Jessica Jones

It's just all too... narratively convenient, for lack of a better word. The point seems like it was to get Jessica to kill someone, so that she has to engage with the guilt of having killed before as well as forcing her into sympathizing with her mother's condition. But having it be her mother's abusive scumbag prison guard seems contrived.

And people cheer for Walter White and Dexter Morgan, but not unironically. People distance themselves from those characters, they disengage and give themselves permission to like these people who are actual murderers, but only up to a point. With Jessica, that distance isn't there. She's much more heroic than the antivillain protagonists of HBO and Showtime. Which doesn't mean she's crossed a line she can never come back from, but she has broken one of her own long-standing principles, and we needed to see more of her journey back from that than we got. One episode could have been enough, but I don't think the Purple Man comeback we ultimately received really did the job.

This is where I think having that private eye monologue make a comeback would have come in handy. Have it spin out of control, constantly interrupted by Kilgrave's voice — and Alisa's — intruding on her thoughts.

Loopholes are possible, but that's why we have judges and juries. The law is heavy machinery, it shouldn't be operated without training and supervision. The point isn't supposed to be that you can kill anyone you want if they enter your home without permission, but if you're trying to defend your home and property and the robber gets hurt (not necessarily killed) in the process, the law defaults to remaining on your side.

Edited by Unsung on Sep 28th 2018 at 7:31:52 AM

The biggest thing Jessica needed was to even have a journey back at all. To reject her mother's philosophy that she inadvertently embraced in that moment. To accept, once and for all, that this behavior is not acceptable and that Alisa is not acceptable for indulging in it. To deliberately and knowingly seek justice.

She does none of those things. At the end of the season, she's dragged kicking and screaming back into her status quo for lack of any other options. In the final episode, Jessica is thwarted like a villain, rather than rising like a hero.

Uh, no. Jessica was totally planning on stopping Alisa herself at the end of the season.

I wouldn't quite say dragged kicking and screaming, but short-circuiting Jessica's own attempt at bringing in her mother means that it's just another part of Jess's side of the story we don't really get to experience for ourselves. Jessica is a closed-off character at the best of times, and I just think we needed to shift away from Alisa and Trish to get an idea of exactly what's going on in the mind of Jessica Jones herself at that point. Not just because it's her name on the marquee, but because if you're going to take away her big final decision, we need to be right in her shoes so we can feel it happen ourselves, not just see it.

Edited by Unsung on Sep 28th 2018 at 7:45:35 AM

Stand Your Ground laws (and its more mild-mannered younger brother, Castle Doctrine) isn't quite as simple as "this guy set a toe on my lawn, so I can blast him in the chest with a shotgun". The law is in favor of the intruded-upon, but the judge and jury would need to review the case specifics to determine if the actions taken to defend one's home were fair and warranted, or excessive and unnecessary.

But that would pertain to whether Dale Holiday is culpable for hypothetically killing Jessica Jones in defense of his home (imperfect self defense), not Jessica killing Dale in intrusion of his home (felony murder). The latter would likely be tried as such if it came to light, but I don't know exactly what would happen; there's a woeful lack of precedent when it comes to "I broke into a serial killer's house and accidentally killed him in excessive self-defense against his excessive self-defense". My father's a lawyer, perhaps I'll explain the scenario to him and get his input, he likes the Marvel Netflix shows and hypothetical legal scenarios.

I enjoy the courtroom scenes in Daredevil, in case you couldn't tell.

Edited by Anomalocaris20 on Sep 27th 2018 at 1:05:03 PM

I'm 90% sure Jessica knew she would have to put her mother down at somepoint when they had that final scene. She knew it was coming. It was that Trish took her down instead and robbed Jessica of her closure and being able to do so on her and her mother's terms.

Trish took the choice, weight, consequence, and everything in that moment away from her.

Jessica can also live with herself having done back things. She's... self-sacrificing is the wrong word. She'll loathe herself for the choices she makes, but she can live with herself. She sees herself as a fuck up and a hopeless case and so she's ok with doing the 'bad choices'. But if Trish or Malcolm does them...

Its part of what makes her dynamic interesting.

Edited by InkDagger on Sep 27th 2018 at 10:59:08 AM

No, she wasn't. She wanted passports from Oscar for both herself and her mom and made it clear to him that she was never coming back. Her game plan was to get her mom out of the country and away from the pursuing law enforcement, then live happily ever after with her.

Alisa won the philosophical battle. Hell, by the end, even Alisa had recognized that this was f*cked up and was trying to turn Alisa in to the police, and Jessica was now trying to convince her to keep on going. Jess drank the kool-aid in the final episode. Once she and her mom rescued that family, Jess was entirely onboard with being Alisa's Little Girl for the foreseeable future. She was all set to take on the world to keep a serial killer safe. Because MOM.

When your hero is so bad at being the hero that the villain has to try and thwart herself - and then still has to compete with the hero over whether or not she should even be thwarted - that's a pretty significant problem.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 28th 2018 at 10:07:27 AM

What bothers me about this second season is how much it undermines the first. One of the main themes of the first is that Killgrave kind of wins in the end by turning Jessica into a murderer a second time, forcing her to do what she never wanted to do again. And now they just have her kill someone, even if it was kind of in self-defence, it just cheapens this point. Another theme is that there is NO excuse for abuse, but the second season CONSTANTLY excuses abuse. That it comes from Jessica's and Trish's mothers is no excuse whatsoever.

Basically the first season showed why even loving relationships can be destructive (I am not talking about Kilgrave and Jessica, but Kilgrave and his parents, Hogarth and her former wife, the annoying neighbors, and to some degree Trish's mother), and something you have to get out no matter how, but the second one basically says that you have forgive your abuser if she just means well enough.

IT frustrates me. JJ season 2 is easily my least favourite of ALL the Netflix seasons.

Rewarding that character arc by having her get everything she wanted out of it and walk away with cool new superpowers is a terrible writing decision. It completely undermines the awful actions she did by making them all worthwhile. Trish won. She screwed over the investigation, she abused dangerous mind-altering substanecs, she manipulated and assaulted Malcolm, and she walked away with a cool prize for her trouble.

I thought that was kinda the point. That as an addict, Trish destroyed all the good things in her life to get her fix.

Malcolm's cool. I really liked his arc and I'm glad he got out of this shithole by the end of it. I hope he never comes back and instead gets to be a cool rival and occasional Enemy Mine rather than Jessica's whipping boy.

Except that's unlikely. I'd like to think Jessica realized how much she took Malcolm for granted when she looks over at his old desk and notices how he finished the furniture in her apartment in the finale. It shows that she does miss him, especially in the hallway when she tried to make eye contract with him and he just ignores her. At some point, he's going to come around, especially if he begins to have issues with the sorts of things Cheng wants him to do.

After everything that happened between them and all of the baggage that they have, Jessica, Trish and Malcolm should go back to being friends by season 3...but, and there's a "but" here....while it would be awesome to see them all back together, the show puts a big emphasis on unhealthy relationships, so I'm wondering how that would work without it going against the show's message.

I don't want Malcolm to go back to Jessica for the same reason why I don't want Foggy to quit his job and run back to Nelson and Murdock in DareDevil's third season; it would just be character regression.

It's the same reason characters shouldn't just get back together after a breakup. Malcolm tried to have a future here at Alias Investigations and Jessica made him feel unwanted time and again. So he moved on with his life. That's fine. He's off to bigger and better things.

Maybe things with Cheng will work out. Maybe they won't. And maybe some day he can have an amicable relationship with Jessica again. But it should never again be what it was before. That period of his life is over. Malcolm needs to keep moving forward.

Oh I'm not saying I want Jessica and Malcolm's friendship to go back to what it used to be like nothing ever happened. What I'm saying is that I want to see Jessica, Trish and Malcolm back together, obviously not the same as they were before, but getting along again, the emotional connections restored or at least recovering.

I say the same for Matt, Karen and Foggy when Daredevil season 3 comes out. I want to see the three as a happy trio once again, although I also know that things can't necessarily go back to what they used to be. And although I do expect Nelson & Murdock to reopen eventually (because even in the Daredevil comics, the firm has a history of breaking up and reopening all the time) I don't expect Karen to be leaving the Bulletin and going back to being their legal assistant, because that would be regression in her story arc. The one thing that does matter is that Matt, Karen and Foggy are more mature in listening and being understanding of each other. I say the same of Jessica, Trish and Malcolm.

Both Luke Cage and Iron Fist have now been axed off and I'm getting REALLY worried about Jessica Jones' future.

It was already in production, wasn't it? Although Melissa Rosenberg was planning on leaving after this season. Maybe it'll be a great return to form and get another renewal.

It started filming over the summer so Season 3 is kind of a done deal by now, but the abrupt nature of Iron Fist and Cage make me worried.

Particuarly since Cage was axed due to disagreements behind the scenes between Netflix and Marvel with the Third Season's scripts already completed over the summer before renewal was ordered.

Edited by InkDagger on Oct 22nd 2018 at 5:44:58 AM

I hope so. If Matt can get a happy ending, then Jess deserves to get one too!

I completely expect DareDevil, Jessica Jones, and Punisher to face the cancellation axe as well. Just not before the new seasons already commissioned are completed. Netflix will let them finish up what they're doing, then tell them to get the hell out.

It always sucks for the kids when parents divorce.

Still, at least they have the benefit of having an already-renewed season in which to close out their stories. That's more than Iron Fist and Luke Cage got.

If they're already in production, who knows how much closure they can get in at this point.

So...

I had a dream last night that Season 3 was released. I started watching it and the major villain of the season was Daisy.

No, not that Daisy. The other Daisy. And no, I have no idea why my subconscious would include her, let alone as a villain. But I got a kick out of it when I woke up today.

Also one of the episodes was listed as being over 3 hours long while another had a total runtime of 0 minutes and 0 seconds (with a snarky title mocking the fact that it's literally nothing and you're wasting your time by clicking on it, but I forget what it was). No idea what that was about either.

Say, do we have any indication as to when the next season comes out? Is it even supposed to be this year?

It'll be this year. Filming was almost a year ago. But we got nothing on when.

Punisher S2 started filming in March and went to July with production wrapping in August. So, 6 months of filming.

Jessica Jones S3 started filming at the end of June, but we got nothing on when it finished. ASSUMING its a similar time scale, I would expect April or May. If they do a rush job and just want to get it over with, I could see Feb or March.

Does Jessica need to eat? We barely see her consume anything besides alcohol but maybe she doesn't need sustenance as much as regular humans do.

I wanna say we've seen her eat a gyro or shawarma or something once? And she sits down to eat with Oscar and Vido. I guess the latter doesn't prove anything but the former kind of suggests to me that she does at least get hungry.

Jessica isn't a perpetual motion machine.

In fact, she probably needs to eat more than the average person, to compensate for her increased energy expenditure and metabolism (assuming her powers operate with some degree of realism).

She took some pizza from that parlor in the beginning of season 2.