*Spoilers from previous episodes.*
And the hits keep on coming. Sorry if this is getting redundant, but it’s true. This is a strong episode for Jessica, for the show, and for David Tennant.
Rebounding from a failed attempt to apprehend Kilgrave, Jessica is feeling hemmed in. Kilgrave continues to find ways to twist the knife, she’s trying to protect Kilgrave’s last victim Hope, and Luke has just come to her with a missing-persons case he wants to hire her for. On the latter front, Jessica’s wary. She’s already felt herself getting a little too close to Luke and doesn’t want to get in any deeper— what’s more, the case threatens to stir up a part of her past that she doesn’t want coming to the surface.
Jessica’s case with Luke is the main focal point of the episode, along with the tug and pull of their relationship. Luke wants things to go further but Jessica wants to keep her secrets to herself, even as she doesn’t want to push him away entirely. It’s a good chance to explore Jessica’s issues more while also learning a bit about Luke’s history. The final scene between these two is a standout.
It’s also just cool to see the dynamic of Jessica and Luke working together. While not nearly as stark as the stuff with Simpson in episode 4, we do see ways in which Luke goes against Jessica’s instructions, pushing ahead when she urges him to pull back. It doesn’t have the same icky feeling as when Simpson does it, and to be fair, there are mitigating factors; aside from this case is deeply personal for Luke, Jessica is in fact doing things at times purely to keep him at an arm’s length from the case, not because it will help find the missing person. Still, it does sometimes result in him zigging when she tells to zag, and she obviously struggles as he pushes at her boundaries.
I didn’t mention it last time so as not to spoil that episode, but we’ve now been introduced to Malcolm properly. The tragicomic junkie of the first several episodes, it turns out, was made into a junkie by Kilgrave in order to keep him in Kilgrave’s thrall (Kilgrave’s mind-control effect wears off after about ten hours, and he needed someone who would consistently do his bidding day in and day out.) In the last episode, Jessica helped Malcolm get away from Kilgrave and detox, and now we see him struggling to reconcile the person he was with the person Kilgrave turned him into. Also? 100% on Team Jessica. It’s heartwarming that such a prickly person keeps drawing people’s loyalty to her: Trish, despite their issues, will go to the mat for Jessica, Luke keeps coming back, and Malcolm has a newfound devotion to her, fiercely protective even though he’s far from physically intimidating. (Him coming at Luke all “what are your intentions toward Jessica?” is a great scene.)
This episode gives us more of Kilgrave left to his own devices. After the events of the last episode, he and Jessica aren’t in one another’s immediate vicinities, but he’s still completely obsessed with her. I like that it’s actually kind of pathetic, that the all-powerful Kilgrave is constantly fixated on this woman who got out of his clutches. And yet, Tennant manages to make it both pathetic and creepy/terrifying at the same time. It’s a neat effect.
One interesting bit in this episode is a scene where, for reasons of his own, Kilgrave needs to try and accomplish something without directly using his powers. And I suppose you could say that being a well-dressed white guy with resources to flaunt is basically the non-superpower version of his abilities, but still. It’s a stretch for him. It’s so easy to have anything and everything he wants literally at a word, and he repeatedly has to catch himself to keep from compelling this person to do what he wants. Terrific scene, and Tennant plays it excellently.
No comments:
Post a Comment