The Super Powered Fancast

Marvel’s Jessica Jones

Netflix

Season 2 Episode 2

As with many moments in Jessica’s life, this episode begins in a bar. Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is having flashes of her past. Memories of being wheeled down a hospital hallway and she is desperate to drink those memories away.

Malcolm (Eka Darville) calls her with some follow-up information on the file that Trish (Rachael Taylor) left in the first episode and begs Jessica to tag along, but she refuses. She tracks down the address of a character who made a brief appearance in season one and finds out something that threatens to derail her entire investigation. Meanwhile, Trish decides to have lunch with her estranged mother in order to get information on someone who might know more about Jessica’s past. Someone Trish has had a past with herself and unaware that she and her mother are being watched from the shadows.

Rebecca DeMornay is great as Dorothy Walker. Her ability to manipulate Trish in subtle (and not so subtle) ways is amazing to see. While the focus of the series, especially in season 1, was on Jessica and her trauma, you can’t discount the fact that Trish dealt with her own trauma as well and her tormentors were never punished. A fact that becomes clear later in this episode.

Jeri (Carrie-Ann Moss) is dealing with her own kind of trauma in this episode and her decisions are a self-destructive means of escaping the realities of her health and her professional issues. Moss plays those moments perfectly and you feel for her character. Jessica runs into another issue when two detectives come by to ask questions about a super powered person who came to her for help and ended up dead. Someone Jessica initially dismissed until she found out that he had information that mutually effected them both.

Trish takes a desperate risk to get information and winds up in the hands of a familiar face. Jessica tries to track down her friend and a new threat emerges that Jessica is not prepared for.

Everyone in this episode is dealing with trauma, both personal and professional and the ways that they are dealing with it allows for some well done character development and drama. Jessica’s continued engagement in activities she thinks will help her forget what she’s been through is only tragic if you forget that she has a support system around her if she utilizes it. The tragedy comes in that she knows that, but her need to be aloof and emotionally cut off is her way of protecting them. Trish, Malcolm and Jeri are all dealing with their own trauma as well and each character is given due time to at least identify that trauma.

The pacing in this episode is a bit of a problem. It tends to drag in moments that could have been edited out. I know the subplot about Trish’s boyfriend is integral to the season, but I think he was in this episode too much. His presence at the restaurant with Trish and Dorothy was unnecessary and he just seemed to keep popping up to deliver information he could have relayed through a phone call. I know the director wanted to show that he is now an important part of Trish’s life, but he never really added anything to many of the scenes he was in.

The newest threat to Jessica is something that deserved more time and it would have enhanced the episode to show more of that character’s actions in the third act. Other than that, the episode was a fine continuation of the groundwork laid in the premiere and now those narrative threads should begin to pay off.