Archive

“Jessica Jones” recap (1.04): Love thy neighbor or whatever

Previously on Jessica Jones: Jessica and Luke get super close. Trish gets super tough. Jeri is getting super divorced. Kilgrave gets super creepy. Well, more creepy. He was already pretty fucking creepy as is.

Jessica is pondering the extreme horribleness that is her newfound knowledge of Kilgrave’s proxy stalking of her. It could be anyone in a city of more than eight million people. But, you know, no need to be paranoid or anything.

She arrives at her apartment to find a well-heeled new client waiting outside of Carl, and uncomfortably watching her junkie neighbor Malcolm struggle to unlock his door. The care with which Jessica always treats him is so nice. Though, at this point, you’ve probably realized all this screen time for a seemingly peripheral character means he is not actually all that peripheral. More on that later.

New upper-crusty client lady is someone named Audrey Eastman. Eagle-eyed viewers and/or anyone who owned a TV set in the mid-’90s will recognize her as Susan from Friends (played by actress Jessica Hecht). You know, the woman Ross’s wife Carol left him for and married. So there you have it, yet another subtle hat tip to all the lesbian ladies in the audience.

She is going on about her cheating husband “Carlo,” who is blindly ruining the lives of everyone in his path. She’s also asking a lot of questions about Jessica’s business. So naturally we’re all rather suspicious about her. I mean, we want to trust her because Carol and Susan were such a nice couple, and Susan used to give Ross endless crap. Still while something seems off, Jessica warily takes the job to get compromising shots of Carlo.

Before the ink can dry on the contract Trish calls in a panic. Sgt. Simpson is back and trying to break down her door. Jessica tells her to go hide in her panic room with Jodie Foster and wee baby dyke Kristen Stewart. Sorry, I just assume they are just naturally hiding out in any and all panic rooms. Don’t you?

Jess arrives and recognizes Simpsons’ crazed determination as something other than Kilgrave’s mind control. It’s the guilt caused by Kilgrave’s mind control. So she opens the door to his bewilderment. Simpson recognizes her and Jess explains they’re together inside doing stuff with their earphones on. Trish pops her head out to confirm that, “Yes, she’s with me.” Ladies, you make it so easy.

After confirming that yes, Trish is alive, and no, Simpson did not kill her, but yes, he sure tried—he starts to stumble off proclaiming his monsterhood. Jessica feels bad for him, but Trish is feeling less charitable. I feel less charitable, too. But that might also be because I know what a total jackass anger monkey he becomes later.

He is concerned for Trish’s welfare, Jessica says she has it covered. But then he mansplains why he would still be better at protecting her, despite not having any superpowers. Jessica doesn’t have time for his fragile male ego and tells him to go home, she has an idea.

That idea is to have Trish grovel on air. Through gritted teeth. And with withering death stares at Jessica. Afterward, Trish says “men and power” is “seriously a disease.” Yep. Can we get that printed up on a T-shirt and send it to all 431 male members of Congress? The 104 female members of Congress don’t need one; they already know.

The next day Jess barges into Jeri’s office because that’s the only way she ever enters Jeri’s office. Pam offers her protestations, but Jessica couldn’t hear her over her loud print and prominent boobs. I’m sorry, they’re right there. It would be rude not to notice.

She wants to know if one of the other lawyers in Jeri’s firm really referred Audrey/Susan from Friends to her. Jeri confirms but is supremely annoyed that Jessica interrupted an important business call she was on. Now she will have to “ramp” back up some man, and you know how us lesbians are loathe to ramp up men.

Ever wary, Jess follows Audrey/Susan through her daily routine. Trish is bored/scared at home and wants to live vicariously through her surveillance. Ah, the friends who stalk together stay together. But at least their sharing gives us this one very salient bit of info: Kilgrave’s mind voodoo only lasts 10 to 12 hours, tops.

Meanwhile, Jeri and Pam are off for a romantic lunch. Well, it would be romantic if Jeri would stop checking her phone. Jeri turns it off (well, sort of) and promises to whisk her lady friend wherever she wants to go once the current circus is over.

Alas, New York may be the largest city in the United States, but it is still too small a city to prevent a lesbian from running into her ex while out on a date with her new girlfriend. Jeri and Pam (Jam? Peri?) run into Wendy who is just leaving. The poor woman is visibly shaken because Jeri is taking Pam to the restaurant where she proposed to her. Oh, Jeri, girl—not cool.

Even Pam is turned off, because she is a human person with a sense of decorum and also feelings. I’m not sure if Jeri forgot, or just didn’t think of the restaurant’s import in her personal history. But either way, it looks a tad like she is recycling her romantic playbook. Time for some new moves perhaps, Jeri. How about trying a teppanyaki place where they grill the food right in front of you? It’s always a big hit when they throw the shrimp at you.

Still the uncomfortable encounter made one thing crystal clear—Jeri is 100 percent not interested in reconciling with her estranged wife. Of course, now Pam is 100 percent not interested in having a romantic lunch with Jeri either. This has been another episode of As the Lesbian Drama Turns.

Jessica’s surveillance of Audrey/Susan has brought her to an abandoned basement. There her new client cranks up some jams and starts shooting at mannequins. Hey, everyone has their own kink. I don’t judge what consenting adults do. Granted, the dummies may not totally be on board with being pumped full of lead.

After the lunch that wasn’t, Jeri summons Jessica to her office. It’s filled with people wanting to use Kilgrave as their defense. But Jeri has bigger ex-wife fish to fry. She wants to use her free favor from Jessica to dig up dirt on Wendy. Welcome to your ugly lesbian divorce subplot, folks.

Jessica reluctantly agrees, and also stays to hear out the Kilgraved wannabes. Most of them are flat-out lying. Kilgrave is a Chinese dude with red-glowing eyes. Kilgrave is a hot shirtless gardener. Kilgrave is a meteor alien with a probing purple staff. But there were a few who were legit: a woman made to play her cello, a woman made to smile until it hurt, a Wall Street bro made to give away his $5,000 jacket.

Jessica has all the real Kilgrave victims exchange information and form an impromptu support group. She wants to know everything Kilgrave did and said with them. Jeri thinks it’s a waste of time, and that Kilgrave is wasting his talents. Oh the things she could do with his powers of persuasion, she laments. Oh, the problems she could solve with his “gift.” Oh, Jeri, girl—not cool. Again.

Jessica tells her as much. How Kilgrave’s powers can never be on any good side, or any side at all. They’re just evil, they just use people like animals, they’re just life destroying. She breaks the conference room glass wall on accident/on purpose for emphasis. Alas, I don’t think Jeri took the hint to heart.

Back at her apartment complex, Jessica is accosted by Simpson who has the surveillance video she asked for earlier. On their way in they run into Malcolm, who Simpson accuses of “watching” him, which is a clunky bit of foreshadowing I somehow missed the first time around. I dunno, maybe I just zoned because a man was talking.

Jess drains the last of a whiskey bottle while wallowing in the irony of watching surveillance video of herself to see who was surveilling her while, sometimes, she was surveilling others. She gathers up some crumpled bills from her pockets to buy a new bottle. But on the way back an adorable little eight-and-a-half-year-old girl comes up to her with a chilling message.

Patsy Walker is safe for now. But she is also a bitch for leaving him to die in the road like a dog. Yep, sending grade-schoolers to do your dirty work is a new and especially disturbing low in the villain department.

Speaking of disturbing, Simpson shows back up at Trish’s apartment. How can we not miss you if you won’t go away? He wants to make things right, so he has brought her something “personal.” For a second, I think it’s a pie, and then I like him a little more. But, no, it’s an illegal firearm. Those are much less delicious with whipped cream.

He says he wants her to feel “safe.” Yes, friends, this is America. So the answer to whatever scares us is, obviously, more guns. An angry man shoots up a college campus, a movie theater, a church, a clinic, a school full of six and seven-year olds? More guns. As a nation our current political climate would have us believe the only thing we have to fear is the fear of not having as many firearms as we want, whenever we want them, wherever we want them.

I’m sorry, I got sidetracked. What were we talking about again? Right, how a gun is going to make Trish safer. Never mind that the thing she fears in this instance is a man who can make her do whatever he wants simply by opening his mouth. Never mind that he could have her turn the gun on herself before he was even in firing range. Never mind any of that. Gun = safety. Thanks, NRA, I got it.

While our national gun debate rages outside Trish’s door, Jessica is following Carlos—her mark—from a safe distance. She trails him into an apartment and then witnesses what sounds like an illicit love-making session. But wait, it’s with Audrey/Susan. Huh? Jessica is equally confused and confronts the not-cheating couple.

Audrey/Susan pulls her gun out and shoots her in the arm. Seems she’s not Kilgraved, just your garden-variety bigot who hates the “gifted.” She calls them super powered “freaks” and blames them all for her mother’s death. You see, her mother was crushed by a building during the Battle of New York.

Come on, lady. That’s ridiculous. First of all, the big green guy, the flag waver, the ultimate tech nerd, Male Katniss, hammer time and kick-ass Black Widow were trying to save lives, not take them. Second, blaming all “gifted” people for the actions of a few “gifted people” is as ignorant and hateful as blaming all Muslims for the actions of two Muslims.

Next you’ll want to ban all “gifted” people from entering the country. I mean, could you imagine the kind of person who would dream up that sort of flat-out prejudiced policy as a preventative measure for next time? I wish I couldn’t.

Jessica goes full HAM on Trump Audrey—well, not her physically, but her bigoted ideology. While I’m not sure if it made Audrey and Carlo any less fearful of the gifted, at least it made them so fearful they’ll never consider fucking with any of them ever again. Also, I think it was rather therapeutic for Jessica to smash up that apartment. Maybe this is why rock stars like to trash hotel rooms. Nah, they’re mostly all still just a bunch of privileged assholes.

Back at Trish’s apartment she is having a through-the-door heart-to-heart with Simpson. Then he tells her his life’s mission statement in the form of a childhood memory: G.I. Joe died to save Barbie. It’s a little on the nose, but I guess it was enough to get Trish to finally open up the door for him. Ugh, you guys, attempted murder while under the mind control of a psychopath is not a “meet cute.”

Jess drops by the Kilgrave survivors support group to listen to horrible stories ad broken people, but one man’s stood out. He was made to chauffeur Kilgrave around, and each morning at 10 a.m., exactly, bring him to a man wearing a blue-and-white scarf who gave him pictures.

Finally, a clue. Jessica scours the surveillance tapes and then, in the shadows, a blue-and-white scarf emerges. Hey, remember that junkie neighbor who got way more screen time than you’d think a junkie neighbor should get? Unfortunately, it wasn’t just to show Jessica’s compassionate underpinnings.

Poor Jessica. I mean, if you can’t trust your junkie neighbor, who can you trust?

Find more from Dorothy Snarker visit dorothysurrenders.com or @dorothysnarker.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button