Review of “Jessica Jones” (season 1)

 * * C

Jessica Jones is the second Marvel character adapted to the small screen for Netflix. While there are some minor tie ins to “Daredevil”, Jessica Jones stands alone. The series started strong as a detective drama, but morphed into pure action/fantasy. It suffered from a bad habit of closing down plot lines in a way that made them seem unnecessary and therefore unsatisfying. The title character is also extremely unlikable, though you get used to her after a while.

Krysten Ritter did a good job with the title character, and her physical acting was believable. Her love interest, Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is good, her best friend Trish (Rachael Taylor) forgettable. I particularly liked Eka Darville as her junkie neighbor Malcolm. The best performance goes to David “the Doctor” Tenant as the creepy villain, Kilgrave. A lot of the minor characters were weaker, and I found the side story involving Jessica’s boss (Carrie Ann “Trinity” Moss) dull.

Jessica Jones is worth watching. It could have been really good if the writers had played a better long game, though the handling of the plot arcs may have come from the episodic nature of the source material. This is the same problem I have with a lot of trade volumes of comic books. What works in an individual episode may be unsatisfying once they are strung together. What worked in broadcast TV, where the episodes were released weekly, doesn’t always work when you watch the episodes consecutively over a few days.

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