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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
Minor spoiler
alert: the last three episodes of Jessica
Jones each contain one “Boss Fight.”
I won’t spoil anything by saying here whom she is fighting (though if
you haven’t seen it yet, why are you reading a review, especially 2½ months
after it came out?). But let’s leave it
at this: each of these fights ups the
physical and emotional stakes for Jessica, so that by the end of the season she
has faced everything she could possibly be asked to face and has somehow come
out on top.
This episode gives us
a ton of information about the relationship between Jess and Trish, something
that I was really hoping to see, especially after they teased us with it early
in the season. Right off the bat the
episode opens with a flashback of Jess waking up in the hospital after the
accident to hear Trish arguing with her mother just outside the hospital room. Evidently taking Jess in was her mother’s
idea as a publicity stunt to make Trish look better and improve ratings for her
show, but Trish is not happy with the arrangement. Later in the episode, another flashback shows
Jess discovering her strength in the bathroom by accidently breaking things
while listening to Trish and her mom fight.
Eventually Trish bursts into the bathroom to find Jess holding the heavy
stone sink above her head. Jess demands
to know how Trish got hurt, but Trish doesn’t want Jess trying to save
her. In the end they agree to keep each
other’s secrets—the strength and the abuse.
This arrangement doesn’t last very long, however, as the next time Jess
hears Trish’s mom trying to force her to throw up, Jess steps in and rescues
Trish, terrifying her mom and creating the impetus for their arrangement
mentioned earlier in the series (1x07, “AKA Top Shelf Perverts”). Trish is worried because her mom now knows
Jess’s secret, but Jess doesn’t care:
the knowledge of her powers can keep Trish safe. I really like this exploration of their prior
relationship, as it shows the key moments in its development. They didn’t know each other before the
accident, so they weren’t always best friends (in a series/universe with
super-soldiers, chemically-induced jumping/flying, and Groot, that would
have pushed the limits of believability for me!), but their relationship’s
development was natural and actually followed the development of Jess’s powers
and desire to use them.
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| Image Courtesy www.previously.tv |
These flashbacks
provide the basis for this episode’s exploration of Jess and Trish’s
relationship. The main events of the
episode pick up right where the last episode left off, with Jess having rescued
the support group from Kilgrave while Hope bled out on the floor. Jess pushes the support group to cover up Kilgrave’s
part in what had happened—a plan that even Robyn eventually went along
with. As soon as she’d left the crime
scene, Jess had Trish help her try to track down Albert, whom she suspects that
Kilgrave murdered as soon as they were out of the restaurant. However, none of the John Does that they find
are Albert. Jessica’s desperate search
for Albert (whose body could be her only lead) leaves Jess exhausted,
distracted, and ultimately vulnerable—she gets hit by a truck, and though she
tries to shrug it off, the injuries weaken her substantially. In the end, she needs Trish to pick her up,
bring her home, and wrap her ribs to keep them still while her accelerated
healing factor repairs all the damage.
From what we’ve seen, Jess’s healing factor is not nearly as powerful as
Captain America’s, though it does at least work faster than a regular human’s
healing. Considering that this series is
very much a psychological exploration of the characters, these scenes are most
interesting for how they push Jessica to the edge. What does she find at the edge? She needs Trish.
Trish for her part is
back on the air after dropping Jess off, interviewing a jazz flautist (was I
the only one thinking Anchorman?
“Ron Burgundy will play yazz flute for us!”). However, the interview is cut short (with the
flautist filling the rest of the time with her music) when Simpson arrives in
the control room wanting to talk to Trish.
Trish excuses herself from the interview to talk to him, and he
immediately apologizes for his actions, explaining that the drugs he was on are
“good for battle, bad for the people you care about.” This is interesting: it’s the most vulnerable we’ve seen Simpson
since the fourth episode (“AKA 99 Friends”), when he and Trish were talking
through the door after he thought he had killed her. However, I really don’t think that he is
genuinely sorry for everything that has happened—his later actions prove as
much. Regardless of his intentions,
Trish has to leave him because that’s when she gets Jess’s call. When she has to choose between her job, her
semi-abusive boyfriend, and Jess, which does Trish choose? Jess.
Every time.
After a rest
(presumably enough to get her healing started, though she’s still bruised),
Jess gets a text about another body, which turns out to be Clemons, which
reveals that all the evidence is gone.
Who could have done this? At this
point Jess’s pool of suspects is pretty small.
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| Image Courtesy www.gloveo.com |
Speaking of, Simpson
meets Trish at her penthouse, where he reiterates that he cares for her and
doesn’t want to lose her. However, he
seems to be falling off the rails by this point, repeating words and rambling
about how Jessica is preventing him from killing Kilgrave. Before he can do anything, two guys working
for Dr. Kozlov (the guy in charge of Simpson’s program) arrive to take Simpson
back into custody. He shoots both of
them in the head without showing any remorse.
Then he locks Trish in her weight room without her phone, calls Jess,
and arranges a meeting. He goes to
Jess’s office to kill her. At this point
Jess knows that Simpson killed Clemons, and suspects that he did something to
hurt Trish. He starts shooting at her to
kill her (and keep her from getting in his way), but Jess evades him well
enough that he wastes all his bullets without hurting her. As the fight progresses, however, it becomes
clear that Jess’s various injuries are severely hampering her ability to fight
him off, while he is not feeling any of his injuries thanks to the concoction
in his pills—and his strength is enhanced as well. Though he knows that she would normally
outmatch him, she is losing badly.
Fortunately for Jess,
Trish arrives just in time to rescue her, hitting Simpson over the head with a
fire extinguisher. The two of them
barricade themselves into the bathroom, where Trish realizes that the only way
they can win (and not get killed by the psychotic ex-boyfriend from Hell—not
that one) is if she
takes one of the pills she took off of Simpson in the last episode. She takes one of his red pills and feels that
immediate surge of adrenaline. This and
her Krav Maga training give her and Jessica the edge to overcome Simpson and
knock him out. However, because Trish
does not have one of the blue pills to bring her down, her body suddenly
forgets how to breathe. Jess calls an
ambulance and starts CPR. In the back of
the ambulance Jess explains that Trish took some sort of stimulant, so the EMT
gives her an injection of something which brings her around. Later, Jess is in Trish’s hospital room while
men from Simpson’s program remove him from her apartment along with any
incriminating evidence.
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| Image Courtesy www.screenrant.com |
The episode ends with
Jess receiving a text from Kilgrave informing her that he has her
“boyfriend.” She rushes over to Luke’s
bar, where she watches the bar explode.
Luke walks out of the bar on fire, and Jess runs over to put the fire
out. At this point he looks completely
bewildered by what just happened. While
there was just about no chance that Luke would be seriously injured by a fire
(I mean come on; the guy’s got unbreakable skin!), this was a good way
to bring him back into the series for the last couple episodes. And any excuse for Jess and Luke to be on
screen together is good enough for me!
This episode fills in
a lot of the blanks with Jess and Trish’s shared back story and gives us a cool
fight between Trish and Jess and Simpson.
I really liked seeing Trish fighting Simpson with super-strength,
especially because one of my hopes for season 2 is that Trish will become
Hellcat (and perhaps hook up with that aforementioned “boyfriend from Hell”),
leading to her/their eventual inclusion in the Defenders. Overall, this was a really good episode,
though the final two episodes are definitely the highlights of the season!
What did you think of
this episode? Do you want to see Hellcat
in Jessica Jones season 2? Let me
know in the comments!
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