Going into its second season, Jessica Jones was probably the series with the biggest question mark. Jessica Jones is not a character with a long history so it will be interesting to see what the show chooses to do and be. In the fifth episode, Jessica is in jail, Trish gets ambushed, and a trip to the aquarium gets very messy. Let’s jump into this but be warned, there are spoilers throughout.
1. Hard Time
Picking up right after the last episode, Jessica is in jail. She’s also still very much being herself and it has everyone on high alert. The cops hate her and Jeri of all people points out that she needs to stop alienating everyone because it isn’t helping her cause here. We all know that she didn’t murder this guy and the cops know it too but because she’s so secretive and stubborn, they find it hard to believe that she’s totally clear of any wrong doing. After listening to Jeri (again, this is freaking Jeri who wants her to chill) she calls Malcolm and leaves him in charge of Alias and decides to talk to the cops. Only one cop is willing to take her information seriously. Detective Costa finds evidence to prove that Jessica didn’t commit this murder and as she’s leaving, he tells her that he wants to help her. Costa was at the police station when Kilgrave almost made them all kill themselves last season. He knows what she did and he, unlike the other people at this station, doesn’t want her in jail. He wants to help her but this is Jessica Jones and we all know that she trusts no one. This whole thing thankfully plays out really quickly. We don’t need to do an arc of Jessica in jail because we know it’s not something that will stick. I really like the twist of Costa being one of the cops that was attacked by Kilgrave. Making all the cops in NYC Jessica’s enemy feels a little boring. It’s easy. Giving her an unlikely ally makes for a little more interesting a development and does something interesting going forward.
2. Protecting Inez
When Jessica gets out of prison, she puts Malcolm in charge of protecting Inez and getting her to Jeri’s place which will act as a safehouse. Inez isn’t feeling it because she doesn’t trust anyone. She also has a drug habit that she’s trying to get out of. She steals Malcolm’s flat screen tv and runs away to try and pawn it and leave the city but he stops her. He explains how important this all is and how Jessica does really want to help her but she rebuffs him. She doesn’t go back with Malcolm until he threatens her and ultimately she makes it to Jeri’s. It turns out that Jeri only let her stay there because it helps her learn about IGH. Jeri is desperate and the seeds have now been planted here for Jeri to look for outside help, which is what I suspected. This whole thing with Inez is kind of dragging a bit and it’s really obvious that she’s going to end up dead. It’s predictable and a little messed up because her entire reason for being here in this storyline is to give information and die. I’d like to be proven wrong.
3. Jessica Undercover
Jessica is able to find out some valuable information. Inez tells her that Luanne’s murder (another nurse in IGH) was pinned on a janitor named David Kawecki. David has a very low IQ and so it became easy for IGH to put this on him and keep him jailed in a psychiatric hospital for…ever really. Jessica goes to Oscar and cashes in her favor that he owes after saving Vido. She needs him to make her a badge so she can go into the hospital without anyone asking and with trepidation, he agrees and does it. Jessica goes to see Kawecki and he, at first, doesn’t want to say much. He tells the story he was always supposed to. He like Luanne, took her home, she somehow died in his bathroom. It never added up because he simply just doesn’t have the capacity to do it. Jessica pushes him and he begins to talk about someone named Dr. Karl. He talks about how he went to lunch a lot with Dr. Karl and they went to the aquarium to see the octopus a lot. She takes this information and it leads to what we get at the end, which I’ll get into in the last point. I was uncomfortable watching this whole thing with Kawecki play out because again, like Inez, he feels like an afterthought. Jessica is very engrossed by this case but it doesn’t feel like she wants to help out these other people who have been hurt. It feels like revenge, and those are different things. I hope she can end up helping Kawecki because clearly he’s another victim in all this. The actual interrogation felt really off too because it was so weird to see Jessica try to play something else other than what she is once she started pressing Kawecki. It just didn’t all click for me.
Continued below4. Trish Is Falling Apart
While all this is going on, we go back to Trish, who slept for a full 26 hours after taking Simpson’s drugs. She starts vomiting but her mother is there to “help” her out because she’s seen her like this before. Don’t forget, Trish had a really rough time being a teen star and she had ten years sober until this. Her mother pushes her to get dressed because ZCN, a big news channel, wants to meet with her. When she gets to this meeting, it turns out to be a big engagement party thrown by Griffin. Trish is completely caught off guard and her response is “thank you.” She takes Griffin aside and off camera we find out she turned him down. Trish and her mother have a huge fight about this and Trish slaps her mother after she takes things too far and accuses her of going back to Max to start a relationship with him. This all triggers Trish in the worst way and she does more of Simpson’s drugs. I am worried for Trish. This is sad to watch but it’s making for some of the more interesting stuff this season. Trish is so complicated and so much of her own baggage that she’s fought so hard to keep hold of. Jessica is doing her thing and Trish is consumed by that superpowered side of things that she’s lost herself and she’s given up on someone who may end up turning out to not be the bad guy we were led to believe he was. I don’t know what the endgame for Trish is here but I don’t know how much longer this get can stretched out before becoming boring/annoying. Pacing is everything in television and this season is already having an issue with that.
5. That’s My Secret, I’m Always Angry
We still don’t have a name on Janet McTeer’s super-powered character but in this episode, we get a little bit more information about her. We see her at her very bohemian home. It’s kind of her fortress where she can be herself and try to relax. We see that to relax, she plays piano. On this afternoon, a neighbor of hers comes by with her baby because the music soothed him. McTeer lets her in and seems to like the baby. There’s something here and I don’t know what. Maybe she had a kid of her own? She sits down to play piano but the baby starts crying and it gets on her nerves. It triggers something else and it brings out her anger as she can’t play the notes right anymore. The neighbor runs off and McTeer smashes the piano. Later, we see Jessica spying at the aquarium. She wants to find Dr. Karl and after a day or two, she does but she also see McTeer’s unnamed character. The twist? They are involved romantically. When Dr. Karl sees Jessica, McTeer’s character smashes the glass of the fish tank and that’s how the episode ends. There’s a lot here that should lead somewhere but I’m not sure where. I would really like to get an episode that answers questions about McTeer’s character because I feel like we’re taking a bit to get there. I want to know her motivations and why she’s so angry. I find it hard to care about her without those answers.
