jessica Jones’s burgeoning(ish) career as a gumshoe.

Her nonpaying career as a Kilgrave-tracker-downer, however, continues apace. Following last week’s revelation that someone has been photographing her, Jessica spends most of AKA 99 Friends feeling haunted and watched. There’s one scene in particular, where she’s thinking of Kilgrave and walking through the streets of New York, and she’s hyperaware of every noise on the street, from car horns to catcalls. Knowing that she’s being watched and followed, every tiny thing around her feels like a potential threat (: The Being a Lady Story.).

In a law office across town, the beautiful and talented Carrie-Anne Moss is setting herself up for ruin. From the minute she says this,

you know things are going to go south. Kilgrave isn’t reducible to his power, and Jeri’s inability to remember that won’t work out well for her.³

Pam’s boobs continue to be shockingly prominent for a business law firm office where important law business is conducted, but she acquires another attribute besides boobs: sometimes disagreeing with Jeri.⁴ When Jeri takes Pam to lunch at the same restaurant where she proposed to her wife, and then they run into said wife (Wendy! still a jerk!), Jeri says, “She does not get this goddamn restaurant.” And Pam says, “Yeah. She does.”

Great work, Pam! Way to stand up to your sharky girlfriend when she’s in the wrong! Also, and I’m saying this as a friend, you might consider finding some dresses that show less of your boobs. And hey, since I’m giving you advice anyway, don’t date your married boss probably. That doesn’t work out well even for people who don’t live in universes where mind control is a thing.

After Trish’s near-death experience last time, Jessica and Simpson (you remember him? the cop who got Kilgraved to kill her last time?) both do their best to protect her. Simpson brings her an illegal gun and chats to her for hours outside her apartment door, which culminates in some hearty sexing.⁵ Jessica talks her into giving Kilgrave an on-air apology for what she said about him last time. Guess whose plan works out.

Y’all, I just love Trish. Even though she makes some choices in this episode that I wouldn’t’ve (accepting Simpson’s present in a box; chatting to Simpson through the door; letting Simpson into her apartment even though last time he was there he tried to kill her; sexing it up with Simpson), I love the trust and admiration between her and Jessica. Trish tries to make Simpson feel better by saying, “What Kilgrave did to you, he did to Jessica. It doesn’t matter how strong you are.” Lady frieeeeeeeeeeeeeeends!

Jessica breaks things: The padlock on a building where Jessica Hecht from Friends is practicing her gun-shootin’ skills. A glass panel in Jeri’s office when Jeri starts getting too sympathetic/interested about Kilgrave. Some plaster, a chair, a mirror, a bed, the radiator, and some very attractive double doors in Jessica Hecht from Friends‘s creepy murder building. The lock on Malcolm’s apartment door.

Drinking game rules: I was going to say, Drink if someone comes to Jessica with a case; but she literally will never have one again after this. So it would be sort of a waste of a drinking game rule.

Watching TV with Whiskey Jenny: When Simpson helps Jessica find out who’s following her, he says “I’ve got your six.” Jessica rolls her eyes at this. Whiskey Jenny and I both shrieked “HE HAS HER SIX! TEAM-UP TEAM-UP!” That…is not ultimately exactly how this plotline ended up going.

The post Jessica Jones, Episode 4: AKA 99 Friends appeared first on Reading the End.

The latest of Marvel’s Netflix offerings, Jessica Jones is based on Brian Michael Bendis’s early-aughts comic Alias. Jessica, played by Krysten Ritter, is a mildly super-powered private investigator in New York City, trying to get away from an unspecified past trauma that’s left her with nightmares, insomnia, and a budding case of alcoholism.

Like its predecessor Daredevil, Jessica Jones is stylish as all hell. The noir influences are obvious from the jump, with camera clicks and Jessica’s voice-over across the first shots of the pilot. She gives us a weak opening salvo¹, and the episode suffers from the task of introducing all its core characters and still fitting a plot in there. (It redeems itself at the end, though. We’ll come back to that.)

We meet Malcolm (Eka Darville), a perpetually stoned guy who lives in Jessica’s building, and Jeryn Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), a high-powered defense attorney who is sleeping with her secretary, Pam, and who sometimes tosses Jessica a case. That is really all the descriptive information you’re ever going to need about those two people.

There’s also Luke Cage (Mike Colter), a really really hot bartender who eye-sexes Jessica all night at his bar, after which they return to his place for some actual sex. When they’re not flirting or having sex, Jessica’s spying on him, for reasons as yet unclear. Reports of Mike Colter and Krysten Ritter’s superb chemistry were not at all exaggerated.

All of this is rather poorly integrated into the episode’s main plot, which will also be the series’s main plot: A centrally-cast Midwestern couple, the Shlottmans, hire Jessica to look into the disappearance of their daughter, Hope.² Two interviews and a couple of flashbacks later, Jessica figures out that Hope’s been taken by the same guy who traumatized the hell out of Jessica herself before his apparent death in a bus accident.

(Obviously Jessica doesn’t realize she’s in a comic book. In comic books nobody is ever really dead.)

As you will know if you have read Alias, or if you have friends who have read Alias and had long conversations with you about whether this goddamn show was just going to be another goddamn rapey bullshit festival³, the villain of the piece has powers of mind control. Jessica, like the practical-minded woman we know her to be, decides to skip town.

Which brings us to Trish.

Very often, when the internet says that someone is a beautiful cinnamon roll, too good for this world, too pure, I say, PIFFLE. But the thing about Trish is that she actually is.⁴ If you are watching the pilot of Jessica Jones for the first time, do not judge Trish on the basis of this episode alone. In this episode, she’s being Jessica’s conscience in a very uncool manner, where Jessica’s like “I have to leave town, this can’t happen to me again”⁵ and Trish is like:

As the viewer, you may see this and think, Wow, that’s very not cool of Trish to tell a rape survivor that it’s her responsibility to stop a guy she has no power to stop. And maybe you’ll turn against Trish. I am here to tell you that I find your reaction perfectly fair, yet I urge you to hang in there, because Trish will never, ever say anything so bullshitty again. Actually she will turn out pretty great. Promise.

Naturally, Jessica does not take off for foreign climes, but stays in New York to rescue Hope, and this is where we officially find out about Kilgrave’s mind control powers. Jessica finds Hope lying on a hotel bed in a puddle of her own urine, unable to move because Kilgrave told her not to. It’s a cleverly disturbing scene, as Jessica drags a screaming, fighting Hope off the bed and out of the hotel room. The viewer knows (and Hope knows, and Jessica knows) that this is rescue, but it looks like assault.

Of course, since I don’t need more scenes that look like assault, I vastly preferred the quiet moment that follows. Here we see Jessica at her softest, offering Hope the same mental exercises⁶ that we’ve seen her doing to calm her own fears. Hope’s parents arrive, tearful with relief, and for a moment it looks like we’re going to get a happy ending out of all this.

Except, as we’ll see over and over in this series, Jessica isn’t quite careful enough. She’s smart as a whip, but she’s also sloppy, and the Shlottmans are dead in the elevator before she can do anything about it. It’s a devastatingly effective end to a slightly up-and-down pilot.

Jessica Breaks Things: 1. The glass in her office/apartment door, which will become a recurring theme in the series. 2. A guy’s camera maybe?, when she’s investigating Hope — but the camera might be fine, really, so the episode’s primary casualty is that damn door.

Drinking Game Rules: Take a drink every time someone tells Malcolm to shut up because he’s high. If you’re drinking wine or beer, take a drink for voice-over; if you’re drinking anything stronger, probably best to leave that rule alone.

The post Jessica Jones, Episode 1: AKA Ladies’ Night appeared first on Reading the End.