A visit to the police station.
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.
RIP, Ruben…
…and Ruben’s head.
Strange sister and brother duo Robyn and Ruben have been an odd little part of Jessica Jones up until now (and Robyn in particular often seems a bit too heightened for this show’s tone), but Ruben’s crush on Jessica gave him a bit more focus in recent episodes. Regardless, finding his corpse in Jessica’s bed, covered in blood, was a sobering moment (literally, for Jessica) that showed again how Kilgrave can bring his evil right to Jessica.
We want to hear it.
While it’s understandable this would push Jessica to the brink and make her determined to take action to stop Kilgrave, her specific plan was ludicrous. But thankfully, that was the point, and the insanity of her plan, with its Supermax prison and Kilgrave doing exactly what Jessica needed him to do, was pointed out to her onscreen by Trish (and even Jessica admitted it was stupid).
That scene also included a nice pep talk from Trish. Rachael Taylor and Krysten Ritter have done great work establishing these two very different women as the best of friends and, truly, sisters. That stands in stark contrast to Trish’s mother though, who we met in person here. Damn, what a horrible woman, huh? In the original Alias comics, we actually (oddly) never really got to know Jessica’s adopted family, and I’m liking what has been invented here, including merging Jessica and Patsy Walker’s stories into one – in fact, you can almost see Jessica as a substitute for Hedy Wolfe, Patsy’s comic book best friend (the two starred in the 1940s “Hedy and Patsy” comic together).
Going back to the show, it was gratifying to see how Trish had been able to resist her family’s influence, embrace Jessica and prove she was a good person in a way her mother could not. (now let’s get her in a yellow cat costume!)
We want to hear it.
Things got decidedly twisted as this episode went on, with Jessica going to ghastly lengths and actually removing Ruben’s head to prove she was a murdered and needed to be locked up. But, as we’ve seen before on Jessica Jones, the most twisted moments aren’t so much graphic as they are mental, and Kilgrave showing up in the middle of Jessica’s questioning disrupted everything she had planned.
Seeing him control the entire police station and force those officers to point their guns at themselves and each other was chilling, as was his completely unconcerned demeanor the whole time. David Tennant got to chew the scenery here and did so with gusto, as Kilgrave proclaimed, in his twisted manner, that he was in love with Jessica – and yearned for her as the one who literally got away.
Jessica has seemingly given up by the end of this hour, joining Kilgrave at her childhood home as he wished. But is she simply going along with what he wants to goad him into a false sense of security? And how will Simpson seeing her arrival play into what happens next? We’re just over half way through the season at this point, and Jessica Jones just keeps delivering.
