Marvel's Jessica Jones

The brilliantly executed comeback of an already smart series is the perfect parable for our times.

It’s Ritter that gives Jessica Jones its punch. ... This season’s story--at least in the five episodes available for review--builds to a deeper secret, and its buttressed by strong supporting players. Carrie-Ann Moss returns as Jessica’s attorney, who is fighting her own demons.

Season 2 of Marvel’s Jessica Jones does all it needs to--which is to say, it brings Ritter’s fantastic interpretation of Jessica Jones back to TV, with every ounce of shadowed malice and explosive desire on display.

While not quite as transcendent as its first outing, Jessica Jones season 2 continues to prove that its lead character is one of the most complex and fascinating figures in the MCU, both on film and television. The series’ penchant for leaning into its noir elements--hard-boiled narration and all--lends it a tone and spirit completely distinct from the sea of superhero stories currently out there.

More than anything, Alias Investigations once again provide a nice noir framework for the show’s central mystery this season, one that is interesting to unravel and certainly feels more grounded than anything we’ve seen in the past with villains like The Hand. The show is also wisely taking the time to give those around Jessica more to do, while keeping everyone connected.

The first three episodes meander, looking this way and that at threats new (professional competition) and old (Janet McTeer as a shadowy figure from Jessica’s past). Then slowly but surely, the season begins to take shape.

It’s the introduction of Janet McTeer as a mysterious figure connected with Jessica’s past who is the most dynamic element of these early episodes. While she has potential as a foil, there’s not enough of her to keep us hooked, not to mention the lack of the emotional hook that we had with Kilgrave in Season 1.

Once the opening hour catches us up on Jessica’s past and sets the stage for the new season, there are some good things here. We see more of the friendship between Jessica and Trish, and that’s good because female pals are still a TV rarity. ... The best moments of the new season are any scene that features the wonderful Janet McTeer as a mysterious new character.

This is one dark show. Good, but dark. And slow, mainly because it’s more interested in people’s emotional interiors than in moving the plot along as quickly as it can.

Jessica Jones sets up its second season to fascinate on a number of levels, and its heroine to represent the crucible through which all of her gender is passing in this moment.

What these episodes lack in forward momentum, they make up for in ever-mounting tension. Much of that tension comes courtesy of Janet McTeer, who plays an as-yet unnamed character of terrible, mostly silent menace.

Jessica Jones remains a show with an impeccable sense of its desired themes and undercurrents. Where the first five episodes sent to critics stumble a little is in translating the subtext into the text, building a plotline so that what Jessica and company struggle against in the episodic and ongoing storylines is as compelling as what's going on in Jessica's head.

While Jessica Jones coheres around a persistent view of Jessica (Krysten Ritter) and her friends as survivors, the series too often seems content to simply acknowledge the effects of trauma without offering an original argument about treatment or prevention. It inevitably conforms to comic-book convention, and Jessica's internal strife is overshadowed by her showdown with a super villain.

The journey into Jessica’s past feels like familiar territory, making the show seem less urgent and less captivating than it previously did. The back end of these 13 episodes is much more exciting and also a lot weirder (in a great way) than the first half.

The early episodes of the season make a lot of room for fairly static character development, with proportionally less attention paid to the traditional genre pleasures, like atmosphere and action, which were central to the first season’s invigorating noir-superhero synthesis. ... The apparent new villain is murkier in motivation, less overtly frightening and less charismatic. That’s the most significant onscreen change in the show, and it’s a bummer.

Ritter is so charismatic, and so good at toggling between sarcasm and outright pain, that a lot of this is more watchable than it should be, given the glacial pace at which the plot moves and the amount of time spent on lesser characters and filler stories.

The first five episodes of Jessica Jones reflect the Very Long Movie problem, the feeling that you’re watching a two-hour plot idea overstretched to absurdity.