Friday 23 March 2018

Jessica Jones Season 2



POSSIBLE SPOILERS

With a flurry of new shows appearing on Netflix every week it seems, sometimes the streaming service's staple shows or those that brought in the subscribers are released without fanfare. A trailer may be out on social channels but that's as far as it goes meaning big hitters such as Jessica Jones season 2 are let out quietly.

The show had some momentum after The Defenders was released last year, bringing the four New York based heros and crime fighters together in a shaky truce. Jessica, who always works best alone, much like the others in the group, was being set up for another solo story. Despite the big showdown in The Defenders, Jessica seems barely affected by the aftermath, instead she continues, business as normal. She drinks, takes a case, drinks at a bar, takes photos of adulterers, drinks some and blacks out at her home slash office. So far so Jessica. But when her best friend Trish, radio presenter and would be journalist, chases a story about how Jessica came to be the superpowered woman she is, things take a turn.

Season two picks up, as if The Defenders didn't really happen, which is odd but at the same time makes no difference. Mentions of Kilgrave and the mental scars he left on Jessica resurface including an actual appearence from the villain in the form of a hallucination later on the on the series when Jessica questions herself for the hundredth time. The focus for the series is about Jessica's origins and her family, gulit taking over her bit by bit. The story is set up well, with a group of cases presented, including one that sounds odd and most likely to be the red herring that really gets the ball rolling. With ex-addict neighbour Malcolm as her assistant who she regularly fires and yet he still comes back, things at Alias Investigations seem to going well, even when a rival investigator comes knocking. Trish and Geri also get their own messed up storylines that go nowhere at first then take sharpe dramatic turns. Geri's story at least involves her signature cold as ice expressions as well as a mini sweet revenge plot but Trish literally goes off the rails all the while claiming she is a journalist.  The core story with Jessica is about her own issues. The first season was about an evil villain who used, abused and terrorized her and how she overcame him. This season is about dealing with the loss of her family and finding out the truth about those rose tinted days before the car crash.

In a way, the three main women of the show go through literal and metaphorical changes throughout the show. Geri finds out she has limited time left and decides to bit back when she is pushed out by her partners at her law firm. Trish starts to evolve into a real journalist and then destroys everything in her life, leaving her boyfriend, losing her job, ruining her relationship with Jessica. Jessica looks for answers and tries to deal with the aftermath when she meets someone from her past.

The trend in the Marvel TV shows is have a hard hitting first half, then slowly make everything worse for everyone involve as well switching villains. The latter part really annoys me as it doesn't work. A twist half way through a story isn't a twist, its actively a bad decision. In my opinion. But Jessica Jones sets itself apart slightly by having a villain in place but to find out he was never really the 'bad guy' but someone who tried to do good but ended up with a mess on his hands.

Jessica Jones season two isn't perfect and is by no means as good as season one in story terms, but it has some great episodes early on and has the honour of having each episodes directed by a woman. It was announced that half the episodes would be directed by a woman but then, why not all of them? It really makes a difference, concerning certain details and it great that this was idea was put in motion. I'm hoping this encourages more shows, especially those about female characters where there are more women directing.

Make of it what you will but I always prefered Jessica Jones when she was on the case where it wasn't so personal. We'll see what happens next.