TV Review: Jessica Jones (Season 1)

Watch| Netflix  Rating| 4 Stars

Starring| Krysten Ritter (Jessica Jones), Rachel Taylor (Trish Walker), Eka Darville (Malcolm), David Tennant (Kilgrave), Carrie-Anne Moss (Jeri Hogarth), Wil Traval (Will Simpson), Susies Abromeit (Pam), Mike Colter (Luke Cage), Erin Moriarty (Hope Shlottman)

Related Reviews| Daredevil Season One

Is anyone actually surprised that I devoured this with two days of it being released?

Jessica Jones follows the titular character as she works to free an innocent girl from murder and get revenge on the man who captured, raped, and controlled her.  It's not your normal superhero show in the least, and follows a character that might be considered more of an anti-hero.  Regardless, it was a pretty good show, just not one that lived up to the stellar performance from Daredevil.

I hate to compare two shows that aren't similar, but they are part of the same franchise, so I was expecting somewhat similar things from them both.  Perhaps this was my folly.  Daredevil was dark and gritty, Jessica Jones was dark in some ways, but not really that dark.  I'm sure for some people it'll be too much, since they do deal with rape.  If this is a problem for you and you're still interested- they only mention it and rape is never actually shown.

There is a lot of sex though.  Normally, I wouldn't mind.  Except that it seemed to be happening in every episode and the only reason I could come up with for this was not necessarily character development- because very little of that happened during the not-particularly-sexy sex scenes- but because Daredevil didn't have any of that and they needed it somewhere in their universe.  And, yes, there's quite a bit, and some of it may be controversial.  Don't let children watch if you don't want them seeing the sex because while there's never anything graphic, it's not exactly child friendly.

There were a lot of characters in the show.  Another thing I thought would end up being a really good thing.  And for the most part it was because it allowed for a break between scenes and interesting stories to tell.  Trish, Simpson, and Malcolm were my personal favorites, though I did like all the other characters.  They do a really cool, meta story with Trish, and you may not pick up on it when you watch if you don't know who she is in the comics.  After you're done, I recommend looking it up, though, because it'll leave you going, "Whoa that's actually really cool."  My two major problems with characters lies herein: there was too much time spent on Jeri and Kilgrave, while scary, wasn't as threatening as many were building him up to be.

The former is where I take the most fault.  I enjoyed Jeri's storyline, and loved how the show managed to include such diverse storytelling.  It was a really good story and the pay off ended with a nice bang.  But it wasn't a big enough bang.  It just didn't feel proportional to me.  There's a good chunk of the show given to Jeri, Pam, and Wendy, so I thought it would end up being something huge.  But it ended before the finale, and while it was a decent ending, for the amount of set-up it didn't satisfy me.  It felt misleading and I wish more could have been done there.

As for Kilgrave, I think this is a preference thing.  And also a David Tennant thing.  While he was a scary figure, I've seen better villains.  And I couldn't sympathize with him.  Villains that I end up liking are the ones I find scariest because they're the most human.  He was just a straight-up bad guy because he was a bad guy.  Yes, they tried to make him sympathetic, but it just didn't work for me.  Also, I love Tennant, so even while he was prancing around being the villain, it couldn't overpower all my memories of him being the Doctor.  As always, he put on a good performance, but it wasn't his best.  I was happy to see how much screen time he got, though.

At this point it may feel like I've been ranting about the show.  And there are a few very small rants in this review.  My initial reaction after finishing it though, was positive.  And my opinion is still a positive one.  I recommend checking this out, even if you weren't a fan of Daredevil.  I know my mom couldn't get through Daredevil and she's really enjoying Jessica Jones.  Now have to wait for Civil War for my next Marvel fix.