All caught up? Good, then let’s keep going. “A.K.A Top Shelf Perverts” is a sort of crossroads for the season as a whole. Kilgrave takes things to a new level and Jessica is left with a huge decision.
1. Jessica Unhinged
After what happened with Luke, Jessica becomes reckless. She hasn’t been bathing, she’s drunk all the time and she hasn’t been working. After getting way too drunk one night, she does what Jeri wants her to do and tries to shakedown Wendy at a subway station. That makes things worse because as she starts to project her own feelings on Wendy, she drops her on the train tracks, almost causing her to get hit. There’s a moment, a split second where it looks like Jessica is going to let that train hit her. She’s been through so much and is still going through it that you believe, for just a moment, that she’s suicidal. It’s a powerful moment but it was even more powerful to see Jessica get out of it on her own.
2. Another Terrible Plan
Jessica Jones is very good at being a detective despite some questionable techniques but she’s very bad at coming up with effective plans. Kilgrave obviously knows where Jessica lives and he breaks into her home to snoop. Ruben, having bad timing, stumbles upon him and that’s his end. Jessica comes home from a night (or maybe days) of drinking and finds him dead in her bed. Seeing that this is the 3rd dead body she’s connected to, she decides to turn herself in to get into super max prison so that Kilgrave will have to use his power on her on camera. Yes, this is a bad plan in so many ways but in her mind, it’s all she’s got. Ruben and his sister weren’t high on my list of favorite characters but I felt so horrible when Jessica found his body. The kid was so naive and deserved a better end. That’s this show though; think of something bad and it’s going to happen on here. Jessica goes to Jeri to find out what she has to do to get into super max and of course Jeri tells her what would get her in trouble. This all culminates in a fantastic but terrifying finale that I’ll get to later.
3. So Long and Farewell
After coming up with a terrible plan, Jessica goes around to say goodbye to those she cares the most about. At least she tries to do that. She never gets the chance to see Trish and she misses Luke but she does pay a visit to Trish’s mom. Trish’s mom is an agent who’s job it is to find the next big things for tweens and teens to go gaga over. She goes to see her to ensure that she continues holding up her end of the restraining order and we finally get a clearer picture at how bad this woman is. Abuse doesn’t have a gender and this show is diving deeper and deeper into that which another thing it deserves some praise for. The problem is that these attempted goodbyes, including the one to the city as a whole, don’t really feel as good as they could have because the plan she comes up with is so bad and never going to actually happen.
4. Trish Does Her Own Investigating
Trish still feels terrible about what happened during the failed “heist” and so she’s been doing her own investigation into where Kilgrave is hiding. She just wants to find him to get justice but Will wants to kill him. She finds Kilgrave’s bodyguards and wants to lure them into giving him up so she can trap him. This leads to her and Will having a discussion about what the right thing to do in this situation is. Trish and Jessica, ever the heroes, don’t want to kill Kilgrave because they have to worry about Hope and other possible victims under mind control. Will comes from the military and he sees a target. The differences between these two are starting to show a lot and I don’t think they’ll last that much longer. I also think we’re getting much closer to a villainous Will that might be set off by something Kilgrave ends up doing.
Continued below5. This Is What Abuse Looks Like
Here’s where some of the very obvious “I don’t get it” criticism comes into play. A lot of people declared that this moment is where they stopped being into the show and I’m here to say flat out, that you missed the point. Kilgrave’s goal is revealed to us in full. Simply put, he’s in love with Jessica and wants her to come with him willingly. All this time he has manipulated her and the people closest to her in order to get her to stop fighting and come with him. He’s standing in a police station with people ready to kill each other just to reveal this to her and to persuade her to come with him…BECAUSE HE LOVES HER. It is fair to say that this is a dumb situation because he’s here, she’s here and once again he’s getting away because she doesn’t try to do anything to stop him. The chasing is exhausting and that’s absolutely a fair criticism. Being underwhelmed with his plan is missing the point the show is partially making about abuse towards women. Real abusers don’t have literal super powers but Kilgrave uses many of the same tactics such as manipulation and threatening loved ones. Not every conflict is going to have the world at stake like The Avengers and a show in the Marvel universe shouldn’t always have to be that. There are different corners of this universe that have every right to be explored and this is one of them. When she does finally step out of the cab at the house he bought for her, it’s impactful because that feels like a true loss for her in this war.
What did you think of this episode? Let me know in the comments below!
