‘Jessica Jones’ Season 2, Episode 2 Recap: With Great Power Comes Great Mental Illness

Two episodes in to Jessica Jones Season 2 and you already miss the lack of focus Kilgrave brought to the show. With such a personal vendetta, and the lives of her friends and…well…anyone in a ten block radius?…at stake, the Purple Man was the perfect foil for a superhero that didn’t seem to want anything to do with being super. Or a hero, for that matter.

Now, though, Jessica is barely interested in her current case, involving The Whizzer, a guy she blatantly ignored until he literally died in a “freak scaffolding accident” (lol) after issuing a semi-coherent warning about “a monster” coming to get him and any other powered people.

Jessica cares enough about this case to get drunk at Daredevil’s bar (seriously…is that the ONLY watering hole now that Luke Cage has closed shop?), break some whiskey glasses because of vague flashbacks, and have bathroom sex with a dude-bro who manages to call her a freak twice in two minutes and still walk away with his member attached. Is it just me, or is Jessica Jones the older, less whimsical sister that Jessa from GIRLS never had?

And not to tangent here, but why is Jessica Jones doing…any of this? She’s maybe the world’s worst P.I.–her powers don’t really play into a profession that requires a lot of stealth–and, as she says herself, she’s neither vigilante nor a hero. She’s also got a real public persona lately, which means that her detective work is limited to being recognized boning in a bathroom stall, being recognized while sicking a mongoose on police officers and being recognized while ruining a goddamn shiva. (Side-note: there should be more action sequences set during traditional Jewish mourning ceremonies.)

Jessica’s looking for Dr. Koslov, the man responsible for the Adderall’d out super soldiers like Simpson, who, by the way, is definitely still alive. (Complete with a fun new Bane inhaler!) And don’t worry, for all of us who hated Captain No-One’s-Hair-Looks-Like-That, he’ll have his head on right by the end of the episode. And by that I mean twisted 180 degrees around his neck.

None of this, by the way–not figuring out who gave her these powers, not finding out why Trish has only upgraded her dating status to the Duke of Douche (still an improvement on “rapey director” and “Donald Trump’s dream hairdo attached to a body”), not bringing down Chang, not hate-flirting with her new superintendent–has any real sense of urgency behind it. Does Jessica even care who made her like this? Shouldn’t she be kind of…grateful? You know, that she didn’t die? And got superpowers?

Because that’s it, right there: besides the X-Men, very few Marvel characters are just born with their powers. They get bit by a spider, or have toxic waste dumped on them, or were experimented on in prison, or did whatever horrible thing in a past life led them to becoming The Iron Fist. So why should Jessica Jones–who lives in a city where the only NON-powered person who got their powers by birth was the time a LITERAL GOD came to visit and destroy downtown– feel that motivated to plunge into her origin story?

In fact, this season feels more like Trish’s story, and I’ll be honest, I kind of like the new, aggressive Patsy. Maybe she’s in it for the ratings, maybe she thinks she’s really helping her listeners, maybe she just wants to hold her own in the world’s blandest Power Couple, but whatever is going down this season, it’s got Trishy “too mushy in the mouth” Walker dead in its crosshairs. And not even her bag of half-ass monster friends can save her this time.

Drew Grant is an editor, writer and YA novelist living in Los Angeles. Formerly the Arts & Entertainment editor at The New York Observer, Drew also founded the brand’s television vertical, tvDownload. Currently, she is managing editor at RealClearLife.com. Her passions involve watching TV, writing about TV and interviewing people on TV. At Oberlin College, she once taught a class on Twin Peaks, and that’s pretty cool. Previous bylines: Salon.com, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, and Gotham Magazine. Twitter and Instagram: @Videodrew.

Watch Jessica Jones Season 2, Episode 2 ("AKA Freak Accident") on Netflix