Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones Season 2 Episodes 9-10

AKA Shark in the Bathtub, Monster in the Bed

I guess you’re hardly surprised that Chang is indeed the shooter, and he’s worked out that Alisa is in fact the killer, and I’m sure seeing her in the apartment with Jessica has not helped. We see the scene from his perspective as he sees that his assassination attempt failed and makes a run for it. Alisa is at the bottom of the stairs and is in quick pursuit, catching up with him, before he can do any lasting damage, Jessica catches up and knocks him out with the sedative.

With little choice, they bring him back and tape him up. Alisa wants to kill him and be done with it but Jessica is not happy with that option, she wants to figure out an alternative for Alisa to the Raft metahuman prison and until then she’s gonna keep him tied up, and she knows she has the leverage of busting him for the shooting attempt if he tries to bust them for kidnapping.

They all head to bed but Jessica can’t sleep until she figures out what to do. Hogarth and Inez are in bed together and flirting but Inez believes that she’ll be out the moment Hogarth is ‘healed.’ Jessica gets a knock on the door it’s Trish who’s come to berate her, it’s god knows what time in the morning by the way, add this onto the list of annoying sh*t Trish does.

Jessica can tell that she’s on something but before finding out they hear Alisa struggling from her night terrors. This gives Trish an excuse to leave but Jessica is becoming insistant on her calling her sponsor. Turns out Alisa managed to escape her cuffs and is in a sleep-walking state, Jessica manages to get her out of it but it’s becoming more and more clear that they need a different solution long-term.

Cut to Oscar dumping the trash and seeing the shattered glass from Jessica’s window. He pays a visit to Jessica, wanting in but Jessica keeps him at a distance ‘for his own safety.’ And just then Vido and his mother come around, and she’s not happy about any of it. Taking Vido away, dragging him, to be more specific. Apparently she does that at least once a week. Jessica tries to check in on Trish but she ignores him, and is apparently even less impressed to see that Griffin is back in a war-zone, or in front of a greenscreen version of it anyway.

Trish takes another shot of the inhaler and turns up at Hogarth’s completely unannounced. Erm, it was Malcolm who took her over to Hogarth’s and Jessica’s plan, when did Trish find out about this? She wants to put Inez on air to smoke out the killer but you might remember she was horrified by that idea not that long ago. Hogarth shuts her down and f*ck Trish for that entire scene.

Jessica brings up the accident and how she blames herself for it, but Alisa tells her not to worry, and wait, was it the mother’s ashes that were bagged, I swear it was the brother? Anyway, she flushes the bagged ashes down the toilet and talks about the pair of them moving away somewhere without extradition laws.

They’re interrupted by a call from Oscar, turns out this time Vido’s mom wasn’t making empty threats, she left her house with Vido and packed suitcases, heading to Peru, at least that’s what Oscar assumes. He needs Jessica’s help to track them down. They inject Chang with more sedative before heading out, Jessica does not want Alisa left alone with him.

Meanwhile, Hogarth has assured the ‘healer’s’ release from Prison and is there to pick him up. He’s not willing to heal her but Hogarth had accounted for that, citing 2 assaults he wasn’t charged and threatening to send him to a super-max penitentiary. He claims he needs energy and Chick-Fil-A is his poison of choice.

Meanwhile Trish is being abrasive on the radio. Skip. Jessica breaks the lock to the apartment and confirms that their passports are gone. She has past due credit card bills so her only option for travel payment is via their shared card for Vido related emergencies. He quickly finds she’s bought bus tickets on said card. Oh look, Stan Lee cameo, on the back of a bus, Excelsior.

The bus to montreal is leaving as they speak and Jessica and Alisa manage to stop the bus with their bare hands. Their feet must be on fire from all that friction. Oscar gets Vido and manages somehow to talk the mother which is impressive given how abrasive she was. Time for Hogarth to get her ‘treatment.’ Inez tells her it might not work, and you can guess that it won’t. Not that a super-healer is too unrealistic for this show, although you could argue it is, but everything about this just screams manipulation. Which is ultimately why this arc is so tragic, and why I really hate Dorothy. They can write characters who are not good people well, have them go through stories like this where they lose so much and have to re-evaluate themselves and the people around them.

Anyway, thanks to Trish Talk, Trish gets a phonecall, offering her a position of Live TV. This prompts Trish to try and take another shot from the inhaler but finds that it’s empty. Oscar says he’ll help her with Alisa if Jessica asks. Alisa asks to join her but before Jessica realises that Chang is awake. He agrees to overlook the kidnapping in exchange for silence about the shooting attempt but is not willing to let go of Alisa. She did murder his associate. Jessica doesn’t really have a choice, she calls Detective Costa and tells her that she’s here.

This sparks a violent outburst from Alisa, Jessica is injured in the outbreak but Chang manages to escape and Jessica eventually convinces Alisa to surrender.

It’s a satisfying enough episode, just feels like the subplots are spinning wheels at the moment

Rating 8/10

AKA Pork Chop

Alisa is taken to prison, in cuffs she could break out of in a matter of seconds. Hogarth and Jessica are waiting for her. But the prison guards won’t leave, and we’re introduced to Haliday, who I will call DMW, Dead Man Walking for the remainder of the episode. He’s your stereotypical asshole. Hogarth has come up with a way to improve her situation under certain stipulations.

Meanwhile, Trish is on her test screening and this is gonna be bad for her as her withdrawal sets in. The deal provides allows her to stay in the current prison, with the guards having access to her tranquilisers, her special bed and whatnot all being accounted for, and visitation, this in exchange for a full confession, including giving up Dr Morris, something Mellissa is adamantly against.

So after the disaster that was Trish’s test screening, she overhears someone talking about the female murderer being taken into custody and rushes off. Trish calls Jessica and it’s time to get everyone on the same page. But not before Malcolm has a hissy fit over it. Dude, your last interaction with Jessica was before all this sh*t started. Trish admits she was taking Simpson’s inhaler, reigniting her desire to be more like Jessica.

Malcolm of course, is still angry with himself for taking the inhaler and decides to cut himself off from Trish to ensure that never happens again. Oscar calls but Jessica opens up about her problems. Jessica is about to head out but Oscar provides her some much needed emotional support. Trish got the inhaler analyses and it contains a lot of toxic and redacted chemicals.

Jessica heads to Hogarth, asking her to try and delay the deal to buy her more time, Hogarth introduces her to the ‘healer,’ OK his name’s Shane but I don’t care, so I’ll keeping calling him the ‘healer.’ Jessica immediately finds this suspicious and Hogarth is trying to persuade her to dial back her approach on Dr Morris. Jessica says no.

DMW is an asshole and Alisa shows him who’s boss, for now. Jessica tracks down Dr Morris, her plan is get him to run somewhere where they can’t extradite him, making the confession worthless and preventing IGH documents falling into shady government hands. She takes some photos for a fake passport and the cat falls out of the bag as Morris reveals that he has no idea who the ‘healer’ is.

Trish talking with Alisa and making things worse… I… just put it on the list. And the subsequent talk with Jessica as well. F*ck handling anything with Tact and grace, and you can’t blame this one on the drugs. She goes to Malcolm and the it soon devolves to sexy time, Malcolm did a quick 180 didn’t he. Meanwhile DMW has retaliated by installing shock cuffs into her bed, and force-feeding her the chicken she’d refused to eat.

Jessica meets Hogarth at the prison the next morning, having signed the paperwork needed to make the deal, she will giving the confession tomorrow. Jessica tells Hogarth about the ‘healer’ being a fraud there and then. Hogarth initially refuses to believe them. Jessica sees marks on her arms and says she’ll do something about it.

Trish wants Malcolm’s help to find Morris before Jessica gets him off the hook. It turns out that Jessica was an idiot and kept location data on her phone for the photos, they have an immediate mean to track down Morris. Hogarth returns home to find her entire house ransacked. This is the point where this subplot elevates to becoming my favourite.

So, Jessica makes a call to find out more about DMW and finds out that he’s directly related to a spate of prisoner suicides. Trish and Malcolm arrive at the hotel and decide to wait it out, they don’t know which room he’s in and can’t knock door to door or he’ll have a chance to run. Unfortunately, they find him rather quickly.

Next thing for the list, Trish knocks Malcolm out and stuffs him in the boot. Jessica is in pursuit of DMW, she breaks into his house and begins to search but accidentally trips an alarm. She spots an animal head on the wall which is off centre and finds contained within the prisoner tags from those that committed suicide. DMW comes back, hits her repeatedly with his baton, Jessica blocks and eventually is able to strike back but the blow kills him.

This begins Trish’s rather sharp descent to becoming the worst thing ever, and the beginning of where the Hogarth subplot begins to gain momentum. Jessica’s plotline is honestly there to fill time and begin a callback for the next episode.

Rating 6.5/10