Wow, it feels like it’s been while
since we’ve caught up with ol JJ. Last time I remember seeing her, she’d been
sharing a drink with Luke Cage after the Defender’s fiasco. She and he were in
an okay place and admit that they both handled their post-relationship pretty poorly. To give them both credit, there's a lot of baggage there, so the fact they can talk at all is a bit of a win. From
the look of things in this episode, things haven’t been SUPER great since then.
Looks like our super PI is hitting the booze hard again. But’s I’m getting
ahead of myself. Let’s get to it, shall we?
We open to Jessica Jones latest
job, proving a pizza guy is diddling one of his customers. Apparently, his boss
is clingy. The owner, upon finding this out, offers to pay Jessica to kill him.
Not being super into the idea of contract killing, Jessica scares the delivery
guy off, threatens her client, chucks a pizza tray into a wall and walks off
with a pizza. Never, ever call her a vigilante superhero. You know the worst
part? She still didn’t get paid. Shucks.
 |
| Oh Robert, what have they done to you? |
Trish, meanwhile, is debasing
herself in the most humiliating way possible… dressing up in her old Patsy
costume and singing the theme song for her Disney style sitcom at a kid’s party.
Shutter, she’s taking one for the team. Why did she do something so
humiliating? To get a file about Jessica Jones’ car accident. Trish incredibly
lucky that one of the security guards was a fan of hers. She’s incredibly
annoyed that the file feels rather thin, but something is better then nothing.
She walks to meet Jessica, and is clearly being tailed by a black SUV. Why is
it always a black SUV? Try a blue minivan or something potential villains,
change it up. On the roof of a building, Jessica is watching a movie being
projected on the side of a building and enjoy booze and pizza. Oh joy. She’s
really angry that the superhero vigilante thing and the killing Kilgrave thing
keep coming up on her cases. Trish tries to talk her adoptive sister into
investigating the company that may have augmented her, IGH. The file she’d
gotten showed that Jessica was missing for twenty days following the car
accident. She’s tries to use the fact that IGH is still experimenting on
people, like Dr. Kozlov’s performance enhancing drugs and Will Simpson, to
entice Jessica. Jessica though, chooses to continue to self-medicate and
ditches Trish.
The next day, Jessica is awakened
with Redbull by Malcolm. Seems like he’s taking the job as her assistant very
seriously. He keeps her supplied with Redbull as she interviews potential
patients, they range from sob stories to conspiracy theorists to a weird guy
claiming to have superpowers and being stalked by killers. That last one is
clearly the most insane, what person would willingly go by the Whizzer? After
Whizzer was led out, Malcolm tries to convince her to take on at least one pro
bono case. They’re conversation is interrupted when Jessica’s next appointment
arrives, Pryce Chang of Chang Consulting Management. The guy rather smugly
offers Jessica a job. CCM is looking to hire superhumans, for obvious reasons.
The best kind of muscle is superpowered muscle, if it isn’t that obvious.
Jessica, oh so eloquently, tells him to piss off. He makes a crack about facing
problems head on, and Jessica counters by saying she takes threats heads on,
meaning she “punch them in the head until they’re unconscious.” God, I love
this woman. Chang leaves in a huff, and Jessica decides on a pro bono case. On
the way out, she meets her new superintendent and shows off her strength. I’m
sure that that’s the last we’ll see of them. <Sarcasm>
Next, we have… oh god, more Jeri
Hogarth. The high-powered lawyer is giving a speech at an award ceremony
honoring women in Law. Oh joy. At her table, we find that she’s being advised
by the partners at her firm to settle the harassment case her former office
bimbo… er secretary has filed against her. Jeri refuses, claiming that the
secretary (no I didn’t bother looking up or remembering her name) was asking
for it. Wow, that always sounds horrible, regardless of who says it or the
truth of the statement. So yeah, Jeri Hogarth, still horrible despite being
played by Trinity.
On Trish’s talk show, she’s talking
PTSD in superhuman vigilantes… how topical. After cutting to break, she meets
with her producer… or director, I don’t know who her immediate superior is. I’m
going to call him a producer for now. Her producer wants to take things in a
new direction. Or more like an old direction. He feels like the ratings are
starting to dip after the Defender’s fiasco and a lack of new material.
Basically, he tells her either to get some actual superhumans on, or go back to
the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous format. Oh joy.
 |
| Somebody take that bottle away from her. |
Turns out, Jessica’s pro bono gig
was spying on Chang. I suppose you can’t get more pro bono then doing a job for
yourself. She tries to dig up any sort of dirt on the guy, but only sees him
notice her and wave. Creepy. Back at her place, Malcolm is working on some home
improvements while Trish waits around. Why did she stop by? To show Jessica a
box she’d found in her storage unit. Said box, disturbingly, contains Jessica’s
parent’s and brother’s ashes… Apparently, she never did anything with them.
That feels wrong on a number of levels. Trish once again tries to pressure
Jessica into looking into IGH, but Jessica is not interested. When Trish tries
to take the box back, though, Jessica refuses to let it go. Trish leaves and is
observed out on the street by a hooded fellow that looks suspiciously like
Frank Simpson taking a hit on a high-tech inhaler. Oh, that can’t possibly be
good. Later that night, Jessica tries to look up info on Chang’s clients,
looking for a nerve to push on. She eventually gives up, pulls out the three
urns of ashes, and pours herself a drink. She toasts them, saying “To not
missing you someday.”
She has nightmares about the
accident, only waking when Malcolm comes in the next morning. He informs her
that one of their clients dropped them for another agency and a package from
Chang. He sent over a pile of documents chronicling his life story and a note
saying “I have nothing to hide.” Dude was willing to pay a fair bit of money
for what amounts to a very minor burn. Just saying. Oh, and the Whizzer stops
by again, asking for protection from whatever is after it. She slams the door
in his face. She gets an idea on how to poke back at Cheng by looking at one of
his clients.
So, the client in question was
looking for his dog, which had been stolen by his spiteful ex-wife. While Cheng
Consulting had been perfectly content with taking things the slow, legal, and
expensive way, Jessica is more… results oriented. She broke in and stole the
damn thing. Alias Investigations, we’re willing to break any law to get you
what you paid for. Jessica returns the dog and gives his owner her card. Cheng,
clearly pissed, starts saying all of the wrong things to Jessica. Mentioning
the vigilante superhero thing, talking about her rather poor life choices,
snapping Kilgrave’s neck. You know, all the things you shouldn’t say to someone
with SUPER
STRENGTH and a well-documented ANGER PROBLEM. Jessica throws
him through some glass doors and beats the ever lovin’ hell out of him. She
stops just shy of breaking his face in.
 |
| Not every friend is willing to pay bail. |
So, obviously Jessica get’s
arrested. She’s released on probation,
court ordered anger management, and bail provided by Trish. Trish is honestly
the best sort-of-sister ever. In a rare moment of vulnerability, Jessica admits
she’s still reeling from the whole killing Kilgrave thing. Trish and later her
new guy, Griffin St. Claire, try to pep her up, but Jessica slips away. While
looking for Jessica, Trish sees Will Simpson stalking her outside. He runs off
before she can nab him.
Back with Jeri, sigh, she’s a dick
to her assistant and then has a meeting with Cheng. Turns out, she’d hired
Cheng to hire Jessica to force Jessica to do some work for her again. Talk about
a roundabout plan. Cheng, now, is rightly pissed that Jessica dislocated his
shoulder and whooped him in front of his staff. All I can say is, bro, you
poked the bear. Don’t poke the bear unless you’re willing to face the
consequences. Cheng wants to hire Jeri to sue Jessica, ruin her personal life.
Again, I say, when you piss off someone with Super strength, a messed-up
shoulder is walking off easy. But Jeri is intrigued… cold hearted witch.
Jessica gets back to her place,
before being attacked by Whizzer. Turns out he’s not insane, he actually has
super speed. He pulls a gun on JJ and tries to force her to protect him from
the thing chasing him. Jessica obviously doesn’t take well to threats and the
two of them tussle. In the fight, the ashes of her brother get thrown about and
smash against the ceiling. Whoops. Whizzer runs off, but Jessica jumps out of a
window to cut him off. Whizzer keeps running and Jessica keeps chasing. That is
until Whizzer is crushed by some debris, and impaled on some rebar.
The next day, Malcom finds Jessica
sitting on her floor and, shockingly, drinking. He cleans up the ashes as best
he can while listening to Jessica. She tells him about Whizzer’s accident and
that he claimed he was being chased by a “Monster” that IGH made. They pull out
his bag, and find out the dude was on a LOT of drugs. Like on so many
anti-psychotics he should have been a drooling vegetable. And, disturbingly,
there’s no prescribing doctor or distribution company. Odd. Jessica finds the
IGH front building, a clothing distributor, and goes inside. The place is a
wreck, and completely deserted. She has flashbacks to when she was brought in
by IGH. The people in charge gave her a lot of injections, and she remembers
being attacked by something twisted. That’s an ominous note to end on.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, Jeri
is implied to be dying of something. Pardon me if I don’t shed a tear.
So… this is a good restart. Healing
is a process, and obviously personally murdering her former abuser was probably
not the healthiest thing to do. Still, wish Trish and Malcolm would try a
little harder to keep her away from the booze. I honestly hope that the court
appointed therapy helps her somehow. This latest conflict with IGH, her new
rivalry with Cheng, and the legal problems I’m sure she’s going to be dealing
with soon suggest things are about to get significantly more complicated for
her. And I like the shift in focus to IGH and whatever superhuman experiments
they were working on. Conspiracies and illegal experiments usually make for
good TV viewing. Using Whizzer as another human Guinea pig was an interesting
choice. For those who don’t recognize the name, Robert Frank aka the Whizzer is
a speedster hero from the Golden Age of comics. He used to work with Captain
America during WWII and is usually used as an older retired or semi-retired
hero in modern stories. So, portraying him as a potentially crazy person seems
like an odd choice. That being said, he’s a minor enough of a character that I
doubt anyone is going to flip out because of it. Characters got to take the
gigs offered to them. I’m interested to see if they’ll use other lesser known
heroes in that capacity in this season. I will say this monster of IGH is
implied to be a real BA and I am interested to see where they go with it. I’m
also curious on what they’ll be doing with Frank Simpson this season. I thought
his superpower brawl with Jessica and Trish was one of the better fights, and
his abuse of superpower drugs was an interesting little side story. Yeah, this
was a good return for Jessica Jones.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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