Jessica Jones - Sin Bin

I remained so amused at how totally fucked up everything turns out while Kilgrave remains imprisoned (well for the episode’s duration anyway) as the ladies on outside of his cell debate about what to do with him. Jessica needs him to prove his ability to manipulate behavior of others through his power of mind control so that Hope can be freed from jail. So a hermetically sealed cell, floor filled with water, with a red button signaling electric shock when needing to subdue Kilgrave (or anyone else) inside eventually draws the likes of Jeri Hogarth and Trish when Jessica configures a plan to locate his parents in the hopes of exploiting their estrangement. To say it doesn’t exactly go according to plan would be an understatement. Jessica means well, but getting Hope out of prison with Jeri as the attorney (the episode really reinforces her imbalance with the woman she wants to divorce and the secretary she wants to marry, as negotiations for dividing properties and blackmail using criminal methods as leverage and spite increases tensions), while Kilgrave doesn’t cooperate, proves to be most difficult. Accepting a plea for twenty years (instead of two life sentences she could get) is what Jeri recommends Hope but Jessica thinks the parents will lure Kilgrave into revealing his powers in front of a camera recording him. When mummy pulls scissors on him, stabbing Kilgrave, and he turns it on, forcing her to stab herself as Jessica’s red button seems to have quit working [naturally], it all falls apart. Before duddy can be next, Trish fires into the cell glass so that Jessica can stop him. Jeri isn’t about to stand idly by and watch Kilgrave in a cell, Jessica pounding on him, during one key scene. Jeri doesn’t want to be a party to Kilgrave’s imprisonment, period. But Jessica knows he is responsible for Hope and that catching Kilgrave “in the act” is essential to her release. But Jeri isn’t “all in”, having to deal with her own personal (and potentially professional) dramas. Jessica previously dangling Jeri’s ex near-death into an oncoming subway certainly didn’t improve relations and ease the contentious nature of the upcoming divorce, that’s for sure. Kilgrave escaping was expected…if he didn’t get out of this through some inexplicable twist of fate, I would have been more surprised. Jessica pummeling him while Jeri (momentarily) watches and then Trish arrives to make sure not to prematurely “push the button” must have been a cathartic moment for the superheroine, even if the result was her being “buzzed” along with him. Trish had no choice, really, as Kilgrave would not use his mind control on Jessica no matter how much she tried to incur his wrath. So once again Kilgrave is free and Jessica must deal with the aftermath and results.

 

 The show really does emphasize both why Kilgrave might be behaving so badly and how that behavior is intolerable. What he has done is beyond egregious. In just the previous episode, Kilgrave used Jessica's former neighbor to explode a bomb in the vicinity of Will and his colleagues while the video of his suffering at the hands of his parents (who later claim to Jessica that was an act of help for him due to brain illness), even Jessica's own violent abuse towards him (recorded in a way to make her the heel and him sympathetic) would seem to indicate he's the victim. But her continual reminders to him of his rape towards women and exploitation of countless victims who must obey his commands keeps us grounded. This man has committed horrible acts towards people so we must keep that in mind. Will would not be so driven to kill him if Kilgrave hadn't used him as a weapon towards Trish. Jessica never forgets what Kilgrave done to her...even if the optics often refuse to give her the fuel she needs to expose him, what happened to her remains her engine and inspiration to get him.