Jessica Jones Jessica Jones FULL SEASON TWO Discussion Thread (BEWARE, SPOILERS GALORE!)

[flickchick85]

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Discuss the 2nd Season of Jessica Jones here.

NO SPOILER TAGS NECESSARY.
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[TheVileOne]

Well. This season took the train off to crazy town after we found out the killer was Jessica's mom. And then it turns out the real bad guy of the season is technically...Trish...yeah. And to a lesser extent Jessica. Jessica was almost just as much of a villain this season as her mom.

And then in the second half, you have Jessica's mom playing the Hope Schlottman role from season 1. And then you have her getting out and going psycho again. And then playing Thelma and Louise with Jessica. I blame her less than Jessica, Malcom, and Trish.

Not as good as the first season. A lot of meandering. Like at one point, you had Jessica and her mom fighting crime together, while her mom is still psychotic. Could've saved us a couple episodes if they just turned Jessica's mom in right away instead of the garbage helping her escape and the attempted assassination by Bryce. And then having them go all Thelma and Louise at the end? Yeesh.

It's so weird. Kilgrave was such an ultimate villain for the first season. It's like they didn't know how to follow up on it at all. Yet another reason killing him off was a mistake.

So you have the psychotic mass murderer mother teaching Jessica the grand moral lesson that she just has to give a **** a little more I guess.

 

[TheVileOne]

I will say this. At least they didn't do any dumb garbage like Kilgrave coming back to life. We only saw him as a voice in Jessica's head haunting her. Basically same as Joker in Batman Arkham Knight. Same function.

 

[Lighthouse]

I rather liked most of this season, except for the Hogarth storyline. I like Carrie Ann-Moss, but her whole subplot was totally pointless. I really don't care about what this lawyer is doing. She doesn't even have an arc, because she's exactly the same as she was at the beginning. I also don't really like how it's trying to paint Trish as the helpless addict and the Dr. as a monster. Oh he's a bad guy, but Trish did some unbelievably awful ****. I hope she's the villain in the next season, because I will not buy her as a superhero.

 

[DarkShadow10]

What happened please?

 

[Tymminator]

Only thing I want to know before I start, does Trish become Hellcat at any point in the series?

 

[Dasher10]

What happened please?

Somebody set up us the bomb. We get signal.

 

[TheVileOne]

What happened please?

To sum up:

- Jessica and Trish start investigating IGH to get to the bottom of what happened to her.
- As they get closer more people close to IGH are getting killed off like someone is covering their tracks.
- It turns out the killer killing everyone off is Alise Jones, Jessica's mother. She also survived the accident and was given super powers by IGH similar to Jessica's. However, the trauma of the accident gave her brain damage, and she's prone to psychotic rages. She decided to stay legally dead and out of her daughter's life after she gets into a rage and kills Jessica's bartender/amateur club owner boyfriend. She started killing off Dr. Kozlov, Frank Simpson (From season 1) and even a speedster named Whizzer because she fears Trish's investigation is getting too close to her lover Dr. Malus.
- Jessica's mother genuinely falls in love with Doctor Malus, the doctor who saved their lives and gave them powers.
- Eventually Jessica Jones convinces her mother to turn herself in. Hogarth arranges a deal so Alise Jones can get visitation from Jessica in prison and not go to the Raft provided she write a full confession about IGH and Dr. Malus.
- Alise will only write the confession if Jessica helps Malus get out of the country because she loves him.
- Trish gets addicted to Frank Simpson's IGH drugs. She gets so desperate that she wants to have super powers like Jessica. She betrays Jessica to try and get Dr. Malus to give her super powers. However, in the process, Dr. Malus ends up killing himself. As a result, Alise Jones wants to murder Trish.
- After Alise breaks out of prison and kills guards and a police officer, she tries to murder an incapacitated Trish. Jessica stops her.
- Jessica starts getting visions of Kilgrave after she inadvertently commits manslaughter against a prison guard who was cruelly treating her mother. Eventually, they stop.
- Jessica and Alise go Thelma and Louise for a little while. Eventually, they go to their old favorite amusement park and ride a ferris wheel. Trish shows up and shoots Alise in the head so the police won't kill both of them.
- It ends with Jessica ending her friendship to Trish for killing her mother, even though her mother was a psychotic mass murderer (but she had brain damage!)
- Trish's partial experimentation by Dr. Malus appears to now give her faster cat-like reflexes. Get it, CAT LIKE.
- The season ends with Malcom quitting and working for another PI company that merges with Hogarth's.
- Meanwhile, Jessica goes to have dinner with her new boyfriend this season, her building's super Oscar, and his son who she has bonded with.

That's basically the season.

 

[TheVileOne]

Only thing I want to know before I start, does Trish become Hellcat at any point in the series?

No. But she does have powers that give her cat like reflexes at the very end.

 

[TheVileOne]

Trish has sort of become the main villain of the show basically.

 

[DarkShadow10]

To sum up:

- Jessica and Trish start investigating IGH to get to the bottom of what happened to her.
- As they get closer more people close to IGH are getting killed off like someone is covering their tracks.
- It turns out the killer killing everyone off is Alise Jones, Jessica's mother. She also survived the accident and was given super powers by IGH similar to Jessica's. However, the trauma of the accident gave her brain damage, and she's prone to psychotic rages. She decided to stay legally dead and out of her daughter's life after she gets into a rage and kills Jessica's bartender/amateur club owner boyfriend. She started killing off Dr. Kozlov, Frank Simpson (From season 1) and even a speedster named Whizzer because she fears Trish's investigation is getting too close to her lover Dr. Malus.
- Jessica's mother genuinely falls in love with Doctor Malus, the doctor who saved their lives and gave them powers.
- Eventually Jessica Jones convinces her mother to turn herself in. Hogarth arranges a deal so Alise Jones can get visitation from Jessica in prison and not go to the Raft provided she write a full confession about IGH and Dr. Malus.
- Alise will only write the confession if Jessica helps Malus get out of the country because she loves him.
- Trish gets addicted to Frank Simpson's IGH drugs. She gets so desperate that she wants to have super powers like Jessica. She betrays Jessica to try and get Dr. Malus to give her super powers. However, in the process, Dr. Malus ends up killing himself. As a result, Alise Jones wants to murder Trish.
- After Alise breaks out of prison and kills guards and a police officer, she tries to murder an incapacitated Trish. Jessica stops her.
- Jessica starts getting visions of Kilgrave after she inadvertently commits manslaughter against a prison guard who was cruelly treating her mother. Eventually, they stop.
- Jessica and Alise go Thelma and Louise for a little while. Eventually, they go to their old favorite amusement park and ride a ferris wheel. Trish shows up and shoots Alise in the head so the police won't kill both of them.
- It ends with Jessica ending her friendship to Trish for killing her mother, even though her mother was a psychotic mass murder (but she had brain damage!)
- Trish's partial experimentation by Dr. Malus appears to now give her faster cat-like reflexes. Get it, CAT LIKE.
- The season ends with Malcom quitting and working for another PI company that merges with Hogarth's.
- Meanwhile, Jessica goes to have dinner with her new boyfriend this season, her building's super Oscar, and his son who she has bonded with.

That's basically the season.

Thank You, I really don't have time to watch this at the minute so I'll have to catch up sometime!!!

 

[raz1337]

Wait, so they actually mention something from Civil War in a later episode?

 

[TheVileOne]

The Raft is mentioned multiple times, but that's about the extent of it.

 

[flickchick85]

Well this was by far the most low-key and least-comic-booky of all the Marvel/Netflix seasons, but I dug it.

Main complaints:

- Trish. I liked her in S1 but at this point it'll be hard to make her transition to an actual hero at this point if that's the plan. She went way too far on multiple occasions.

- Alisa's "vendetta" against Trish was hella contrived. In fact some aspects of Alisa's illness were awkwardly handled, imo. But I thought McTeer played the role well.

-Unlike others here, I actually liked Jeri's scenes, but I just wish her arc had been more connected to the main one somehow.


Things I liked:

- Krysten Ritter outdid herself this season. Just a great performance. My heart broke for Jessica several times throughout the season.

- While I mentioned I found the portrayal of Alisa's character a bit clunky at times, I really did like the overall storyline there, and I liked how small and intimate this season was because of it. This season really delved into who Jessica is and what made her that way on every level, and I liked that. And Janet McTeer and Krysten Ritter nailed the dynamic there perfectly, imo.

- Malcolm got SO much better this season.

- I was dreading the whole Oscar/Jessica thing from the moment they met, but I actually ended up liking the way it played out. Her scenes with him and Vido were great.

Overall, not as good as S1, largely because the big Kilgrave-sized hole in this season, but it still worked as a great psychological/character drama for me, and is still one of the better Marvel/Netflix seasons, imo.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Trish has sort of become the main villain of the show basically.

No. Not at all.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

I thought this season was great. I feel like it is close to on par with season 1, with each having their own strength and weaknesses. The big deciding difference being Kilgrave, who was such a great driving force.

Things that stood out for me:

- Jessica and Trish might have my favorite dynamic in the MCU. Its so complex and layered. There is a codependency that flips their relationship on their head, seeing the different stages. Last season Trish was the more stable one, trying to help Jessica fight her demons. This season we got the inverse that was hinted at during the first season.

- Jessica's mom being around shouldn't have worked. But how they handled it turned into really compelling storytelling imo. It wasn't perfect, but it really worked imo. Especially how it paralleled with Trish and her mother. How both Jessica and Trish have these blindspots with their mothers.

- I liked that there was no villain. There were a lot of issues, problems, demons these people are fighting. But each person's worst enemy was themselves. Their issues and blindspots.

- Ritter was just so good. Up there with Bernthal on Punisher.

- I liked how they handled the action this season. Less was more, especially with Jessica not throwing people around, but instead pushing and holding in place.

- I was not a big fan of the romances this season. Something felt a bit time killy about them and I am confused by what Trish's boyfriend was doing with her computer. Like was he up to something?

- Kilgrave going Arkham Knight was just fantastic.

- I found the secondary storylines this season far more enjoyable and compelling.

Overall, I am very happy with the 26 episodes of Jessica Jones we now have and I really hope the wait for season 3 isn't nearly as long.

 

[Drizzle]

I wish Kilgrave's appearance was spread out over a few episodes instead of just being restricted to episode 11.

 

[Dasher10]

That likely had to do with David Tennant’s work schedule.

 

[TheVileOne]

No. Not at all.

A lot at all really.

 

[nypinta]

Yeah. If not the outright villain, she was very much villain adjacent. She used Malcolm to get to Dr. Malus, which means even if her motivation at first was to help Jessica, at some point her motivation to continue to investigate IGN became her personal quest at a chance to be enhanced, meaning she was using Jessica too, justifying some pretty horrible actions because of it. Which is what bad guys do.

What I find interesting is that pretty much everyone has good intentions (at first), even if they lead to horrible actions. And although they didn't really address it, they season does raise the question of who is responsible when an enhanced person is created against their will, even if the people who create them didn't do it on purpose. IGN and their reaction to what their research leads to are to me, the ultimate villain. Giving a person with massive superstrength sedatives in pill form is stupid. But the solution to that isn't to close the clinic and leave that person basically on their own, it's to come up with better protocols. Jessica's mother never asked for the powers given to her, but she did kill a woman. It was IGN's responsibility to keep her someplace secure, but also to treat her humanely. Instead, the shut the place down, Dr. Malrus did the best he could, and a brain-damaged, enhanced woman ended up in a jail where she was treated as a thing. That's not justice, IMO. It's probably weird that I feel more sympathy for Jessica's mom (and like her more too) than I do Trish's mother. That woman sold her daughter just so she could ride her coattails into fame and fortune, and still does it even after all the damage it's done to her. That's villainy.

If they do anything with Trish next season (and I do hope there is another) it better be some serious redemption arc, if they aren't going to make her an outright villain. She has a LOT to make up for, IMO. And I hope that now she has what she wants, she'll realize just how badly she screwed up.

 

[TheVileOne]

At what point though is a person responsible for their actions? Before the end of the season, Jessica was always pointing the finger at others for what Trish was willfully doing.

 

[dmcreif]

As a big fan of Daredevil, the ending to Jessica's sophomore outing here seems so similar to Matt's that it's like deja vu. Which is telling, because after all, Matt was the Defender next to Luke that Jessica seemed closest to. There's so much parallel in how Team Alias fell apart to how Nelson & Murdock broke up.

Here, Jessica has cut almost all of her original friendships. She's left mourning the loss of her mother for real, much like Matt was left mourning Elektra. Jessica and Trish are now estranged over the matter of Trish having killed her mother. Meanwhile, similar to how Foggy ended up joining his girlfriend at Jeri Hogarth's law firm, Malcolm gets fed up with Jessica and Trish pushing him around and keeping him in the dark, to the point that he leaves her to work for Jeri Hogarth and Pryce Cheng. Malcolm even does the same thing as Foggy, of getting a nicer suit and a more professional looking haircut before having a job interview with Hogarth.

But there's one note of solace in these parallels: much like Matt kept his relationship with Karen in spite of all that happened, Jessica managed to hold on to her new relationship with Oscar. There's actually much parallel in between this scene of Jessica sitting down to dinner with Oscar, and the scene of Matt meeting Karen in the shuttered Nelson & Murdock office and revealing his secret identity to her. Both moments even come after Jessica and Matt have respectively lost almost everything, and realize just how empty their lives are without relationships.

 

[dmcreif]

On a related note, almost as if by design, Jessica's relationship with her mother is very similar to Matt's relationship with Elektra. Like, both Elektra and Alisa are morally compromised and violent women who've killed numerous people. Both were presumed dead, then came back to life with superstrength. And Alisa's relationship with Karl seems like a parallel to Elektra's connection with Alexandra, with the difference being that Elektra had her memories of Matt and Stick suppressed by Alexandra, and actually died before being revived; while Alisa on the other hand was just comatose and kept her memories of Jessica.

 

[scarlet-witch]

To sum up:

- Jessica and Trish start investigating IGH to get to the bottom of what happened to her.
- As they get closer more people close to IGH are getting killed off like someone is covering their tracks.
- It turns out the killer killing everyone off is Alise Jones, Jessica's mother. She also survived the accident and was given super powers by IGH similar to Jessica's. However, the trauma of the accident gave her brain damage, and she's prone to psychotic rages. She decided to stay legally dead and out of her daughter's life after she gets into a rage and kills Jessica's bartender/amateur club owner boyfriend. She started killing off Dr. Kozlov, Frank Simpson (From season 1) and even a speedster named Whizzer because she fears Trish's investigation is getting too close to her lover Dr. Malus.
- Jessica's mother genuinely falls in love with Doctor Malus, the doctor who saved their lives and gave them powers.
- Eventually Jessica Jones convinces her mother to turn herself in. Hogarth arranges a deal so Alise Jones can get visitation from Jessica in prison and not go to the Raft provided she write a full confession about IGH and Dr. Malus.
- Alise will only write the confession if Jessica helps Malus get out of the country because she loves him.
- Trish gets addicted to Frank Simpson's IGH drugs. She gets so desperate that she wants to have super powers like Jessica. She betrays Jessica to try and get Dr. Malus to give her super powers. However, in the process, Dr. Malus ends up killing himself. As a result, Alise Jones wants to murder Trish.
- After Alise breaks out of prison and kills guards and a police officer, she tries to murder an incapacitated Trish. Jessica stops her.
- Jessica starts getting visions of Kilgrave after she inadvertently commits manslaughter against a prison guard who was cruelly treating her mother. Eventually, they stop.
- Jessica and Alise go Thelma and Louise for a little while. Eventually, they go to their old favorite amusement park and ride a ferris wheel. Trish shows up and shoots Alise in the head so the police won't kill both of them.
- It ends with Jessica ending her friendship to Trish for killing her mother, even though her mother was a psychotic mass murderer (but she had brain damage!)
- Trish's partial experimentation by Dr. Malus appears to now give her faster cat-like reflexes. Get it, CAT LIKE.
- The season ends with Malcom quitting and working for another PI company that merges with Hogarth's.
- Meanwhile, Jessica goes to have dinner with her new boyfriend this season, her building's super Oscar, and his son who she has bonded with.

That's basically the season.

Thank you. As someone who didn't like the first season but was curious on maybe giving this a shot, I'll probably skip it.

 

[Mike Murdock]

I commented in the episode thirteen thread that this was not a traditional superhero vs. villain story. I think, for the most part, that worked. There were a lot of good moments. There were also some plot threads that never really felt strong enough to stand on their own and never really intersected.

I think Trish's story probably needed to be stronger to sell the ending. On the other hand, I really loved Kristen Ritter's performance and she sold all the scenes with her mother.

Looking at my scores, I was very consistent, but there were absolutely no five star reviews. Just fours and four and a halves.