"Jessica Jones" - Character Close Up

12/30/2015

Written by Scotty

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR OWN RISK...

I love looking back at a season after it has ended and the Netflix Marvel series' as a whole have captured my heart with how they work out. Making it so easy to watch a season over a weekend or two, you don’t seem to forget where the characters started and where they finished up. It makes it much easier to become attached to your favorites and watch as they accomplish their goals, or not, whichever you like to see. So without further ado, let’s jump into the characters from Jessica Jones, starting with the lead.

Jessica Jones – Now I was honest when I started watching this series that I knew very little about this character and I think that this show has done her justice, maybe even cleaned up her act a little bit. Living in the bottle, Jessica wants to help the good people of Hell’s Kitchen, but has to take the odd job when money gets tight. She does not allow anyone to get to close to her after her run in with Kilgrave and for good reason, she does not know who she can trust. Not saying that she is the perfect hero, if you ask her, she is far from one, but she does have it in her to do the right thing and stand up for those who need to be heard. I fell in love with this character after the trailer came out and she said, ‘it’s called whiskey’ and after the series has ended, she is more of a role model than I expected. I raise a glass to you Ms. Jones.

Luke Cage – What can I say about Luke Cage overall? He is just a powerful man that wants to fly under the radar after all of the craziness that happened in the city. He is also moral driven, but don’t get me wrong, he is no Captain America when it comes right down to it, but he will not mess around with a married woman…as long as he knows. He just wants to live his life and find out who is responsible for killing his wife that terrible night. He is also very emotional, which is good for a man in a series like this since you don’t get to see a lot of emotions out of characters that are not the top billed. He and Jessica also broke his bed, which made me laugh. I really did enjoy watching Luke change from lover to fighter when he found out Jessica was responsible for killing his wife and even though it hurt him to the core, he was still keeping an eye on his friend, to the end.

Trish Walker – Patsy, I still cannot get David Tennant’s voice out of my head when he called her this. Trish is trying to make sure that nobody will ever hurt her, especially when Jessica dropped out of the superhero game. With her apartment being locked up like Fort Knox, you would think that she could not take care of herself, but she has been training for some time to ensure her own safety. Trish desperately wanted her friend to be the hero, but in her own way, Trish is the hero to many more than she could ever know. She does not back down from a fight, especially when she takes it to Kilgrave on the air and threatens her own existence. She is also a go getter and will not stop when a wall appears in front of her. Keeping the investigations working at all costs, she also knows what it is like to be in the underbelly of the city with her drug problem. Knowing what people look like when they are taking, as well as being able to tell when they are not themselves, she is an unsung hero of Hell’s Kitchen.

Malcolm Ducasse – Malcolm was strung out when he first entered the series and although Jessica blamed it on Kilgrave, Malcolm comes clean about doing it himself as well. Keeping tabs on Jessica for Kilgrave was a cheap and easy way to stay stoned out of his mind, but when Jessica confronted him about it, the real Malcolm came out. Getting cleaned up, Malcolm headed the Kilgrave support group and you could tell that it is what he was meant for. Caring about other people’s problems, along with Jessica’s, he is ready to take that next step in becoming someone that needs to have more background revealed as he will not let anything happen to his friends.

Jeri Hogarth – The blood sucking lawyer that nobody is supposed to like. Well they got that part right when her divorce was not going the way that she expected. I will not lie, I did not like the storyline that they put her into with the divorce, I would have rather seen her more in the court room and defending the innocent, or the villains with a ton of money and Jessica telling her that she was wrong. But overall Jeri is the woman you want on your side if anything goes wrong legally. She wants to win and those are the only cases that she takes. She wants the finest, they is why her love has transferred from Wendy to Pam. She only wants the best of the best in her life and that is why she hires Jessica on occasion, since she is the best.

William Simpson – Officer Simpson, well oh well. After falling victim to Kilgrave’s commands, Will feels terrible about what he has done to Trish. Earning Trish’s trust, he is able to get on the inside of what is really happening with Kilgrave and he wants in. With plenty of special operations training, he is ready to take the fight to the mind controller, but Jessica will not let him go all the way. After losing his men on an operation, Will is forced to call in his old friend Dr. Kozlov to help him in his recovery. Knowing how things used to work and how he is being instructed to work now, Will stays with the old ways. Will’s mind gets blinded by rage when it comes to taking his super solider pills and is only thought is on revenge. After Trish breaks up with him, he has to depend on the one thing that he is good at and that is killing whoever gets in his way. Could there be a shot at redemption for Will in the next season, I don’t think so since Trish almost died taking his pills, but you never know. All I know is that he is not a man you want to get on the bad side of.

Kilgrave – I know a lot of people are going to tune in to see David Tennant in his glory of being a baddy and they should, he played an awesome bad guy. When you first see Kilgrave, he is obsessed with getting Jessica back from when she decided to leave him. Knowing that he has power, his story goes much deeper than that when you get to see him being part of an experiment that eventually saved his young life. Getting everything he wanted just by saying it, it appeared that he never lived a hard life. But without his parents there to tell him good from bad, right from wrong, he never developed that little voice inside of his head to say no. It was great watching him trying to convince people to do things without using his power as he grossly overpaid for Jessica’s childhood home. Then to see the love/hate relationship between him and Jessica, well it was phenomenal.

Well, that is what I got for the characters that made the show for me. I know I left off the twins and Pam, but they did not amount to much in to me in what made the show work. Actually, I could have done without Pam, but the actress did bring a huge presence to the screen and Robyn did make Jessica’s life a living nightmare when the time was right.

I really am digging on the Jessica Jones story and might have to go get some comics to see where the storyline will take me next year. I was impressed by how dark the show appeared, but with the light hearted banter going on, you never really noticed. But it was dark enough that I did take a break to watch some comedies, I needed a pick me up. I also liked how the Avengers played into the storyline a little bit when it came to people not liking the gifted individuals in the city. I really wanted more overlap between Jessica Jones and Daredevil however and even though we got some, it would have been fantastic to see Matt Murdock shoe up to defend her case when the time called for it. Maybe next season, you never know. I raise a glass, or Jessica Jones style, a bottle to the writers, cast and crew for delivering another great series. I hope that the Marvel movies that are coming out can take a page from the Netflix series and bring us an actual baddy that we can be afraid of like Kilgrave, he was the worst to date and I really enjoyed it. Well, whatever series comes out next, I don’t care, I just want to sit back and watch them as they seem to be getting better and better as time moves on.

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