Well, weaker writing I’ll give you. As a number of professional and amateur critics have noted it was probably a mistake to hyper-focus on Kilgrave so much. Even just two or three establishing episodes to lead into the series with a slower build towards Kilgrave would have allowed them the luxury not to stretch their main plot out quite so much. I can understand why the writers and producers decided otherwise, but it was a choice that backfired IMHO.
Still a great show, though :).
It was mind control, not something that could easily be proven by video.
Well, there were microbes involved, but effectively it was mind control.
Oh, I get it. They had David Tennant, so they wanted him in a bunch of episodes. The cat and mouse game, however, couldn’t be so complex to make the show hard to follow by your average viewer, so they had to find plot twists any way they could. And doing that right is hard. And the writers clearly weren’t up to it, so it all became pretty much crummy soap opera twists.
But if you take away four or five episodes that were just Killgrave filler? Awesome show.
I just finished this series yesterday and really enjoyed it!!
I agree Jessica’s plan to get Kilgrave to use his powers on camera was doomed to fail from the beginning, but I figured that was the point, the Jessica really wasn’t thinking anything through logically. After all, even if her plan had worked perfectly and she got the evidence she wanted, there would never be a trial because Kilgrave would just mind control any officer, lawyer, judge, jury, etc. into believing him. I don’t think it was bad writing, I think it was used to show that Jessica made some really bad decisions.
The only thing that bothered me was that the whole vaccine angle was just dropped as a plot point. After Kilgrave’s dad sprays himself with the vaccine, and he’s in the restaurant, right after Kilgrave tells him to come to him, the dad hesitates for a second and smiles at Jessica, then walks to Kilgrave. I thought that was a signal to her that the vaccine worked, and he was just pretending to be controlled, and would act against Kilgrave at a later moment. I assumed that in the apartment instead of making a drug that would make Kilgrave stronger, he was actually making something that would make him weaker, and when Kilgrave told him to put his fingers in the blender I thought “Wow! The dad is much braver than I thought! He is willing to take it to the very brink of losing his fingers rather than give up and reveal that the vaccine worked!” Then when Jessica walked in later and found him on the floor, I knew he would still be alive, and when he woke up I thought “Aha! Now he’s going to reveal to her that he’s been working against Kilgrave the whole time!” But … nope, he just died. 
I can’t buy that. At one point there were eight people in that bunker, including a successful lawyer. Not a single one went and pointed out the many faults in that plan. Which leads me to think that the writers didn’t think about them either.
The actor played it ambiguously. Maybe I’m post-hoc rationalizing, but I seem to remember a tiny headshake that accompanied his smile–or anyway some physical gesture, some slumping, that communicated, “Sorry, Jessica, no go,” as he shuffled toward Killgrave. But whatever it was was subtle enough that I wasn’t sure I’d understood.
I beg to differ. The lawyer and the cop and Nuke all pointed out the problems with Jessica’s plan.
Don’t remember that. What did they say?
The point is that her priority was wrong and selfish. People died just so he could get that one girl out of jail.
That what she was doing was illegal and inadmissible in court and would get them arrested and the lawyer disbarred.
Must have missed that. Which character?
Trinity…the lawyer.
I don’t think there’s a superhero in Marvel or DC who wouldn’t have done the same - risking innocent lives to pursue a noble, but selfish, personal agenda is what they do. It’s why Batman drops off murderous psychopaths at Arkham every month, despite the place having poorer security than your typical urban high school.
Totally. Describing it as “selfish” is, I think, a drastic oversimplification.
Part of the beauty of the last episode is watching her among the crowd, as everyone is told to murder each other. Killgrave has distilled her choices for her:
You see her think about it. You see her decide. And she stalks through the crowd of victims, not helping anyone, just shoving them aside when they get in her way, so they can continue murdering one another. True, they all survived (I assume)–but it was no thanks to her.
That, I think, was what the final voiceover was all about. She’d made a coldblooded decision to let innocent people die in order to achieve her goal. No matter how laudable it was, there’s no way a person like Jessica Jones could feel good about that, could feel like a hero, could feel like anything more than a different flavor of villain.
Never mind, misread something.
I just watched that episode last night. I don’t think Kilgrave really knew she was immune. He looked genuinely surprised when she didn’t let go of him.
He knew, that was why he was trying to get by without using his powers when he bought her childhood home and set up situations where he could control her by threatening other people instead of just ordering her around. He might have been surprised when his power boost still didn’t work though.
Hmm, I just finished it, and feel like I missed a lot. Maybe I’ll rewatch a few episodes.
I enjoyed it, but it bothered me a little that the female super-hero is defined by her relationship with a man. Spiderman has psychological trauma, but it was because of his agency, choices he made that he regrets. I can’t think of any male superhero who is defined by another person (“romantic” relationship or not) in the same way.
And, of course there are plot holes, and stuff that’s implausible. But it was fun, and a lot of the acting was really good. I will be happy to watch “Luke Cage”, which hopefully will feature Jessica and Patsy as well as Luke.
In the same way? I don’t know. But there are some pretty fun bits in comics suggesting that Batman is defined primarily by his super-fucked-up relationship with The Joker.
I think I see where you’re coming from. I’ll be more worried if the next several female superhero shows/movies have protagonists similarly defined by trauma. And going forward, I hope JJ is not defined by another villain this way. But as a one-off season, I think it’s a legit story to tell.