Jessica Jones’ ninth episode breaks out the glass case of emotion
This weekend, A.V. Club contributor Caroline Siede is watching all of the first season of Marvel’s Jessica Jones on Netflix. After she’s finished with an episode, she’ll post a quick response. Though she’s working straight through the season, she’ll be taking some breaks, too, posting five reviews on Friday, four reviews on Saturday, and four reviews on Sunday. Weigh in on this episode in the comments below or discuss the whole season on our binge-watching hub page.
“AKA Sin Bin” (season one, episode nine)
This is the last episode I’m reviewing today (the final four will go up tomorrow), and this break could not come soon enough. This show is so thematically rich I’m simultaneously at a loss as to how to sum it up and overwhelmed by how much I want to say. It turns out binge-reviewing isn’t quite as easy as binge-watching.
Admittedly I’m kind of stalling here because I don’t quite know what to make of “AKA Sin Bin.” It’s always hard to be objective in criticism, but it’s even harder when I don’t really have time or distance (hey, Kilgrave’s weaknesses!) to analyze this episode.
Put another way: I think “AKA Sin Bin” is either the best or worst episode of Jessica Jones and I can’t decide which. It’s definitely tense, well acted, and full of exciting twists and turns. But it also feels like it’s plopped in from a more heightened superhero series not the realistic, slow burning one I’ve been watching.
We open on a “how the turn tables” moment as Kilgrave is now Jessica’s prisoner for once. (Add Kilgrave to the long list of villains who wind up in glass prisons.) It initially plays out like a feminist revenge fantasy with Jessica determined to manipulate and/or beat Kilgrave into using his powers on camera, which is the key to proving Hope is innocent. But Kilgrave’s smart enough to know what she’s doing (plus she basically tells him what she’s doing), so he plays the innocent victim. Jessica explains to Trish, “He didn’t have to tell me to do a goddamn thing and he had all the control.”
The show continues the exploration of Kilgrave’s past it started in “AKA WWJD?”, somewhat to the detriment of Jessica, who gets a little sidelined at the end of this episode. She tracks down Kilgrave’s parents, who complicate his childhood sob story: They did experiment on him but it was to save him from a degenerative neurological disease. And they only abandoned him after years of living under his iron rule. (I’m assuming The Twilight Zone’s “It’s A Good Life” is basically Kilgrave’s origin story.)