One of the things I’ve loved so much about Jessica Jones‘ inaugural season is how small-scale it’s been. Unlike most of Marvel’s slate, the show eschews big-budget battle scenes and citywide destruction. The more personal approach works incredibly well for Jessica Jones, and helps in no small part to make it as unsettling as it is. At its core, Jessica Jones is about toxic love and wounded masculinity, and the way that men can lash out when they feel unloved. But more than that, it’s about how people – not just women, but men as well – rebuild their lives after escaping the clutches of an abusive relationship. That doesn’t lend itself to explosive storytelling, and as such this show leans on its performances. There are no huge Avengers-style brawls here, but goddamn is there some engrossing storytelling on display.
Obviously, “AKA Smile” is about the battle between Jessica and Kilgrave. The show has done such a damn good job of exploring their relationship this season, and it’s just one way that the show has set itself apart from the rest of Marvel’s universe (the TV universe has excelled at psychologically complex villains). Kilgrave is basically an ex boyfriend with the powers of a supervillain, and at times “AKA Smile” reminded me of Eron Gjoni, whose toxic 10,000-word blog post was the beginning of the online woman-hating movement known as Gamergate. Like Gjoni, Kilgrave is able to command people through the power of his words, and like Gjoni, he uses this power to attack a woman who rejected him.
Kilgrave has given up any notion of Jessica loving him like he loves her, probably because he doesn’t really love her as much as he needs to possess her. This mindset has metastasized into an “if I can’t have her no one can” mentality, which is of a piece with the reductive, misogynist mentality that Kilgrave represents. Jessica, for her part, has no illusions about what she needs to do: she needs to kill Kilgrave, not put him in jail, not anything that will leave him able to ruin anyone else’s life.
More than anything, “AKA Smile” was an episode about moving forward, which is a fitting finale for a show that is so concerned with how people recover from trauma and grief. So much of this season has felt like a long therapy session, with Jessica and others coming face to face with their abuser and their abuse. That’s what makes Kilgrave’s death so satisfying – he’s not a physically strong villain, so it rings absolutely true that Jessica could so easily snap his neck. It’s a shame to say goodbye to David Tennant and his magnificent performance, but there’s a genuine sense of relief watching Kilgrave’s body crumple to the floor. It feels like Jessica, and abuse survivors like her, can finally move on from the horrific experience they had to endure.
The appearance of Daredevil‘s Claire Temple is a welcome addition that hints at a larger world in which Jessica Jones operates, but I don’t even know if the show needs it. This show works so wonderfully well at a small, personal level. All season long it showed us on an intimate level what the actual lives of superpowered men and women are like. It’s occasionally fun, but also lonely, depressing, and heartbreaking. In short, captivating television.
A Few Thoughts
- I was really hoping that Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson would show up at the end as Jessica’s lawyers
- Jessica summed up the whole show in the following line: “I’m an asshole. Now help me or get out of my way”
“AKA Smile” score: 4.25/5
Jessica Jones season one score: 4.25/5
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