Well, we’ve hit the penultimate episode of Jessica Jones, and for some reason it seems that the powers that be still seem unsure about how to fill the final few episodes of the MCU’s trauma-laden P.I.. In case we’d forgotten, the show had managed to build it’s plot to something that felt very much like we were ready for the big final – but as we still had three episodes to go, the previous installment managed to drop the ball when it came to cashing in on that sustained momentum. As a result, the eleventh episode screeched to a halt as the writers inexplicably put Kilgrave on the back burner in favour of shoving through a bunch of sub-plots that seemed only to exist to create some narrative strands for a season two. With time rapidly slipping away before the season finale, can the hasty return of Luke Cage spark things back to life, or has the big man only returned to be a walking advertisement for his own, upcoming show? It seems that Jessica is coming down with a bad case of MCU-itis…
After being compelled to blow up his own bar while still being inside it, Luke Cage manages to shake off being in the explosion and even suggests that his own, personal Kilgrave experience has opened his eyes to reassess his feelings about Jessica being made to kill his wife by the mind controlling maniac. At first, Jessica finds it hard to believe that it’s not all some sort of mental time bomb planted by her enemy, but after the time limit on Kilgrave’s suggestions lifts, it really does seem like Luke is ready to forgive her. While the two try this Marvel Team-Up business one more time, their efforts to locate their enemy come up dry, but while Kilgrave has gone to ground, that doesn’t mean he’s not been busy.
But before we go back to concerning ourselves with the attentions of purple-clad mad men, there’s still a few dangling plot threads the season seens to insist on addressing. Firstly, the whole issue of Simpson and his super pills gets a worrying connection when Trish is approached by her estranged mother who points out that the company that supplied those military stimulants is the same one who paid for Jessica’s medical bills after the childhood car accident that killed her family. Also, both Malcolm and Robyn still struggle to comes to terms with their recent experiences with Kilgrave and what it’s cost them both. But while things shift and stir in the background, it seems that Jessica and Luke’s newest attempt at that team-up is doomed to end just as messily as the last one. Yep, once again Kilgrave has gotten the drop on them with Luke being under his thrall the entire time thanks to experiments making the villain’s powers even stronger. While Jessica is still immune, the reach and duration of his control have greatly increased and before you know it, Jessica is fighting for her life against a man who can easily match her for strength, but whose skin won’t break. In a battle to the death, Jessica will have to resort to the unthinkable to survive.
Once again we have the rather easily avoided conundrum of an episode being full of good, exciting content, but being delivered at a point in the season where it ends up doing way more harm than good. It seems that Jessica Jones true weakness isn’t booze or holding a polite conversation, but turns out to be having to conform to modern comic book plotting that requires constant foreshadowing to things that haven’t even happened yet. By all means, drop as many hints and clues about what the next season may hold and obviously hype up the upcoming Luke Cage show by dropping Mike Colter’s reluctant hero into the show – but don’t do it at the expense of the main plot of the damn show.
Yes, it’s cool to get more of Colter’s Cage, especially as his calm, good natured control is still a good fit with Jones’ natural chaos, but suddenly dropping him back into the story so hard and literally out of nowhere feels about organic as Iron Man 2’s treatment of Black Widow (ie. not very). It’s almost as if the writers got a memo late in the day that saw the powers that be demand that a more standard superhero brawl needed to occur despite Kilgrave’s powers entirely coming from suggestion and so they slung in a last minute return for Cage to come back and throw hands with his one-time super friendly with benefits. To give the show its credit, while the budget precludes the fight from being too flashy (a mind controlled Cage should be as destructive a force as a rampaging Hulk), it still works within the stripped back parameters of the show. However there’s still a feeling that Luke’s been nerfed a little bit due to the fact that a point blank shotgun blast is enough to knock him out when he still seemed oddly perky after surviving his exploding bar.
Elsewhere, we also find the writers being forced to hold back when it comes to Kilgrave himself. By now, the guy should be an unrelenting menace whose ego is getting dangerously out of control as his powers get a boost from his father’s experiments, but again, we find that the show is holding back as it’s forced to once again kill time before the final episode will allow them to finally cut loose.
However, while shooting Luke Cage in the face, the show also mamages to shoot itself in the foot by the fact that if you’d paid attention to such things, you’d have known that a Cage solo series was due to start in under a year, which left the cliffhanger in a bit of bind as we already knew it couldn’t possibly be fatal. It’s exactly thos sort of careless storytelling that’s ended up disrupting a genuinely innovative show and resulted in its final episodes stripping any and all forward motion from the season in an untidy scramble to address almost every single plot threads directly except the one that needs following the most. Still, I don’t actually blame all this on the people making the show as you feel that a lot of this (season length, teases, a sudden reliance to MCU tropes) was probably demanded by Netflix itself. It’s a shame, because what had been a truly original show that tackled weighty themes such as sexual assault and the various, complex psychology of both the victim and the perpetrator has now found itself mired by gimmicky cameos and needlessly drawn out writing.
Much like the previous episode, “AKA Take Bloody Number” contains loads of good stuff that regrettably ends up being slightly wasted as the show continues to bend over backwards in order to keep circling the main plot instead of going for that big, decisive finish. We may get a return of Rebecca De Mornay’s scheming Dorothy and even a big superhero fight, but not even this can shake the feeling that the season should have already ended an episode or too as the writers furiously keep spinning their wheels. Whether the final episode of Jessica Jones can restore that former glory is uncertain, but if it doesn’t dig in soon, it’ll be a fairly ignominious finish for a show that started out so fiercely original.
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