The Defenders: The Defenders

 "It's just a city, They rise. They fall..."

Hmm. I mean, there's nothing wrong with this. It's finale stuff. It does the job. It wraps things up. It's exciting. But... is it me who's feeling perhaps a little underwhelmed?

So Luke, Jessicaand map go down into the bowels of our metaphorical Hell beneath New York. They blow the baddies up. Matt stays behind to try and persuade Elektra to turn good... but she's a baddie precisely because she wants to be with him forever in deatyh and, as she says, "This is what living feels like." It's all very dramatic, but also a bit cliched.

There's so much weight placed on the police captain wanting our heroes arrested, too... but then, at the end, all charges are dropped, no questions asked, part of the cover-up. Oh, there are a few good character moments, I suppose, although not that good. Misty losing her arm is a genuine shock. I have no idea about these nuns who have in some way rescued Matt. But, well, this is a bit of a let down after some good recent episodes.

I'm going to continue blogging all of the formerly Netflix Marvel stuff, fear not. But there's less of a mad rush now, as Daredevil: Born Again won't be rushing upon us on Disney Plusas soon as we thought. Besides, despite Jon Bernthal's impressive performances, I'm not a great fan of the Punisher as a character, and next up is thirteen episodes of him. So I'll be taking a short break and watching a certain animated series in this "slot".Fear not, though. It will be just a short break.

The Defenders: Mean Right Hook

 "We just go and find another team to join? An army?"

Oh boy. This is quite the episode. Our heroes are all investigating what seems to be a big, multifaceted conspiracy involving the hands from different directions, in what seems to be a well-constructed plot. There's so much going on, but the story is easy to follow, not an easy combination. I'm enjoying this very much.

Sigourney Weaver's dying Alexandra continues to fascinate, and not only because she can order around Madame Gao like an underling. Is she hinting, after her private performance by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, that she may be considerably older than she looks? Is this why Jessica traces the shell companies back to 1820 and finds it doesn't stop there?

I like the handling of the characters. Jessica is her irrepressible, irreverent self. Luke may be all loved up with Claire, but nothing will stop him doing the right thing. Matt, complete with an intervention by Foggy to give him work to be "another type of hero", is struggling with not being Darevevil: heroism as addiction. Danny is a right mardyarse: I fail to see what Colleen sees in him. Oh, and Misty is awesome.

At the end, excitingly, our protagonists meet. There's a hero vs. hero fight between Luke and Danny, in which we get to see what happens when the unstoppable force that is the Iron Fist meets the immovable object which is Luke. And Jessica's attorney is... Matt.

I can't wait to see what happens next.

The Defenders: The H Word

 "People call me Foggy."

"And you let them?"

It's so good to see so many of these characters for the first time in ages. Danny and Collen I've only just seen, of course, and Darevevil was in She-Hulk, but I've missed the others.

As a first episode, of course, this just establishes where the characters are and develops them a bit. So Luke is freed from prison due to the sterling work of Foggy... and finally gets a room with Claire. About bloody time. Jessica is... drinking lots of bourbon, until she's drawn into a case by sheer stubbornness. Matt lis laying off the old vigilianteeism and realising he's in love with Karen, and the love triangle stuff with Elektra was unwise, despite his real feelings for her. Danny and Collen are back in New York in search of the Hand... the only possible Big Bad.

We meet an intriguing new character played by Sigourney Weaver who is told, in her very first scene, that she hasn't long to live; a fascinating writing choice. And we then find out that Madame Gao, no less, takes orders from her. That's quite a surprise.

For now it's slow, with the heroes not yet meeting. But that's fine; lots of characters to share screen time and be developed. So far I'm very much enjoying this.

Luke Cage: Suckas Need Bodyguards

 "Bugger off!"

This is, I must hasten to point out, a splendidly clever and entertaining episode in its own right,  but it's surprising in how suddenly it seems to tie up the first half of the season and offer what looks like an ending of sorts, with Cottonmouth arrested on the strength of Scarfe's detailed notes of his work for Cottonmouth and the full scale of the police corruption, now exposed and destroyed. The subplots of Cottonmouth's increasing desperation reach their climax, their nemesis here.

Also in serious triuble, both from her dodgy cousin's arrest and from a rather gleefully well-executed media ambush. It seems the baddies are defeated. Except... early in the episode, Maria suggests to Cottonmouth various ways to kill or hurt Luke. I suspect this will have consequences.

Luke's powers, too, have become very visible, at least locally. This, too, will have consequences. And there is much musing over this. From Trish (remember her, from Jessica Jones?) supporting him on the radio to the more determined suppirt of Claire, Luke has his friends. 

Yet there's another emotional heart of this episode; Scarfe's confession and death. His last few scenes may be mostly action, but he redeems himself by destroying Cottonmouth. But poor Misty loses her mentor. She's a decent person while he's a despicable human being who is directly responsible for his son's death by keeping a gun in his house. 

We end with... an ending. or do we? I'm calling it: Cottonmouth will in some way use Luke's fugitive past against him. This is good telly.

See No Evil (2006)

“The eyes are the windows of the soul...”

This is a somewhat obscure little horror film, somewhat gory, starring a wrestler as the baddies and with no stars; the most famous member of the cast is arguably character actress Rachael Taylor. But the direction is superb and suspenseful, and this short little claustrophobic thriller doesn’t outstay it’s welcome.

There are superficial similarities to Psycho- the action takes place in a hotel and the baddie is under the strong influence of his creepy and deeply abusive mother. But the more direct influence is perhaps Friday the 13th, although this is a far superior slasher to anything I’ve seen so far in that wretched franchise.

A bunch of convicts are barely introduced (although I like the captions of what they’re in for) before they start being picked off, but surprisingly the character development is pretty good in spite of this. The camera is constantly teasing us, and the levels of gore are just about right, and exist alongside the suspense and not instead of it.

The main distinguishing feature of this film, of course, is that Jacob the baddie has a thing for gouging people’s eyes out with his thumbs and keeping them in jars. Lovely. There’s also a fair bit of dragging women by their hair and using a carrier bear trap to inflict graphic injuries that remind me of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Perhaps best of all are the dogs who gleefully eat the wounds of the injured and provide the film with an amusing coda. I knew there was a good reason I’m a cat person.

A pretty good thriller, then, and a much better watch than many which are more well-known.

Jessica Jones: AKA Smile

"You really are an anal crumpet, aren't you?"

So this is it, it’s over, and somehow it all fits into fifty short minutes.

It’s interesting to have the finale be the episode in which Rosario Dawson guest stars as Claire, providing the rather necessary plot function of nursing Luke to health while Jessica has her final confr with Kilgrave. But she also acts as a link to Daredevil and a nice person for Malcolm to chat to about being a “sidekick”- he ends the episode as Jessica’s self-appointed employee, a former social work student finally finding a way to help people.

After a tense set piece with Kilgrave getting everyone in the hospital to want Jessica dead, and an injection into Luke’s optic nerve that we thankfully don’t see, it’s time for the final showdown, and the unhinged Kilgrave has managed to increase his powers even more, even at a 60% risk of death. David Tennant is outstanding for this finale, but Krysten Ritter is extraordinary. Her monologue to the unconscious Luke is quietly devastating. She can’t be with him because, essentially, her self-Loathing means she sees herself as not deserving happiness.

The final showdown- a horribly injured Albert has time to warn Jessica before dying- sees a much more powerful Kilgrave. But a clever bait and switch between Jessica and Trish, and Trish allowing herself to be bait, allows Jessica to trick Kilgrave that he can indeed control her. And it’s when he’s at his very creepiest and his very rapiest that Jessica is able to quickly snap his neck. Visually it feels sudden and even anti-climatic, but thematically it’s satisfying. Kilgrave dies at his most unrepentant.

Hogarth gets a nice little coda to begin her atonement by saving Jessica from being tried for Kilgrave’s murder, but Jessica ends the series still consumed with self-loathing. A magnificent end to a magnificent series, and a character I want to see again.

Jessica Jones: AKA Take a Bloody Number

"Please! The chemistry was jumping off the two of you."

Nearly there. The penultimate episode and, while the plot is all about tracking down and killing Kilgrave, this seems to be an episode all about Jessica reconnecting with Luke, at last able to understand and forgive her after himself being controlled by Kilgrave to destroy his likelihood. Perhaps, as Trish urges, Jessica can finally find some happiness with him? No. Of course not. Because this is television drama, and a late twist tells us that this isn't what the episode is about at all.

Kilgrave, meanwhile, is getting his terrified dad to find ways of increasing his powers, in the process giving Jessica (and Luke) the chance to do all that PI stuff and track him down. Trish, with help from her mother and her agenda, may have found clues as to how Jessica got her powers in the first place, but it seems for the moment that it can wait; one big bad at the time. Simpson may or may not be dead.

After a rather distressing scene involving secateurs Malcolm, in a role reversal from early in the season, despairs of Jessica's addictive behaviours and instead rather patiently sets out to help an increasingly disturbed Robyn who, alone, seems unable to function in society. But, after a terrifying scene involving Albert and a blender, Kilgrave's trap snaps shut; Luke has been under his control all along, very unwilling though he is, and Jessica has to shoot him (with his quickly uttered permission) to save herself. It's a devastating ending to a powerful hour of television, and the finale is sure to be more dramatic still...

Jessica Jones: AKA I’ve Got the Blues

”What about nuns?”

“They still make those?”

It’s the morning after the night before, a symbolic hangover following the dramatic events of the last episode. It’s also a time to breathe before the final two episodes so it’s a more relaxed pace and a secondary villain in the shape of a drugged up Simpson. Jessica even gets hit by a truck due to tiredness, but it’s clear how single minded she is about killing Kilgrave, whatever the cost.

We get some nice flashbacks of Jessica and Trish in their youth, and we are shown Just how a musics “Patsy’s” mother was, forcing her into a showbiz career to the extent of compulsory bulimia. It’s Jessica saving her from this abuse, and Trish’s early accidental knowledge of Jessica’s powers, that forges their deep friendship. It also adds extra meaning to Trish’s druggy heroics later on as she gets to be the hero for once. A Hellcat indeed.

The confrontation between a physically weakened but mentally sharp Jessica is compelling as she reveals she’s worked out that it was him who killed Clemens. The ensuing fight and its consequences define thecepisode, with Trish being lucky to survive.

But we end with a splendid cliffhanger as texts that can only be from Kilgrave lead Jessica to Luke Cage’s bar just before it explodes. Lucky his power is to be invulnerable. What will happen now? How will Luke react to her? Here we go...

Jessica Jones: AKA Sin Bin

"Killgrave? Think about obvious! Was 'Murdercorpse' already taken?"

Jessica is playing for high stakes with Hope's freedom, not her own this time. She may have Kilgrave where she wants him, but does she have enough evidence for a conviction? It’s a high tension episode as a desperate Jessica cuts all sorts of corners for Hope, but may just make the situation worse.

I have to say I think the whole concept of plea bargaining is just awful. It isn’t justice, and I hope we never bring it to this country. But it certainly provides a good dramatic device. We also get to see a resilient Kilgrave where he isn’t in control, and he’s quite the match for Jessica. It also seems that Simpson survived the explosion, and has a part still to play.

Most ominously, though, Jessica isn’t the only one who is desperate. Hogarth faces ruin from her vengeful ex, and seems tempted by the prospect of Kilgrave making her problems go away.

Jessica shows us her true skill as a detective by tracking down Kilgrave’s parents, showing us that beneath the alcoholism and PTSD is a brilliant mind. They turn out to be much closer than expected, and it seems that Kilgrave’s side of the story isn’t exactly correct.

The family reunion is as grimly compelling as you might expect, and ends in chaos as an angry Kilgrave makes his mother stab herself to death and nearly does the same to his father, escaping in the confusion. But does Jessica have the evidence she needs? It’s an extraordinary episode, at once fast-paced enough to be exciting and slow enough to give the characters real time to breathe.

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.

Jessica Jones: AKA Top Shelf Perverts

"We both know you don't own a vacuum cleaner...”

Wow. Jessica has really hit rock bottom after last week; Luke’s stinging rejection has really affected her. We know that, narratively speaking, there’s no way she’s going to get locked up in Superman for the rest of her life for a trumped up crime of her own devising in the middle episode of the season is dark, dark, dark. Jessica is a very damaged person.

And the reason for that damage is as foregrounded as ever as we finally get a personal confrontation between Jessica and Kilgrave in which both Ritter and Tennant are magnificent. Kilgrave is the textbook abuser her, entitled to have Jessica just because he thinks he loves her. She’s the object of his “aff futons” and thus an object, to be allowed no agency at all. He’s refusing to use his powers directly on her but that doesn’t mean this is about anything other than a disturbing need to control. All this is every bit as disturbing as his murder of Ruben.

We also see Trish’s mother, and apparently Jessica’s adoptive stepmother, as we begin to get some backstory regarding Jessica’s childhood. And Will is going off the rails, tracking Kilgrave without being honest to Trish about what he’s doing. Here’s my prediction; he’s going to get himself killed.

Hogarth’s ex blackmails her for 75% of her assets; this means war, and brings this plot thread from
The background to the fore. I’m sure something will snap soon. It’s a decisively eventful middle episode, ending with Jessica seemingly helpless in Kilgrave’s orbit.  This is brutally good telly.

Jessica Jones: AKA The Sandwich Saved Me

"Patsy taught me to hold the remote with one hand and box the bald-headed bishop with the other."

Narratively there was always going to be an episode at this vague point where Jessica and Trish try and fail to capture Killgrave; what's more interesting is what it reveals about the characters in another excellently written, acted and directed episode.

I really haven't given enough credit to Krysten Ritter as Jessica, playing a complex but likeable character. This episode, with flashbacks showing a pre-PTSD Jessica before she met Killgrave, shows the subtleties of her performance.And, of course, we see the moment when briefly superheroic Jessica first meets the man who will ruin her life as with so many others.

One of these lives is Malcolm's; it has become horribly apparent that this man we have dismissed as a junkie is only that way because Killgrave needs to keep him dependent in order to spy on Jessica for him. The junkie isn't who he is. It turns out we don't know him at all. And there are signs of hope that the cold turkey may actually work.

The episode shows us how Jessica, a self-doubting Trish an a newly initiated Simpson work together, giving us hints that Simpson may be prepared to go too far. Mostly, though, this episode more than any other shows us how evil Killgrave he is and how he ruins lives, including a horrible scene of Hope being beaten up in prison.

Jessica Jones: AKA 99 Friends

"You are coming across as distinctly paranoid."

"Everyone keeps saying that. It's like a conspiracy."

No Luke this episode,  and no Killgrave, although he pervades everything. No; instead Jessica gets a divorce case that isn't a divorce case, showing us the hostility that there is towards "gifted" people following all that CGI in The Avengers, and perhaps more importantly how easy it is for people to blame easy targets for their loss. Jessica distracts herself from guilt over Luke by setting up a support group for people controlled by Killgrave in the past, while Trish grows reluctantly closer to Simpson, the guilt-ridden cop who thought he'd killed her.

It's a quieter episode where the characters get to breathe, so we get to more fully explore the effects of PTSD on both Trish and Jessica, who are both very different, while we get out first
inklings of just how messy Hogarth's divorce is likely to be. The slow pace suits the style, and direction and narration style are, as ever, excellent in what is shaping up to be a very promising Chandleresque tale of domestic abuse.

Jessica Jones: AKA It's Called Whiskey

"Ok. So there's you, me, the big green dude and his crew."

It's an eventful third episode as Jessica and Luke bond over their superpowers, taking the chance to give us a bit of exposition on what they can both exactly do in between extremely frequent bouts of the kind of sex you get between a woman with super strength and an invulnerable man. That bed stood no chance.

Jessica half-tells Luke about Killgrave before mutual lust interrupts. And we get our first "Sweet Christmas!". But the set piece is Trish arranging a phone in from prison with poor Hope, believed by no one, in which the idea is thrown out that Killgrave exists in a hope that other victims come forward. But the whole thing comes to a distinctly menacing end as Killgrave himself Rings in with threats.

Trish, incidentally, is Patsy Walker, not (yet?) Hellcat but with a comic and fans, although it seems Killgrave "always thought her television show was shite". That's quite a revelation. After a significant alteration with a mind controlled cop, though, Jessica manages to trace Killgrave to the luxury apartment where he's staying in the inevitable early confrontation that the rhythms of storytelling require. She looks through a window and sees Killgrave- and that's when we see: it was Jessica who pushed Luke's wife under that bus, killing her, at Killgrave's order. Not wonder she breaks up with him at the end. Awfully, though, he thinks that she just simply can't deal with being with a widower.

Creepier than all that, though, are the many stalkery pics of Jessica, put there for her to find, with "See you later" written on one to make it clear that the whole show was for her benefit. Killgrave has plans for her. This is gripping telly.

Jessica Jones: AKA Crush Syndrome

"You should kill yourself."

"Probably. But I'm the only one who knows you're innocent."

The quality doesn't let up in the second episode as Jessica, spurred on by the need to prove Hope's innocence, resolves to go after Killgrave in spite of her extreme fear. Pausing only to impatiently suffer an interview by a cop played by Clarke Peters from The Wire, she spends most of the episode investig... er, blagging her way to some initial answers, which is compelling viewing in itself.

But it's the characterisation that really keeps you hooked, with the subtext that Jessica is a domestic abuse survivor never far from the surface. We start out with awkwardness, though, as Jessica has to tell Luke Cage that she was only ever interested in him for business reasons as a client thought his wife was sleeping with Luke. He understandably feels used and disgusted. But, after this inauspicious beginning, Jessica spends most of the episode being quietly awesome piecing together how Killgrave survived, forcing a doctor to perform the surgery as a random bloke is forced to donate both kidneys and ultimately spend the rest of his life as a vegetable in thrall to his overbearing and religiously in-your-face mother. Ouch. That's dark. But Kilgrave has a weakness; anaesthetic.

Meanwhile, we get introduced to Jessica's twin neighbours, who seem to be yet another abusive relationship. And we get our first, horrifying glimpse of Kilgrave as he simply knocks on the door of a random home and orders the family to let him stay and do as they are told; it's horrible to see him sending both kids to the closet. But we end on an interesting cliffhanger as the super-strong Jessica and the invulnerable Luke both "out" themselves to one another by accident. Now that they have something in common will the awkwardness last?

Another impressive bit of telly and a very promising series.

Jessica Jones: AKA Ladies Night

"New York may be the city that never sleeps but it sure sleeps around."

I should start by saying that, although I read a lot of Marvel stuff as a kid and a teenager, I'm rather vaguer about anything later than '94-ish, from which point my comic book collection took a definite second place to my record collection. To put it simply, I have no prior knowledge whatsoever of Jessica Jones as a character (although I certainly recognise both Luke Cage and the Purple Man when I see them), and am coming to this fairly cold with my only expectations being to expect a variation on the noir tone of Daredevil. So it's a pleasant surprise to find a mix of very Raymond Chandler PI tropes (I love the narration) and a very feminist subtext.

We're told little of Jessica's past frm before she became a hard-boiled, hard-drinking private eye other than a hint from Trish late on that she used to be some kind of "hero", that she has super-strength that she doesn't advertise too widely, and that she's a year beyond a relationship with a sinister may called Killgrave, whose power to make people want to obey him is used mainly on the opposite sex and, it's implied, for extensive sexual purposes. This is a clear and deliberate metaphor for spousal abuse, and the way we're gradually shown how Jessica is still dealing with PTSD shows the very real trauma of spousal abuse and the very real courage needed to confront it. In a world where most Avengers merchandise fails to include Black Widow because blatant sexism it's good to have a Marvel series, with a female showrunner in Melissa Rosenberg, that deals with such issues.

It's a brilliant intro, showing us Jessica and her world and beginning the season arc, all while working as an episode of telly in its own right, with that shot ringing out in the lift being a truly shocking moment. We meet Jessica and the various characters who inhabit her world, including the interesting and nuanced Luke Cage, with whom she has some hard sex and an awkward parting. It's a very promising start to a series that promises to be a very different kind of noir to Daredevil.