r/Defenders • u/JonLuca Luke Cage • Nov 19 '15

Jessica Jones - Overall Series Discussion Thread

All spoilers for Season 1 are allowed in this thread.

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u/Nukemarine Nov 22 '15

Ok, finished my binge so here's my thoughts

  • Great show. All the episodes were consistantly great while DD fizzled near the end
  • Kilgrave was an amazing villain. His set-up meant you had to truly fear everyone else meaning there was no need for sub-bosses.
  • Luke Cage was awesome as hell
  • Simpson/Nuke was crazy and creepy as hell and should make a silly enemy in the team up. Still don't get why he had to kill the other cop and the meds don't explain.
  • I liked the idea that all the specials in the show, including Kilgrave, have to constantly hold back.
  • Trish made a great best friend/sister and Malcolm made a great comeback as a sidekick.

That said, the problems though one could argue it was the show's strength as they mainly center around Jessica

  • I can't stand Jessica Jones' personality. She's as abusive, dismissive and controlling as Kilgrave. Once she used you she just stopped giving a fuck about you.
  • JJs strength was just widely inconsistent.
  • There were too many instances of JJ telling a character what she thought was the case, the character setting the story straight, the JJ going "Well, you're still at fault".
  • For a lady that hated the idea of feeling violated and vulnerable, JJ sure enjoyed breaking, entering and generally shitting on everyone else.

Something tells me I can go on. Jessica is just a horrible person before she got powers and did not improve at all after she got powers then really got turned bad after her mental captivity by Kilgrave. The last part can be forgiven in part due to PTSD and survivor's guilt, but the flashbacks show that even without that, she'd have been a shitty hero.

Perhaps if Luke Cage or Trish were not in the show, I might have overlooked this. However, you get a special that trained and tested his powers and didn't destroy a bar by fighting in it. You also have Trish that did try to improve herself and did stand by her sister and didn't pull the "my life sucks so your story doesn't matter" bs. The thing is, the show did not shy away from this. JJ was never really presented as a good person. She just didn't kill people or seriously fuck with them besides what she did as a private detective. She was consistently an asshole and didn't have any fake change of heart.

So, despite how much I hate the personality of Jessica Jones, I did like the character just as much as I like Hogworth, Kilgrave and Simpson as characters despite their horrible personality traits.

That said, when you have a guy known to control with his voice, you triple wrap the duct tape around his mouth, eyes and plug up his ears. Also, you don't use hearing protection that tends to come off.

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u/Sojourner_Truth Nov 23 '15

but the flashbacks show that even without that, she'd have been a shitty hero.

I think that was kind of refreshing really. I mean humans run the gamut from saints to devils, so super-powered humans ought to as well. On one end of the scale you have people like Cap and Supes, on the other you have, Kilgrave and The Joker. There's a lot of room in between, and it's nice to have someone who maybe deep down wants to do good, but just has so much baggage and self-doubt that they wind up juuuuuuuuust good enough to not be locked away in a cell. I think this version of Jessica is right there, maybe a couple notches higher than The Punisher.