Jessica Jones Never Says "I Love You"

So, I had three shows that I binged over the holidays with a mind to write posts about all three of them. Those three were The Man in the High Castle, Making a Murderer, and Jessica Jones. All of which your TV Sluts have just covered. Sigh. I present, with apologies, my take on Jessica Jones anyway with the promise to get on my game for my next post and make it on something that we haven't already run our collective mouths about.

Cards on the table: While I’ve largely liked and enjoyed (nearly) all of Marvel’s combined movies (that would be the Iron Man/Captain America/Avengers oeuvre that regularly dominates the world’s box offices), I’ve never loved any of them. They’re too slick, too formulaic, too safe. They’re solid entertainment, surely, but there’s never any thought that they’re anything other than animated picture books with no real stakes or consequences for any of the characters. Marvel’s TV shows have done a better job at building actual characters, but I’ve still been hard-pressed to watch any of them and really commit.

All that said, I frickin’ love Jessica Jones. I’m not sure how they pulled it off, but the show’s creators came up with a series that fleshes out the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a believable and interesting way while subverting that universe at the same time. And it’s incredible to watch.

Break out your Veronica Mars references. They're all accurate.

Before I say more, here’s the requisite backstory you need if you’re not steeped in these characters: Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is a sorta superhero who tried to make a go of being heroic at one time and it just never really worked out for her. She now uses her smarts, considerable strength, and not-at-all mastered ability of flight (she calls it “more like controlled falling”) as a private eye, albeit one who has yet to make too much of an impact. As such, she is outside the superhero game. She has no costume, no fancy globe-trotting adventure fighting large Evil Empires. What she does have is an enemy in the form of Kilgrave (David Tennant) who can compel anyone listening to his voice to do whatever he tells them to do. Jessica herself is a former victim of Kilgrave’s, having been compelled to be his companion before breaking free.

And right there you have the seeds of what makes Jessica Jones so interesting to watch. This is a show about a hero who has PTSD and has turned into her own best self-destruction machine trying to deal with it, hiding her damage in violence, cynicism, detachment, and literally gallons of hard alcohol. And while both the noir and superhero genres have their fair share of heroes with a dark past, Jessica Jones elevates both by calling out the horrors of her past more than is typically done. She’s a rape survivor, the only member of her family to make it out of a fatal accident, and a manipulator who veers closely to doing to others what was done to her.

Actual excerpt from the comic detailing Jessica and Kilgrave's interactions. Archie, it ain't.

Jessica as a character fits nicely into the anti-hero trope, but the show consistently moves her beyond a caricature and into someone who feels real. Her rape is a great example; writers often make the mistake of using a female character’s rape as a way of depowering her to exploit her vulnerability. In a lot of writer’s minds, rape = Strong Female Character. Jessica Jones avoids this by exploring how affected Jessica as a person is by her captivity, particularly given that it was a captivity that invaded her mind first and foremost. Her physical and mental rape isn’t something that motivates her; if anything she’s running from it. Which is to say, she’s behaving like a real human person and not a convenient backstory generator.

A show anchored by a fully-fleshed out female character is, by itself, almost unseen even in our supposedly enlightened times. Now consider that the other lead characters in this show are a black man (Luke Cage, a perfectly cast Mike Colter), a second white woman (Trish Walker played by Rachel Taylor), a lesbian woman (Carrie-Anne Moss), and another black man (Eka Darville) with a primary assist from a Latina woman (Rosario Dawson, reprising her Daredevil role) and you’ve got a cast not normally assembled. Only one main character is a white man with one other white man in a supporting role. For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has too often veered into looking like it was filmed in the same New York that was occupied by the cast of Friends, this is remarkable. And like Jessica, the other characters more often than not defy the traditional ways that they are represented, allowing them to have their own stories.

Consider this: the show has a woman and a black man, two populations that are traditionally expected to be docile and unobtrusive in “polite” society, to actually get violently angry. Jessica doesn’t just fight to protect herself; sometimes she does it simply because she’s pissed and needs to hit someone. Her on-again, off-again love interest Luke’s anger is portrayed more righteously, but just the image of a large, intimidating black man being mad is itself subversive given that it’s shown to a presumably majority white audience. (It’s worth noting that this same construction was illustrated even more explicitly this fall in DC’s Supergirl in what was probably one of the best scenes that show has put out yet.)

That sound you're hearing is Donald Trump supporters freaking out over this.

The feminist interpretations of this show are clearly everywhere. The motif of Kilgrave’s commands to Jessica that she smile more will on their own launch a thousand women’s studies theses. What really made me fall for the show though had to do with how they integrated this punky little story into the larger MCU narrative. I said earlier that the show both made the Marvel universe bigger while subtly smacking it across the face at the same time. It accomplished this by allowing consequences to actions that actually raise the stakes of the story and establish tension. Unlike the big movies, you can watch Jessica Jones and not be sure what’s going to happen to the characters. Survival isn’t an assured outcome and even if a character lives, he or she may not be able to overcome what has happened. Jessica and her compatriots are underdogs in the truest sense. They’re the characters literally crushed by their big screen counterpart’s actions, as several characters make clear when they outline the people they lost in the Avengers’ destruct-a-thon battle for New York in their movie. The show is an antidote to the high-contrast, fluffy spectacle of the movies.  If the Marvel movies feel like they’re written by comic book writers, Jessica Jones feels like it’s written by the staff of Orphan Black. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s also worth mentioning that this is the first, yes first, of all of Marvel’s productions to feature a female lead character. Scarlet Johannsen’s Black Widow hasn’t even managed to get her own movie yet.

"We're both multi-faceted adults with independent stories. So, should we talk about a man right now or...?"

To be sure, Jessica Jones has its flaws. The story takes off like a rocket and finishes like an explosion, but unfortunately there’s a little sputtering in the middle when the show seems to circle itself needlessly. A few storylines never quite take off; Kilgrave wants photos of Jessica enough that he manipulates the people around her to provide him with them covertly but once he’s found out the reason for this is never really allowed to breathe. Likewise, some of Jessica’s neighbors seem tossed in more to provide things for the show to do rather than actually serve the narrative. In general, the pacing of the show can become uneven at times. For what the show manages to pull off, however, it’s kind of brilliant.

So far, Marvel/Netflix have been mum on whether or not they’ll green light a second season for the show. Netflix is notorious for keeping its ratings close to its chest, so it’s hard to get a sense of how well the show performed in the traditional sense, although critical response has been largely very positive and the fan response was equally upbeat. What it will likely come down to is the extent to which Marvel is willing to deviate from its established schedule of shows with Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders, and Daredevil’s second season already in the pipeline. And while Jessica has been intended to play a role in the upcoming The Defenders series, it’s still unclear of the next time we’ll see her or get more from her story. 

Jessica Jones: The TV Slut Chat

After binge watching Netflix's Jessica Jones all weekend, fellow TV Slut, Ben, and I sat down and had a good old fashioned chat about it. It's mostly Ben using big words and having deep thoughts and me acting like a fool (typical day at the office), but I think we occasionally come up with some insightful things to say. Enjoy!

Maggie Cats(M): So what did you think of Jessica Jones?

Benjamin (B): I liked it a lot. I think I liked it more than Daredevil, which is saying something. The first thing I think about, though, when I read all the think-pieces on Jessica Jones, is that I feel calling it a "noir" is kind of on the wrong track, thematically.It's really blurring the lines between a detective story and a horror story which involves detective work, like The Ring.

M: I agree with all that and getting back to Daredevil briefly, it's clear that the shows both exist in the same world, but their "heroes" are wildly different. Jessica Jones is even darker and bleaker...and she's a type of hero we haven't seen before (at least in the Marvel cinematic universe). I love how broken, traumatized, and scared she is. She's one of the most powerful women in the world and she's basically jumping at shadows and drinking herself into oblivion.

B: Frankly, except for some cop shows which (mostly deservedly) had only one season before being consigned to Netflix (e.g. Hack), we don't have crime-fighters who are basically messes.

M: Exactly. The entire season is really about her finding her own agency again and learning to trust people. I deal with PTSD a lot in my job, and in my lay opinion, they did a nice job with a realistic portrayal of someone with this type of trauma. Well, not mind-control trauma, but you know what I mean. We don't get a lot of THAT in my line of work.

B: I thought that was all pretty good, too. I was a little worried up until about episode 8 that Jessica Jones, for plot reasons, seemed to have it too well together, but then she did some really dumb self-destructive stuff that you do when you can't keep it together.

M: EXACTLY. And the one thing the writers had to do to make the viewer buy into  this season was establish why you couldn’t just shoot Kilgrave and call it a day. And I think that's why Hope was such an important character. Kilgrave had to stick around to get Hope off the murder rap--which clearly represented Jessica's one chance at redemption as well. After all, without her the show would be over in one episode. "Jessica tracks down the guy who violated her and puts a bullet in his head." Done. So how do you keep the story going? Come up with a compelling reason to make her want to keep Kilgrave alive.

B: It's also true that, until Jessica Jones gets Kilgrave to run amok in NYC, if she just killed him, no one would really believe her about his powers and therefore other than Trish they wouldn't believe that she didn't want to do all the stuff Kilgrave told her to do. Many of the people in Jones' orbit - I'm thinking Hogarth and Cage primarily - only give lip service to, "oh, yeah, Kilgrave can control minds" until they encounter him directly.

M: Everyone told Jessica that they understood Kilgrave was bad and the things he did were horrible. But nobody REALLY understood the full extent of it until they were victims of his powers themselves. It's another thing that felt very real and powerful; until you have experienced something like that, you can't really appreciate the true horror. I think the guy who was forced to give up his coat on the subway clearly had it the worst. I mean, can you IMAGINE? Oh, the humanity.

B: Note how he kept going to the meetings, though. Not being able to be an asshole when he wanted to really took a lot out of him.

M: The show is certainly dark and I wouldn't call it funny, but there are little moments like that are funny in a kind of Fargo-"aren't people ridiculous" type of manner.

B: I actually thought this show was more "accurately New York" than Daredevil. The real estate looked realer, the weirdos seemed more like the folks I encountered on the street, etc. I and most of the people I knew lived in buildings like the one Jessica Jones lives in.

M: That takes us back to your first (or was it second) point, I actually found Daredevil much more noir than this in terms of style and lighting. Sidenote: I think Jessica Jones and Veronica Mars would have gotten along well. 


**POTENTIAL LATER EPISODE SPOILER AHEAD**Shifting gears a bit, were you surprised when Rosario Dawson’s Night Nurse showed up?

B: Slightly. I am familiar with the MCU movie schedule, so not exceptionally surprised since Since Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Jessica Jones are all in the Defenders movie together. **END LATER EPISODE SPOILER**

M: I was shocked, I had no idea there would be overlap. I knew they would eventually come together, but was surprised at a cross-over character at this point. Speaking of Luke Cage…any thoughts? I thought he was hot as hell.

B: He is an amazingly attractive man. It seems, though, in Jessica Jones, if you're a man without super powers, you're mostly incompetent. And not worth talking to for the most part. It's refreshing, really.

M: I read somewhere online that this series actually fails the Bechdel test for men. Which delights me. It's so great how Marvel is getting to explore all these new types of characters and storytelling on Netflix. It almost (well actually, not almost) makes the movies look kind of hackneyed in comparison.

B: I wonder how much of this we would have seen had it not been on Netflix or a similar streaming service. This is a "prestige TV"-level of faith in the auteurs.

M: Netflix (and to a similar extent subscription cable) are really redefining what makes a successful tv series. Network programming looks sloppy and poorly planned in comparison.

B: The problem, I think, with network TV is that, like any legacy media, they would like to keep the same level of market share. So NCIS and other pleasers of everyone over 50 keep coming because the newer market is so fragmented. Or riffs thereon, like Mysteries of Laura.

M: It will be interesting to see at what point streaming television stops being considered "new" by more established (i.e. older) viewers. And oh my gosh, I can’t believe we haven’t talked about David Tennant yet!

B: I want to note that the first time we see his face he's licking Krysten Ritter's cheek in classic "creepy pervert" style. Also, we do not see the "soulfully sad" eyes he uses in pretty much everything else he's in.

M: I think David Tennant is a great actor, but I don't think he has a lot of settings. So this character felt very derivative of the Tenth Doctor to me--if the Tenth Doctor was a total sociopath. So what I am trying to say is that I found him really fucking scary. And I think the show made an excellent choice by keeping him basically off-screen for several episodes. We only hear of what he does from his victims; so you aren't REALLY sure what he's going to be like. And then within a few seconds of meeting him, he casually tells a guy to throw hot coffee in his face. As the audience, in that moment, you are like, "oh, I get it."

B: I had a different take on the buildup. Because we see early on how pervasive Kilgrave can be in recruiting small armies of agents, and how insidious their programming can be, when he's not on the screen he's sometimes a lot more dangerous-seeming than when he is. I felt Jessica Jones' paranoia for those first episodes; I totally understand why she wanted to book it to Hong Kong.

M: That’s an excellent point—there’s a lot of “Kilgrave can be anybody.”

B: AND HE IS. They just don’t say it.

M: He’s definitely playing a long game and Jessica is more flying (controlled falling) by the seat of her pants. I mean, she’s basically controlled falling the entire season. OMG SYMBOLISM.

B: It's also good to note that what Jeri Hogarth says about Kilgrave is also true - his ambitions are kind of small potatoes. Darkseid spends like years and years of DC comic time trying to get the Anti-Life Equation, which is basically what Kilgrave has.

M: I wonder what traps Kilgrave has left for Jessica in season 2? There was a lot of time he had to whisper in people's ears, you know. I am sure he made some contingency plans.

B: But that would require he consider the potential that he would actually fail. I don't know that he ever really does. You can see how sort of anti-charming he is when he can't use his powers. I think one of the reasons Kilgrave is so after Jessica is that she could escape him and that just makes him crazy. He's not really interested in controlling the world, he's interested in what he wants now and if he doesn't get it, he throws a fatal tantrum.

M: His emotional development definitely got stunted. Right about the time his parents started stabbing needles into his brain stem.

B: He's like some philosophers' descriptions of demons: unable to manifest the virtues of patience, prudence, etc. except for sheer force of will.

M: WOAH. What? It’s a Sunday afternoon man, you can’t get that deep with me. STOP IT. Let’s talk about how hot Luke Cage is again.

B: He has an amazing chest. So, on that front, what did you think of the first sex scene where Jessica Jones says "you won't break me," and Luke Cage insists that he probably will? And then you see in Krysten Ritter's face like, "man, this is NOT DOING IT FOR ME."

M: I like how I knew they both had super powers, but neither of them knew the other one did. Basically, the first sex scene felt like foreplay for the later sex scene. When they are like, "ah yeah now I can go for it."

B: And then destroy things.

M: So instead of the first sex scene feeling like a culmination of something, it was just really just whetting the appetite.

B: Did you notice that Trish is also super-assertive during sex?

M: UM, YEAH. There is one part right after when she, Simpson, and Jessica are discussing the plan to get Kilgrave when she is like, "Hey, last night was fun, but that doesn't mean I want to hear your opinion.” I was like, GO GIRL.

B: Well, Trish is super-supportive of her BFF/sorta-sister. And Simpson is never right about anything ever.

M: And here's the real crazy thing: it's not like the women in this show are just "acting like men" or whatever you want to call it. They're all just ACTING LIKE PEOPLE. Who are flawed. And kinda broken. And it's wonderful.

B: Yes. They’re not just made up to be “masculine.”

M: So of course Trish is going to back Jessica, and you can shut your mouth, Simpson. This is a great example of how to do blind casting (changing character's genders and races from the source material) correctly.I believe these people were the right fit for the part and make Jessica's NYC feel more authentic. Sure, it's not perfect, but definitely a step toward more diverse storytelling.

B: I know that I really liked watching Trinity from The Matrix and Calamity Jane from Deadwood yell at each other.

M: YES.

And we’ll leave you with that mental image since that’s where the discussion pretty much stopped. We didn’t get a chance to do much summing up (since Ben’s daughter was getting squirmy in his lap), but needless to say we both loved Jessica Jones. And saying that we liked it even more than Daredevil is high praise indeed!

You can watch all 13 episodes of the first season of Jessica Jones on Netflix streaming.

Marvel's Agents of SHIELD Season 2: A Mac Attack review

Remember last Fall when we all waited breathlessly for the premiere of SHIELD? And then the internet was like blah blah blah I hate it or blah blah blah I love it or blah blah blah I only watch things based on DC Comics? But then we stuck with SHIELD and it got really awesome in the Spring after the new Captain America movie? Well, even if you don't remember any of that--the second season of SHIELD has started and ready to weigh in on whether things have improved or gone down hill is Mac Attack. 

Warning: Spoilers. 

Let's begin with the TL;DR. I liked it, but it wasn't amazing. If my cousin is more indicative of the general audience than I am, the changes will be, on balance, positive.

I personally didn't like them. That said, this whole review comes under the caveat that In Joss We Trust, and also that the show is (in my opinion) supported by the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe as a whole, so there's no question but that I'll keep watching it. In short, it's less "great" and more "good" now. 

Breakdown. 

Director Coulson. What's up with him? He used to be Superman, in that he was the paragon of hope. Nothing could ever change his innate nature, his trust in himself, in his mission, in the ultimate goodness of humanity that had to be protected at all costs. Towards the end of last season he went through some stuff that made him darker for a while, but he seemed at times to be fighting to maintain that belief, even though he admitted it was faith. I sorta wish they'd found drama in other places and let this one thing be the solid foundation of the show, but at least then it was still an interesting conflict. Now... he just seems sorta waffling. He cares about his team, but he wants to take risks, and he'll stay in the shadows but look towards the light... It's more "real", I suppose, but also more boring. They could have achieved the same effect by introducing outside pressure (like from Melinda) that forces him to act that way, while maintaining the interesting parts of him. I'm not saying it's not a valid character choice, but it's a downgrade from what he used to be. 

I know people wanted more shout-outs to Marvel Canon. Here you go. Absorbing Man.

Here you go, canon fans. ... And ladies. 

I actually like how they're doing this. Pick a bunch of D-listers, take the name and power, then do your own thing with it. I would still have been in favor of an even more original, unique take, but if it keeps my cousin happy, I'll take it. I really think they threaded the needle on this one. They're giving the people who want this to be just an extension of the comics 90% of what they want, and giving people like me, who want something new and think the comics are a hot mess, 90% of what we want. Neither side is totally happy, but both sides keep watching.

Anyone who actually thinks Lucy Lawless's character is dead, raise her hand. Sidenote, that was a LOT of trust on Absorbing Man's part that rubber is immune to the Obelisk.

So... big dangerous mission, we're gonna take the risks, we need to win... and they get, what, a cool jet? To replace the cool jet they can't use anymore? We'll risk EVERYTHING to... maintain the status quo.

Seeing Skye in the field doing a good job with guns was a nice change.

Absorbing Man's trick of using the glass to turn invisible and draw in the guards was smarter than I give that character credit for.

Their handling of Talbot was masterful. Saving/kidnapping him, demonstrably wanting to get one thing out of him while secretly getting another thing, playing him like a puppet... add this to the fact that they have the team all doing each other's jobs (Skye's in the field while Trip's running computers) and I'm starting to suspect they poached some of the Leverage writers, which would be a huge positive in my book.

A few things I hate. 

The show has gotten stupider. Ontology is following intent, and that's always a bad thing. Absorbing Man had about a 45 second headstart on Agent Xena. How could he possibly have known where she was going, AND gotten ahead of her? And I don't totally agree with the physics of the crash. Perhaps they'll fix it later, explain that one of the mercenaries was a traitor or this Doctor Evilface dude was tracking them via GPS and somehow had a vehicle for Absorbing Man that was faster than a speeding car trying to go as fast as it could in a straight line on an empty road. If this is not at least referenced in the next episode (how could he POSSIBLY have gotten there in time?) I will be greatly disappointed.

Ward's imprisonment, he'll only talk to Skye, he's got an agenda and will attack psychologically. Skye is initially hesitant to meet with him and acts aggressive at the start. We, the audience, will slowly gain sympathy for him while Skye does. This sympathy will cause conflict between Skye and the people Ward's actually hurt, like Fitz. His ultimate betrayal of Skye's newfound trust results in his escape, while still somehow leaving potential room for his true redemption. Sorry, already saw the second season of Alias.

Absorbing Man's guards see him gone, so they immediately open the door and walk into the room. Because apparently they got kicked out of the Evil Overlord's Legion of Terror. I get that we were supposed to believe they weren't as good at being guards as SHIELD agents would have been, but did they have to be suicidally, mind-numbingly stupid?

A lot of potential. 

A lot of things weren't addressed in this premiere. I'm not against this, I think they did cover a lot, and I can't think of what I'd suggest they give up in order to cover these other things. I am looking forward to them finally being addressed.

Does Skye think of Ward, the man who trained her, when she's out in the field kicking ass with guns now? 

Melinda. We got almost nothing with her, though I love the complexities of her arrangement with Coulson. He's in charge of her and the mission, she's in charge of him as a resurrected half-alien. And they're both good enough at what they do to make this complicated relationship work. Mostly. Check in more often, Coulson. Don't be that trope.

I'm glad they've basically gotten rid of Fitz and Simmons, they were the show's crutch. I liked them as characters, and I'm glad they're still on the show, but they would just magic-science every problem. Now the characters will have to solve problems with skill and cleverness, and not just, "I've analyzed this and here's a magic antidote".

It was awesome seeing Carter's shout-out, odd that she calls it the end of Hydra, yay she's with the Howling Commandos. And interesting tie-in, now we know why "mysterious artifacts" are called 084's. It's these subtle details that really flesh out the world. This is why I will always keep watching.

A Guardians of the Galaxy tie-in was asking for too much; I can't think of a reference I would have actually liked, anyway.

From Risks above; too often, "take a risk" gets translated in TV to "try something that seems dangerous but then win big and get everything." I like that there was sacrifice. Things went wrong, costs were paid, but they got something for it. Tension. Yay.

Predictions. 

"He can absorb the properties of whatever he touches, we don't know how." A foreshadow to the 'age of miracles' from the end of Winter Soldier? Is this the beginning of a tie-in to Avengers: Age of Ultron?

The Obelisk, when activated, has runes on it like Garett and Coulson draw. Obviously a Kree artifact.

Oh, and a female lead changed her hair-style. I think I'm supposed to care about that, it prolly says something deep and meaningful about gender roles. I don't really care.

Wow...what a searing indictment of...um, wavy hair?