What is it about being a mother that so clearly seems to involve more intensity–more of a lifelong commitment to putting one’s needs after another’s–than the role of being a father? For starters, obviously, it stems from very literally hatching something out of yourself and forcing said being into this cold, cruel earth. One can’t help but feel an eternal responsibility stemmed from the guilt of making another human being sprung from your own loins do this shit. This obligation is compounded when the dynamic in question is that of mother-daughter.
Yet this isn’t the dynamic that begins as the primary focus of the second season of Jessica Jones, starting with the episode “AKA Start at the Beginning,” in which we pick up where we left off in the Marvel Comic Universe version of New York wherein Jessica (Krysten Ritter) has become perceived as something of a vigilante hero. Then again, there are still many who see her as nothing more than a freak with a freak-sized chip on her shoulder to match. Entering the picture of the unsolved puzzle called IGH (the laboratory that spawned Jessica’s freakdom) is Robert “Whizzer” Coleman (Jay Klaitz) in “AKA Freak Accident,” a man who was given super-speed while being experimented on. In many respects, it is Whizzer who sets the tone for the thesis of season two by noting, “With great power comes great mental illness.” That much is evident even in someone like Jessica’s best semi-famous friend, Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor), who wants so badly to be powerful that it drives her to unprecedented extremes by the end of the season.
As Jessica trails a lead given to her by an investigation into Whizzer’s apartment, she is led to the funeral of one of the doctors, Miklos Kozlov (Thomas Kopache), who worked at IGH, specifically on Trish’s ex, Simpson (Wil Traval)–whose inhaler of ephemeral power has already gotten Trish hooked by this point. As the narrative progresses, it becomes clear to Jessica that a deadly killer has been offing several people connected to the IGH lab in order to cover tracks, specifically those related to Dr. Karl (Callum Keith Rennie). In the background of it all, the less talented P.I. with a corporate approach to detective work, Pryce Cheng (Terry Chen), has sent one of his henchmen to steal Jessica’s computer after his only ally against her, hotshot lawyer Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Ann Moss), turns back to Jessica for the help she needs in getting dirt on the partners that want to buy her out. On a side note, Jeri’s subplot is one of the most intriguing to watch unfold throughout the season. Upon returning to her street after Cheng’s man tried to make his getaway, Jessica sees the torn apart, bloodied body in the back of the open van he tried to depart in. Looking at the corpse in front of her Jessica insists, “That’s not me. That’s not me.” As in, no, that’s not who I am, that’s not who I could ever become–therefore quickly establishing the fear all women have inside of us: becoming our mother.
Of course, Jessica doesn’t yet know that the arcane force behind this rash of murders is her mommy dearest just yet. Not until “AKA The Octopus,” where yet further innovative investigative work leads her to the aquarium (one imagines it certainly can’t be the petite one at Coney Island, but that’s up to your discretion). And as Jessica glides through the watery building, she informs us, “Fun fact: when an octopus is attacked, it ditches its wounded arm and just swims away. It’s better to let things go before they drag you under.” Per usual, Jessica’s Humphrey Bogart-esque narration is precisely what makes Jessica Jones so signature—though, granted, she did have far more memorable V.O. aphorisms in season one, which also offers us the notion that love, apparently in any form, is a con that ought to be avoided if we want to ditch that so-called wounded arm.
Jessica persists with her octopus analogy while she closes in on Dr. Karl, remarking, “The killer and I are like two solitary animals circling each other in a tank. Two creatures, out of nowhere, unconnected to anything…de novo.” That last “de novo” part referring to the bizarre, alien-like nature of octopus DNA, which also, clearly applies to Jessica and her mother, Alisa (Miriam Shor), whose genetic sequencing was remade in the eyes of Dr. Karl after their car accident. Jessica, still skeptical about the identity of Alisa, and assuming that she’s merely a depraved tool being used by Dr. Karl for some as of yet unknown reason, is disgusted to learn of their romance together. Thus, “AKA Facetime” commences with the voiceover, “Love isn’t for the weak-hearted. It’s for idiots and murderers, apparently… So the creep and the maniac have found happiness together. Guess there’s someone for everyone. Almost everyone.” Jessica’s unexpected wafts of loneliness come on strong and at random, this moment being no exception to the rule, and prompting her to turn to her latest love interest (maybe men really do love a strong woman, if Jessica’s many admirers are any indication), Oscar Arocho (J.R. Ramirez), who also just so happens to be the building’s super and a convenient master in the art of forgery. Her closeness with him, however, ends up making Jessica feel skittish as always, fearing at once that he’ll end up getting hurt by someone if she lets him too far into her life. Unmasking the real persona of the killer that she’s been seeking–her own mother–one particular question Jessica asks on the way to finding her “safe house” with Dr. Karl is, “The line keeps moving and I keep stepping over it. How far is too far?” This apprehension that she will one day end up ceasing to see a line at all–just like Alisa–is what drives her to near madness perhaps more than anything else in season two. And, speaking of madness, the best episode of the season, “AKA I Want Your Cray Cray,” gives us a thorough origin story of Alisa’s first attempt to reach out to Jessica despite Karl’s warnings that she can’t control her emotions well enough to see her yet. Sometime in the early/mid-00s, hence Trish even having a single called “I Want Your Cray Cray” and being excited about it potentially winning a VMA, Jessica encounters arguably the ultimate true love of her life, a bartender named Stirling Adams (Mat Vairo). He’s unbothered by her “abilities” and only wants to open a club of his own in the East Village called Club Alias (ah, now you know why she calls her own business Alias Investigations). The fate of Stirling, however, is not so secure with Alisa spying on certain interactions that lead her to impetuous moves with irrevocable consequences. Thus, when she asks Jessica if she can forgive her at the end of the story she recounts, Alisa is met with a punch in the face. Kate Hudson and Goldie Hawn this is not.
Trish, all the while, has been going down a rabbit hole from which she can’t return with this IGH inhaler, even choosing to end her relationship and sudden engagement with Mr. Perfect Newscaster himself, Griffin Sinclair (Hal Ozsan), inciting the predictable judgment of her own overbearing mother, Dorothy (Rebecca De Mornay). This doesn’t prevent her from rebounding quite nicely with Jessica’s “associate,” Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville, unafraid of nudity as you’ll see). Forced to confess to her addiction, or what she calls “enhancer,” when Malcolm calls her out for her strange behavior, Trish gives Malcolm a taste of it to heal himself after a fight in “AKA Ain’t We Got Fun.” Disgusted with himself for giving in and the effects themselves, Malcolm takes off running, in part from the adrenaline rush and in part out of fear of what he’s willing to do for Trish.
By “AKA Shark in the Bathtub,” Jessica is almost coming around to the idea of having her mother back in her life, even as Cheng tries to kill Alisa as recompense for her murder of his associate. Seeing the blind rage with which her mother reacts to threats to those she loves is both endearing and horrifying to Jessica, who comments, “This is how I lose my mother” and “I got one thing from my mother. Neither of us get a happy ending.” This motif of being like one’s matriarch–so omnipresent throughout Jessica Jones S2–almost even more so the harder we try to avoid it, is what renders Jessica her most human in these episodes. For ultimately, that’s why she’s so viable as a protagonist–for her very human frailties, all primarily of the emotional variety. Living through an even more warped version of what it means to have “mother issues,” our empathy for Jessica intensifies after she is forced to turn her mother over to the authorities and must then deal with taking out a sadistic prison guard in “AKA Pork Chop,” prompting her to hallucinate an encounter with the nefarious Kilgrave (David Tennant) at the end of the episode.
With “AKA Three Lives and Counting,” a title that refers to her first kill, Luke Cage’s (Mike Colter) wife, Reva (Parisa Fitz-Henley), Kilgrave himself and, now, a certain tormenting prison guard, Jessica’s conscience somehow manifests in the form of Kilgrave, baiting her at every turn with the accusation that she is, at her core, a killer. The back and forth that escalates between them leads her to chortle, “I’m trading banter with a delusion.” Leave it to Jessica to possess superhuman strength even when it comes to managing her insanity, which she’s still somehow forced to put on the back burner to take charge of Trish’s far more acute sense of it as she hijacks Dr. Karl–using Malcolm as a pawn in her scheme along the way–and demands that she perform the same experiment on her as he did to Jessica and her mother. All too willing (Dr. Karl can’t help his kooky love of playing Dr. Frankenstein), he accompanies her to the lab to begin his process. Jessica, still with Kilgrave in her head urging her to kill again because he knows she “wants to,” manages to save Trish just as Dr. Karl concedes to blowing up the entire operation, himself included–leading into “AKA Pray for My Patsy,” wherein Trish lies in a coma in the hospital as Jessica narrates, “Chasing your dreams can be deadly.” And Trish’s dream–to be a superhero, to be of true importance in the world–is decidedly dashed in a big way. As for Jessica, she has the epiphany that her own dream of wanting a mother all this time has led her conclude, “What happens to our dreams when we realize they’re never going to come true? They turn into nightmares.” Because Jessica can’t really have her mother, not as she is–and will continue to be. It simply wouldn’t be feasibly for living in the world peacefully–Marvel Universe or not. Alisa’s own psychopathy, however, is merely an augmented reality of the internal goings-on and musings of a mother who sees her daughter threatened or in presumed danger of any kind. She is the proverbial mother who would raise a car to save her child from death. Except Alisa doesn’t operate on hysterical strength (well, maybe, to an extent she does, as she’s pretty much always hysterical)–instead living with a constant state of souped-up rage over the treatment of her only daughter. And isn’t that something every mother can relate to? Wanting to perpetually protect at any cost? What’s more, the delusions they harbor about their child–choosing to ignore faults that are, to most others, rather glaring–is what solidifies this lifelong form of mental illness called motherhood. Thereby proving the mascot for the mentally ill himself, Holden Caulfield, when he says, “Mothers are all slightly insane.”
