In our Jessica Jones recap, we take a look at episodes 1-4 with the major story points in each one and a few key things to pay attention to…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Before the recap begins, let’s just talk about how Jessica Jones might be the best thing Marvel has ever done on television and it’s giving the cinematic universe a run for its money as well.
From the writing to the directing, there’s nothing not to like about this series but one piece of commentary that must be made is about Marvel’s consistently great casting. Jessica Jones stars Krysten Ritter in the lead role and there probably wasn’t a better choice out there in all of Hollywood from A-list film stars to undiscovered ingénues. Her snide sarcasm is topped only by her understated emotion that stays tapped down for large parts of the series until it erupts in anger, sadness, lust and rage.
The rest of the cast is just as great, especially David Tennant as Kilgrave and he might just be the best Marvel villain that’s ever landed on screen. Certainly, Tom Hiddleston isn’t ready to give up his top spot after playing Loki for several films, but Tennant isn’t far behind the mischievous one in terms of carrying entire scenes and having the gravitas to take everyone else’s performances up along with him.
There aren’t enough adjectives to describe how well done the entire first season of Jessica Jones is from start to finish, but we are going to attempt to capture some of those key moments as we recap the entire first season starting with the initial four episodes.
Make sure to come back every couple of days as we drop the entire series over the next week and hopefully capture all the essence, story and Easter eggs that exist in the first season of Jessica Jones.
With that said let’s get into our recaps….
EPISODE 1 – AKA LADIES NIGHT
Jessica Jones is a private detective working in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City with most of her jobs boiled down to spying on cheating spouses and then providing proof to the husband and/or wife of their significant other’s infidelity. Some people accept it and just sob. Others are in disbelief and get riled up, which then forces Jessica to toss them through plate glass windows.
Welcome to Alias Investigations — employees equal one — Jessica Jones.
When she’s not cashing in on marital infidelity, Jessica gets cases from an attorney in town named Jeri Hogarth. She’s as ruthless as she is smart, but Jeri likes to use Jessica for more of her high risk cases because she always delivers even if her means are sometimes a bit outside the law. Jeri is married to a doctor named Wendy while secretly bedding down her own assistant, Pam.
On today’s agenda, Jeri needs Jessica to serve a high risk warrant to a sleazy strip club owner, who is virtually untouchable and unreachable thanks to his well paid security force that surrounds him at all times. Jessica is just the girl for the job and when she encounters the scumbag, she waits for him to ditch his detail and then literally stops his car from pulling away by lifting the back end into the air.
Jessica hands him the subpoena and snaps a picture for the record and then warns him to keep his mouth shut or she’ll blast him with her laser eyes. FYI — Jessica doesn’t have laser eyes, but this idiot doesn’t need to know that. She sends over the picture to Jeri and it’s a job well done.
In her down time when she’s not tracking down cheaters or handing out high risk subpoenas, Jessica sits on a fire escape across the street from a dive bar run by Luke Cage — a character she gets to know really well. She watches him hook up with a woman and take her to his apartment but eventually Jessica gets the nerve to go close to the front of the building when she meets Luke for the first time. He invites her in and offers her ladies night specials, which means Jessica can drink cheap and that’s like music to her ears.
The two flirt back and forth despite Jessica’s protests that she doesn’t flirt and the two of them eventually end up in Luke’s apartment having some rather loud and raucous sex. When it’s all done, Jessica uses Luke’s bathroom and upon investigating his medicine cabinet she finds a photo that has her staring like a deer caught in headlights. One look at the woman in that photo and Jessica quickly gets dressed and heads back home.
Jessica also gets a new case in the first episode when a couple from Omaha, Neb. comes calling — the Shlottman family — and they are in search of their daughter Hope, who is a championship track student that went missing recently after dropping out of school. She’s always been a model student athlete but now she’s gone and her parents are desperate to find her. Thankfully, someone at the local police station was kind enough to pass them along to Jessica for help.
Jessica eventually tracks down the girl’s former roommate, who tells her that Hope left to be with a guy and left her without anyone to help pay rent. Jessica does manage to get a credit card statement, which assists with hacking into her account to find that Hope has some recent activity at a lingerie store and the paper trail eventually leads to a restaurant. As soon as Jessica opens the door it’s like a case of déjà vu and a shiver runs down her spine as she realizes that this Asian bistro used to be an Italian restaurant not so long ago. When she shows the maitre d a photo of Hope, he’s hesitant to talk but then tells her how a British man walked into the restaurant and ordered the most expensive bottle of wine on the menu, a pasta dish they don’t even serve and the best table in the house and everyone just fell to his commands.
A nightmare runs through Jessica’s mind remembering this exact sequence from her past when she was locked by a man dressed in purple named Kilgrave, who controlled her mind and forced her to bend to his will. Jessica thought he was dead, but this is a clear indication that he’s back and she’s scared out of her mind.
Immediately, Jessica is ready to leave town and she hits up her best friend Trish to front her some cash so she can get out sooner rather than later. Trish offers assistance but also says that Jessica would hate herself for not helping this girl if she could do anything to stop someone else from being tortured by Kilgrave.
Trish’s words get to Jessica and she eventually ends up at a hotel that looks all too familiar and when she goes to the front door, the bellhop recognizes her by name. She goes to a room that she once stayed in and when Jessica goes inside she finds Hope Shlottman laying on the bed, paralyzed in fear and unable to move. She’s wet the bed because her captor told her ‘don’t move’ and she’s literally unable to lift a muscle.
Jessica forcibly removes her from the room and knocks her out along the way and when she finally wakes up, Hope is still shaken from the ordeal. Jessica tries to convince her that this whole mess was not her fault but Hope is struggling with the violation she’s just suffered over the last few weeks living with Kilgrave.
Jessica calls Hope’s parents and tells them to take her out of town and as far away from New York as possible. That’s the only guaranteed way she’ll be safe. Jessica’s horror is further confirmed when the Shlottman’s tell her that it wasn’t a cop that referred them to her but instead a well dressed man British man in a purple suit. Jessica is already panicking so she shuffles the Shlottman’s off to the elevator but at the last second she catches a look from Hope as the doors are closing and she’s pulling a gun from her purse.
Hope shoots both of her parents dead — and embedded command left from Kilgrave’s mind control — and Jessica is shattered when she realizes what just happened.
EPISODE 2 – AKA CRUSH SYNDROME
Following the end of episode one where the Shlottman’s are murdered, Jessica is determined to help Hope escape these charges because she knows Kilgrave is behind it but no one is going to believe that somebody has mind control powers just based on a leap of faith. Jessica wants Hogarth to represent Hope in her trial but the high-priced attorney won’t even consider it without some kind of evidence that Hope was actually controlled by this other person.
To make matters worse, Jessica returns home to find the cops digging into her apartment as well and they’ve found a ton of photos of Luke Cage. The cops need to question him as well, which forces Jessica to go back to the bar and apologize following his interrogation. Luke is more curious why Jessica has been following him and taking photos and she explains that the woman he’s been sleeping with is married and her husband wanted proof. When the woman shows up later, Luke gives her the boot and convinces her that despite her pleas that her husband doesn’t care, he obviously cared enough to hire a private detective. Later that night, the woman shows up at Jessica’s place full of rage and anger because she confessed to her husband only to find out that he never hired her in the first place.
The problem is now he knows and he’s on his way to Luke’s bar with his rugby buddies to give the bar owner a beat down. Jessica quickly runs to the bar to serve as Luke’s backup and the two of them take out the rugby ruffians without much trouble but the end of the fight is what’s most surprising as one of the thugs stabs Luke in the neck with a broken beer bottle — except it’s the bottle that snaps and not a single shard ends up breaking the skin.
The next night, Luke shows up at Jessica’s apartment and says that he knows she’s special just like he is — and then he proceeds to put a table saw up to his stomach and she watches as the sparks fly, the metal thrashes and not a single piece of skin is harmed, Luke Cage really is the unbreakable man.
Jessica is also continuing her investigation into finding Kilgrave and the first thing is figuring out how he survived their last encounter. Jessica looks through some paper clippings of a bus crash and runs across a photo of a woman — the same woman whose picture she saw in Luke’s apartment and freaked out before leaving.
A flashback shows Jessica walking away from Kilgrave with the feint sound of his voice reverberating in her head telling her to come back but instead she keeps walking. A moment later a bus jack knifes and misses her but ends up smacking Kilgrave across the street. His hold over her was broken and Jessica assumes he is dead.
She assumed wrong.
While Jessica is continuing her investigation, her best friend Trish is even more concerned about her. She wants Jessica to move into her apartment — which is set up like Fort Knox with a security enforced door, cameras, a fingerprint entry system and a panic room inside as well. When Trish isn’t doing her hit talk show in New York called ‘Trish Talk’, she’s quietly training in her workout room while sparring with a partner while learning how to disarm someone with a gun.
Because Jessica refuses her request to move in, Trish sends someone to fix her door, which is still smashed from the disgruntled husband she tossed through it last episode. Unfortunately, when Jessica arrives home and finds a strange man in her apartment she assaults him and sends him to the hospital and all he was trying to do was fix her door!
Jessica gets an idea when she watches the door repairman get hauled away in an ambulance — on the night of the accident Kilgrave had to go to a local hospital for care and emergency services would have been dispatched to the scene. Jessica goes to close by hospital but there are now John Doe’s listed but she does find out that two ambulances were on the way to the scene of the accident but only one arrived.
Jessica tracks down the other driver named Jack Denton, but he’s in no shape to talk. It seems his ambulance was hijacked by Kilgrave and the poor guy was forced to give up both his kidneys to save the deranged sociopath. He now lives on a dialysis machine that’s being paid for by some anonymous donor.
The next day, Jessica tracks down the donor — he’s a well known transplant surgeon who quit his very lucrative practice to teach med students at the local college. The doctor runs from Jessica when he spots her because he’s seen her pictures before — and it was Kilgrave who had them. The doctor explains that Kilgrave compelled him to complete a kidney transplant but not just one kidney — he had to have both to be whole again. During the surgery, Kilgrave refused anesthesia because he didn’t want to go under. The doctor explains that those kinds of drugs effect a different part of the brain than those that are active during actual sleep.
She tells the doctor to explain to Hogarth what happened to him so she will hopefully accept Hope’s case. More importantly, Jessica has figured out Kilgrave’s weakness — his mind control won’t work if he’s knocked out unconscious. Hogarth decides to represent Hope and Jessica finally has a weapon to use against Kilgrave!
EPISODE 3 – AKA IT’S CALLED WHISKEY
Luke’s revelation the night before turned into some steamy sex directly after and when they are finally catching their breath, Jessica asks about the nature of his powers. Neither discloses much — his was an experiment, hers was an accident. Luke has unbreakable skin and super strength. Jessica has super strength and can jump, almost fly, but then falls back down again. The two finally connect but the picture of the woman in Luke’s bathroom continues to haunt Jessica and he finally explains — ‘She died. Bus crash’.
Jessica eventually remembers the night she escaped from Kilgrave — her hands are covered in blood and he orders her to take care of someone. That someone who Jessica punched in the heart and killed was Reva Connors — Luke’s now dead wife. Jessica eventually tries to break it off with him and Luke assumes it’s because of his dead wife and he’s right in some ways but the reality is she’s still guilty over killing the woman despite the fact that she had no control over her actions.
Meanwhile, Jessica spends a good portion of this hour looking for the drugs that could put Kilgrave out of commission once and for all. The only problem is finding medical grade anesthesia isn’t easy and it’s not a street drug that she can just score on the corner. Jessica goes as far as trying to get the drugs from Jeri’s soon to be ex wife, but instead gets handed a prescription for an anti-psychotic to hopefully curb her many, many mental issues.
Jessica is just about out of hope when she figures out a plan — her junkie neighbor Malcolm, who she befriends and helps back into his apartment after he’s lost wandering the building after getting high — could be used at a local hospital to give her the perfect distraction to snag the drugs and get out before anyone sees her. Jessica ends up pushing Malcolm into a nurse and saying he lunged at her before she disappears into the drug closet and finds the bottles and needles she needs to take out Kilgrave.
On the way out, Jessica looks back at Malcolm, who still has the glassy eyed look from his heroin buzz but he still has time to give Jessica a stare that makes her feel pretty awful inside that she was willing to sacrifice a friend so she could accomplish her mission.
Jessica is also trying to get some public support for Hope after every radio station, television station and newspaper has turned against her. Hogarth isn’t willing to go public but when Jessica convinces her friend Trish to use her massively popular show as a way to broadcast an interview with Hope, she finally has her platform to get the real story out there.
It doesn’t go as expected though because Hogarth eventually paints Hope as a person not right in her own mind and probably suffering from delusions. Jessica is enraged so Trish takes it upon herself to clean up the mess. She goes on a long winded tirade about how a guy who can control minds is lurking out there in New York before subsequently trashing Kilgrave from the way he dresses to the pistol he’s packing in the pants. Trish is overjoyed to give him what he deserves, but Jessica is irate because if Kilgrave is listening — and he’s sure to be listening — that this could anger him and he’ll go after Trish. Jessica’s nightmare comes true just seconds later when Kilgrave calls into the show and leaves her with a few not so veiled threats.
Jessica is now convinced that Trish is a target and she needs to stay inside or risk Kilgrave coming after her. On the way out of the radio station, Trish accidentally pounds some guy who only wanted her autograph. Later that day, a cop shows up at Trish’s place to ask her about the incident. She’s not convinced this guy isn’t being controlled by Kilgrave but after a series of questions, Trish finally lets him into her place.
Big mistake.
The cop immediately attacks her and nearly kills her but Jessica shows up in time and stops him instead. She ends up sticking Trish with the drugs she swiped from the hospital to convince her would-be murderer that she’s dead. It’s not so much about Trish’s protection as it is the mind conditioning that Kilgrave has over his victims. The cop won’t stop whatever action he commanded until it’s over. So the cop believes Trish is dead and he can now go back to report to his boss that the job is done.
Jessica takes this to her advantage and slips a cell phone into the cop’s pocket and follows him back to a lush apartment in New York City. She peers inside and there’s Kilgrave watching a rugby match and relaxed like he doesn’t have a problem in the world. He eventually turns and spots Jessica and the two lock eyes. Before he can do anything, Kilgrave tells the cop to kill himself and Jessica is forced to stop him. Between that and the actual family that lived there trying to kill her per mind control commands, Jessica is unable to catch up with Kilgrave and he’s able to escape.
Jessica finally starts looking around the house, she finds a room printing out photos with an entire mosaica on the wall already. It’s a huge slew of photos of Jessica from the last few months, which reveals that not only did Kilgrave not die but he’s been keeping track of her ever since. Jessica needs to find out who has been tailing her this entire time while she’s been tailing her cheating clientele. Jessica thought she broke free of Kilgrave when he got hit by a bus, but this is just further proof that he’s never been out of her life — only tucked away in the shadows instead.
EPISODE 4 – AKA 99 FRIENDS
Jessica’s mission is now to find the person who Kilgrave had spying on her for the past few months. She’s also got a new case to investigate when a woman named Audrey Eastman shows up at her apartment asking for help after being referred to Jessica through Hogarth’s lawfirm. Jessica is so wary to trust anyone that she reluctantly takes the case but ends up trailing Audrey before going after her husband just to ensure that she’s on the level and not under some kind of control from Kilgrave.
Audrey leads Jessica to an abandoned club where she discreetly fires off rounds from a revolver at dummies while loud music plays to mask the gunshots. Jessica figures she must be planning to kill her husband so she decides to track him down after all. She eventually fights the guy sneaking away one night and follows him into a run down building and it looks like she’ll get the evidence she needs to settle the case and get her payoff.
The only problem is when she looks inside, Jessica finds that Audrey is there with her husband. A second later her phone rings and it’s Audrey — wondering if Jessica has tracked her husband on this particular night.
Jessica finally breaks into the room to try and figure out what the hell is going on and a second later Audrey shoots her in the arm. Jessica is convinced this is more Kilgrave trickery, but that’s not the case at all. It seems Audrey lost her mother during the Battle of New York when the Avengers took on Loki and his space army and she happens to be friends with someone close to the strip club owner who Jessica served a subpoena back in the first episode — so she knows that Jessica has super powers.
Audrey is gunning for revenge (literally) by taking out someone she believes was involved that day but Jessica tells her rather loudly and violently that is not the case. Jessica sets the couple straight and tells them she has 99 friends who will be looking for them after she tried to assassinate a super powered individual so their best bet is to get out of town in a hurry.
Elsewhere in the episode, Jessica finds a new ally in Sergeant Will Simpson — the cop who was ordered to kill Trish by Kilgrave in the last episode. He’s so distraught after nearly killing her that he’ll do anything to protect her and help bring down Kilgrave. Jessica decides the best way he can help is to get surveillance footage from local cameras so she can figure out who it is that’s been following her to get pictures for the purple clad psychopath. Simpson also makes it up to Trish when he shows up outside her door where they talk for hours until she finally feels comfortable enough to open up and let him in. When she does, Simpson hands her a present — a revolver so she can always protect herself if anyone else comes after her.
Will comes through with the tapes and now Jessica has hours upon hours of footage to go through to try and find the person working alongside Kilgrave. Jessica also orders Trish to go on the air during her talk show and apologize to Kilgrave for the awful things she said so hopefully that will take her off his radar. Sure enough later that night, a little girl under the influence of Kilgrave’s mind control tells Jessica that ‘Patsy Walker’ is safe and she no longer needs to worry about him.
Jessica is also dealing with an influx of Kilgrave survivors who are going to Hogarth’s law firm claiming that he controlled them as well in an effort to help Hope Shlottman’s case. Most of them are just frauds, but a select few actually did encounter him once they dole out some crucial details. One was forced to be Kilgrave’s chauffer and it ended up costing him custody of his son after he was ordered to leave the little boy on the side of the road while he was crying. Another said Kilgrave just told her to smile repeatedly — which is a command that Jessica knows all too well about. But the man who was Kilgrave’s driver for a month had a bit of information that gave Jessica something to look for on the tapes. While he never got a direct look at the person meeting Kilgrave to hand over photos, he saw the man was wearing a black and white striped scarf each time they met.
Jessica ends up shuffling all of them into a support group so these people can help each other deal with the loss of control over their own actions in those moments while she is going back to the tape to see if she can find that man in the scarf who is handing off photos to Kilgrave.
Jessica goes back to her house and starts digging through footage when she sees the man in the black and white scarf who has been following her all these months. It’s her junkie neighbor Malcolm — who she routinely helps upstairs and finds wandering her apartment looking for peanut butter. She breaks into his place and finds a printer churning away minute after minute just spitting out pictures of Jessica. She also finds a photo of Malcolm from before he got locked under Kilgrave’s control — he was a healthy, happy young man but thanks to Kilgrave he’s been hooked on smack for months and his life was basically ruined all for the sake so he could keep tabs on Jessica ever since she left him to die.
JESSICA JONES EASTER EGGS EPISODES 1-4
- The opening scene from the show mimics one ripped directly from the comic book Alias written by Brian Michael Bendis that the show Jessica Jones is based upon. The series ran for 28 issues and the final arc, which shows how she was mind controlled by a man named Killgrave is the loose basis for this first season.
- Jeri Hogarth is actually a man named Jeryn Hogarth in the comic books and it’s likely she will be an important connecting character for the fourth and final Marvel TV series that should begin casting very soon. Iron Fist aka Danny Rand is represented by Hogarth in the comics and chances are that connection will remain once that show gets underway in 2016.
- Luke Cage (played by Mike Coulter) is someone to know because he’s the next person getting their own Marvel show. The series titled Luke Cage will also be set in Hell’s Kitchen and there’s a laundry list of actors and actresses already cast for the show, which is expected to debut in 2016.
- Trish Walker, who is Jessica’s best friend in the show, is based on ‘Patsy Walker’, a comic book character who was actually launched in the 1940’s and went onto become a superhero named Hellcat later on. In the comic books, Jessica’s best friend was Carol Danvers, who is better known as Captain Marvel, but considering she’s getting her own movie in a few years, Marvel couldn’t cast someone to appear on TV and then do a film three years later. So Trish Walker because the new best friend with her own backstory as a child star and actress, who eventually breaks free of her controlling mother to start her own life fresh in New York.
- Detective Clemons, who questions Jessica in episode two after the Shlottman’s are murdered, is actually a minor character from The Punisher comic books. That character (played by Jon Bernthal) will debut in Daredevil season two coming in 2016.
- Reva Connors, who is supposed to be Luke’s wife in the series, is actually based on the same character from the comics except she was just his girlfriend when the character first debuted.
- Luke Cage says ‘sweet Christmas!’ at one point during the first few episodes and that’s also his catch phrase from the comic books.
- Jessica repeats a series of streets whenever Kilgrave comes to mind. It’s a trick her therapist taught her to say whenever she felt like she was losing control.
Stay tuned for Jessica Jones recaps for episodes 5-8 coming soon to Nerdcore Movement!
