Jessica Jones hits its stride with “AKA 99 Friends,” right as it bares it soul. While Daredevil focused on themes of pain and guilt, Jessica Jones deals with trauma and PTSD – in short, how to survive. This is a show of almost exclusively damaged individuals, people united in pain trying to find a way to be normal again.
Jessica is more paranoid than ever, which is understandable given that she found out she’s being pretty obsessively stalked. This is compounded when she’s contracted by Audrey Eastman to find dirt on her cheating husband. Jessica doesn’t trust anyone because she’s been hurt, which is a prevalent theme through “AKA 99 Friends.” It’s a subtly melancholy episode, light on fights or any real narrative momentum. Kilgrave and Luke Cage sit this episode out, and while it seems like a huge misstep to bench two of Jessica Jones‘ best characters, the show not only works without them, it actually thrives in spite of their absence. This is a damn good episode, and it really got to me.
The themes of abuse and survival resonate across the board. Trish is traumatized by what happened to her, and so is Sgt. Simpson, a nice addition to the cast. He’s wracked with guilt and ready to jump in and start helping in the search for Kilgrave. Seeing Kilgrave’s effect on people is actually tough to watch. Simpson is experiencing some serious PTSD, and Trish has to act as a supplicant to her abuser. She appeals to Kilgrave’s vanity, on air, in the way that serial killers are appeased (shades of Zodiac in that scene).
“AKA 99 Friends” doesn’t let up, especially when Jessica unwittingly founds a support group. The parade of Kilgrave’s victims through Hobarth’s office is at turns funny (“He had these glowing red eyes”) and deeply upsetting. The confessions range from the seemingly mundane (one guy says Kilgrave owes him a new coat) to the actually upsetting. Think of what’s implied by a woman with bandaged hands saying “He made me play my cello for him…until I made a mistake.” And the fact that Kilgrave made one woman continuously smile might make him the most 2015 villain on TV right now. Sexist dick.
Jessica Jones, at its core, is a deeply melancholy show. But it augments its sadness with terrifically dark scenes like a little girl, brainwashed by Kilgrave, approaching Jessica and saying “Patsy Walker is safe. For now.” And the resolution of the Eastman case is a nice bit of standalone storytelling. She and her husband just want to kill gifted people, out of a sense of retaliation and need for a preemptive strike for the Chitauri attack in The Avengers. It’s good world-building, and establishes that all these stories take place in the same universe. Plus we get treated to an honestly scary scene of Jessica losing her shit and wrecking the Eastmans’ room, while letting loose with a warning that doubles as a rally cry for abuse survivors everywhere: “You take your goddamn pain and you live with it, assholes!”
“AKA 99 Friends” is such a knockout because it doesn’t show these people wallowing in their pain. They’re not letting it defeat them. At the end of the episode Trish metaphorically and literally lets Simpson into her life. And Jessica, despite her protestations, goes to what Jeri dubs “her support group.” In the face of the darkness in which Jessica Jones traffics, it’s almost startling to see a glimmer of hope.
A Few Thoughts
- Today in Jessica Jones Doing Sleazy Shit: nothing. She was surprisingly above board this go-round. Of course the day after I start this feature she doesn’t do any sleazy shit. But as a consolation prize, Jeri taking Pam to the same restaurant where she proposed to her soon-to-be ex was sleazy as hell
- Simpson and Trish talking through the door was cute, but if I had to listen to someone talk at my neighbor’s door all night I’d be incredibly pissed
- I get that this show and Daredevil don’t explicitly want to name characters from the MCU, but name dropping “the big green guy” and “the flag waver” is a little distracting
- Jessica storms into Jeri’s office at least once an episode
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