Jessica Jones
Reader, I binge watched. Of course I did.
Non-spoilery summation for comic book readers familiar with Alias: matches the noir detective tone perfectly (they even kept the first person narration, which in this case I think is crucial for said tone), uses elements from the comics but remixes them plus adds new elements, so even if you've read Alias, you won't know how it all goes down (other than Jessica's backstory with the main villain). The credits sequence echoes the covers from the comics, and there's the occasional panel recreation (like in the second scene, which is the opening panel from the first Alias comics recreated), but not often. The comic books characters making it into the tv series directly are Jessica herself, Luke Cage, Kilgrave, and with a gender twist Jeryn/Jeri Hogarth. Everyone else is either unique to to the tv series or while roughly fulfilling similar narrative roles to comic book characters so different individuals that I wouldn't call them analogues, i.e. in the trailer and pilot you think that Carol Danvers' role as initially estranged best friend for Jessica in the comics seems to be taken by Trish Walker, but in fact Trish and Jessica have a very different backstory and a different type of relationship as the result of it, so I wouldn't call Trish the equivalent of Carol, she's too different. (But awesome!)
Non-spoilery (except for the premise already shown in the trailers) summation for people who never read a single line of the comics and may or may not be roughly familiar with the MCU: excellent female centric (and not just because of a female main character) series using hard boiled/film noir tropes - the cynical, hard drinking private eye with a backstory trauma and bad attitude but drive to help people beneath it, most of all - more often than not in a genderflipped way. The connections to the rest of the MCU mostly happen through the very occasional dialogue reference, and one crossover character from the Daredevil series whose role, however, can be understood without having watched either Daredevil or anything else. Which means you can watch this whether or not you're into other areas of the MCU. The physical violence level is a bit less Tarantino-esque than Daredevil, though there are some nasty deaths; it's the emotional violence that makes for the true horror element. In connection with that: the only on screen sex we see is consensual, and there's no female nudity at all. (Even during said sex scenes, the female characters remains clothed.) However, because one major theme is mind control, the backstory most definitely includes rape on every imaginable level, and the series explores the consequences of this to several characters (both female and male), including our heroine. It's very much a survivors story. It has a seasonal arc with a main storyline that concludes in the finale and some ongoing subplot threads setting up a second season, which I definitely hope the show will get.
Melissa Rosenberg, who created this show based on Brian Bendis' comics, is someone I mainly know as a writer/coproducer from the first four seasons of Dexter, aka the ones which were good (and wow, was the instant loss of quality after season 4 when she left noticable!), and of course I know and like several of the actors cast for the series, so I had high hopes. Which were more than fulfilled.
Now it didn't surprise me that Melissa Rosenberg picked the Kilgrave arc from the comics as her main arc to adapt for the first season. In the comics, there are hints about Jessica's backstory trauma, but it isn't revealed until the fourth story arc/trade collection, and let's face it, modern impatient viewing habits would never have tolerated viewers waiting until the fourth season for this. Also, Kilgrave is a foe providing a clear seasonal goal (first, as long as Hope's liberty and life is still at stake, to capture, then to kill), whereas the various individual villains and cooperations Jessica clashes with in the earlier comics are less suited for this. Mind you, during episode 11 (aka the one where Simpson goes on the rampage) I was itching to complain about a clear filler/stalling episode until it occured to me that it wasn't so much about that as it was about setting IGH up as Jessica's post-Kilgrave nemesis to investigate/fight if/when season 2 comes. Incidentally, there was a vid recently exploring the long term result (read: damage) the super soldier project wrecked in the Marvelverse after Steve was its one success (and partly because Steve was a success), and with the minor IGH subplot hinting at next season, this show provides additional material.
But that's really a minor aspect. Mainly, and rightly so, the show focused on Jessica Jones, survivor of backstory awfulness, forced to confront it in the present. As mentioned before, she is and isn't a typical film noir/hard boiled fiction P.I. in this. The storybeats are met - for example, in the pilot, Jessica heads out of town until her inner decency gets the better of her because she can't let another woman go through what she herself went through - but because Jessica and everyone else are so vividly drawn, they feel fresh. I was also continually impressed how the show avoided depersonalizing Kilgrave's non-Jessica victims. (You know, often what the villain does to our hero/heroine or their immediate loved ones of course is treated as a main event, but his/her other victims only serve as props, without the story bothering to at least give a sense that their tragedies are as awful as our hero's.) Showing the damage Kilgrave leaves behind in the survivors - in addition to those who end up dead - is a consistent red thread through the season, as is their attempts to heal. And this, btw, is the reason why I'd call this show dark, but not grimdark. It's very much about what you do next after horror has happened, and about survival through connections, both for Jessica and supporting characters like Malcolm, or our second most prominent female character, Trish. Trish doesn't get Kilgrave'd until the finale and then only briefly; her backstory trauma is different (and a reminder that you don't need superpowers to fuck people up), but no less dark - Trish was a child star with an abusive mother. Trish is also one of the most optimistic and benevolent characters of the show. She survived her mother and her exploitation as a child and adolescent because teenage Jessica came into her life and they bonded. That adult Trish helps Jessica even when at the start of the show Jessica (due to her own PTSD) is being a jerk to her is due to this emotional connection, which endures and at various points helps them both. Similarly, Malcolm whom Kilgrave turned into a drug addict is saved by Jessica from immediate death but saves himself afterwards by connecting with other Kilgrave survivors, and thus restores the self Kilgrave took from him, the young man wanting to help other people. The show presents some pretty awful human beings (not just Kilgrave), but it's also a paeon to the power of human kindness.
Jessica, as is her comic books counterpart, isn't just screwed up by the past, she's also prone to making spectacularly bad decisions. Most prominent example in the tv series: having repeatedly sex with Luke without coming clean about the past and her part in his wife's death, no matter how mind-controlled, with him first. This isn't part of the Jessica/Luke relationship in the comics, btw, but Jessica's certainly prone to do things like that early in her series. Anyway, tv Luke's reaction once he does find out, at season half point (just like Foggy finds out the truth about Matt at season half point in Daredevil), is predictable. Incidentally, it occured to me that this, too, is noir, though if the noir hero has killed the noir love interest's husband, the (female) noir love interest is expected to get over it downright quickly in most narratives. A more recent example: The Crying Game) But, and that's what makes Jessica a heroine as opposed to a villain in waiting, she takes responsibility for them. (And then some.) And as abrasive as she can get, she can't not help other people if they're in need. (This is how Kilgrave keeps defeating her until the finale, because due to his powers he can always put someone else's life on the line.) In a late flashback, we see this started long pre Kilgrave, with teenage Trish, and it's as consistent a character trait as her sharp tongue and short temper. The help in question also doesn't solely happen via physical life saving, it can also happen via collecting drugged out Malcolm from the floor or, in the finale, reaching out to Jeri Hogarth and offering her a possibilty, with the full knowledge of all Hogarth's guilty off . That's what I mean when I say that the show is dark but not cynical.
Mind you: it's also not rosy eyed in the sense of believing everyone to be redeemable. In episode 8, Kilgrave tempts Jessica with a scenario beloved by many a fanfiction (and for that matter, some pro fiction) writer: a villain reformed into using his powers for good instead of evil by The Love Of A Good Woman. Both Jessica and the overall narrative reject this scenario completely. It's not Jessica's (or anyone else's) responsibility to provide Kilgrave with a moral compass, or to bribe him into not damaging people by providing him with what he wants; all of Kilgrave's acts are on Kilgrave. The one difference between him and all previous MCU villains is that he's not into world domination, nor does he have a secret master plan to take over at least the city, or something similar. Instead, he's simply into controlling people on a personal level, playing games with them, and fixated on Jessica because she was the only one capable of eventually breaking said control. The show makes a point of not letting him have the traditional villain's lair, either. He moves in and out of over people's homes, taking them over completely as it suits him. It's the casual taking over of spaces (both physical and emotional ones) that's so frightening. Even of memories. Jessica's mantra to fight against her PTSD consists of listing the streets near her childhood home, because that's a safe, happy, pre-Kilgrave memory, but it stops being one when he literally takes over said childhood home too. I think in the entire series, we see Kilgrave touch Jessica only two times, once taking her arm in episode 8, and once in an episode 11 flashback kissing her. (Not counting occasions where Jessica touches Kilgrave by punching him.) But the show doesn't need to show any physical contact between them to make it clear how thoroughly he screwed her up.
At the end of the season, Kilgrave, as opposed to Wilson Fisk/the Kingpin in Daredevil, actually dies, and what's more, not in the way movies often kill off villains in order to take the responsibility from the heroes, i.e. the classic Disney fall from a great height. Instead, Jessica kills him with her own hands. Which I think was the correct narrative choice. Kilgrave surviving in the comics was due to the general unkillability of comic book villains more than anything else, and on a tv show, you can't maintain him as an antagonist for longer than one seaosn without making both him and Jessica unbelievable, precisely because he doesn't have the traditional supervillain goals and is so fixated on her. And it would have been dishonest to the general theme of responsibility (something Kilgrave never takes) to let someone other than Jessica do it, let alone employ the Disney fall from great height.
Where does this all leave Jessica? At terms with one part of her past, still something of a mess, but able and willing to continue (and to continue helping others), with few but good friends around her. Which is as good a place as a noir hero is ever going to reach.
Other minor observations:
- the Daredevil crossover character isn't Matt himself (who is Jessica's lawyer in the comicverse, but couldn't be here, given Jeri Hogarth's role), it's Claire, medical support to messed up superheroes extraordinaire. She doesn't show up until the last two episodes, but it's a great appearance.
- the costume Trish suggests in the flashback to Jessica was of course the one comicverse Jessica wore during her brief pre Kilgrave stint as a traditional superhero, and she did call herself Jewel, but I can see why tvverse Jessica snorts at the idea
- Jeri Hogarth's storyline with her to-be-divorced-wife and personal assistant/lover is tv unusual for a) all thre participants being female and b) not a single other character commenting on this. Instead, both on a Doylist and Watsonian level, it's treated exactly the same way as the heterosexual equivalent would be. I think that's a first for the MCU
- David Tennant uses a standard English accent for Kilgrave, which caused at least one review to say "thank God he's using his own accent instead of trying an American one", which caused nitpicking me to declare "no, he doesn't; his own is Scottish". BTW, Kilgrave, or rather, Kevin Thompson as he was called as a child, is from Manchester, but neither his nor his parents' accents are Northern at all. Maybe they moved to Manchester from the south?
- Mike Colter as Luke Cage is great, and had good chemistry with Krysten Ritter as Jessica, but I'm actually on board with the show letting him go his separate way for now at the end of the season. I know there's a Doylist reason (i.e. he gets his own show), but I also buy it on a Watsonian level, given what both Jessica and he go through in this season, especially after Jessica finds out Kilgrave mind-controlled and scripted Luke's forgiveness that meant so much to her. They can hook up again at some later point, but for now, distance and separate working through what happened is better
- in case I haven't mentioned it yet: I love that Jessica's & Trish's relationship is the strongest one on the show, and the one given the most narrative space
- and that Trish is no damsel but (because of her own backstory) has learned martial arts, is well able to defend herself, and is Jessica's inspiration for heroism
- and lastly, I appreciate the show provides us with enough examples of Jessica being actually good at detecting to justify her choice of job.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1123208.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Non-spoilery summation for comic book readers familiar with Alias: matches the noir detective tone perfectly (they even kept the first person narration, which in this case I think is crucial for said tone), uses elements from the comics but remixes them plus adds new elements, so even if you've read Alias, you won't know how it all goes down (other than Jessica's backstory with the main villain). The credits sequence echoes the covers from the comics, and there's the occasional panel recreation (like in the second scene, which is the opening panel from the first Alias comics recreated), but not often. The comic books characters making it into the tv series directly are Jessica herself, Luke Cage, Kilgrave, and with a gender twist Jeryn/Jeri Hogarth. Everyone else is either unique to to the tv series or while roughly fulfilling similar narrative roles to comic book characters so different individuals that I wouldn't call them analogues, i.e. in the trailer and pilot you think that Carol Danvers' role as initially estranged best friend for Jessica in the comics seems to be taken by Trish Walker, but in fact Trish and Jessica have a very different backstory and a different type of relationship as the result of it, so I wouldn't call Trish the equivalent of Carol, she's too different. (But awesome!)
Non-spoilery (except for the premise already shown in the trailers) summation for people who never read a single line of the comics and may or may not be roughly familiar with the MCU: excellent female centric (and not just because of a female main character) series using hard boiled/film noir tropes - the cynical, hard drinking private eye with a backstory trauma and bad attitude but drive to help people beneath it, most of all - more often than not in a genderflipped way. The connections to the rest of the MCU mostly happen through the very occasional dialogue reference, and one crossover character from the Daredevil series whose role, however, can be understood without having watched either Daredevil or anything else. Which means you can watch this whether or not you're into other areas of the MCU. The physical violence level is a bit less Tarantino-esque than Daredevil, though there are some nasty deaths; it's the emotional violence that makes for the true horror element. In connection with that: the only on screen sex we see is consensual, and there's no female nudity at all. (Even during said sex scenes, the female characters remains clothed.) However, because one major theme is mind control, the backstory most definitely includes rape on every imaginable level, and the series explores the consequences of this to several characters (both female and male), including our heroine. It's very much a survivors story. It has a seasonal arc with a main storyline that concludes in the finale and some ongoing subplot threads setting up a second season, which I definitely hope the show will get.
Melissa Rosenberg, who created this show based on Brian Bendis' comics, is someone I mainly know as a writer/coproducer from the first four seasons of Dexter, aka the ones which were good (and wow, was the instant loss of quality after season 4 when she left noticable!), and of course I know and like several of the actors cast for the series, so I had high hopes. Which were more than fulfilled.
Now it didn't surprise me that Melissa Rosenberg picked the Kilgrave arc from the comics as her main arc to adapt for the first season. In the comics, there are hints about Jessica's backstory trauma, but it isn't revealed until the fourth story arc/trade collection, and let's face it, modern impatient viewing habits would never have tolerated viewers waiting until the fourth season for this. Also, Kilgrave is a foe providing a clear seasonal goal (first, as long as Hope's liberty and life is still at stake, to capture, then to kill), whereas the various individual villains and cooperations Jessica clashes with in the earlier comics are less suited for this. Mind you, during episode 11 (aka the one where Simpson goes on the rampage) I was itching to complain about a clear filler/stalling episode until it occured to me that it wasn't so much about that as it was about setting IGH up as Jessica's post-Kilgrave nemesis to investigate/fight if/when season 2 comes. Incidentally, there was a vid recently exploring the long term result (read: damage) the super soldier project wrecked in the Marvelverse after Steve was its one success (and partly because Steve was a success), and with the minor IGH subplot hinting at next season, this show provides additional material.
But that's really a minor aspect. Mainly, and rightly so, the show focused on Jessica Jones, survivor of backstory awfulness, forced to confront it in the present. As mentioned before, she is and isn't a typical film noir/hard boiled fiction P.I. in this. The storybeats are met - for example, in the pilot, Jessica heads out of town until her inner decency gets the better of her because she can't let another woman go through what she herself went through - but because Jessica and everyone else are so vividly drawn, they feel fresh. I was also continually impressed how the show avoided depersonalizing Kilgrave's non-Jessica victims. (You know, often what the villain does to our hero/heroine or their immediate loved ones of course is treated as a main event, but his/her other victims only serve as props, without the story bothering to at least give a sense that their tragedies are as awful as our hero's.) Showing the damage Kilgrave leaves behind in the survivors - in addition to those who end up dead - is a consistent red thread through the season, as is their attempts to heal. And this, btw, is the reason why I'd call this show dark, but not grimdark. It's very much about what you do next after horror has happened, and about survival through connections, both for Jessica and supporting characters like Malcolm, or our second most prominent female character, Trish. Trish doesn't get Kilgrave'd until the finale and then only briefly; her backstory trauma is different (and a reminder that you don't need superpowers to fuck people up), but no less dark - Trish was a child star with an abusive mother. Trish is also one of the most optimistic and benevolent characters of the show. She survived her mother and her exploitation as a child and adolescent because teenage Jessica came into her life and they bonded. That adult Trish helps Jessica even when at the start of the show Jessica (due to her own PTSD) is being a jerk to her is due to this emotional connection, which endures and at various points helps them both. Similarly, Malcolm whom Kilgrave turned into a drug addict is saved by Jessica from immediate death but saves himself afterwards by connecting with other Kilgrave survivors, and thus restores the self Kilgrave took from him, the young man wanting to help other people. The show presents some pretty awful human beings (not just Kilgrave), but it's also a paeon to the power of human kindness.
Jessica, as is her comic books counterpart, isn't just screwed up by the past, she's also prone to making spectacularly bad decisions. Most prominent example in the tv series: having repeatedly sex with Luke without coming clean about the past and her part in his wife's death, no matter how mind-controlled, with him first. This isn't part of the Jessica/Luke relationship in the comics, btw, but Jessica's certainly prone to do things like that early in her series. Anyway, tv Luke's reaction once he does find out, at season half point (just like Foggy finds out the truth about Matt at season half point in Daredevil), is predictable. Incidentally, it occured to me that this, too, is noir, though if the noir hero has killed the noir love interest's husband, the (female) noir love interest is expected to get over it downright quickly in most narratives. A more recent example: The Crying Game) But, and that's what makes Jessica a heroine as opposed to a villain in waiting, she takes responsibility for them. (And then some.) And as abrasive as she can get, she can't not help other people if they're in need. (This is how Kilgrave keeps defeating her until the finale, because due to his powers he can always put someone else's life on the line.) In a late flashback, we see this started long pre Kilgrave, with teenage Trish, and it's as consistent a character trait as her sharp tongue and short temper. The help in question also doesn't solely happen via physical life saving, it can also happen via collecting drugged out Malcolm from the floor or, in the finale, reaching out to Jeri Hogarth and offering her a possibilty, with the full knowledge of all Hogarth's guilty off . That's what I mean when I say that the show is dark but not cynical.
Mind you: it's also not rosy eyed in the sense of believing everyone to be redeemable. In episode 8, Kilgrave tempts Jessica with a scenario beloved by many a fanfiction (and for that matter, some pro fiction) writer: a villain reformed into using his powers for good instead of evil by The Love Of A Good Woman. Both Jessica and the overall narrative reject this scenario completely. It's not Jessica's (or anyone else's) responsibility to provide Kilgrave with a moral compass, or to bribe him into not damaging people by providing him with what he wants; all of Kilgrave's acts are on Kilgrave. The one difference between him and all previous MCU villains is that he's not into world domination, nor does he have a secret master plan to take over at least the city, or something similar. Instead, he's simply into controlling people on a personal level, playing games with them, and fixated on Jessica because she was the only one capable of eventually breaking said control. The show makes a point of not letting him have the traditional villain's lair, either. He moves in and out of over people's homes, taking them over completely as it suits him. It's the casual taking over of spaces (both physical and emotional ones) that's so frightening. Even of memories. Jessica's mantra to fight against her PTSD consists of listing the streets near her childhood home, because that's a safe, happy, pre-Kilgrave memory, but it stops being one when he literally takes over said childhood home too. I think in the entire series, we see Kilgrave touch Jessica only two times, once taking her arm in episode 8, and once in an episode 11 flashback kissing her. (Not counting occasions where Jessica touches Kilgrave by punching him.) But the show doesn't need to show any physical contact between them to make it clear how thoroughly he screwed her up.
At the end of the season, Kilgrave, as opposed to Wilson Fisk/the Kingpin in Daredevil, actually dies, and what's more, not in the way movies often kill off villains in order to take the responsibility from the heroes, i.e. the classic Disney fall from a great height. Instead, Jessica kills him with her own hands. Which I think was the correct narrative choice. Kilgrave surviving in the comics was due to the general unkillability of comic book villains more than anything else, and on a tv show, you can't maintain him as an antagonist for longer than one seaosn without making both him and Jessica unbelievable, precisely because he doesn't have the traditional supervillain goals and is so fixated on her. And it would have been dishonest to the general theme of responsibility (something Kilgrave never takes) to let someone other than Jessica do it, let alone employ the Disney fall from great height.
Where does this all leave Jessica? At terms with one part of her past, still something of a mess, but able and willing to continue (and to continue helping others), with few but good friends around her. Which is as good a place as a noir hero is ever going to reach.
Other minor observations:
- the Daredevil crossover character isn't Matt himself (who is Jessica's lawyer in the comicverse, but couldn't be here, given Jeri Hogarth's role), it's Claire, medical support to messed up superheroes extraordinaire. She doesn't show up until the last two episodes, but it's a great appearance.
- the costume Trish suggests in the flashback to Jessica was of course the one comicverse Jessica wore during her brief pre Kilgrave stint as a traditional superhero, and she did call herself Jewel, but I can see why tvverse Jessica snorts at the idea
- Jeri Hogarth's storyline with her to-be-divorced-wife and personal assistant/lover is tv unusual for a) all thre participants being female and b) not a single other character commenting on this. Instead, both on a Doylist and Watsonian level, it's treated exactly the same way as the heterosexual equivalent would be. I think that's a first for the MCU
- David Tennant uses a standard English accent for Kilgrave, which caused at least one review to say "thank God he's using his own accent instead of trying an American one", which caused nitpicking me to declare "no, he doesn't; his own is Scottish". BTW, Kilgrave, or rather, Kevin Thompson as he was called as a child, is from Manchester, but neither his nor his parents' accents are Northern at all. Maybe they moved to Manchester from the south?
- Mike Colter as Luke Cage is great, and had good chemistry with Krysten Ritter as Jessica, but I'm actually on board with the show letting him go his separate way for now at the end of the season. I know there's a Doylist reason (i.e. he gets his own show), but I also buy it on a Watsonian level, given what both Jessica and he go through in this season, especially after Jessica finds out Kilgrave mind-controlled and scripted Luke's forgiveness that meant so much to her. They can hook up again at some later point, but for now, distance and separate working through what happened is better
- in case I haven't mentioned it yet: I love that Jessica's & Trish's relationship is the strongest one on the show, and the one given the most narrative space
- and that Trish is no damsel but (because of her own backstory) has learned martial arts, is well able to defend herself, and is Jessica's inspiration for heroism
- and lastly, I appreciate the show provides us with enough examples of Jessica being actually good at detecting to justify her choice of job.
This entry was originally posted at http://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1123208.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.