LogFAQs > #904611188

Marvel's Jessica Jones

I'm glad this show got the go-ahead so early on. It was a good pick. "Who is this woman, is she just a private investigator?" Well, she's an alcoholic, kinda a bitch, and I guess she's got super strength too. But that's not what defines her. We see that pretty early on... she's not just "strong woman".

However, Kilgrave saw her as "strong woman". Throughout the series, we get introduced to this villain bit by bit as we learn how evil he is, how messed up he is... and I guess we're given one slight chance at feeling sympathetic with him. But even still, Jessica is right - the dude is demented and trying to make him act the hero doesn't change that.

With Kilgrave... you're given a villain who does things that are so messed up that you can't help but root for Jessica, even if she's an asshole. This sets up plenty of opportunities for the writers to have fun with murderporn, but it creates seemingly little room character development. Whereas Kingpin spent his whole story battling with who he was and just what he could do, Kilgrave... Kilgrave's issue is that he lived life with control and didn't know how to deal with not having it. That's Theme 1.

You see this theme all throughout the show - it's probably the most important one. After all, that's the villain's power. Control. You see many people controlled, and the effect it has on them afterwards. The whole first few episodes deal with Jessica coming to terms with her lack of control when she was with Kilgrave. The rest deal with her trying to patch up others. Even when she finds out that she is in control and he isn't, she still has no control because he is still controlling everything else.

This lack of control is Jessica's biggest hardship - not being able to control the safety of others, not being able to control the way she wants to live her life with Trish pushing in on her, not being able to control how she feels about Luke/his wife... in the end, her growth is by accepting her lack of control. She lets Trish push in, she lets herself care for Luke, and she lets Kilgrave control how he pleases. Jessica won, because she accepted her losses, which is Theme 2. We'll get to that in a bit.

Kilgrave suffered from a lack of control as well, as I said. But for him, it became an obsession. When he couldn't control Jessica the first time, he got hit by a bus. As the show went on, he tried every trick he could to get her to comply... but she turned him down bit by bit by bit. If he would have Accepted His Losses, he could have moved on, lived life, and avoided seeing her again. But he couldn't move past the lack of control. That is what truly controlled him. In the end, it was what took him down... he couldn't accept that he had no control over Jessica, and willingly let his reluctance lead his neck into her twisting arms.

Other Lack of Control - Trish couldn't control her life early on, so she decided to make a change about that. She accepted her faults and learned from it. Her training, her security... easily Trish is the most secure character on the show. She IS the pinnacle to achieve. Even when Simpson went crazy (literally buying into losing control), she kept her cool and stayed in charge. Trish knew she had to accept that she didn't have what it took to save Jessica from him and took the red pill... she was the glue that held Jess together.

Hogarth's whole story is based on being an incredibly controlling and manipulative person, a la Kilgrave, but having to deal with her lack of control in her divorce. It controlled her and made her release Kilgrave, suffering the effects of his evil in the process. Jessica helped her though - made her accept who she was all along, which set her back on path in the end.

(cont.)
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