AKA Everybody Move, Everybody Gets Hurt - Jessica Jones, Season 3

Back in 2018, nearly exactly two whole years ago, I sat down and watched season two of Jessica Jones on Neflix; I had thoughts, and you can read them here.

Although season three dropped June 2019, it sort of got parked, the type of thing that would get watched when one gets stuck at home due to an epic virus that’s challenging the whole world. So…yeah, guess now would be a good time?

But no, now would not be a good time to sit down and watch thirteen episodes of a TV show that goes out of its way to shit on its own characters and their interactions and relationships, providing absolutely no sense of closure to their journey, nor any hope or promise of a future for them.

The fact that Jessica Jones was cancelled February 2019 (before it even released) screams volumes; after all, how and why do you cancel or pull something before it drops? That was, in face, a small part of how and why this got left so long before watching.

And now, after watching, it is, thirteen frustrating, irritating episodes that I regret watching. (Yeah, I know that my Star Trek: Picard review is equally cranky, but I’m always fucking cranky, so it can’t be just me!)

Season three picks up some time after the death of Jessica’s (serial killer) biological mother, with Jessica (Krysten Ritter) still doing her detective thing, using her powers as and where she can, but still somewhat avoiding the airs of super-heroism. In some ways, while the show has hinted and promised it, there has been no real development for her as a character; she remains broken and depressed, challenging and addressing things in her own way.

I have no problems with this, for either the show or the character. Were it not for the fact that every season of Jessica Jones to now (including her appearance in The Defenders) has promised some sort of growth for her, some sense of her moving on with her life.

And sure, the Jessica we meet at the beginning of season three isn’t as low as she has been previously, but the show goes out of its way to keep her on her own. The relationship that the show promised at the end of season two with neighbour Oscar (J.R. Ramirez) is written off in a somewhat brutal fashion, with both Oscar and his son appearing briefly to declare the end of any relationship with Jessica. Their appearance in this season at all does little for Jessica, solely confirming that they got their happy ending and that Jessica is a miserably depressed character in her own right. For a show that had regular, and somewhat forced, meet-cutes to establish this relationship (ending season two with a nice “family” dinner), having the characters appear just to close that relationship does nothing except scream that Jessica, as a character, is entirely on her own.

Adopted sister Trish Walker (Rachel Taylor) is still persona-non-grata after killing Jessica’s mother: the show however suggests that this has remains a secret, that Jessica has taken the fall for her death. Neighbour (and sometimes helper of all things Alias Investigations) Malcolm (Eka Darville) now has a full-time job working as investigator for Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Ann Moss)’s legal firm, and this also leaves Jessica somewhat on her own.

But that’s sort of the way she likes it. Jessica gets herself a night-time bar run-in and hook-up with Erik Gelden (Benjamin Walker) only to get attacked and end up in hospital getting her damaged spleen removed.

The show goes through great effort to establish how this could be very problematic for Jessica, limit her drinking habits and her strength and abilities; the show also forgets this entirely a few episodes later.

The attack proves somewhat irrelevant for the season as a whole, doing little more than get Jessica and Trish talking again; we get a few beats as Jess looks into who attacked her, only to discover that Erik was the target, not her. In other seasons, you would expect this to lead us to the villain of the season but not this time, a reason just to give us some tension between Erik and Jessica; there are a few beats where the show suggests that maybe, just maybe, Erik will be revealed to be the villain of the season, but those beats are mostly just fake-outs, and somewhat frustrating because of it.

Erik, although the series tries to embrace him with Jessica, is not a heroic character; like her, he uses alcohol to escape his powers (some ability to be aware of someone else’s evils) and Erik uses blackmail to ensure that those evils remain secret and keep an income for himself. Such characterisation makes him a good match for Jessica, but also a few steps down if we’re being honest, especially when compared to Oscar; Erik’s presence takes Jessica back a few steps, undermining the growth and development that she has seen previously.

As a matter of fact, this is one of this season’s biggest issues, and it’s not solely for Jessica; all of the show’s characters are broken-as-fuck, continuing to live in their broken worlds, with many of the characters trading one side of addiction to another, with drug-like highs now replaced by our characters doing “the right thing” and facing up against some form of villainy.

But who, or what, is Jessica Jones’ villain of this season?

The show suggests it’ll be our serial killer of the season, Gregory Sallinger (Jeremy Bobb), solely because the show has embraced that beat previously. Sallinger (with his degrees in pretty much everything) has crossed paths with Erik, who has become aware of his dastardly ways and tried to blackmail him; Sallinger then goes after Erik, leaving Jessica caught somewhere in the middle.

For a show with Jessica’s name in its title, this season goes out of its way to play as an ensemble: in some ways, it’s understandable with Trish as Jessica’s sister, maybe even her equal. But the show goes out of its way to give Hogarth and Malcolm their own extensive plots; sure, those plots come somewhat together for a few beats, but most prove something of a waste to a larger narrative, serving as nothing more than distractions from something bigger.

Such distractions prove infuriating; with the third season, I was expecting either a show on a grander scale, or perhaps a lower-scale villain that would allow characters and beats between them to develop and change. Instead, the show goes out of its way to remain between these styles; Sallinger is not a big enough threat to last the seasons consistently, so there are hints that maybe hiring Hogarth as his legal representative might make for a powerful force of evil, one that could even be combined with Erik.

Instead, the show then goes out of its way to break a character aggressively, turning them into the villain in a fashion that is so forced it is frustrating. That character is Trish.

Trish has been a problematic character since the first season of Jessica Jones, and the show played with her in an appropriate way to do so; she wants to be the centre of attention (as encouraged in a somewhat abusive way by her mother Dorothy Walker, played by Rebecca De Mornay), but with an empowered Jessica as her adopted sister, Trish can never live up to those levels. The show has mentioned and played with Trish’s addiction issues previously, and also her sense of pride, a need to be as powerful and meaningful as Jessica; some of those beats come from a genuinely warm place and others from an instinctively primal place, with the show suggesting that at least some of this comes from Dorothy’s parenting. But the show also suggests that some of this is solely Trish.

Trish continues in her downward spiral, but the show justifies her movements; her behaviour for the first half of the sesason is somewhat heroic, even if some of that behaviour comes from an egotistical space. A scene of Trish trying on different costumes that she can wear as a potential hero plays out with the comedic beats of a teen-focused sitcom, fitting for the character. For her to later be responsible for at least three brutal murders (ignoring the death of Jessica’s biological mother the previous season)…it’s a weird beat for the character and while that beat works, it sets Trish up as a much darker and more horrific villain than the show has prepared her to be.

With previous seasons playing Trish as something of a broken sister to Jessica, both of them supporting (and capable of supporting) each other in different ways, Trish’s brutal murder of Sallinger and later refusal to face the effects of her crime, contradicts where she has been as a character to this point. Perhaps, in some way, by refusing to play as a supporting character, Trish has refused to accept anything except a higher billing, even if this turns her into the villain. The show plays with these beats and emotions, but at its third season, it’s too late for Jessica Jones to fully be embracing this, and it is certainly not helped by the aforementioned ensemble beats that give Malcolm and Hogarth similar billing to Trish. That all of those characters deal with sideways romances, playing with notions of ego and pride, there isn’t enough difference in these thirteen episodes to truly make this season in any way interesting.

Not to mention the fact that Jessica Jones as a show hasn’t even really given its viewers a sense of closure; where sibling-show Daredevil at least brought itself to a natural, meaningful close (that could be revisited if needed), Jessica Jones refuses this completely. Perhaps this is a suitable beat for a show that has dealt with depression and addiction in several different forms, but the show refuses and fails to address some of the other beats that it has, itself, established.

One of those is in Hogarth’s health, with the show establishing early this season that she intends to take her own life before her health declines (or rather, to ask Jessica to help her do the same.) The season embraces some back and forth in a romantic plot for Hogarth, a plot that highlights just how much of a potential villain she could be if the show wanted to go down that path; when Hogarth ends the season alone, the show plays things too subtly with no final closure for her.

Similarly, the end of the show sees Trish locked up, Jessica wanting to leave town for the sake of her sanity and passing Alias Investigations over to Malcolm. Such an act doesn’t really give any sense of closure for Jessica, and is frustrating in its own right; but perhaps we the audience could embrace this with the knowledge that Jessica will never get over her messed up head-space, and if she said this or addressed this, we would understand.

Instead, the show shadows’s Jessica’s beat with words from previous abuser Kilgrave (David Tennant); when this suggests that maybe Jessica won’t leave New York as planned, it’s hard to figure if this is because she fears that Kilgrave is still alive in some form, or if she has learned how to be a hero through his abuse. Such commentary takes away from Jessica as her own self-defined character, and while I have no problems with this forming part of the issues that are the core of her character, I found no reason for the show to bring back the Kilgrave narrative at the end of a season that has ignored this in order to embrace all of the other shit in Jessicas’s head.

Following an infuriating season that refuses to offer any sense of closure or completion for anyone, instead managing to add and infuriate, some part of me is very glad to finish with Jessica Jones. Some part of me thinks that I know what they were trying to do with this show, using broken characters who are and always will remain broken, and allowing them to exist in, and continue to be, heroes (or villains.)

Unfortunately, that’s not what many people expect or want from their superhero TV shows, shows in which their heroes are meant to be heroic and face their shit directly. But nah, we viewers, we want our superheroes to do exactly that, and in doing so, to give us something to aspire to and help us to do it ourselves.