Should You Binge Watch Netflix's 'Jessica Jones' This Weekend?
Fresh off the success of its original Daredevil series, Netflix is back with another gritty superhero drama. This time, Krysten Ritter stars as the titular Jessica Jones, a detective-type with superpowers from the Marvel universe. So is Jessica Jones good?
Short answer: Yes!
Dark As Hell, And Really Great
Jessica Jones is unlike anything Marvel or DC has tried in the live-action realm, and it's excellent. Hopefully, it leads to even more risk-taking with the kinds of characters and stories that get taken from page to screen.
[HitFix]
Jessica Jones… returns to Daredevil's dark corner of the Marvel Universe, and things only get bleaker… [B]y placing its stellar female cast in this murky underworld and letting them shine in a way Marvel has never done before, it stands head and shoulders above the company's other marquee properties to become one of the best new shows out this year. Daredevil was great by Marvel standards. Jessica Jones is just great.
Jessica Jones is the darkest, sexiest thing Marvel Entertainment has ever done. Yes, for gritty thrills, it surpasses the studio's movies and its network and streaming shows.
Not just a contender for the title Best Marvel-related TV Property; in a supremely crowded TV scene, it is one of the year's most distinctive new dramas.
[Variety]
Finally, A Female Lead!
Marvel's newest hero, whose eponymous series debuts on Netflix this Friday, might be its most flawed, but she's also its most fascinating, and her show marks an evolutionary leap forward for the brand's expansive collection of movies and TV shows, deftly exploring themes of trauma, abuse, and prejudice. It's taken too long to get here, but Jessica Jones is exactly what the overwhelmingly male Marvel Universe has been crying out for.
It should be said: Jessica Jones is a deeply feminist show, all the way down to its depiction of sex, which is pointedly empowering for the women. More than that, its central conflict is its lead character struggling to maintain her agency against an abusive man.
[AV Club]
And A Nuanced Treatment of Sex
Jessica Jones depicts men who are excited to be sleeping with powerful women as a matter of course… It's refreshing to see a show that establishes that strength and masculinity is compatible with accepting and even embracing a woman's power over you. And it's also refreshing to see a show that presents abuse survivors relishing sex and physical intimacy on their own terms.
[Polygon]
Jessica Jones will likely be widely discussed for its treatment of sex, which it addresses with unprecedented frankness for a Marvel property. The first episode features a torrid sex scene between Jones and Cage that's shockingly detailed, not in terms of graphic nudity but rather in its depiction of fumbling desire and angsty energy and the sheer mechanics of superheroes having sex.
[Slate]
It's More Than Just A Superhero Show
It's the perfect time for Jessica Jones to debut with a superhero spin on the female antihero, and showrunner Melissa Rosenberg breaks major new ground for female representation in live-action superhero properties by focusing on one woman's ongoing struggle to overcome the severe trauma she experienced under the mind control of a deranged man.
[AV Club]
OK, occasionally the lead stops a car with her bare hands. But far more breathtaking is the show's examination of recovery: How does a woman truly survive a sexually, emotionally and physically abusive relationship?
Netflix's Jessica Jones jettisons comic book conventions with glee. There's no time spent on origin stories and there are lots of scenes with superhero sex. I can't really remember seeing that in a TV adaptation of a mainstream comic book.
[NPR]
But It's Not Perfect
I have absolutely no issue with superhero fictions taking on serious issues provided they do so seriously, but there's no evidence so far that Marvel's corporate overlords are capable of this. In the meantime, wielding mass murder and PTSD as cheap plot devices or smirking red herrings is at best idiotic, at worst reprehensibly glib.
[Slate]
Like all Netflix shows, Jessica Jones has serious problems with pacing; in this case, it's because Kilgrave's crimes are of such an enormity that time spent away from him, on tangential aspects of Jones's sleuthing, feel like filler material.
[TIME]
Verdict?
We'll be watching. You probably should too.
If you want to do some background comic reading, you can check out WIRED's list of important issues.
