And judging from your comments it sounds like Jessica Jones May be worth it as well.
What's really awesome about Jessica Jones is...um...let me get back to you.
I know! It takes a long time to write out all the really stuff about JJ. It's sooo good.
Yeah, you know, I hadn’t given it a fair chance when I wrote that. But in the ensuing couple of days, while home with the flu, I watched all of S1, so I can now comment more fully.
Overall take: On the positive side, it told a good story. It had interesting characters. In many ways, it felt real. They took the seedy underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen and made it somewhat relatable by not dressing it up as something romanticized and good, so it all felt very real.
On the less-than positive side, two major points: First, the season felt like it plodded. It was interesting. But between chasing too many rabbit holes and having too many failed attempts on Killgrave, I just found myself in the last half of the season just wishing it would hurry up and end. It just became TOO much of: Killgrave is too powerful and we can’t find him. But we found him. And we have a window to take him out. And just as we’re about to, one character or the other does something stupid and he gets away. And he becomes MORE powerful {or just more convicted and more understanding of the growing movement to stop him]. And we can’t find him. [repeat] This went on far too many times.
Second, while from an artistic point of view, the way they took the seedy underbelly of Hell’s Kitchen and made it somewhat relatable was cool. And yet, there were just FAR too many moments where I was just grossed out with what was being presented or the manner in which it was being presented. They just went too far, far too often for my tastes.
Balancing the good and the bad, overall, it told an interesting story. One particular aspect of it—the subplot issue of
Cage’s wife—was handled BRILLIANTLY in just about every facet. It was never THE issue, but it tied well into a lot of major and minor issues, right down to Jessica’s PTSD, and was a thread that wove its way through pretty much the entire season and so many character motivations. That one plot point had such resounding impact on so many different character decisions. It was just brilliant. The season was a cool watch. But I don’t think I’ll be watching S2. And I don’t think I’ll be watching the other related series if they are similarly graphic about some of the issues JJ tackles/portrays.
A few other specific comments:
I hated Jeri. She was, in many ways, a great cardboard cutout “power lawyer.” And that made her easily hate-able.
The “1,000 cuts” comeuppance scene was brutally AWESOME. In the whole Jeri/Pam/Wendy love triangle, none of the three were ultimately very likeable or sympathetic, which made it satisfying when the entire thing fell apart for ALL of them.Simpson…he was just weird. In so many ways.
Was it just the drugs that made him so paranoid and delusional? I don’t understand why HE couldn’t understand that Jessica was out to stop Killgrave. There was no rational reason for him to keep going rogue and ultimately screwing things up. Is there more about him that was revealed in the series that, in my flu-induced stupor, I must have just missed? Or is there more about him in the comics that would have made him make more sense? Or was he just an idiot? Is there more backstory about whatever sort of super-soldier drugs he was taking that is fleshed out somewhere else? I liked him for awhile, but he just became such a royal pain about midway through the season that I kept wishing he would just go away.
The door. Oh, the door.
You just knew it was going to happen. I’ll just leave it at that.
The “supermax” rabbit-hole. This subplot annoyed me. And at the same time, I thought it was well done and exposed Jessica’s true desperation at this point in the story.
Episode 8 was really cool. Just when the season seemed to be going in a different direction and subverting what we thought we knew, it ended up revealing the true colors of some characters in unexpected ways. The two related major events at the end of the episode—I did not see them coming.
Nurse Temple. Her appearance alone was a nice crossover nugget.