Jessica Jones : Some Thoughts

Between noon on Friday and just after midnight on Sunday, I spent 6 hours sleeping, 8 hours at work, and 13 hours watching every episode of Jessica Jones. It was pretty damn amazing, and in every way a worthy follow-up to Daredevil. I’d like to record a few scattered thoughts while the show is fresh in my mind — I’ll be skipping the lengthy intro and “clever” subtitles, because I’m goddamn exhausted. Please note that this article contains spoilers for every episode.

Gender

Supergirl talks about empowering women, but gives us an incredibly meek main character who is absurdly eager to submit to anyone who comes near her — a reverse Kilgrave, if you will. Agent Carter stars an intelligent, brave, highly skilled woman who faces horrible discrimination, but manages to kick ass anyway. Jessica Jones has a main character who kicks plenty of ass, and happens to be a woman. Maybe that’s somewhat over-simplified — feminist themes run all through Jessica Jones. The point, though, is that she isn’t defined or limited by her gender or sex.

Moreover, not only is the main character a woman, so is her best friend. So is her lawyer/associate/client. As are the lawyer’s wife, and girlfriend. The damsel in distress is a woman too, but she eventually ceases to be a passive victim, and takes matters into her own hands. The only men who play important roles are the bad guy, the love interest, and a love interest who becomes a bad guy. This is very much a show about women — men are secondary. And you know what? I didn’t even notice that until someone pointed it out. Maybe the creators set out to make a story about women, or maybe they just set out to make the best story they could, and it happened to be mostly about women. Either way, it turned out brilliantly.

It’s no coincidence that Kilgrave seems to primarily target women for his gratification. It’s definitely no coincidence that Simpson, the secondary antagonist, claims to love women, but doesn’t respect or trust them. It may be a coincidence that Simpson feels that way because, at least in part, he took a red pill, which is emblematic of the toxic “men’s rights” movement, but I sure hope not, ’cause that shit is delicious.

It’s rare to have female characters who are more than a prop. It’s especially rare to have more than one of them. Jessica Jones manages to pull this off seamlessly.

Choice

Possibly the most important theme in Jessica Jones is choice. That crops up more rarely than you’d think. Most shows are about people, or solving problems, or telling jokes. Jessica Jones is about the freedom to choose, and having to deal with the consequences. I’d list every instance, but absolutely no one would sit through an article that long, and I definitely don’t have the patience to write it.

Kilgrave, of course, removes your free will. Jessica, on the other hand, is all about freedom, even when it makes her life harder. She pushes people away so that she isn’t limited by their expectations or needs. She lives in a shithole rather than stay with her rich, loving friend. She is faced with countless dilemmas, and they are rarely a matter of finding the right answer — instead, she has to choose the least-bad option, or pick a course and hope that it turns out OK. In the end, she’s faced with the hardest choice of all : let a crowd of innocent people die, or stop the monster that haunts her. She wins, to the extent that someone like her can win, by refusing the choices offered to her by Kilgrave, and taking a third path of her own making.

When you present people with two (or more) starkly different options, and don’t give them enough information to know what will happen, you quickly learn who they are. Jessica Jones makes tough calls every day, and lives with the consequences. Kilgrave never has to make tough calls, and doesn’t even know the meaning of responsibility.

What point am I trying to make here? I dunno, but this shit is way more entertaining than watching a bunch of nerds argue about whether Star Trek is better than Star Wars. I mean, I enjoy The Big Bang Theory, but there’s just no comparison between that and Jessica Jones.

Kilgrave

The TV version of Kilgrave is a pretty significant departure from the comic version, and that’s a good thing. Comic Kilgrave was a vaguely generic boogeyman. He was spooky, sure, but that’s really just because of the way he used his power. Personality-wise, he wasn’t much more than a guy who gets off on having power.

The TV version, though…oh man. Talk about a juicy character! He got his powers as a child, and his entire personality, his lack of empathy, his sociopathic cruelty, all stem from his completely-fucked up life. He isn’t evil, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing is wrong — he’s still a child, doing what comes naturally. Moral behaviour is learned, and there was no way to teach him. In that situation, given virtually ultimate power as a child, pretty much everyone would turn out the same way. He’s not a super-villain, he’s a rabid dog. You can’t help but feel sorry for him, but he still has to die.

David Tennant, of course, is flawless in this role. He’s just as charming and funny as he was in Doctor Who, but his Kilgrave is far creepier. The matter-of-fact way he tells people to do horrible things is just chilling.

Jessica

When I saw that first promo picture of Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones, I thought to myself “She’s way too young for this role!” See, when I first read Alias (the comic that Jessica Jones is based on), I was probably about 19, and Jessica was clearly meant to be about half a decade older than me. As I aged, I never really had any reason to update that mental image, and in my head, Jessica was still about half a decade older than me. To see someone who’s clearly in their mid-twenties portraying a character who’s meant (in my mind) to be in their mid-thirties was jarring. Then I realized my mistake, made peace with it, and was blown away by how well Ritter played Jessica.

And then I read Ritter’s Wikipedia entry, and it turns out she actually is older than me. Apparently I’m just an idiot, and she doesn’t age like normal humans.

MCU

Jessica Jones takes place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which is the same world as Iron Man, Thor, Guardians Of The Galaxy, Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D, and so on. While the idea behind it is great, I think that the execution could have been better. Jessica Jones seems somewhat uncertain about its connection to all this other stuff, and the integration feels awkward.

There are a number of things that make sense in context, but are rather jarring to someone familiar with the rest of the MCU. In one episode, Jessica is confronted by someone who lost their mother in the Battle of New York (or, as they call it in Jessica Jones, “The Incident”). Jessica suggests that she take her anger out on “the green guy, or the flag waver.” From a cynical dick like her, that’s a perfectly in-character response, but it feels uncomfortably like an attempt to distance the series from The Avengers. It’s all-too reminiscent of the way everyone on Supergirl talks about “your cousin” instead of saying “Superman”.

In another episode, one character remarks that he doesn’t believe in elves, as though this is something that everyone should take for granted. That would be fine, except this is only a few years after the United Kingdom was attacked by Dark Elves who were hell-bent on destroying the entire universe. Of course, there’s a perfectly good explanation : the Dark Elves didn’t exactly look like the popular image of elves, and there’s no reason why the average person would know what they call themselves. As far as most people are concerned, they were probably just some kind of alien. That sort of thing is fine when it’s addressed, but it seems inconsistent when it’s just thrown out there casually.

The elephant in the room, though, is S.H.I.E.L.D and Hydra. After a few episodes of Jessica Jones, everyone in New York is aware that there may be an evil mind-controller out there somewhere, and at least some people believe it. That’s exactly the sort of person that S.H.I.E.L.D. would want to stop, and Hydra would want to control. On the surface, their total absence seems almost unforgivable. I’m not saying that Jessica Jones would be a better show if all these secret organizations started showing up (in fact, I think it would be much worse), but it seems like the sort of thing that absolutely has to be addressed.

Is there an easy answer to this? Of course! Right now, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is in the middle of Season 3. If we assume that Jessica Jones takes place in the middle of Season 2, that means S.H.I.E.L.D. is just beginning to rebuild, and Hydra is in ruins. It’s the perfect excuse for their failure to show up in Jessica Jones. It’s also an answer that shouldn’t be left up to the fans.

Don’t get me wrong — I think it’s a good thing that Jessica Jones isn’t too tightly integrated with the MCU, and I certainly don’t want it to have the same tone or approach as other Marvel shows. But, even though shared universes offer rich backgrounds, established worlds, and a built-in audience, they demand a certain degree of consistency, and although Jessica Jones tried, it didn’t fully deliver.

This even crops up, in a lesser form, with Simpson. He’s a former/current/rogue member of a black ops unit that uses mind altering combat drugs. His organization is never given a full name, or a background, so the whole time I kept expecting a S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra reveal. In the Marvel Comics universe, there are plenty of secret government units, shady corporations, and megalomaniac rich people who could be responsible for Simpson’s organization, but in the Marvel Cinematic Universe there are very few possibilities, and S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra are the only prominent ones. Now, this is a pretty decent way to introduce a new shadowy organization for future dramatic use, but it does somewhat detract from the current show.

Final Thoughts

Goddamn this show is good! I hope they make another season right away, like they decided to do with Daredevil.

If you enjoyed this article, why not read my essay about Daredevil, my open letter about the future of Star Trek, or The Sad, Strange Story of the Taliban’s Canadian Hostage ?