Jessica Jones

[selenak]

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

Comments

[angevin2]

He's basically the adult version of the kid from the Twilight Zone who wishes people into the cornfield! Who is also more or less a normal kid who wants normal kid things, but that's what makes that episode so scary. And in both cases the parents are absolutely at a loss (one of the things I loved about the handling of Kilgrave's backstory was its complexity, like in the way his parents were presented, and the way his own version of his past wasn't exactly what had happened, but Tennant's performance suggested that it was how he interpreted what had happened, rather than just him being deliberately manipulative. And yet, as Selena says, the show rightly never lets him off the hook for it).

Tennant has actually said in interviews that almost anyone would become a monster if they had the power that Kilgrave does, particularly given that he gets it as a child in the show (I am given to understand that in the comics it's different?). This has caused a little bit of controversy on tumblr, since a lot of people took it as justifying or defending what he actually does, but I took the point to be that he never had to recognize the reality of other people and never had to develop sympathy or empathy. Which is still pretty normal, honestly. I teach teenage boys and a lot of them are little monsters even without absolute power. I like to assume most of them will grow out of it.

[selenak]

Tennant's performance suggested that it was how he interpreted what had happened, rather than just him being deliberately manipulative.

Yes, that was the impression I had. And it's not a far fetched explanation for a child to come to, given they didn't explain to him what the experiments were about, that they were trying to save his life. Mind you, since Jessica (when he was still controlling her) apparantly told him all about her life, including her relationhip with Trish and how it started, he knows that abused children are a red button for her, and I think he brought it up deliberately in his big winning-Jessica-over compaign. But what he can't see, and Jessica can, is that this doesn't absolve him from the subsequent harm he did to other people. (And wouldn't have even if his parents had been Mengele instead of basically Julian Bashir's parents with worse luck.)