Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 2 Episodes 1-2

The Defenders was not a good show, even at only 8 episodes it was boring, so will things change in its aftermath. The first show to come out was the second season of Jessica Jones. There are no guest stars and any reference to the series is purely tangential. I get the need for a show like this to stand on its own but I feel that entirely misses the point of these crossovers, to have knock-on effects for each individual character. Only Iron Fist and Daredevil really capitalise on this, but before we get to those, we have to start with Jessica Jones. Can she hold her own without the not purple Purple Man, let’s take a look

AKA Start at the Beginning

Jessica Jones has one of the better opening title sequences, but it does go on a bit. It’s another dark night in New York City and we start with this pizza delivery guy, obviously it’s a cheater who Jessica Jones is working to expose. She shows her client the photos as he nonchalantly walks in, as he heads out back, the client asks Jessica to kill him, offering to triple her fee. Jessica obviously intends to do no such thing and exposes her intent.

The client calls her a hypocrite, saying she’d kill Kilgrave but not him. Jessica intimidates her into backing down before leaving with a pizza and presumably no paycheck. Meanwhile, Trish is playing her old character, Patsy, at a kid’s birthday party. She can’t sing for sh*t. She was doing this in exchange for a file, I guess her radio show still pays the bills then. She reads the file and discovers something shocking. As she walks home someone appears to be following her.

Jessica is watching a film on the roof, go figure. Trish meets up with her and shows the file, there’s 20 days missing between Jessica’s accident and being assigned a hospital bed. There’s also a bit about how Trish championing Jessica (even unintentionally) on the radio is making life difficult for Jessica. If only it remained unintentional.

Jessica tells her to stop and let the past remain where it is. I honestly do see the logic here, sounds like it’s a hell of a rabbit hole and that’s obviously where they’re going. Remember Malcolm, he recovered from drug addiction in the quickest time known to man and turned his life around in a number of days, he’s Jessica’s assistant now and gets her out of bed for her latest round of clients.

Adopted sons, Skrulls (except they’re not actually bad guys in the MCU apparently), some chemical factory making people sick, a nerdy guy who believes people are out to kill him because he has powers, they called him the Whizzer, he apparently has super speed but can only run when scared. This is supposed to seem like a joke but he’s deadly serious.

With Jessica off-handly dismissing all the clients, great way to earn money we’re introduced to the asshole of the week, Pryce Cheng of Cheng Consulting. He wants to absorb Alias Investigations but Jessica refuses before he makes the details clear anyway. Speaking of new characters, we’re next introduced to Jessica’s new neighbours: Oscar and his son Vido. The fridge is in Jessica’s way and she moves it, with Vido very excited about that, much to Jessica’s annoyance.

Hogarth is giving a speech for women in law, she’s received an award for her legal work. She sits with legal partners who have agreed to settle a lawsuit by Pam against the firm. Hogarth was adamant not to settle but every second the battle goes on, it looks to sour their clients. It’s evident now that neither of the other partners like Hogarth all that much, only tolerating her because of the clients she brings in.

It seems Trish has not taken the message from Jessica and is doing a segment on the effects of trauma on powered people and specifically discussing repressed memories. Her boss is down there because the ratings and call-ins on Trish Talk are sliding. He has some suggestions but they’re mostly shallow sh*t and Trish wants to be all important and stuff.

Jessica is spying on Cheng, hoping for blackmail material so he’d leave her alone but he makes it clear pretty quickly that he knows she’s watching. Trish is at Jessica’s apartment and has brought with her the ashes of Jessica’s family. And it’s started pretty early, I already hate her! She literally did a segment on how trauma effects powered people. She is literally bringing up that trauma and for what, to boost her ratings? F*ck her!

Jessica’s reaction is harsh but not unreasonable. She doesn’t want to remember, and will cut her out if that’s what it takes. That’s ominous foreshadowing for you. As Trish leaves, a hooded figure watches, taking a breath of some inhaler. Jessica begins going through the photos but instead brings out her family’s ashes and drinks to their memory.

She wakes up, as a client has cancelled on her and they’ve received something from Cheng Consulting, basically Cheng’s life story. The Whizzer tries to get protection but Jessica shuts him down again. Hearing that Cheng has stolen one of her clients, she gets even by finding the lost dog of one of his clients and loudly advertising herself in the middle of his building.

He happens to say some words about Kilgrave that set Jessica off. What a f*cking asshole. Jessica throws him through a window, and backhands him, she stops short of throwing any meaningful punches, not that the guy doesn’t deserve it. Still, it’s enough to get her arrested. She gets probation and court-ordered anger management but Trish pays her bail. Jessica is worried that facing her demons will ultimately make her worse.

We’re introduced to Griffin, Trish’s partner and a TV reporter. Jessica urges Trish to stop looking into her past or stay away. Griffin is a nice enough guy but has no idea what’s going on. Trish spots the hooded figure through a set of rotating doors and claims he looks familiar. Mr Cheng approaches and now believes his best course of action is suing Jessica Jones and putting her out of business. He was ultimately hired by Hogarth to get her help.

The Whizzer demonstrates that does in fact have super speed as he nearly bumps into Jessica Jones, now with a loaded gun. A fight kinda ensues which results in the ashes of one of Jessica's relatives being scattered into the room. The Whizzer runs off, fearing he may have p*ssed her off there and Jessica jumps out her window in pursuit. He walks under some scaffolding, which collapses and dumps debris on him, ultimately ending his life.

Jessica finds him impaled on a metal rod. Oscar and Nido happen to spot the body from across the road. Oscar covers his eyes as Jessica hobbles away.

Hogarth has an appointment with the Doctor who gives her some bad news. We don’t hear what just yet, but you can see the colour drain from Hogarth’s face as she’s given the news. Hogarth quickly becomes one of my favourite characters this season. Jessica is sitting, crying about the day’s events, Malcolm starts clearing it up. Jessica has the Whizzer’s bag, there’s anti-psychotic in a dosage so high it would kill most people. She notes that there’s no pharmacist the prescribed them, nor the name of a doctor, just the company that made them.

IGH comes up, Industrial Garments and Handling, clearly a front for their nefarious schemes (potentially) Jessica breaks in finding the place largely abandoned, but she does find some equipment which she takes photos of and a room with a wall likely broken by super-strength. She begins to flash back to be taken through the corridor during those missing days. She remembers a badly burned figure grabbing her.

This episode is a lot, and most of it good, thankfully.

Rating 8/10

AKA Freak Accident

We open at a bar and Jessica is doing what she does best, drinking her sorrows away. She calls Trish but it’s Griffin who picks up, so Jessica tells him it can wait. As she’s leaving a guy compliments her, naturally PG-13 sex follows. Malcolm has tracked the lease of the building to Dr Koslov, which Trish found out at the beginning so we’re essentially still nowhere when it comes to this investigation.

Malcolm gets some texts from someone called Lanette. Jessica takes a taxi to a neighbourhood suspiciously similar to the one Kilgrave took her in the last season. She’s tracked down Koslov, who has private security patrolling the perimeter. Doing this in broad daylight might not have been her best plan.

She’s caught but invited inside, with the doorman believing she’s one of his patients, which she kind of is. It turns out Koslov is dead, having died in a freak car accident, this is I guess a wake for him. She wonders around the house flashing back to the wake of her own family, with Dorothy telling her she should cry.

Griffin and Trish are meeting up with Dorothy, Griffin bails after Dorothy arrives. Trish is after someone called Max who was a donor at the hospital. Dorothy is reluctant, and tells her to focus on her dwindling ratings but she relinquishes the details none-the-less.

Hogath is getting a phone-call from Cheng but her news has rather put a damper on her thoughts about suing Jessica. She’s stopped by a woman who asks if she wants to party and Hogarth replies that she does. Jessica’s house tour gets her into Koslov’s office, where she begins checking things out, she finds a photo with him and Simpson. One of Koslov’s other patients, wheelchair bound attacks, Jessica holds him off and they agree that his death was no accident. 

Jessica theorises that whoever killed Whizzer also killed him. The other guy thinks that Simpson killed him, Jessica’s surprised to hear that he’s still alive and whilst I knew he was, I’m not thrilled at the prospect of seeing him again.

Oh yeah, it’s pretty much confirmed here that Trish’s stalker is Simpson, who’s got a gun on his seat, and I don’t mean a hand-gun. Jessica returns home and showers, discovering that Malcolm has returned her relative’s ashes into a plastic bag. She puts the ashes on her bookshelf and begins research on Simpson and The Whizzer, seeing if she can connect the two. She finds a set of keys in the Whizzer’s bag but before she can act on it, two detectives show up and ask about the Whizzer’s death. If they’d come inside and seen his bag, it would’ve been trouble so Jessica takes them to Oscar

But Oscar pretends he never saw it and when you find out why you’re going to hate his guts. Malcolm, in bed with someone or another, gets a phone-call from Trish, asking for a meet, and to not tell Jessica. Jessica finds the Whizzer’s apartment and finds a laptop. She’s viewing some videos when the NYPD arrive, she escapes out a window. Hogarth takes whatever drugs she was being offered and kissing a random woman.

Malcolm meets with Trish on a movie set, presumably we’re here to see Max. So, turns out Oscar isn’t happy to talk to the police because he believes that it would have an adverse effect on his custody battle. Being brought up on charges for lying to the police would likely have a worse effect, just sayin.

Jessica’s investigation into the Laptop reveals that the Whizzer had contacted Trish, saying he’d appear on Trish Talk to reveal the truth about everything. Max was… is a sexual predator and f*ck this got depressing quickly. Malcolm was hiding and recording the conversation the whole time. Jessica goes to Trish’s apartment but only finds Griffin. He doesn’t know much but it’s enough to worry him.

Jessica calls Dorothy but that ultimately amounts to nothing. Malcolm confronts Max and breaks his nose, so this goes nowhere. Jessica instead breaks into Dorothy’s house and forces her to talk. Hogarth wakes up the next morning to a knock on the door to Mr Cheng, this is ultimately pointless. I suppose it’s enough to get Hogarth to stop partying and get her friends to leave, although soon after she spills some red wine and begins crying again.

Jessica arrives at the studio but Simpson and Trish have already met in a scene I skipped over, turns out he can take a bullet. Jessica finds Trish’s bag and a blood splatter, she follows the trail into a studio, where Trish has Simpson tied up. He’s not responsible for either of the murders, he’s not strong enough to do it and was only trying to protect Trish.

Incidentally, making Simpson back into a sympathetic character is an interesting twist, wasted as you’ll soon see. The lights go out, implying the killer is in there with him. Jessica unties him and Trish gives him back his inhaler but it’s all for nought as he’s quickly killed and the killer escapes. So, they brought him back just to kill him? That’s a bit of a waste.

This is another uncomfortable episode, none of the main plot-lines progress much so it feels less satisfying this time around

Rating 7/10