Friday, June 18, 2021

Netflix Retrospective - Jessica Jones season 3 episodes 3-4

OK, let’s get back into Jessica Jones

AKA I have no spleen

We get the scene again of Jessica in the hospital asking for the name of the guy Trish was after, the guy she suspects is her attacker, or at least someone who works for him. She’s had he spleen surgically removed. Jesccia’s mentally ready to go after her attacker, problem is she can’t stand up. And hearing that certain aspects of her life, like drinking may have to change to accommodate her lack of spleen is not helping.

Cut to Malcolm pissing, ok so there’s blood in his urine but f*cking seriously? Zaya, Malcolm’s girlfriend is concerned about him but he refuses to tell her too much because the injuries in question are a result of episode 1 where he deliberately crashed a car into the drink-driver.

Jessica has flashes of the attack and accidently kicks Detective Costa in the hospital, he’s here to take a statement to assist in the arrest of the attacker, he believes it’s someone she pissed off. She has nothing concrete to tell him anyway.

Meanwhile Hogarth and Kith meet for lunch. Kith, being an old flame of Hogarth is also well versed in her lingo and tell when she’s talking rubbish and can tell she’s not just here to reminisce. Still, that’s kinda what they end up doing anyway. At least until it gets too uncomfortable and Kith decides to leave.

Jessica is discharged from the hospital, though against medical advice. How will she be able to pay the medical bills? Gillian provides what assistance she can in her own special way, changing the locks and setting reminders on Jessica’s phone for all the tablets she needs to take before leaving for her off-the-clock activities.

Jessica finds the burger from that night in the fridge and eats it, without even heating it. Rather you than me, Jessica. Still, it seems she may be falling to Erik’s way of thinking when it comes to burgers. Jessica and Trish are both working on finding Brandt. Jessica falls asleep but is woken up by Malcolm, he took the liberty of grabbing the knife before the cops could. He had it looked at but it’s a popular knife from a set with no fingerprints on it.

Jessica breaks into Brandt’s house, drinking one of his beers before she finds Trish. The two debate morals and heroism and whatnot and we cut to Hogarth. Malcolm’s got a job, to dig up dirt on Kith’s husband Peter.

Jessica dug up a lead on Brandt, an auction list that was conveniently jammed in his printer, presumably selling his stolen statue. The auction itself seems to be hush-hush, ie the items on sale were obtained illegally and none of the people Jessica calls are interested

Malcolm manages to sneak into Peter’s office but is caught on his way back out, he manages to bluff his way out. Erik pays Jessica a visit, but she tells him she tossed the burger because between Malcolm and the hospital expenses, maybe she needs to keep the $50. It’s also a cheap saying she’s not interested in his company tonight.

Trish is doing her shopping channel ad, and thanks to Trish the clothes are selling like hotcakes, if someone made 140,000 hotcakes and had to sell them. Her co-host tells her she was born for this which makes her a tad uncomfortable, though she doesn’t show it on-screen. Gillian wakes Jessica up the next morning, just as she’s about to go for lunch and tells her a client is waiting. It’s Hogarth who’s got out of the whole ‘kill me’ phase and actually has some choice words for Jessica’s pity party. Anyway, she agrees to look into the illegal art sales and will have some galleries sent to her for her to survey.

Whilst doing some reconnaissance, Jessica spots Trish who tries to follow in her footsteps but Jessica gives her the slip. In doing so however, she also misses one of her pills and begins staggering, eventually passing out. Luckily, Trish comes along and calls the hospital, but because we can’t have Trish doing something nice without her also being an asshole, they restore her karmic balance by having her steal Jessica’s notes and run off.

Kith pays a visit to Hogarth’s house and once she gets her cello out things get intense… and it doesn’t stop with the Cello. Malcolm planted a camera in Peter’s office and watches as he and another student have sexy-time in the office. Teacher’s having relationships with students is icky regardless of age, I want to throw up.

Jessica wakes up back in hospital, she passed out due to dehydration, guess alcohol doesn’t really do it for you. She gets a text from Hogarth with the time and date of the auction and agrees to stay the night at the hospital. Hogarth asks what Kith will say about their little tryst, but Kith tells her they have an open relationship, they can basically screw whoever they want.

The next day, Jessica arrives at the Gallery and climbs to the roof, breaking her way inside and finding the statue. But Jessica’s not alone as Trish has managed to work the lead too and is at the gallery taking a more direct approach. She watches as Trish manages to download the sellers’ contact information from the auctioneer’s computer.

Jessica confronts her outside and Trish presses the wrong button and gets backhanded for it. Jessica grabs the phone and uses it to work out his location. Thing is though, he’s not involved. He didn’t think you could just stab someone like Jessica and realises that pissing her off might just be a terrible idea. He has some degree of sense is what I’m saying. She calls Trish, and leaves the guy tied up for her to deal with.

Malcolm reveals details of the affair to Hogarth but she says it’s not enough and tells him to dig deeper. Of course, Jessica’s no closer to sh*t from her end, she calls Erik to commiserate but a combination of things he says and her PTSD flashbacks give her an epiphany. The guy was never after her, the target was Erik.

It’s not the easiest one to watch, but it provides just enough in terms of answers to keep the ball rolling forward.

Rating 7/10

AKA Customer service is standing by

Sal Blaskowski, the family-woman of crime who Erik owes money to because of gambling. Good job he knows some Houdini tricks but she gives him a week to get the money she’s owed or else. He’s been blackmailing people and he believes it’s one of them who targeted him with the knife.

He has a sort of sense about whether people are good or bad and gives notes telling the people he sends them to to give money to him or else. He gives them a drop off point and Jessica agrees to check them out, and then the two of them will pay them a visit. Trish drops by and Jessica kindly tells her to piss off and find her own bad guy, which she does, hearing about Blaskowski.

She finds the blackmail money on mark #1. Jessica couldn’t dig up much about the guy, he’s an accountant with no priors and no family. But upon paying him a visit… Yikes, thank you for sparing us the photographs Marvel. DC, take notes!

Trish calls about Blaskowski and Jessica tells her she couldn’t care less, giving Trish free reign to act on her own. Hogarth is meeting with someone about getting things installed to help her but it would require several indignities that she’s not happy with, including getting rid of all her rugs and furniture. Malcom’s pulled an all-nighter and is still having moral qualms about his work.

Mark 2 also paid the money and is currently working at in insurance firm. Question, is it likely the person who resorted to stabbing Jessica would’ve paid the ransom? I guess Jessica can just wonder into an office block no questions asked. Given her history I would not recommend it. Turns out the boss was embezzling money from the employee’s pensions, not exactly the horrors of the last guy but equally bad, despite her being more apologetic and scared.

Oh yeah, Trish broke into Malcolm’s office to get intel on Blaskowski. Malcolm fights her briefly before she reveals herself to be Trish. It’s another really tiring moral debate where the same points are rehashed ad nauseum. But it does give Malcolm the gumption to ask some more work benefits for the information he found, especially since in that information, he found out about Hogarth and Kith’s relationship and deduced exactly why he was asked to do this, Hogarth agrees. Apparently, Peter had been scalping the scholarship fund set up in memory of their daughter to pay for various things for his side-whores. This could be distributed anonymously to everyone who contributes to the fund, but that would destroy Kith right alongside him. Hogarth decides to wait on this information for the moment.

Mark 3 is a no-show but Jessica believes she’s found her target. Erik decides he’s had enough and isn’t really interested in being used as an arbitrator for Jessica. He goes off to pay his debts whilst Jessica goes to confront Mark 3. Hogarth takes Kith out and quickly gets her quartet a particularly famous ear to play for.

Unfortunately for Erik, he’s three hours late with the money so her guys push him into the pool with weights tied to his ankles again, this time enough of them that he doesn’t reckon he’ll survive. Fortunately for him, Trish arrives and fights off the boys, one of them is pushed into the pool, and Erik uses his pocket knife to escape, Blaskowski attacks Trish, but she dodges and ensuing move ends with Blaskowski impaled on her crowbar.

Jessica knocks on the door of mark 3, eventually breaking in and taking evidence. He’s clearly intelligent, with some decent physical records too. His name is Gregory Sallinger and he’s incredibly deranged by also quite intelligent, he has hidden cameras so when Jessica grabs him it looks like a full assault, he already broke into her apartment and reclaimed the knife and calls the police on Jessica.

After an evening at the theatre not ending the way she wanted, Hogarth tells Malcolm to release the information. Trish checks in on Blaskowski, she’s alive but not in great shape. Jessica finds Erik asleep by her front door, they enter and find the bag with the hush money, covered in blood, an obvious threat. She advises Erik lay low, but he’s a murderer and can’t let anyone else get hurt by him.

Jessica decides she needs Trish’s help and thinks the best way to help is to call into her show? That’s gonna confuse a lot of people. We see that Sallinger has already killed someone else as he eats a rosy red apple.

We’ve finally been introduced to the series’ main villain… I just kinda wish I cared more about the Malcolm/Hogarth plots

Rating 7/10

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