Jessica Jones Season 1 was a novelty. a 2nd series of the new Netflix Marvels with a great female lead.
This is the 8th season of the same old stuff. I feel bit fatigued by these series.
Easily the best villain in the whole MCU too. But even it had the problem that it needed to be 8-10 episodes. Which this is definitely suffering from so far.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
I still think it’s pretty good 9 episodes in. It feels different enough. By this time in Iron Fist I just stopped caring and knew it was silly bad shit from episode 1.
Edit: I really liked this season. It doesn't really top my favorites like DD, JJ S1, or PunPun standalone; but it resonated with me. Season 1 was mainly about control and dealing with the fallout from trauma. Season 2 is all about relationships like someone said before. I kind of liked how it was pretty low stakes. Kilgrave, besides the very real trauma he inflicted, was still a supervillain. These antagonists feel somewhat more real, I guess.
I never really got disinterested in Jessica's mom or the doctor. Where they were both coming from made sense to me. Kilgrave and Kingpin were more entertaining and villainous, but I can't understand the lengths they went to in a personal sense. I could with Alisa and Karlus. I liked how even though her mother was built up as a big monster, and she still kind of was, her characterization after the reveal was done very well. Stinks that Malcolm did what he did and got what he got. I feel like he's trying so hard. I liked how the ending wasn't a big fight or even a showdown like in S1. Did the Raft really not have visitation or even phone calls? Like if they had kept Hawkeye or Antman in there that would be terrible. I know it was a general Ross thing but I hoped Tony would have helped him made it more humane. Also, I liked how they once again are mentioning the mainline MCU stuff without being like "THE MOVIES!". Wish the movies would reciprocate. Furthermore, I wonder if Foggy got transferred with Hogarth at the end.
The ending does throw IGH out the window for a Defenders Season 2 villain.
Kadoken on
+1
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
S205
I wonder if Hallet Davis paid for product placement with that piano. On the one hand, its logo was put in center-frame for quite a while. On the other hand,
it got smashed up pretty good, which I would imagine is verboten in your typical product placement contract.
I wonder if Hallet Davis paid for product placement with that piano. On the one hand, its logo was put in center-frame for quite a while. On the other hand,
it got smashed up pretty good, which I would imagine is verboten in your typical product placement contract.
Might be misremembering but I think a few (full season spoilers)
iPhones get wrecked this season too. Product placement bugged me more than usual this season so it was nice to see the phones in particular get smashed up.
This season does a great job of showing how people who have experienced abuse and trauma can inflict the same abuse and trauma on others, and become what they try so hard to escape.
+2
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ElJeffeNot actually a mod.Roaming the streets, waving his gun around.Moderator, ClubPAmod
Definitely more flawed than season one. In particular, the times when Krysten Ritter is not on screen are... not good.
I'm not sure why the show wouldn't put her in every scene.
I'm actually not sure why every show doesn't put her in every scene. I feel that every moment of television that doesn't feature Krysten Ritter is a missed opportunity.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
+5
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WhiteZinfandelYour insidesLet me show you themRegistered Userregular
I like Krysten Ritter so much that I watched Life Happens and Vamps all the way through. Even so, JJ has a damn good supporting cast and I was usually fine with the focus shifting off her for a bit.
Definitely more flawed than season one. In particular, the times when Krysten Ritter is not on screen are... not good.
I'm not sure why the show wouldn't put her in every scene.
I'm actually not sure why every show doesn't put her in every scene. I feel that every moment of television that doesn't feature Krysten Ritter is a missed opportunity.
Now I'm sad the MCU hasn't got Jessica appearing in tv shows (AoS) and movies reacting to the cast. Love to see her interact with the Avengers, Black Widow will either love her or hate her.
It skips frmo the mum scenes to the Jessica scenes and at first I just thought they'd skipped a load of stuff and Trish was heavy into drug addiction. Wasn't until they left the club and talked about college that I realised it was also set in the past.
I'm enjoying the season so far but it feels like it's taking aggggges to get anywhere, and it's lost a lot without Kilgrave.
2x09
There's at least forward planning with this show. They have a healer, which is a bit of a macguffin but whatever, his power takes a huge toll so at least it's limited. Compared to the Flash where they just give him basically infinite time with no downsides.
This season does a great job of showing how people who have experienced abuse and trauma can inflict the same abuse and trauma on others, and become what they try so hard to escape.
Yeah, I'm finishing up ep12 and I think the most impressive bit of writing so far is:
The fact that no one's really evil or sadistic. Even Jessica's mother. They're just their own version of broken and fucked up.
I enjoyed JJ2, although there were some negatives.
I fastforwarded through the Trish ranting/failing to rant scenes, and overall I don't like the whole "breaking up the band" thing,
Netflix did the same thing with Daredevil. Season 1 grow attached to this group that work well together, season 2 now they all hate each other.
When they first revealed Jeri having ALS,
I assumed there was no way they would magic her out of it. What kind of statement is that to people currently suffering from it, "Hope your magic cure comes because we can't even have a character deal with this disease for one season." I really liked the way they handled that arc, and the reminder that you don't fuck with Jeri, ALS be damned.
I think JJ s2 is one of the best things Marvel has done on Netflix.
Feels like a detective show with super powers. And i wasn't expecting a lot of the twists and turns.
Sure, its light on the action but i think that's perfectly ok for this series.
+16
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BethrynUnhappiness is MandatoryRegistered Userregular
edited March 2018
I liked it.
Actual ending spoilers included.
It had its ups and downs, but I felt like the last 3 episodes did justify themselves, which is a problem I have had with the other shows.
I think Malc did well the entire show and shored up what was otherwise a morality pinball game of actions. I.... kind of want a show with Malcolm and Foggy just chilling out and being decent folk.
Trish continues to make exceptionally awful decisions in just about every aspect possible, so well done writers on keeping her character as annoying to watch as she was in the first season!
I wasn't a big fan of them shoehorning in Weinstein etc. in the opening few eps. It didn't really make an impact, it wasn't focused on nearly enough to make a meaningful statement, it was just there to make you nod. Along with "nasty woman" and a few other "oh look we've been watching the shitshow too" numbers.
I'd have a hard time pinning down a single general theme like abuse was to the first season. There were obviously themes of addiction, familial psychological abusers, etc., but it didn't really pull it together in the same way.
Hogarth's entire story was good but almost entirely appendicular to the main story. I'm not sure if it was really justifying its presence there, or padding time, like the story with the weird girl and boy from the first season.
Trish killing mum at the end was a bad hit, and I don't think they should've written it like that. It's just piling too much misery onto the lead.
Full spoilers now that I've had a few days to think:
It did not live up to my expectations. It's better than most of the other Marvel Netflix series (have not watched Punisher and never intend to), but that's not great. I might even rate it below the first six episodes of Luke Cage until Cottonmouth is killed off, while being overall better than Luke Cage.
Anyway, the good parts are mostly due to Ritter. She's still great in this role, and handles all of the various parts well (well, except the action, but there's not a ton of it and that's what doubles are for). She does really well with all of the anguish in Jessica's life while also making you but the moments where she has hope or even joy, like in the flashback (before that's crushed).
Tennant's guest spot was a highlight, because Kilgrave is still a fantastic villain, and they brought him back without undoing the power of what happened in season one. Having him represent Jessica's self-doubt and her more ruthless side is maybe a little cliche, but whatever, that character and performance are so good I will allow the indulgence. They could have dwelled on the themes he represented a little more. They definitely started the season in those areas, having Tennant around to voice them may have been more effective.
The first problem was all of the side plots for every minor character. They did not really do a great job of tying into Jessica's story. There are maybe some thematic links (women + anger = ?), but the plots didn't really tie in. For example, while Hogarth's story provided some nice showcases for Carrie Anne Moss, was it really linked to the larger Jessica's mom plot? Thematically, how she handles the betrayal of her body and then of Inez is interesting as a counterpoint to how Jessica and her mom manifest their anger, but it was tangential to that plot. Would the season have been different if Inez disappears after she explains about IGH? Not really. But it would have been shorter. And god knows these shows need to be streamlined.
Same deal with Trish for the most part. She's got this boyfriend that we hint at being semi-nefarious but was really just planning a surprise engagement party? And then she dumps him because she wants a more mainstream news career. Or maybe she wants to be more like Jessica and have powers? OK, there's an interesting plot in there about how her mother chose an identity for her and she never got to figure out what she wanted. But it makes her an incredibly irritating character in this season, where I found her a really good character in the first season. Then they use the rage generated by Simpson's inhaler to basically make her an irrational plot device for the second half of the season, and that's no good. BOO.
Malcolm's plot is just dumb and him becoming ethically dubious is strangely dissatisfying in a series where Jessica is the main character. She is generally on the right side of things. Most of the time we spend with him here could be better spent doing... other things. Like, anything else.
Anyway, the major thing here is Jessica and her mom. Which works fine. It's not fantastic like Kilgrave, but it's not terrible like I dunno, Diamondback. It's just fine for me. I think we needed a better sense of who she was before the car accident to make the post-accident version of Alysa make more sense to us. And the antagonist (better term for a villain) should have a better motivation than "sometimes gets uncontrollably angry when her child or husband are endangered." I dunno.
Basically, the first season was an excellent show with two great performaces that was slightly padded. This was a slightly above average show with one great performance that was extremely padded.
Self-righteousness is incompatible with coalition building.
It had its ups and downs, but I felt like the last 3 episodes did justify themselves, which is a problem I have had with the other shows.
I think Malc did well the entire show and shored up what was otherwise a morality pinball game of actions. I.... kind of want a show with Malcolm and Foggy just chilling out and being decent folk.
Trish continues to make exceptionally awful decisions in just about every aspect possible, so well done writers on keeping her character as annoying to watch as she was in the first season!
I wasn't a big fan of them shoehorning in Weinstein etc. in the opening few eps. It didn't really make an impact, it wasn't focused on nearly enough to make a meaningful statement, it was just there to make you nod. Along with "nasty woman" and a few other "oh look we've been watching the shitshow too" numbers.
I'd have a hard time pinning down a single general theme like abuse was to the first season. There were obviously themes of addiction, familial psychological abusers, etc., but it didn't really pull it together in the same way.
Hogarth's entire story was good but almost entirely appendicular to the main story. I'm not sure if it was really justifying its presence there, or padding time, like the story with the weird girl and boy from the first season.
Trish killing mum at the end was a bad hit, and I don't think they should've written it like that. It's just piling too much misery onto the lead.
The show finished filming a month before the New York Times published the Weinstein story. In fact, they finished writing the whole season by April of last year.
Full spoilers now that I've had a few days to think:
It did not live up to my expectations. It's better than most of the other Marvel Netflix series (have not watched Punisher and never intend to), but that's not great. I might even rate it below the first six episodes of Luke Cage until Cottonmouth is killed off, while being overall better than Luke Cage.
Anyway, the good parts are mostly due to Ritter. She's still great in this role, and handles all of the various parts well (well, except the action, but there's not a ton of it and that's what doubles are for). She does really well with all of the anguish in Jessica's life while also making you but the moments where she has hope or even joy, like in the flashback (before that's crushed).
Tennant's guest spot was a highlight, because Kilgrave is still a fantastic villain, and they brought him back without undoing the power of what happened in season one. Having him represent Jessica's self-doubt and her more ruthless side is maybe a little cliche, but whatever, that character and performance are so good I will allow the indulgence. They could have dwelled on the themes he represented a little more. They definitely started the season in those areas, having Tennant around to voice them may have been more effective.
The first problem was all of the side plots for every minor character. They did not really do a great job of tying into Jessica's story. There are maybe some thematic links (women + anger = ?), but the plots didn't really tie in. For example, while Hogarth's story provided some nice showcases for Carrie Anne Moss, was it really linked to the larger Jessica's mom plot? Thematically, how she handles the betrayal of her body and then of Inez is interesting as a counterpoint to how Jessica and her mom manifest their anger, but it was tangential to that plot. Would the season have been different if Inez disappears after she explains about IGH? Not really. But it would have been shorter. And god knows these shows need to be streamlined.
Same deal with Trish for the most part. She's got this boyfriend that we hint at being semi-nefarious but was really just planning a surprise engagement party? And then she dumps him because she wants a more mainstream news career. Or maybe she wants to be more like Jessica and have powers? OK, there's an interesting plot in there about how her mother chose an identity for her and she never got to figure out what she wanted. But it makes her an incredibly irritating character in this season, where I found her a really good character in the first season. Then they use the rage generated by Simpson's inhaler to basically make her an irrational plot device for the second half of the season, and that's no good. BOO.
Malcolm's plot is just dumb and him becoming ethically dubious is strangely dissatisfying in a series where Jessica is the main character. She is generally on the right side of things. Most of the time we spend with him here could be better spent doing... other things. Like, anything else.
Anyway, the major thing here is Jessica and her mom. Which works fine. It's not fantastic like Kilgrave, but it's not terrible like I dunno, Diamondback. It's just fine for me. I think we needed a better sense of who she was before the car accident to make the post-accident version of Alysa make more sense to us. And the antagonist (better term for a villain) should have a better motivation than "sometimes gets uncontrollably angry when her child or husband are endangered." I dunno.
Basically, the first season was an excellent show with two great performaces that was slightly padded. This was a slightly above average show with one great performance that was extremely padded.
This season is about relationships. Everything is driven by the complex and conflicting desires and feelings people have within themselves and towards others. Every character has selfish and altruistic reasons for their actions and it's the blurring of the lines that drives them down to make terrible decisions.
Trish does genuinely care for Jessica and she wants Jessica to find closure. But she also has her own demons from years of abuse and addiction. She hates feeling helpless and she'll do anything not to. That's part of her relationship with Jessica too. Trish wants Jessica's powers and tries to live vicariously through her. She wants Jessica to be a superhero so she could feel good about herself. Eventually, Trish falls deeper and deeper into the selfish motivation and she just couldn't help herself.
The tragedy is that Trish basically becomes her mother. Dorothy abused Trish and put her in horrible situations so that Trish could become famous. But in Dorothy's mind, she's always helped Trish and the fact that Trish did become famous and successful is proof of that. And Dorothy can never admit or even see that she really did it because she wanted to be famous and was just living that dream through Trish. Trish does the same thing to Jessica without realizing it. Trish thinks she's helping Jessica with her case and get closure to her past, but she's really doing it because she wants to use Jessica and to escape her own fears of being helpless.
You have the same theme playing out with Malcolm's story. It seems like Malcolm starts out having good intentions only to become morally dubious, but there was always that duality of selfish vs. altruistic motivations. At the start of the season, it looks like Malcolm is trying to get his life back together and working with Jessica because he believes he can help other people by helping Jessica. But it's revealed throughout the season that he's using Jessica as a way of coping with his addiction. He basically says that he has to stay occupied or he'll fall into his bad habits again and when Jessica tells him to go home, he goes find someone to sleep with, and they show how he's switched his drug addiction with sex addiction. And you see more of how he's getting involved in other people's lives so he can feel better about himself. He wants to be the hero and he's close to Jessica in hopes of rubbing off on her superheroics. That's one of the biggest themes of this season, the conflicting and sometimes contradictory nature of human desires.
The second season more or less cements that everyone in Jessica's life
is toxic as fuck. She needs to burn down that support network except the lawyer for professional convienence until she can find another (while on probation).
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Giggles_FunsworthBlight on DiscourseBay Area SprawlRegistered Userregular
It had its ups and downs, but I felt like the last 3 episodes did justify themselves, which is a problem I have had with the other shows.
I think Malc did well the entire show and shored up what was otherwise a morality pinball game of actions. I.... kind of want a show with Malcolm and Foggy just chilling out and being decent folk.
Trish continues to make exceptionally awful decisions in just about every aspect possible, so well done writers on keeping her character as annoying to watch as she was in the first season!
I wasn't a big fan of them shoehorning in Weinstein etc. in the opening few eps. It didn't really make an impact, it wasn't focused on nearly enough to make a meaningful statement, it was just there to make you nod. Along with "nasty woman" and a few other "oh look we've been watching the shitshow too" numbers.
I'd have a hard time pinning down a single general theme like abuse was to the first season. There were obviously themes of addiction, familial psychological abusers, etc., but it didn't really pull it together in the same way.
Hogarth's entire story was good but almost entirely appendicular to the main story. I'm not sure if it was really justifying its presence there, or padding time, like the story with the weird girl and boy from the first season.
Trish killing mum at the end was a bad hit, and I don't think they should've written it like that. It's just piling too much misery onto the lead.
The show finished filming a month before the New York Times published the Weinstein story. In fact, they finished writing the whole season by April of last year.
That's kind of amazing.
+1
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
Finished it. Liked it a lot. It resonated with me in some very real ways.
It doesn’t have the flourish of the first season, but tells a much more personal story. Solid A-
quite get why Jessica was so obsessed with Karl or considered him such a monster. She and her mum would both be dead if not for his work, and he seems to genuinely be a good, if misguided guy. Her traumas seem more to be the fault of Kilgrave.
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
quite get why Jessica was so obsessed with Karl or considered him such a monster. She and her mum would both be dead if not for his work, and he seems to genuinely be a good, if misguided guy. Her traumas seem more to be the fault of Kilgrave.
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
His intentions are good I guess, in that his ultimate goal is to be able to save lives, but he also definitely got caught up in the science of giving people powers. Not to mention that everything was done against their consent,
which is a huge theme of this show, and something that Jessica personally has zero tolerance for, given her experience with Kilgrave.
quite get why Jessica was so obsessed with Karl or considered him such a monster. She and her mum would both be dead if not for his work, and he seems to genuinely be a good, if misguided guy. Her traumas seem more to be the fault of Kilgrave.
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
His intentions are good I guess, in that his ultimate goal is to be able to save lives, but he also definitely got caught up in the science of giving people powers. Not to mention that everything was done against their consent,
which is a huge theme of this show, and something that Jessica personally has zero tolerance for, given her experience with Kilgrave.
As they were though, they were done for,
especially her mom. There was no option for consent, but doctors don't have that when saving lives. He had the option of saving her life and giving her a chance to be normal, which in her burned state was never going to be possible. And with Trish, she literally wanted it.
quite get why Jessica was so obsessed with Karl or considered him such a monster. She and her mum would both be dead if not for his work, and he seems to genuinely be a good, if misguided guy. Her traumas seem more to be the fault of Kilgrave.
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
His intentions are good I guess, in that his ultimate goal is to be able to save lives, but he also definitely got caught up in the science of giving people powers. Not to mention that everything was done against their consent,
which is a huge theme of this show, and something that Jessica personally has zero tolerance for, given her experience with Kilgrave.
As they were though, they were done for,
especially her mom. There was no option for consent, but doctors don't have that when saving lives. He had the option of saving her life and giving her a chance to be normal, which in her burned state was never going to be possible. And with Trish, she literally wanted it.
Which is why her mom tried to convince her of exactly that. Her mom’s fine with it, even when she first learns about it. But because of Jessica’s baggage with consent, that’s not even close to a good enough reason.
Also it’s heavily implied, if not outright stated, that IGH actually pursued patients who couldn’t consent, since their procedures were being done illegally. They were basically on the lookout for comatose or critical patients, stole them, and ran experiments.
Him realized that as long as he lived there where people going to track him down to make them superpowered. That despite everything he worked for, his goal of a better way to heal people was always going to be ignored.
The inhaler and Simpsons Pills? That was based of his work and it was all anybody wanted out of him.
Couple that with the fact that as a scientist, he had in his own way an addiction to advance his science no matter the cost.
Him spending the rest of his life creating monsters and soldiers? That what made him end it.
Trish
Her arc was set in stone pretty much from episode one of S1. She was always on Jessica's case about being a hero. Making her a costume to wear and so on. It was always obvious that she wanted powers and was a Stage mom to Jessica. In S1, her obsession with martial arts as a way to even the playing field. When that didn't work, her taking of Simpsons Pill. Honestly, a case could be made that in both season of JJ, Trish's arc was the journey of Trish Walker to becoming Hellcat, 26 episodes long.
Its actually kind of refreshing really. All those stories about "With great power" and what a drag having powers is. Its nice to have one character actually go looking for power any way they can. If superpowers where real there would be a lot of Trish Walkers around. Just look at steroids and all their side-effects and people still use that stuff.
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
quite get why Jessica was so obsessed with Karl or considered him such a monster. She and her mum would both be dead if not for his work, and he seems to genuinely be a good, if misguided guy. Her traumas seem more to be the fault of Kilgrave.
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
His intentions are good I guess, in that his ultimate goal is to be able to save lives, but he also definitely got caught up in the science of giving people powers. Not to mention that everything was done against their consent,
which is a huge theme of this show, and something that Jessica personally has zero tolerance for, given her experience with Kilgrave.
As they were though, they were done for,
especially her mom. There was no option for consent, but doctors don't have that when saving lives. He had the option of saving her life and giving her a chance to be normal, which in her burned state was never going to be possible. And with Trish, she literally wanted it.
Jessica's whole being is partly built around the idea in her head that she accidentally killed her entire family. That's so ingrained in her that even before Killgrave she was punishing herself.
Jessica's stance is that she would have been happier dead than living with that.
Loved it. Thought it was the "tightest" MCU Netflix series to date. Maybe not the most "fun" or exciting, but i found every episode to be interesting and tuned up like a drum. I enjoyed everyone of the story lines this season.
The one character whose motivations made no sense to me in S2 was
Jessica's mom. She's been pretending to be dead to Jessica for 17 years. Granted, for the first 5 she was in and out of consciousness, and then when she woke up her first act was to escape and go find her daughter... but after talking to her once through a bathroom door she gives up and goes back to the lab and spends another 12 years ignoring her, not once trying to reach out to her or have some kind of relationship or even let her know she's alive. She even sat across from her at the bar and didn't show a flicker of emotion! Stone cold.
Then suddenly when Jessica finds the house her mom does a 180 and spends the rest of the series not wanting to be away from her daughter, holding on to her, even kidnapping her and trying to flee to country so they can be together.
Then just as suddenly at the end of E13 she changes her mind, tells Jessica to go away and sets herself up to be picked up and sent to the Raft where she knows she'll never see her daughter again.
Posts
Up to the first 10 minutes of Ep 3 spoilers:
Did I miss something, or is that supposed to a mystery?
What it is is just not revealed yet at that point.
Man, wish I wouldn't have clicked that. Didn't think it'd be that big a bomb!
through episode 4, but Episode 2 spoiler I believe, maybe 3
Really surprised how quick they killed off simpson. Though he'd be a bigger character as the series went on
This is the 8th season of the same old stuff. I feel bit fatigued by these series.
Easily the best villain in the whole MCU too. But even it had the problem that it needed to be 8-10 episodes. Which this is definitely suffering from so far.
Edit: I really liked this season. It doesn't really top my favorites like DD, JJ S1, or PunPun standalone; but it resonated with me. Season 1 was mainly about control and dealing with the fallout from trauma. Season 2 is all about relationships like someone said before. I kind of liked how it was pretty low stakes. Kilgrave, besides the very real trauma he inflicted, was still a supervillain. These antagonists feel somewhat more real, I guess.
The ending does throw IGH out the window for a Defenders Season 2 villain.
it got smashed up pretty good, which I would imagine is verboten in your typical product placement contract.
Might be misremembering but I think a few (full season spoilers)
I'm not sure why the show wouldn't put her in every scene.
I'm actually not sure why every show doesn't put her in every scene. I feel that every moment of television that doesn't feature Krysten Ritter is a missed opportunity.
Now I'm sad the MCU hasn't got Jessica appearing in tv shows (AoS) and movies reacting to the cast. Love to see her interact with the Avengers, Black Widow will either love her or hate her.
S2:E7
2x09
Yeah, I'm finishing up ep12 and I think the most impressive bit of writing so far is:
Netflix did the same thing with Daredevil. Season 1 grow attached to this group that work well together, season 2 now they all hate each other.
When they first revealed Jeri having ALS,
I assumed there was no way they would magic her out of it. What kind of statement is that to people currently suffering from it, "Hope your magic cure comes because we can't even have a character deal with this disease for one season." I really liked the way they handled that arc, and the reminder that you don't fuck with Jeri, ALS be damned.
Feels like a detective show with super powers. And i wasn't expecting a lot of the twists and turns.
Sure, its light on the action but i think that's perfectly ok for this series.
I think Malc did well the entire show and shored up what was otherwise a morality pinball game of actions. I.... kind of want a show with Malcolm and Foggy just chilling out and being decent folk.
Trish continues to make exceptionally awful decisions in just about every aspect possible, so well done writers on keeping her character as annoying to watch as she was in the first season!
I wasn't a big fan of them shoehorning in Weinstein etc. in the opening few eps. It didn't really make an impact, it wasn't focused on nearly enough to make a meaningful statement, it was just there to make you nod. Along with "nasty woman" and a few other "oh look we've been watching the shitshow too" numbers.
I'd have a hard time pinning down a single general theme like abuse was to the first season. There were obviously themes of addiction, familial psychological abusers, etc., but it didn't really pull it together in the same way.
Hogarth's entire story was good but almost entirely appendicular to the main story. I'm not sure if it was really justifying its presence there, or padding time, like the story with the weird girl and boy from the first season.
Trish killing mum at the end was a bad hit, and I don't think they should've written it like that. It's just piling too much misery onto the lead.
Anyway, the good parts are mostly due to Ritter. She's still great in this role, and handles all of the various parts well (well, except the action, but there's not a ton of it and that's what doubles are for). She does really well with all of the anguish in Jessica's life while also making you but the moments where she has hope or even joy, like in the flashback (before that's crushed).
Tennant's guest spot was a highlight, because Kilgrave is still a fantastic villain, and they brought him back without undoing the power of what happened in season one. Having him represent Jessica's self-doubt and her more ruthless side is maybe a little cliche, but whatever, that character and performance are so good I will allow the indulgence. They could have dwelled on the themes he represented a little more. They definitely started the season in those areas, having Tennant around to voice them may have been more effective.
The first problem was all of the side plots for every minor character. They did not really do a great job of tying into Jessica's story. There are maybe some thematic links (women + anger = ?), but the plots didn't really tie in. For example, while Hogarth's story provided some nice showcases for Carrie Anne Moss, was it really linked to the larger Jessica's mom plot? Thematically, how she handles the betrayal of her body and then of Inez is interesting as a counterpoint to how Jessica and her mom manifest their anger, but it was tangential to that plot. Would the season have been different if Inez disappears after she explains about IGH? Not really. But it would have been shorter. And god knows these shows need to be streamlined.
Same deal with Trish for the most part. She's got this boyfriend that we hint at being semi-nefarious but was really just planning a surprise engagement party? And then she dumps him because she wants a more mainstream news career. Or maybe she wants to be more like Jessica and have powers? OK, there's an interesting plot in there about how her mother chose an identity for her and she never got to figure out what she wanted. But it makes her an incredibly irritating character in this season, where I found her a really good character in the first season. Then they use the rage generated by Simpson's inhaler to basically make her an irrational plot device for the second half of the season, and that's no good. BOO.
Malcolm's plot is just dumb and him becoming ethically dubious is strangely dissatisfying in a series where Jessica is the main character. She is generally on the right side of things. Most of the time we spend with him here could be better spent doing... other things. Like, anything else.
Anyway, the major thing here is Jessica and her mom. Which works fine. It's not fantastic like Kilgrave, but it's not terrible like I dunno, Diamondback. It's just fine for me. I think we needed a better sense of who she was before the car accident to make the post-accident version of Alysa make more sense to us. And the antagonist (better term for a villain) should have a better motivation than "sometimes gets uncontrollably angry when her child or husband are endangered." I dunno.
Basically, the first season was an excellent show with two great performaces that was slightly padded. This was a slightly above average show with one great performance that was extremely padded.
The show finished filming a month before the New York Times published the Weinstein story. In fact, they finished writing the whole season by April of last year.
Trish.
Malcolm.
The Building Superindent.
I thought all of them had some good developments.
This season is about relationships. Everything is driven by the complex and conflicting desires and feelings people have within themselves and towards others. Every character has selfish and altruistic reasons for their actions and it's the blurring of the lines that drives them down to make terrible decisions.
The tragedy is that Trish basically becomes her mother. Dorothy abused Trish and put her in horrible situations so that Trish could become famous. But in Dorothy's mind, she's always helped Trish and the fact that Trish did become famous and successful is proof of that. And Dorothy can never admit or even see that she really did it because she wanted to be famous and was just living that dream through Trish. Trish does the same thing to Jessica without realizing it. Trish thinks she's helping Jessica with her case and get closure to her past, but she's really doing it because she wants to use Jessica and to escape her own fears of being helpless.
You have the same theme playing out with Malcolm's story. It seems like Malcolm starts out having good intentions only to become morally dubious, but there was always that duality of selfish vs. altruistic motivations. At the start of the season, it looks like Malcolm is trying to get his life back together and working with Jessica because he believes he can help other people by helping Jessica. But it's revealed throughout the season that he's using Jessica as a way of coping with his addiction. He basically says that he has to stay occupied or he'll fall into his bad habits again and when Jessica tells him to go home, he goes find someone to sleep with, and they show how he's switched his drug addiction with sex addiction. And you see more of how he's getting involved in other people's lives so he can feel better about himself. He wants to be the hero and he's close to Jessica in hopes of rubbing off on her superheroics. That's one of the biggest themes of this season, the conflicting and sometimes contradictory nature of human desires.
That's kind of amazing.
It doesn’t have the flourish of the first season, but tells a much more personal story. Solid A-
Soundtrack is on point too.
Maybe I missed something, but I don't
Having him suddenly go from self-assurred to suicide, KNOWING what would happen with whatever Jessica's mom is called was out of character and a bad writing decision to just further this story.
which is a huge theme of this show, and something that Jessica personally has zero tolerance for, given her experience with Kilgrave.
As they were though, they were done for,
Also it’s heavily implied, if not outright stated, that IGH actually pursued patients who couldn’t consent, since their procedures were being done illegally. They were basically on the lookout for comatose or critical patients, stole them, and ran experiments.
The inhaler and Simpsons Pills? That was based of his work and it was all anybody wanted out of him.
Couple that with the fact that as a scientist, he had in his own way an addiction to advance his science no matter the cost.
Him spending the rest of his life creating monsters and soldiers? That what made him end it.
Trish
Its actually kind of refreshing really. All those stories about "With great power" and what a drag having powers is. Its nice to have one character actually go looking for power any way they can. If superpowers where real there would be a lot of Trish Walkers around. Just look at steroids and all their side-effects and people still use that stuff.
Jessica's stance is that she would have been happier dead than living with that.
Loved it. Thought it was the "tightest" MCU Netflix series to date. Maybe not the most "fun" or exciting, but i found every episode to be interesting and tuned up like a drum. I enjoyed everyone of the story lines this season.
Then suddenly when Jessica finds the house her mom does a 180 and spends the rest of the series not wanting to be away from her daughter, holding on to her, even kidnapping her and trying to flee to country so they can be together.
Then just as suddenly at the end of E13 she changes her mind, tells Jessica to go away and sets herself up to be picked up and sent to the Raft where she knows she'll never see her daughter again.
WTF?