Jessica Jones (season 2)
10/10
Gotta use the high end of the review spectrum sometime, and Jessica Jones is as deserving of it as any tv show. I'm also sure that this is likely to split opinions between those who love it and those who think it was too slow, but I'm definitely in the former camp. Season 1 was already the best Marvel/Netflix series, and even if season two doesn't have a villain as villanous as Kilgrave, it makes up for it with in-depth characters and the fact that it's completely different from any other superhero television series out there. As Jessica sets out to investigate IGH from season 1 and a mysterious death of a superpowered individual, it starts off fairly predictably, but soon defies the genre conventions and turns into a film noir detective story, then a very personal character study. There are side stories involving a very fitting continuation to Patsy's hero's journey, and Jeri Hogarth dealing with some life-altering changes of her own, which are pretty interesting in their own right and echo the same themes of human connectedness and purpose as Jessica's dilemma.
If you're looking for cool fight scenes or lots of different superpowers, I recommend to adjust your expectations (or checkout Daredevil and Punisher instead). Take Jessica Jones as a detective story, and you'll get your money's worth.
I used to work for a national PI firm, and I have to say that someone on that show
really did some research into how private investigators really operate.
For example, in season two there was that moment when one PI was trying to investigate another PI and got spotted.
Most PI's are incredibly paranoid that someone is investigating them. They convince themselves that they're being watched even when they're not. They deliberately choose offices and homes that would be hard to surveil without being noticed. If one PI actually does investigate another PI, there's a lot of pride on the line. The one doing the investigating is going to try to not get caught to prove that they are better, and of course the target is constantly on the lookout for possible surveillance out of paranoia that can only come from spying on private citizens for a living.
The look that was exchanged was perfect.
There's other stuff too. Jessica frequently does what PI's call "pretext calls" in which you call someone up and lie to them in order to weasel information out of them, such as offering fake prizes to get someone to rat out someone who doesn't want to be found. At the national PI firm I worked at, they had dedicated pretext investigators who did nothing but pretext calls all day long. I used to listen in on them because they were terrifyingly good at deception. If any of those guys decided to become a scam artist, no one would be safe. Anyway, the pretext calls Jessica makes are quite authentic and convincing for me, and I've heard real pros do it.
This is probably a weird and pointless detail that most people won't care about, but I happen to know a little about it and I'm occasionally impressed with the show in this regard.
But yeah, it's not about the punching. It's mostly about the characters.
Jessica and Trish are both pretty damn fucked up in their own way, and their friendship is deliciously complicated.
