Thursday, June 7, 2018

Jessica Jones: “AKA The Middle Chunk”

As v/in Diesel would say, it’s about fuhmbuly.
I’ve been watching the middle chunk of Jessica Jones Season 2, but not writing about it. Partly because we blew through them fairly quickly (through episode 9) and partly because the middle chunk deals almost exclusively with two plot developments, and I’m still not sure how I feel about them.


First of all, the superpowered murderer cleaning up after the evil doctors is...Jessica’s mother. Not dead after all, healed by the same process that healed Jessica, but because her injuries were more severe, she has more mental problems and more power. Because of this, Jessica was led to believe she was dead.

This is one of those plot turns that’s very well executed, but that I dislike at its core. A phrase I’ve been thinking of in regards to The Last Jedi comes to mind - a direction you disagree with is not the same as incompetence. I don’t like that it’s her mom. Partly because I’m exhausted by the use of family in superhero shows and partly because it throws wrenches into the history and mythology of the character, and it remains to be seen whether or not it’s for a good reason.

Sure, getting some clarity about her past could certainly get to the root of some of Jessica Jones’ dysfunction, but what’s the endgame? Is the show trying to bring us a healthier Jessica, or is it just playing, knowing that we love the hard drinking, no-fucks, alienating character the way she is? So the jury’s still out. As of right now, she’s just turned her mom in to the police.

The other big plot point is Trish’s addiction to the Nuke steroids. Again, it’s a direction that’s well-executed and totally plausible given Trish’s past and her particular motivations. Again, I don’t like it very much. Again, this is less the fault of this particular show and more the fault of other shows who’ve done similar things for a long time.

And again, I’m not sure where it’s going and if that justifies it. Is Trish going to come out of this changed, in a better place, or as Hellcat? Or is it just a wringer to put the character through? She’s just run out of the steroids after the found inhaler ran dry (after an implausible number of doses, mind you) so we’ll see.

In subplot land, Hogarth got the healer to try to cure her ALS and it (I’m assuming) didn’t work. And Jessica and Oscar have almost a kind of sort of relationship.

It’s all entertaining enough, but again, it’s not a direction i really wanted to see.

1 comment:

  1. I'm with you on the mother thing. It was a bad twist but they did so well to mitigate the eye roll I would have had otherwise.

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