”Ow. Pick me up?”
By Eric Goldman
Note: We’re writing up separate reviews for all 13 Jessica Jones episodes, though for the purposes of binging brevity, some may be notably shorter than our usual reviews. Click here to see all of our Jessica Jones episode reviews.
Warning: Full spoilers for the episode below.
After he’d been front and center in a huge way for the last few episodes, “AKA I’ve Got the Blues” left Kilgrave off-screen for its entirety, giving Jessica a breather… Well, a breather of sorts, considering she still got hit by a truck and nearly killed by Simpson! But it’s all relative on a show with this much going on.
Jessica’s morbid hunt for Albert’s corpose offered some nice dark humor along the way – I particularly liked when she insisted she was there for a woman on the visitor’s list who was, “A really great woman and she died. It was tragic!”
Jessica and Trish’s fight with Simpson was awesome – the best all-out brawl we’ve seen on this show so far. Everyone (even Trish, once she went all “Give me a red”) got in some great moments, with Jessica and Simpson holding nothing back. Given the build up and the big moment of her taking the pill, I’m surprised Trish’s time fighting Simpson didn’t last longer, but it was still cool to see – especially since it was basically a preview of Hellcat vs. Nuke, on a series that is deftly juggling multiple origin stories.
Speaking of origins, we got more of a look at Jessica and Trish as teenagers here and just how abusive Trish’s mother was to her – and how the girls keeping each other secrets, and Jessica physically intervening to stop Trish’s mom, would begin to bond them. It was another good look at these two very different women and how they truly became sisters, and Jessica and Trish’s bond continues to be a great emotional through line of the series – Jessica obviously is not one for a lot of open emotion, so seeing her so obviously emotional twice (over Hope’s body as the episode began and then her relief when Trish opened her eyes) had a lot of impact.
With just two episodes left, I again wonder how many plotlines are going to be resolved on this series vs. left for the other, interconnected Marvel/Netflix series. After all, the super soldier program Simpson is a part of is certainly big enough on its own to continue elsewhere… and Nuke was introduced in an issue of Daredevil, after all.
The Robyn character continues to be a pain, though thankfully she didn’t have as much screen time here – though she was the devil on Malcolm’s soldier, giving him an anti-pep talk that seemingly led to him deciding it was time to look out for himself and ignore Jessica’s problems. Given what happened to Hope though, it would be nice if things would turn out better for the other young, lost soul Jessica’s tried to help on this series.
Feeling a bit like a calm before the storm episode – only because the main threat here was the mini-boss Simpson (who’s plenty intimidating on his own!), not big bad Kilgrave — “AKA I’ve Got the Blues” gave us the show’s best fight scene so far and skillfully escalated origin stories for Marvel characters this show has done a strong job of cultivating as supporting characters. Now, with Luke Cage back in the picture, and the need to find Kilgrave and stop him once and for all, the stage is set for a big conclusion.
