Jessica Jones 1x02 Review: Legwork

“AKA Crush Syndrome”
Written by Micah Schraft
Directed by S.J. Clarkson
 
The Story
Jessica is determined to prove Hope’s innocence. For that, she needs a good lawyer, and since she is sadly unaware of Nelson & Murdock, she’ll have to settle for a Lawful Neutral one instead. But Hogarth only helps defendants she thinks are likely to win, so if Jessica wants her help, she’s going to have to prove that Kilgrave the mind-controller actually exists. She doggedly pursues her best lead: the bus crash she believed killed Kilgrave. That leads her to hospital records, which lead her to the man Kilgrave forced to donate both kidneys to him, who leads her to the surgeon who performed the operation, who can testify to being mind-controlled alongside Hope. Success! Hogarth is on the case. While she works on it, Jessica also has to deal with her very loud (and possibly incestuous) upstairs neighbors, and she and Trish initially disagree over whether or not Trish is allowed to do nice things for her like replacing her busted door. In the end, Jessica concedes and they’re on the path to reconciliation. Also, Luke the hot bartender got dragged into Hope’s investigation because the police detective found pictures of him in Jessica’s office. Jessica tells him she had the pictures because the husband of the woman he was sleeping with hired her, but she’s actually been keeping an eye on him because he’s connected to a woman who died at Kilgrave’s bus accident the night she escaped him. The husband and his buddies try to beat Luke up, and Jessica goes to help, but it turns out he’s got super strength and unbreakable skin! Awesome.
 
Things I Liked

• Theme song!
• Ooh! Jessica’s broken door and how long it takes to get it fixed this season is totally a metaphor for how badly damaged she is, and how long it takes her to rise above it and be able to start letting people in again. Nice.
• Jessica is totally a Humphrey Bogart character. It makes me so happy.
• Jessica threatening her weird neighbor

Jessica’s reaction to having to wear pink, heart-covered scrubs

• The metaphor of Kilgrave and the cockroach (both unexpectedly hard to kill), paired with Jessica’s narration

 
Things I Didn’t

• Kilgrave (but I mean that in the sense that he’s a brilliant villain—super scary)
• Jessica’s weird neighbors
• Hogarth
• The mom of that guy Kilgrave forced to donate his kidneys to
• My laptop crashing and forcing me to rewrite this whole review from memory, which is why the “things I liked” list is shorter than it would have been

 
The Characters
Jessica is extremely prickly, but she still doesn’t want Luke to think ill of her. Aww. And she’s warming back up to Trish! Maybe the reason Hogarth was the person she’s been having the most interactions with lately is that she’s as unfriendly as Jessica, so there was no danger of forming an attachment or becoming a burden to her. I really liked watching Jessica do her detective thing. It takes a lot of work to follow leads, and particularly a lot of acting so that people will give her information without questioning it.
 
Why is Trish so concerned about security and self-defense, and why isn’t she telling Jessica about all the training she’s doing? I honestly can’t remember the reason. Did she start training after what Kilgrave did to Jessica? Did that make her feel powerless, when her super-powered foster sister got turned into a mind slave and was psychologically broken by the experience?
 
Luke doesn’t want drama, and he doesn’t appreciate Jessica possibly stalking him, but once he finds out she’s another person with super powers, it’s enough to overcome his reservations, at least for now. She might be the first powered person besides himself he’s ever met.
 
Hogarth continues to be horrible, and also extremely calculating. She might be one of the most Slytherin characters in anything I’ve ever seen. But I have a serious problem with the way she’s written. In the comics, Hogarth is a man, but everything else about the character is the same. It kind of feels like all they did for the show was turn Hogarth into a woman, without tweaking the personality at all so that the character would actually feel like a female. It seems like Carrie-Anne Moss is portraying a male character, not a lesbian woman. And people close to her call her Jeri! Even her name sounds like a man’s name!
 
Overall Rating
5/5