Jessica Jones: AKA WWJD?

"I care if you die. The rest are fungible."

This tour de force of a two hander between Krysten Ritter and David Tennant is easily the most significant episode yet. And the best.

The fifty minutes consists mostly of Jessica and Kilgrave together in Jessica's childhood home, which Kilgrave has rather creepily decorated, right down to the CD's in her bedroom and the Green Day and Nirvana posters (nice!). We learn many things about both their pasts and get to know them both much better. Kilgrave won't control her as he somehow imagines that it's possible for her to fall in love with him of her own free will. Yeah, right. He's not above using others to manipulate her though, reminding us that the character is of course a metaphor for controlling, abusive men.

We learn, through an early flashback, that Jessica's younger brother is long dead. Jessica can put away an awful lot of wine. And there's an early clash as Kilgrave denies responsibility for Reva's death, saying that he only told Jessica to "take care of her". Worse, he denies the fact that he repeatedly raped Jessica while he controlled her because, hey, he bought her dinner.

There's a brief interlude as we see just how ruinously horrible Hogarth's divorce is going to go, and Will Simpson is trying to blow up Kilgrave. But then we hear about Kilgrave's horrid childhood- abused and experimented on by scientist parents, hence his powers and, no doubt, his sociopathy. And it seems he's a Kevin. Well I never. Worse, Jessica lost her parents in a car crash as a teenager because she was being a dick to her little brother in the back.

But it's when Jessica persuades Kilgrave to use his powers for good- defusing a hostage crisis, and not even making the hostage taker kill himself- that the big piece of misdirection occurs. She even goes AWOL to chat with Trish, and we're left convinced that she's considering trying to use Kilgrave for good. But it's all a trap, and we en up with Jessica in possession of a drugged and unconscious Kilgrave- but too late to save Will, who is, er, blown up by his own petard.

Now THAT is a bloody good episode.