Not A Review Of “Jessica Jones”

What’s this? Two “not a review” posts in a row? Inconceivable! But true. You see, some may remember that a couple of years ago my wife got hooked on crystal meth “Breaking Bad“, AKA “The Best Show Ever“.  It took a while for us to get through all the episodes, after which I was charged with finding my wife another show to watch.  Not surprisingly, this turned out to be a pretty tall order.  Aside from the six-episode “Happy Valley“, I didn’t have much luck coming up with anything that held her interest.

Until now.

I sort of had a feeling, based on what I had read about “Jessica Jones“, that it might catch her attention and fail to put her to sleep, but I had thought that about a couple of other shows too (e.g. “Mr. Robot“, “Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries“) which hadn’t really gotten any traction. So, as I did with “Breaking Bad”, I just started watching “Jessica Jones” while my wife happened to be in the room doing something on her laptop. She pretty much ignored it at first, which she typically does when I play something without telling her what it is, her assumption being that it’ll be anime, something cheesy, or both.  (This is not an unsafe assumption.)  So I made an offhand remark to get her to look up from the laptop for a few minutes:

Me (pointing at Krysten Ritter): “Do you recognize her?”
Wife (peers at screen): “Is she from ‘Breaking Bad’?”
Me: “Yes, very good!”
Wife: “They introduced her towards the end, right?”
Me: “Oh, you’re thinking of Lydia. No, she played Jesse’s girlfriend who Walt SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS towards the beginning.”
Wife: “Oh.” (goes back to computer)

So, yeah, this one seemed like a bust at first, too. But somewhere around the halfway point, I noticed she was sort of looking at the screen, which then turned into full-on paying actual attention.

Wife: “She looks like she should be in that city with the ashes raining out of the sky in 3D^*. Is this a horror movie?”
Me: “No, this is a superhero show.”
Wife: “She’s a superhero?”
Me: “Yep.”
Wife: “She doesn’t look like any superhero I’ve ever seen.”

And she even started speculating about other characters:

Wife: “Is that guy^** a superhero too?”
Me: “Well, they haven’t identified him as one yet …”
Wife: “He’s a superhero. Otherwise he would just look like a normal person.”

But I think what really hooked her was the twist at the end of the first episode. The next day, she actually asked to watch another episode.

Wife: “Let’s watch a movie.”
Me: “We haven’t got a movie right now, but we could –”
Wife: “I meant that thing we saw yesterday. Let’s watch more of that.”

And later, when an actual movie did arrive, after we had finished the last few minutes of the second episode of “Jessica Jones”:

Wife: “What’s on the DVD?”
Me: “‘The Mist’. It’s based on a Stephen King story.”
Wife: “So it’s a horror movie?”
Me: “Yeah. Well, more like dark fantasy I think. Do you want to watch it?”
Wife: “No, I like this.”

So there you have it. Although we haven’t watched an entire episode in a single sitting yet, that’s mostly because of the puppy, who gets rather cranky if she stays up too late and needs to be put to bed at 9:30^***. This makes “Jessica Jones” one of the highest-rated productions ever on the scale of “How Long Did It Take This To Put My Wife To Sleep?”

And Kilgrave didn’t tell her she had to like it, either.

^* She is referring to “Silent Hill: Revelation“.
^** She is referring to Luke, who owns a bar in Jessica’s neighborhood. As his name was “Luke” I was pretty sure he was Power Man (since confirmed), but was being cagey about it.
^*** It’s the puppy who needs to go to bed at 9:30pm, not me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.