1x07 AKA Top Shelf Perverts

I liked this one. Jessica's plan to get herself locked up in a supermax prison was dumb, but 1. everyone more or less told her it was dumb, and 2. that was kind of the point. After what happened with Luke, Jessica wasn't thinking things through, but just viewed herself as a cancer that needed to go away. It would, in some ways, be an escape for her, a sense that she's removing herself from these proceedings, even if there's little reason to think that her plan would work, even less to think that it would actually deter Kilgrave, and if she really wants to help the greater good, she should follow Simpson's advice and just kill Kilgrave.

Killing is always an interesting area to explore in comics. Batman's embargo on killing is motivated by an interesting concept that if he crosses that line once, even in extreme circumstances, he doesn't know if he'll be able to stop. In this series, the same embargo with respect to Kilgrave is represented by two different ideas: the first is Jessica's, which is that she needs Kilgrave alive to save Hope, and the second is Trish, who thinks it's not their place to deliver lethal justice.

But I find myself agreeing with Simpson. For Jessica's part, leaving Kilgrave alive led to the death of Reuben, not to mention the harm that's come to all the other people that Kilgrave has controlled since, and that's just what we've seen. Who knows what pain he's caused. I feel for Hope; I really do--frankly more than I feel for Jessica--but the greater good is to prevent Kilgrave from taking any more lives or hurting any more people, even if it means Hope has to bear the brunt of his deeds. For Trish's part, there's little to indicate that the justice system is equipped to handle someone like Kilgrave, that even if they managed to capture him and turn him over to the authorities, that he wouldn't be able to manipulate his way out of the situation and go wreak more havoc. That said, even I disagree with Jessica and Trish, I think their moral philosophies make for interesting character motivations and storytelling possibilities within the frame of the larger narrative.

That said, I didn't really care for Jessica's "last day of freedom" mini-plot. For one thing, we know this isn't actually her last day of freedom. There are six more episodes than this, and it'd be a bolder stroke than I imagine the series would countenance to keep her locked up for the back half of the season. So there's no real stakes to it.

But even just treating it as Jessica thinking it's her last day of freedom, it doesn't really work. Again, I didn't buy into the Jessica-Luke relationship as much as the show seemed to want me to, so her stop at his bar rings a bit hollow. I did enjoy her visit to Trish's mom, since it added an interesting new dimension to both Jessica's history, both recent and long past, and did the same for Trish. But all the other "last meal" elements, like the visit to the top of the bridge, just seemed overdone given that we have every reason to believe she won't end up in jail.

Surprisingly, my favorite character in this episode was Malcolm, who's transition from generic junkie to character who knows what it's like to be controlled by Kilgrave makes him someone who can believably push back on Jessica, and who showed both strength and vulnerability in how he tried to prevent her from taking the fall for Reuben. I'll admit, he seemed largely like a prop, even after the reveal of what had been done to him, but he really came into his own here, both in terms of story and performance.

And, of course, Kilgrave continues to be an incredibly interesting part of this series. The scene with him in the police station (with more Clarke Peters!), and his continuing, utter creepiness in pursuing Jessica is the live wire that runs through this show. It makes sense that she would become an obsession for him as the only thing that his powers couldn't ultimately compel, and the way in which he finds a new way to invade her privacy a little bit more each episode makes him the perfect, disturbing villain. Again, he's probably the best motivated, most unnerving villain that the MCU has put forward thus far.

The flashbacks to Jessica's memories of her childhood home lay it all on a little thick, but as is often the case in this show, despite the shortcomings in execution, it points the narrative in an interesting direction, and I'm curious to see where it's going.