Jessica Jones Review: AKA Take A Bloody Number (Season 1 Episode 12)

There was a moment, about five minutes before the end of this episode, where I had to play pause and let out a curse. That’s how much Jessica Jones had lulled me into a false sense of security with the love story of Luke Cage and Jessica Jones.

After almost twelve episodes in, we should have known better. We really should have. But once again, we, like Jessica before us, were Kilgraved. We didn’t see that coming. We’re not sure anyone can claim they did.

Not that the episode isn’t sprinkled with clues. Hindsight is 20/20 and all that. Maybe we were naïve. Maybe this show is just that good. Or maybe, just maybe, we wanted to believe that the man we were seeing was Luke Cage so desperately, that, like Jessica, we fell for the oldest trick in the book.

Compassion.

In a way, we’re still not sure that most of what we saw wasn’t Luke, but in the end, one thing is clear: our favorite indestructible guy was not in control. Kilgrave was. It almost feels like Kilgrave always, always is.

That’s the thing about Kilgrave. He didn’t need to get more “powerful” or expand his range of action for us (or Jessica) to fear him. We were already afraid. No, strike that. Afraid doesn’t even begin to cover what Kilgrave makes us feel. And that’s all because of David Tenant.

Playing a bad guy is, in many respects, way harder than playing a good guy. To make an effective villain, you need glimpses of both madness and humanity, and it’s in this respect that Tennant succeeds far beyond our expectations. We fear Kilgrave, just as we recognize that he really and truly does care for Jessica. We want him far away from her, but we know that he honestly doesn’t realize that what he’s doing is wrong. Marvel has dreamed of a villain as dynamic as him for ages, and the fact that they finally got him in what was supposed to be their “B” superhero team either speaks to Marvel’s wealth of source material, or to the fact that they greatly underestimated their own product.

Either way, Tennant is magnificent, Ritter is the reluctant heroine we all want to be, and Colter has enough charisma (and secrets) to carry his own show. And that’s a win, even if it’s probably not the win Marvel expected.

We started this review talking about the absolute shock of finding that Luke had been Kilgraved, but, to be honest, that’s got nothing on the last shot of this episode. Jessica has, so far, gone as easy as she possibly can on Luke, while still defending herself. She doesn’t want to hurt him. She wants him to beat Kilgrave’s control. Except he can’t, and, when faced with the choice between hurting him or letting him killing her, Jessica chooses herself.

She chooses life.

For a woman who, for so long, felt like she didn’t deserve anything, that’s a pretty powerful statement.

But he can’t be dead. He’s got a show coming. And that’s the only reason why we’re pressing play on the next one. It’s the end. And this has to get better. At this point, I’m pretty sure worse is impossible, after all.

Other things to note:

• Why does Jessica even bother to lock the door? The glass is broken.
• I’m calling it right now; IGH is the big bad of the recently announced Season 2 of Jessica Jones. Not that I care right now, because …Kilgrave! How can you beat that?
• Trish is the best friend ever. And she clearly approves of Luke.
• Honestly, if you’d told me when I started watching this show that Trish would be my favorite, I would have laughed. But she is.
• Also, Trish’s mother? She comes off as more than just a bad mother. Maybe I’m just seeing ghosts everywhere at this point, but boy ….is she hiding something or what?
• My only problem with these shows is that sometimes the leaps in logic are hard to follow. How exactly did Jessica know what Kilgrave was trying to do? For that matter, how does Luke get the idea that Kilgrave might be testing his powers?
• The Jessica/Luke fight at the end was brutal, and perfectly acted by both Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter. It never feels staged, and I winced about 57 times.
• How is it possible that Ritter, a tiny woman, feels like a believable action-hero? I don’t know how they did it, but Colter is a HUGE and imposing man, and never, for a moment, did I doubt that she could take him. That’s a testament to how both how Krysten Ritter has played Jessica and to how she’s written.

Reviewer rating:

User rating: 

Jessica Jones Season 1 is available on Netflix right now.

Lissete Lanuza Sáenz

Lawyer. Writer. Columnist. Geek. Falls in madly in love with fictional characters. Hates the color yellow, misogyny, and people who are late. Can always be found with a book. Watches an absurd amount of TV every week, often, while eating coffee ice cream. She has no regrets. You can check out her blog here: Absurday. Lissete is a senior writer for Tell-Tale TV. Follow @lizziethat