AKA Number Three

I loved the first season (2015) of Jessica Jones but found the second (2018) to be uneven. I'm four episodes into season three (2019) now and so far I'm really liking it.

Like the other Netflix Marvel series, this season of Jessica Jones spends a lot of time contemplating what it means to be a hero. Jessica's friend, Trish (Rachael Taylor), having recently acquired superpowers, desperately wants to be the ardent do-gooder Jessica (Krysten Ritter) is too cynical to be.

The second episode of the season, "You're Welcome", directed by series star Krysten Ritter, is surprisingly amusing as we follow Trish through basic superhero training only to find it's actually kind of difficult to come across crimes being committed. After she finally stops a mugging, the need for a secret identity becomes clear when the mugger sues her and she neglected to get information from the victim. It's stuff like this that's sorely missing from The Boys. I only wish the Marvel Netflix shows weren't so allergic to superhero costumes.

Jessica herself has a couple interesting plot threads. Her new love interest is a shady character called Erik (Benjamin Walker), based on the Marvel Comics character Mind Wave. Walker is an actor with a lot of natural warmth who serves as a good foil for the caustic performance from Ritter. Mind you, I still like Ritter in this role. She's really good in the third episode after she's lost her spleen following a stabbing in the first episode. It works as a source of tension not unlike Jack Nicholson's injured nose in Chinatown.

But, once again, the character of Jeri Hogarth played by Carrie-Anne Moss threatens to upstage everyone. The ruthless, high powered lawyer happens to be dying and is trying to reconnect with an old lover. With her time running out, and her history of playing hardball, there's a lot of tension around how far she'll go to get someone to love her before she dies, if she'll do something really repulsively manipulative. I kind of feel like I know where the show's going with this, and with the other subplots, but I'm still enjoying it.

Jessica Jones is available on Disney+.