Jessica Jones 1x12 Review: Hurting the Ones You Love

“AKA Take a Bloody Number”
Written by Hilly Hicks Jr.
Directed by Billy Gierhart
 
The Story
Trish’s mom comes to visit. She offers tantalizing information about IGH, the organization responsible for Simpson’s, uh, drug issues, and possibly for Jessica’s powers, since they footed her medical bills after her family’s accident. Trish tells her to leave. Elsewhere, Jessica and Luke are working on tracking down Kilgrave together. The twelve hour time limit on Kilgrave’s abilities expires, so Luke’s okay. He says Kilgrave didn’t find out about his powers. From what they discover, Kilgrave is keeping his dad alive because he’s trying to get control over Jessica again. Sure enough, that’s what he’s doing. Malcolm’s on his way out, but he stays to help Robyn get past a bout of grief. He takes her to the river where he dumped Reuben’s body so that she can talk to him. She manages to be surprisingly inspiring. Jessica and Luke find the club where Kilgrave’s been testing his strengthened abilities. Kilgrave is there. His powers still don’t work on her...but they’ve been working on Luke this whole time. Kilgrave orders Luke to kill her, and she and Luke spend the rest of the episode in a fight to the death neither of them wants, culminating in Jessica using the rifle of a policeman to shoot him in the chin.
 
Things I Liked

• Luke picking up that angry lady and silently moving her aside, and her reaction
• Jessica and Luke falling asleep against each other on their stakeout. Aww.
• Trish’s reaction to meeting Luke. She ships it!
• Luke fighting so hard not to keep attacking Jessica, and Jessica begging him to fight harder so she won’t have to pull the trigger
• Those hints about IGH are actually really effective. They don’t intrude on the story enough to be annoying for how little we learn about it, but we do learn enough to be intrigued about it for later. Take note, whoever’s writing the Stick/Elektra/The Hand story arc on Daredevil. This is how you lay the groundwork for a future storyline.

 
Things I Didn’t

• Kilgrave’s jealous fury when he finds out Luke and Jessica are lovers, and that there’s something real between them. He’ll look for anything to blame besides his own behavior to account for her not wanting him.
• Kilgrave’s dad and the blender.
• Kilgrave trying to take credit for the sexual tension between Jessica and Luke, just because he wrote the dialogue

 
The Characters
Jessica definitely loves Luke. Yay! Except everything is horrible right now.
 
Luke turning out to have been Kilgraved is one of the most gut-wrenching twists possible. Now, we can’t know how much of their reconciliation was genuine and how much of it was just Kilgrave’s puppeteering. I get the sense that it was sincere because of the way Luke fights and tells Jessica to shoot him, so that’s something, but I wish I could be more sure.
 
I’m running out of ways to describe how horrible Kilgrave is. But one thing he isn’t is stupid. He can stay hidden and run very effective cons for a man who always gets what he wants just by demanding it.
 
Robyn has such a weird, intense way of speaking. Always looking a person straight in the eyes and moving her mouth much more than she needs to for making the sounds. If she would just talk normally, I bet she’d have a more vibrant social life.
 
Overall Rating
5/5