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Jessica Jones: AKA You're Welcome


"I've got it covered."

Notably absent for the majority of the preceding episode, Trish’s journey from unfulfilled sidekick to stubborn (and slightly ineffective) hero is explored in ‘AKA You’re Welcome,’ an hour that shifts focus on to the woman that Trish believes to be the more undervalued half of the Jessica/Patsy duo. With Krysten Ritter in the director’s chair, the hour explores some interesting facets of Trish’s character, though it doesn’t completely justify the lag in momentum due to a rehashing of events we’ve already seen play out.

In the premiere, Jessica found a drafted email that Trish had written for her. In it Trish defends her decision to be the moral compass Jessica is so adamant that she doesn’t want. This episode spends most of its first half detailing how Trish got to that point, while the second half focuses on the events that lead up to what we’ve already seen; i.e. Trish’s failed attempt to get hard evidence against Andrew Brandt.

The decision to lean into what’s already happened on-screen would have worked a little better had they shown us something we didn’t already know. Instead, the episode relies heavily on the nuances of Trish’s state of mind, something that works thanks to effective character beats laced throughout the episode by both director Ritter and Rachael Taylor, both of whom have an intimate knowledge of who Trish is, who she believes she is, and who she wants to be.

After she left Jessica’s apartment at the close of the second season, Trish started to exhibit physical symptoms which hinted at Karl’s procedure on her being a little more successful than originally thought. Through a serious of montages, we watch as Trish learns to hone her physical abilities in a rough, yet effective way. Though she passed the physical with flying colors, putting her new moves into action became a little messier in real life than it seemed on paper.

Without Jessica at her side, Trish has to rely on what her friend has taught her over the years, which leads to her running into a few... roadblocks, the biggest of which is a lawsuit from a criminal she assaulted in public. She’s saved thanks to Malcolm's savvy detectiving, but Trish’s black and white view of the world clashes with Malcolm’s now more morally hazy approach to his work. I liked how this particular aspect folded into the narrative, with Trish’s moral stance not just throwing up issues with Jessica, but with someone like Malcolm, who is still struggling with what he has to do as part of his job at Hogarth’s firm.

Following a fun clip show of Trish experimenting with different costumes (I especially loved her fun dig at the OG Hellcat costume – “Hell no”), Trish finally goes incognito, and takes a more long-term approach to her policing of New York’s criminal element. She manages to save a girl from sexual assault without revealing herself, though her extended absence while trying to apply the same overnight stake-outs to her take-down of Andrew Brandt gets her in trouble with Dorothy, who notices her daughter’s absence from her “day job” as a talk show host.

Hell no!
Dorothy continues to be the worst, but there were a few moments during this episode where she showed genuine love for Trish; I don’t think she’d scrub a dirty old toilet for anyone she didn’t actually care about. She hasn’t lost her love of controlling Trish’s life though, setting her up with another role in the limelight to keep her career alive and prioritizing costume meetings over greeting the daughter she was so desperately looking for not a few hours prior.

By the time the hour reached the break-in sequence at Andrew Brand’s apartment, there was a general sense of “been there, done that,” but the focus on Trish’s perspective, and the solid foundations of the Jessica/Trish dynamic were enough to hold my interest. Their back-and-forth in Trish's shitty hotel room was part of the previous hour, but seeing it again having experienced what Trish had done to get to that point gave it more gravitas.

Both women are exceptionally stubborn in their own ways, and it's easy to see how that inability to listen to each other will cause problems for them over the coming episodes. I especially loved Trish’s acknowledgement of the thanks she got for her help from others, and the same “You’re Welcome” line being spoken out of anger after Jessica refuses to accept Trish’s help, despite being stuck in a hospital bed.

Plus

We learn through Trish’s eavesdropping that Jessica and Oscar broke up because of Jessica’s inability to let him in. He does acknowledge how much Vido still loves her, hence why he was still hanging around Alias without his dad in the premiere.

He Said, She Said

Dorothy: "Whatever it is you are trying to accomplish, you cannot do it alone."
Trish: "I know, Mom."

It’s pretty obvious at this point that the main focus of this season will be how Jessica and Trish learn to work together, and reach some sort of agreement over what makes someone a hero. Despite the hour putting a dampener on the surprise ending of the premiere, ‘A.K.A. You’re Welcome’ has laid solid groundwork with respect to the show's main duo, giving the season a lot to leverage off of throughout the final eleven episodes of Jessica Jones.

7 out of 10 mysterious statues

2 comments:

  1. Gotta hand it to Rachael Taylor and the writers: I though I could not despise Trish more than at the end of last season, but they're managing to push me more and more with each episode.

    If she does not meet her very deserved demise this season, I'm going to be oh so hugely disappointed (Kevin Sorbo voice).

    ReplyDelete
  2. I felt for Trish, and I didn't expect that, considering what she did at the end of season two. It still doesn't feel to me that Trish is hero material, though. Maybe I'll be proven wrong.

    Malcolm. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete

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