![]() Through seven episodes we still don’t know the source of her powers, outside that it had something to do with an “accident.” Lastly, the detective in question is a woman, an interesting wrinkle to throw into the noir obsession with the femme fatale. Jessica Jones also feels like a procedural in which the central mystery is the detective herself: Jones’ backstory is revealed piecemeal, in flashbacks and cryptic dialog. For starters, this detective is strong enough to lift cars and can even fake her hand at flying (“more like jumping, then falling,” as she describes it). The second thing that jumps out is that it’s really, really good.Īt its most fundamental level, Jessica Jones is a detective noir with a fistful of twists. It’s dark, funny, edgy, spooky, and through the first seven episodes, there’s barely a whiff of capes or costumes. But amid what was predominantly a boys’ club of powerful characters, it feels as if Jessica Jones may be the one to endure.The first thing that jumps out about Jessica Jones, the new Netflix series about a “gifted” private investigator running both from and toward her haunted past, is how startlingly different it is than anything Marvel Studios has done to this point. That stretched-out storytelling tendency – the “Netflix bloat” effect – may end up being this curtailed venture in superhero streaming’s lasting legacy. Still, it wouldn’t be a proper Netflix Marvel show if there wasn’t at least a little narrative wheel-spinning in the middle. Once Salinger properly enters the story, season three heats up a bit. The fact that he knows how to leverage all the institutions of law and order that heroes are supposed to protect makes him even more dangerous, particularly when Jessica still often defaults to two-fisted justice. ![]() Unlike the similarly slimy Kilgrave, Salinger apparently has no superpowers beyond his seething white male privilege and a determination to tear down powerful women. There is also a clammy new villain, Salinger (played by Jeremy Bobb, Nadia’s one-night stand in Russian Doll), who takes his own sweet time revealing himself, even if that delay seems to be part of some meticulous overarching plan. Salinger (Jeremy Bobb) Photograph: David Giesbrecht/Netflix Former tabloid fixture Trish – who has spent her whole life in the public eye from child star, to thwarted pop siren, to talkshow host and now, rather grimly, shopping channel presenter – has taken to becoming a masked avenger.Ĭlammy new villain. The bourbon-swigging private eye who prefers to work in the shadows is now famous enough to be recognised in the street, putting her sometimes questionable methods under scrutiny. Season three picks things up a year later, and strives to bring Jessica and Trish back together by smartly inverting their usual roles. But, even if the plotting often seemed wayward, the performances still resonated, particularly the push-pull relationship between Jessica and her adoptive sister, Trish (Rachael Taylor), who ended up at such an extreme impasse it seemed unlikely they would ever reconcile. Thanks in no small part to Ritter’s performance – enjoyably sarcastic, occasionally swaggering, but always wary – Jessica Jones felt raw and real in way that felt unusual for genre TV.Īfter she discharged her contractual duties in the Defenders, the second season of Jessica Jones felt a little bumpier, belatedly setting her on a collision course with a fateful figure from her past in the formidable form of Janet McTeer. It felt like a potent metaphor for a cultural moment when the commonplace abuse of male power had been belatedly dragged into the spotlight. She was a survivor of trauma at the hands of David Tennant’s Kilgrave, a scrawny, self-regarding villain who used his exotic mind-control powers to callously rob his victims of all agency. While it was refreshing to see a Marvel character who preferred a scuffed leather jacket to spandex, Jessica’s bruising backstory also chimed with the times. Here was a relatable hero, who drank too much, occasionally slept in her clothes and was generally ambivalent about her work. Trish (Rachael Taylor) Photograph: David Giesbrecht/Netflix
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