‘Jessica Jones’ Season 2 Episode 5 Recap: Consider The Octopus

This recap probably isn’t going to focus on the A-plot of the Jessica Jones Season 2 episode “AKA The Octopus,” so let’s just sum that up real quick for anyone out there who is just dying to be reminded, in blog-form, of something they just watched on TV. Jessica Jones went to jail, where she traded her information about Janet McTeer to the police in exchange for her release, which…surprisingly worked? It looks like she does have a friend inside the force; which shouldn’t be a surprise considering how many cops there were that time she talked Kilgrave down from making a whole precinct shoot themselves in the head. Out of prison and warily aligned with Jeri, she tells Malcolm to send Inez to the lawyer’s as a safe-house, which also lets the audience (and Malcolm!) know that her trust in him now extends to the title of an Alias associate! Put that on your invisible business card, buddy!

Hot on the trail of some actual detective work for once, Jessica triages Inez’s intel about the patsy who took the fall for Nurse Luanne’s death, a mentally ill IGH janitor David Kawecki, who she gains access to by getting Oscar to mock her up a fake ID. He tells her not to smile and she smiles and it’s kind of adorbs.

Blah, blah, reveal is that David likes Octopi, and sometimes his IGH handler Dr. Karl took him to the aquarium, and, unrelated, Dr. McTeer likes to rage-out while playing piano around small children. Jessica finds out Dr. Karlsburger and McTeer are dating while seeing the fishies, Jones has a flashback while taking a photo of the two of them, McTeer punches a hole to Free Willie, and it’s going to be a real Sharknado if Jessica doesn’t…I don’t know…plug it up, fast? I mean, won’t the water just spill to the ground? A couple seals might flop? A couple tropical fish may need saving? Not the hugest deal? So let’s move on to the REAL meat of the episode, which is…PATSY!

Look, I’m not going to lie. I have a personal stake in Trish’s drug hangover slash surprise engagement party slash revelation that she doesn’t want to marry her boyfriend so much as want to BE her husband, because that’s more or less how my engagement and subsequent marriage more or less went down. And that’s on me! Not him! At all! (Well, maybe a little bit on him, but he was not nearly as annoying as Griffin, and my drug problem was way worse than huffing military-grade performance enhancers, if you can believe it.) Nor was I pressured by a surprise engagement but together by a terrible, stage-mother who straight-up accused me of sucking my statutory rapist’s dick as a way of…getting attention?

So yeah, some differences. Also, I was not a child star. And I didn’t have my own radio show. And my fiance did not have a British accent or a stupid hairdo. BUT OTHERWISE THIS SCENARIO WAS EXACTLY THE SAME.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Trish’s point isn’t that Griffin isn’t the right man for her, it’s that he isn’t the man for her right now. He’s not the perfect man for her when she’s only now realizing how desperately she wants the credibility that he embodies. Sure, she can be part of the power couple; she has the fame…she’s always had the fame. She’s PATSY! But she’s not taken seriously. Not yet. Not in the way that Griffin is; not in the way that she had so desperately let herself hope for, if only for that one moment, when her mother told her that ZCN wanted to meet.

And that’s exactly the problem: with Griffin by her side, she’ll never really know if her stories are good enough, or if she’s just riding on her husband’s coattails. Theirs may be the first example of a healthy, non-toxic, love born out of mutual respect that either have ever experienced…but that amounts to nothing if Trish will constantly be doubting if she can hold her own against him.

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 5 ("AKA The Octopus") on Netflix