Netflix Retrospective: Jessica Jones episodes 1-3 review

Sorry it's late, but I can promise it has nothing to do with drink, so let's dive into the first 3 episodes of Jessica Jones

AKA Ladies Night

The first episode of a series really has a lot to go for, it’s got to introduce us to our main characters and relevant members of the supporting cast, if it’s a serialised show, which superhero shows tend to be (with animation to a lesser extent) it needs to set up the threats our hero is facing. All that whilst also being an entertaining episode in its own right. Fortunately, this episode succeeds in all of these.

So, the plot: When a case of a missing girl gives Jessica a reminder of painful memories she must decide whether or not she can muster the courage to save her, or whether saving her is even the right thing.

From the get go we see we’re dealing with someone very different from Daredevil, starting with the fact that Jessica Jones does not have a secret identity. She doesn’t show off her powers, just using them when the moments call for it, but she’s not hiding them either. And super-strength, providing you have control is fairly easy in that regard

Then we have the character of Jessica herself. She’s not branded as likeable exactly, she takes few prisoners, she’s pessimistic, she’s distant, she’s an alcoholic but, far from the struggling blind Catholic that is Matt Murdock

Some of her supporting cast are featured in this episode. The noisy neighbours and the drug addict are both pretty glossed over for this episode. More major roles come to the lawyer, Jeri, who clearly is having an affair with her assistant, although this plays out quickly than you might think.

We also have Luke Cage, aka Power Man from the comics. He owns a bar in this iteration, we’ll see how that plays out. Spoilers not well. There’s hinting that she may have a thing for him as we see her watching his ‘girlfriend’ and her husband.

We also have Trish ‘Patsy’ Walker who is our replacement for Carol Danvers, since she’s getting a movie, eventually. Her role isn’t all that important in this episode, aside reminding Jessica of her morals.

But the other thing, establishing the villain. They did that and they did that hard. Kilgrave aka The Purple Man (who is not yet purple) may not be physically present but we feel his influence throughout the episode. Whether by flashes resulting from Jessica’s PTSD or just glimpses of what he could do to that ending, that horrifying ending. It’s clear Kilgrave is a forced to be reckoned with. A good match for Jessica Jones

Rating 8.5/10

AKA Crush Syndrome

I’m not even sure what this title’s referring to

So in this episode, in order to help Hope gain hope (haha) Jessica wishes to convince Jeri that Kilgrave is real, and that means finding out the horrible details of how he survived the incident that she thought that originally killed him

Hope meanwhile isn’t very hopeful (I’ll stop these now) even going as far as to tell Jessica that she should kill herself to stop Kilgrave. Well, f*ck you too kid. We also get a proper introduction to annoying brat girl and his annoying brat twin brother: Robyn and Ruben, they’re annoying tw*t’s and I spend most minutes wishing for them to die, which will become awkward later, but not in this set of episodes.

Trish wants to help, and starts by trying to get Jessica a new door, it was broken in the first few minutes of the last episode. You sending a stranger to a house of someone with paranoia is never going to end well, and in this case ended up with a power tool in his arm. Good one Trish!

This episode once again barely features Kilgrave but does a lot to establish his threat level, from the capability to get a man to sacrifice his own kidneys (oh man is his mother crazy as f*ck) to get a surgeon to operate on him without putting him under and then there’s that visit to the house where he invites himself as a guest and gets the children to lock themselves in the cupboard.

But the anaesthetic bit. It seems that Kilgrave’s mind control shuts off when he’s surgically under. This is rule that will be continuously ignored throughout the course of the season. So… Yeah, this is kinda pointless

On the other hand, we also have the Luke Cage subplot. Because Jessica Jones’ house counted as part of the crime scene of Hope’s parents’ murder, they discovered photos of cage, believing he might’ve been the gun-dealer. Events lead to a nice action scene with the pair of them as we finally see unbreakable skin in action

Oh and Jeri’s wife found out about the affair. You know, we could’ve just gone straight from where we are, there’s not much added here to make those 2-3 scenes between the 3 go anywhere

Rating 8/10

AKA It’s called Whiskey

It seems like each title, rather than relating to exactly what happens in the episode, relates to line of dialogue within the story. Let’s see how that pans out

So, a full 7 minutes of this 52-minute episode is dedicated to Luke Cage and Jessica having sex and eating. I know you don’t have restrictions regarding episode length but… Bit excessive in my eyes, we’d seen enough in episode 1

But the meat of the episode. Wanting to drag sympathy to Hope’s case, Jessica mounts pressure on Jeri to start fighting her corner but without anything tangiable to back up hope’s case (I presume she was not recording the conversation she had with the Doctor last week) and with Jessica refusing to give testimony herself, she goes to Trish and ends up sending events in motion that begin to spiral out of control. Jessica is willing to do whatever it takes to get the surgical drug that can knock out Killgrave’s powers (except for when it doesn’t, but I’ll get to that)

Right, so we’re introduced to new member of, ahm “Team Jessica” in officer Simpson, the mentally unbalanced a**hole who’s a massive GIVE US A SEASON 2 AND WE’LL SHOW YOU WHAT HAPPENS. At least with Stick in Daredevil the threat was big enough that it could’ve easily been for the Defenders series, but this guy isn’t.

But in this episode, he’s just Kilgrave’s pawn, who goes to attack Trish, who proves self-defence lessons are almost pointless if you just let in a policeman. Although in fairness wouldn’t a regular policeman show his ID on arrival rather than having to be asked for it.

We get the first real showdown between Kilgrave and Jessica, and when I showdown I mean staring contest because she only has to look away for a few seconds and he’s gone, leaving an entire family (apart from the two kids who presumably died in a cupboard or something) to fight her, that worked.

Trish gets a significant focus this week, as she bravely denounces Kilgrave live on the radio whilst trying to defend Hope and validate her claims, the fact that it painted a target on her provided an interesting dilemma to force Jessica to steal the meds, which she did all too easily. Serious, the security in the hospitals are sh*t

Speaking of Jessica, this is the week we found out she killed Luke Cage’s wife whilst under Kilgrave’s control. It seems like it was this that allowed her to escape. Clearly this has to come back to haunt her but it does shed an interesting light on how things started here.

Rating 8/10

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Images/clips used in this review are from Marvel's Jessica Jones and belong to their respective owners. All images in this review are subject to fair use