1x03 AKA It's Called Whiskey

I'm really torn about this show. On the one hand, it has some excellent plotting. I like the slowly but steadily revealed details of Jessica's recent past, and the concomitant gradual introduction of Kilgrave. And people act rationally, sometimes even to the point of cleverness on the show. Trish asks the cop for identification before opening up. Hogarth figures out a way to defend Hope in the court of public opinion without doing it herself. Jessica uses her tracking phone to follow the brainwashed cop to Kilgrave. I really appreciate how the show is building its narrative up piece-by-piece in a natural, intelligent way. It's frankly some of the best structured plotting, with logical decisions made by the principals, in a long time.

But I just feel next to nothing for the characters. They're all more archetypes than people. Jessica is a fairly standard-issue damaged girl. Luke Cage is Hunky McGoodGuy. Trish is the generic spunky friend. Hogarth is the typical cold, calculating lawyer. They each fit a type I've seen before and despite the superhero flair, there's not much to distinguish it all. The acting performances are all fine, but don't really elevate the characters beyond that station. There's time to develop each of them further, but right now they all just leave me cold.

The only exception is Kilgrave, who has an appropriately unnerving vibe to him already, but given that he's gotten the Jaws treatment, it's hard to know if that will last once he becomes more of a full-fledged character rather than a baddie lurking at the edges of the story.

And there's some legitimate action in the show. The scene with Trish and the cop was appropriately tense. But then it gets counterbalanced with cheesy scenes where Jessica should be able to handle a the pugilistic stylings of a standard penthouse family with ease, and yet the scene's supposed to be as tense with them attacking her from behind corners or what have you. I actually laughed at the last attack.

As I mentioned before, I like a lot of the ideas swirling around the show, but not so much the execution. Showing that Jessica killed Luke's wife while under Kilgrave's control ties everything that's been built in the first three episodes of the show together nicely, and I like the idea of two powered people finding solace in comfort in discovering another person like them. And I like the idea of a big part of Jessica's trauma being that she was used to kill another person, and that like Hope, she's struggling with the guilt of that and her comments about Hope are as much about herself.

But then when they put those ideas into practice, when they have characters talk to each other about whatever it is, I'm immediately taken out of the moment. The scenes with Jessica and Luke feel anything but natural, like two people pretending to have a connection than anything palpable on the other side of the screen. And that means the story, interesting as it is in the abstract, doesn't land. The dialogue doesn't help matters -- I found myself calling lines before they happened, which is never a good sign for conversations feeling natural. This show is a real mixed bag in the early going. Hopefully it finds its voice.