Archive

“Jessica Jones” recap (1.10): Abandon all Hope ye who enter here

Previously on Jessica Jones: Shit went all to hell, basically. But, at least Jessica can now resist Kilgrave’s powers. So, you know, there’s that.

An injured Kilgrave races out of the building and finds a panicked Jeri—who has just now realized what terrible life choices she has made—trying to speed away. She pulls a gun on him, but damn why doesn’t anyone roll up their car windows? Would his mind control have worked through a closed Audi window? If not, that’s something they should definitely tout in their commercials.

The predictable worst-case-scenario of him hijacking her to get away happens. She is freaking out because of the gruesome murder of Kilgrave’s mother, which she unwittingly helped to facilitate. Oopsie? He commands her to go to a doctor “someone you trust.” Yeah, so this is going to end so poorly.

Back at the lab, Jessica is left with the carnage of Kilgrave’s escape. His dead mom. Unconscious dad. Trish still trying desperately to put a bullet in her head. Jessica wrestles a bullet out of her hand and pops it in her mouth, to comply with Kilgrave’s command and finally calm her down. It’s one of the most brutally tender moments in a series filled with so many brutal and too few tender moments so far.

Jeri has taken Kilgrave to see Wendy because of course she has. It’s just more evidence that the heart and the brain are rarely attached. Kilgrave notes as much, and orders her to patch him up. He also lets slip that Jeri agreed to cut the wires so Kilgrave would make Wendy sign the divorce papers. I mean, we all saw that coming, but still.

Kilgrave’s father, who is still trying to cut out his own heart, lets something slip of his own. Kilgrave’s power comes from a virus. When he talks, he emits microparticles. OK, well let’s just bubble boy him and problem solved. That or does anyone have a giant hamster wheel lying around?

Kilgrave’s dad tells them they’ve been working on a vaccine for decades, but now may be able to create one thanks to Jessica and her immunity. So they collect blood, and we all cross our fingers and say a little prayer for science.

Across town, Kilgrave is playing the jilted lover card with Wendy, who is commiserating right back. Look, I agree—not with Kilgrave, never with Kilgrave—but cheaters do suck. And, again, it sucks beyond the telling of it to have someone you love not love you back anymore. But egging on a psychopath, dear Wendy, is never the answer.

Then Kilgrave’s rhetorical directive to, “Tell me something I don’t know,” makes Jeri drop a truth bomb. Hope was pregnant with his child; she kept the fetal tissue and Jessica doesn’t know it exists. Jesus, Jeri, can you please stop proving all the stereotypes about soulless power attorneys right?

Jessica calls Jeri to check her status, and Kilgrave instructs her to find out where his father is. He also gives Wendy the green light to kill Jeri with “death by a thousand cuts.” So then she starts, “One.”

At the lab, the detective has been left alone to secure the scene or something. We hear a door open. Oh, no. Who could it be? Oh, don’t worry, it’s just Simpson. No big deal. It’s two police officers standing around and upholding the law together, right? Oh, shit, wait.

So, Simpson has just graduated from general asshole to murderous asshole. He killed a fellow cop. He burned the lab to the ground, with all its evidence. He is just bent on vengeance. He is, to put it bluntly, going to be a major fucking problem.

Wendy is in the 20s of her 1,000-cuts campaign and has already made quite a mess. Jeri and her grapple, with Jeri on the losing end. It’s pretty awful, and she still has like 970 cuts to go. But then we hear a knocking that gets more and more incessant at the door.

The knocking becomes a crash, and someone arrives to clock Wendy on the head. It’s Pam. Poor, love-struck, totally screwed Pam. So now it’s all over but the bleeding, guilt and consequences.

Jessica arrives a few seconds later and scans the carnage. This entire episode is Jessica dealing with the carnage and collateral damage left in Kilgrave’s wake. Ditto for the show. Pam’s direct hit on Wendy sent her head into the edge of the coffee table. Thus endeth Wendy.

Jessica demands to know where Kilgrave went, and then leaves poor Pam and bleeding Jeri. Well, not before she spits some frankly deserved invectives at Jeri for helping Kilgrave. I mean, she’s not wrong. But, to be fair, she does fully realize what a terrible, terrible, so so so terrible decision she made now.

In a storyline we almost forgot about but refuses to go away, Creepy Twin Girl is plastering the neighborhood with missing posters. OK, fine, it’s sad. But in a detached way, because as much as I enjoy this show, it failed to build enough emotional attachment for Creepy Guy Twin, so his death felt merely like another in a line of terrible things Kilgrave did, instead of a legit tragedy.

Jessica sees Malcolm helping Creepy Girl Twin with the fliers, but has no time for such nonsense. She heads to her apartment, but instead of just finding a stiff drink there she also finds an unrepentant lunatic. Kilgrave is there. There’s a lot of slamming into walls and yelling, and not the fun kind. But Jessica refrains from killing him, at least for now.

Kilgrave reveals he has gone to the judge and district attorney and convinced them to release Hope. Just when I think I have his endgame figured out, I’m confused all over again. But it becomes clear soon enough when he says it is a trade for his father and the promise to stay away from Jessica.

Pam, now in police custody, is dealing with her own devil, so to speak. Jeri comes to see her, as legal counsel and girlfriend. But Pam has started piecing things together. How did Kilgrave even know about Wendy? Jeri says, “It’s complicated,” which Pam already knows is code for “I’m lying.”

So that’s that. Pam realizes, even if it was circuitous, Jeri was trying to use Kilgrave to make Wendy sign the divorce papers. When confronted with her own horribleness, Jeri fires back at Pam saying she is the one who told her to get her to sign no matter what. Oh, girl, wrong move. Have you never dated women before? This is not how you win an argument with one.

Pam calls her bullshit and then tells the booking detective she needs a new lawyer. Gotta hand it to Jeri—when she fucks something up, she fucks it up royally. Though, fair warning, New York lesbians. Someone appears to be back on the market.

Kilgrave is still at Jessica’s place, now just hanging out with his feet up. I sort of don’t understand this casual détente they have going. Yes, I understand she wants to save Hope. But wouldn’t she think she already did that with the evidence she doesn’t know Simpson has burnt to a cinder? And yes, I know there are a bunch of unknown innocents he also said would die if he didn’t show back up. But, seriously, she could, at least, put a little more of the hurt on him.

Instead, Kilgrave remains free and able to flap his lips. He goes on about how Jessica really did have feelings for him, after all. Because there were 18 seconds when he wasn’t controlling her at all. He had let the 12-hour clock run out without any instructions, and she stayed.

But Jessica remembers that moment, too. She remembers how she waited and waited and waited for one moment of free will. And when it finally came she planned her escape. When Kilgrave went back inside, she stepped out onto the roof ledge. And as she was about to jump she had an elaborate fantasy about riding away on a white horse. And then the moment was over because Kilgrave gave her another order. And that was that.

Moral of this story: No one gets actually rescued on a white horse, by princes or themselves.

Kilgrave insists it was love; she wanted to be there. But Jessica knows removing Kilgrave from one’s consciousness is like lifting a fog, it’s gradual and takes a hell of a lot more than 18 seconds. She also knows, in every fiber of her being, she never wanted or would ever want to be with him.

And we flash back to his nonchalant cruelty as he berates her after her near jumping incident and commands her to cut off her ear. She starts, but then he stops her with fake comfort. Back in present-time, he touches the scar, and she clocks him across the room. Here we go. Now that’s more like it.

Malcolm is spilling his guts at his support group, which leads to Creepy Girl Twin hearing his confession about her brother. This subplot is one I just can’t invest in, period. There’s so much going on already: Jessica and Kilgrave, Hope and jail, Jeri and Pam, Trish and Simpson, Simpson and those red pills, Kilgrave’s dad and the vaccine, Luke and wherever the hell he went.

But now we have to deal with this. Creepy Girl Twin then goes about trying to turn everyone against Jessica because she is the real problem, not Kilgrave. Sure, blaming the victim. I get it. I just wish I didn’t have to watch it.

Jessica has Kilgrave all tied up and is calling Hope with the good news. But then Creepy Girl Twin leads her mob into Jessica’s apartment. She starts hitting Jessica with a 2×4 and then knocks her out. She finds Kilgrave and takes his duct tape off because, again, Creepy Twin Girl is THE FUCKING WORST.

Can I pause here a second and ask how, even with a 2×4, Creepy Twin Girl could possibly get the better of Jessica? Like, she can stop a moving car. She can fly/guided fall. But, sure, scrawny arms over here can totally knock her out. Sure.

Since we’re talking about people who are The Worst, Simpson shows up at the hotel room where Trish and Kilgrave’s dad are holed up and working on a vaccine. He figures out who the scientist is, and attacks him for creating Kilgrave. In his rage, he pushes Trish, and she bangs her head hard.

He says he’s on meds which are making him all better, but Trish realizes “all better” means “super agro” and makes him leave. But, before he goes, she also picks his pocket and takes his red pills. Smart, dangerous but smart.

Jessica wakes the next morning to a ringing phone. Yes, scrawny arms clocked her out that hard. On the other line is Hope, who is waiting to be picked up at the jail. Jessica tells her not to move because now Kilgrave is loose and no doubt gunning for her. But by the time she gets there Hope is gone and Kilgrave has left a message to bring his dad or “lose all Hope.”

So she arrives at the restaurant, with his dad and his newly finished “vaccine,” to trade. Kilgrave has set up his own contingencies, naturally. Creepy Girl Twin, her idiot mob and Malcolm have all been strung up. Well, that’s what we call learning your lesson the hard way.

Kilgrave is smugly eating pasta with Hope by his side. I swear if it wasn’t for other people Jessica would have had Kilgrave caught and jailed by now. I guess Sartre was right, Hell really is other people. He orders his dad to come to him, which his dad does because his vaccine didn’t work after all. This is all going so poorly.

Hope implores her to kill Kilgrave. But he knows she won’t, because she still wants to save Hope. Hope knows this, too. So she ends it herself. She plunges a wine glass stem into her neck. Well, holy shit, there goes our series hero’s main narrative motivation for three-fourths of this entire series. The show literally just killed all Hope.

But, in doing so, it also freed our hero. And, as she promises, now nothing, nothing in the world, is stopping her from killing that fucker. No, freedom isn’t free. But, damn, does it feel liberating.

Find more from Dorothy Snarker by visiting dorothysurrenders.com or @dorothysnarker.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button