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 tenth episode, the fall out from calling the cops on Alisa is huge and Jeri gets a reality check that she wasn’t ready for. Let’s jump into this but be warned, there are spoilers throughout.
1. Let’s Make A Deal
Alisa is in prison but she’s not at The Raft yet. Jessica has brought in Jeri to make sure that doesn’t happen. If Alisa confesses to everything and gives them Dr. Karl, she can stay in this prison and get to live a better life than what she’d get in The Raft. There, she would be in solitary confinement 23 hours out of the day. In this prison, she’d be watched but she would get to paint, read, wear her wig (giving her comfort) and she’d also get to see Jessica often. Alisa doesn’t want to do this because she doesn’t want to give up Karl. She loves him and she’d rather go to The Raft than let this happen. Jessica refuses to accept this and after leaving this visit, she gets to work, trying to figure out what to do. She goes to visit Alisa again and she gets Alisa talking about a trip they took when she was a kid at a “love motel” that was cheap and since they were kids, they had no idea it was a hot spot for prostitutes. Alisa is basically telling Jessica where Karl is and where she should take him without actually saying it. This is something Jessica doesn’t want to do but she knows that it’s what has to happen because otherwise, Alisa will be gone from her life for good. I kind of liked this choice that Jessica has been forced to make here from a story standpoint. She’s got to protect this horrible guy because to a degree, he did protect her mother for a long time. She is making a compromise to keep her mom as safe as she can and as rough as it is to watch, it’s complicated and thus interesting. It’s one of the most interesting positions she’s been in this season.
2. Be Careful Who You Let Into Your Home
It’s hard to feel bad for Jeri Hogarth after the events of last season. She’s shown herself to be cold and calculated and often times very selfish. One of the things this season has tried to do is soften her a bit after finding out that she’s dying. After Shane tried to heal her, Jeri isn’t feeling any symptoms so she’s feeling hopeful. She has Shane staying her, as well as Inez and tells Jessica that she’s changed. She doesn’t know if what Shane did worked for sure but she feels that she’s turned over a new leaf. Jessica is skeptical about Shane having the ability to heal and after she talks to Dr. Karl, she relays the information to Jeri that Shane was never a patient there. Jessica tells Jeri that Inez was a nurse and she knows how testing works for ALS. She knows it’s not a simple thing to detect this early on but Jeri doesn’t want to believe Jessica. When Jeri returns to her apartment, she sees that it’s been completely turned out. Inez and Shane cleaned her out and fled and she realizes that she’s been played completely on top of still being sick. She drops to her knees and breaks down. In her head, Jeri has turned a corner. She was so desperate for a cure that now that she believes she has one, she’s got a new lease on life and wants to be a better person. Jeri is someone who realized too late that she had to be better and now I worry about how far to the dark side she’ll go now. This is so weird and complicated because this is a horrible thing to have happen to her but she’s done such cold hearted things in the past so so I’m torn. I wouldn’t go so far to say she deserves this but it’s a weird situation as a whole.
Continued below3. When Will Trish Stop?
Trish has run out of the substance in Simpson’s inhaler and she completely bombs her tryout at ZCN because now she’s drying out. After she, Malcolm and Jessica meet up to talk about everything that’s happened, she tells Jessica about what she’s been doing. Jessica tells her she needs to get better and get off this but eventually asks her to leave because she knows right now that she’s not good for Trish. Trish goes to Malcolm’s apartment because apparently there are some real feelings here, more so on Malcolm’s side I think, but he turns her away, saying that they are no good for each other. Trish then goes to see Alisa in prison and Alisa completely unleashes on her and points out some very real things here. Trish is obsessed with being a hero and IGH just happens to be where her mind set itself. Alisa rightfully points out Trish’s biggest insecurity which is that she doesn’t have powers but Jessica does and she doesn’t do anything with them. She resents Jessica for it and Alisa ends their conversation by telling her that Jessica will always choose her over Trish because she’s her mother. Trish then decides to take finding Dr. Karl into her own hands. She knows now that Jessica is helping him escape but she refuses to let this happen. She’s able to manipulate Malcolm into helping her and they go to the hotel that Jessica tracked Karl down to. Trish knocks out Malcolm with her gun and that’s the last we see of this situation. Trish is completely driven by wanting to be a superhero of some sort. She wants to do what Jessica won’t and it’s now pushed her to completely abuse Malcolm, who doesn’t deserve this. I don’t know how you redeem Trish from this and I don’t know if I care anymore. She’s so close to going that step past where she’d be forgivable.
4. Love In The Midst Of Suffering
We need to talk about Jessica and Oscar because I think we’ve reached a point where the two of them might actually be a serious thing. After what happened the night before and the visit at the prison, Jessica calls Oscar to make sure that Vido wasn’t around for any of that last night. Thankfully he wasn’t and the two of them talk about when he was in jail and what that was like as a parent. She tells him she’s fine but he goes to her anyway and they hug in what really ends up being the sweetest moment of the entire season. As a comic book reader, I’m sad that we aren’t getting the Jessica Jones/Luke Cage pairing but I think this pairing works more in the actual story being told to us here. These two have a lot in common when you get to the core of it all. They’re two people who’ve been through some rough stuff and despite everything, are really trying to get better. Jessica is far rougher around the edges but it’s not like he’s not either. The two of them have a bond that feels believable to me and I’m rooting for them.
5. Protect What You Love
At the end of this episode, Jessica goes to visit Alisa and when Alisa puts her arms up a bit, Jessica notices burns on her wrists. Alisa won’t tell her what’s going on but Jessica isn’t stupid so she starts checking up on the guards. She starts digging around and making calls about the lead guard for Alisa, Dale. She finds out that he’s been fired for a lot of prisoner suicides and it seems like he’s got his eyes set on Alisa now. Jessica breaks into his house and finds that he collects trophies and inside one of those trophies are the numbers from prisoner jumpsuits. Dale surprises Jessica with pepper spray to the eyes and she can’t see what’s happening but keeps swinging out of defense. This all ends badly when she ends up hitting him too hard and kills him. She stares down at the body and can’t believe what she’s done. The only person she’s killed willingly is Kilgrave and now she’s looking at another body in a home she shouldn’t have been in to begin with. What comes next for her? Is she becoming a monster like Alisa? I’m eager to see the next episode because I think this is worth examining. I’m always interested in any superhero genre story talking about killing because so often we get these massive action scenes where it’s pretty clear regular people on the ground are dying. A show like Jessica Jones talking about killing like this is good because it shows that there’s a value on life. Jessica should be torn up about killing someone even if you could argue that he deserved it. It’s what separates her from the villains.
