JESSICA JONES season 2 - An extremely slow burn

Jessica Jones is a Marvel-Netflix series created by Melissa Rosenberg, starring Krysten Ritter, Rachael Taylor, Eka Darville, J. R. Ramirez, Carrie-Anne Moss, and Janet McTeer. This second season follows Jessica as she deals with the traumatic events of the first season and wrestles with her fear of becoming a psychotic murderer. Encouraged by her friends, she investigates the mysterious IGH company which had experimented on her 17 years ago and gave Jessica her enhanced powers. Meanwhile, an unknown entity is hunting down people connected to IGH, one who might have a closer connection to Jessica than previously believed.

I was a really big fan of the first season of Jessica Jones, and it was pretty tied for my favorite of Marvel's Netflix series (rivaling the fantastic first season of Daredevil). That being said, I had extremely high hopes going into this season and couldn't wait to see more of Jessica's past and how she will deal with the effects of what happened in the previous season (can't say due to spoilers).

I was very disappointed.

This season was created by the same team that had done season 1, so I was very surprised to find that while season 2 had a good number of really cool plot points and character development, it all did nothing but annoy me. It's plagued by a lot of good ideas and some really terrible execution; character flaws felt more like idiotic decisions that betray how these characters were written in the last season, important plot moments are so few and far between, and the entire show was extremely poorly paced with what feels like eight hours of content stretched out to thirteen hour-long episodes. It says a lot when the show doesn't even get interesting until the seventh episode, and there was only one episode I actually really liked (episode 11).

The first half of the season focuses on the mystery behind IGH and the identity of the mysterious killer that's been hunting people down. The show does give Jessica a bit more time to exercise her investigation skills, which is always nice, but this part of the season feels so incredibly slow, with nothing really happening at all. The second half has Jessica dealing with the revelation of who the killer is, and again it's great stuff that is plagued by poor pacing.

And all of this could've been easily excused if the characters had been interesting, but Jessica Jones fails to deliver on this front as well. Jessica is the only character that makes this season worth watching while everyone else is left in the backburner. Trish--one of my favorite characters--has been reduced to an insufferable idiot that I really, truly hated. Malcolm returns, and he's never really interesting. New character Pryce Cheng gave me hope since he was played by an Asian Canadian actor, but he ends up being a literal waste of time. Jeri Hogarth returns and is given an interesting subplot as she deals with her own mortality and pride, but unfortunately this is such a B-plot that it really has nothing to do with the main story.

The only other character worth a damn is Alisa, the main villain of this season. She's nowhere near as fantastically written and performed as Kilgrave of the previous season, but she's still a pretty good antagonist, with some really great emotional beats and connection with Jessica. She provides for us a twisted reflection of what Jessica is afraid she'll become one day--an unfeeling, crazed murderer. Unfortunately this is a really good plot point that loses its edge due to how far stretched out it gets over thirteen whole episodes. When she finally does let go of her grief and accept that she is ultimately a good person because she has control over her powers, this feels like a fantastic moment that goes unearned.

A minor issue I've found throughout the season is little specks of really poor production value. There are some moments with really atrocious editing (at one point I even wondered if it was intentional because it was so bad), amateurish levels of ADR, and some truly ugly CGI that looked like it was from the early 2000s. These really have no effect on the season at all, but it does show the lack of polish that this show had.

Final Verdict

Jessica Jones season 2 is full of great ideas with horrible execution. The characters you know and love from the previous season are back, with almost all of them being reduced to really annoying idiots you hate. There is potential with some really good plot points, but they get poorly implemented or get stretched out over the course of too many episodes that you just don't care anymore. The Jessica/Trish and Jessica/Kilgrave dynamics that made the last season so interesting are gone, and the show is all the worse for it. It's not a bad season overall, but the thirteen hours it demands from you is just way too much of a commitment for a season that lacks the same quality that made season 1 shine.

Score: C+

Spoiler Talk

• Trish makes a lot of really garbage decisions and I hate her now. I understand that they wanted to dig deep into this desire of hers to be strong and to be powerful--an interesting subversion of the girl power theme that makes Jessica Jones season 1 such a good watch--but I think they should have given her a much more sympathetic descent into darkness. Now, she just comes across as a whiny spoiled brat.
• The parallel between Jessica and her mother is a really good idea, but I wish that they were more concise with this theme. Jessica is scared of becoming a murderer just like Kilgrave was, a fear that's accentuated now that she finds out her own mother is exactly the kind of killer she's so afraid of becoming. Have every episode build up this theme so that when she does confront the Kilgrave in her mind and realizes once and for all that she has control over her powers, it's a much more powerful moment. Instead there's so much fat that we lose focus.
• There's a distinct lack of a consistent theme in this show. Season 1 was pretty well done with a central theme of dealing with the trauma of rape and loss of control over one's own body. This is shown through Jessica's own inability to form meaningful relationships with others, Kilgrave's victims forming a support group, Trish's abusive relationship with Simpson, Jeri's desire to garner power no matter what the costs, and a central antagonist that is the walking embodiment of male entitlement. Season 2's closest idea to a central theme is the effects of the loss of control over one's own power, as seen through Jessica's fear of becoming a murderer, Alisa's condition, and Jeri's ALS. But what does Trish's addiction have to do with it, or her weird obsession with getting powers? What about Malcolm? What about Pryce Cheng? The show treats Jessica's slow loss of her friends and family as her own fault, but this has nothing to do with the theme. It reeks of lack of focus that ultimately culminates to nothing.
• I hate how Trish gets powers at the end. The entire season shows us that her actions are WRONG. That her addiction is a FLAW and that her desire to want powers is a BAD thing. Let me repeat that for the people in the back: Trish gets addicted to a substance that her abusive ex-boyfriend used to try to KILL her and her own best friend, and then she obsessively tries to get powers like Jessica when she knows that those very powers make Jessica wish she was dead every single day. This is all treated as a BAD thing and the reason why she and Jessica have torn apart. And then she gets REWARDED for her behavior. The show seemingly treats her as a hero for killing Jessica's mother, and goes as far as to give her the very powers she always wanted. Jessica goes out of her way so many times to protect Trish and gets nothing but hatred and a dead mother while Trish has made all the wrong decisions and gets what she wants in the end. An utter disappointment.
• Let's hope season 3 is better.