‘Marvel’s Jessica Jones’: Another Bloody Good Netflix Home Run
The first episode of Marvel’s Jessica Jones plays out like Season 1 of True Detective meets Raymond Chandler with just a sprinkling of superheroics. And that is a marvelous mixture that makes you want to binge watch the whole Netflix series in one sitting.
To be fair, the first episode isn’t perfect. It lags at times and indulges in the noir aspect a bit too much to build the atmosphere. But once it does, it plays that atmosphere perfectly. It builds to a fantastically shocking and disturbing conclusion.
Unlike it’s predecessor on Netflix, Daredevil, there is almost no connection to the greater Marvel Cinematic Universe in the first episode. That makes sense, as the series is based on the amazing comic book Alias by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos, published under Marvel Comics’ mature (as in cursing and gore, not sex) imprint MAX. Titles under that imprint, while considered part of the Marvel canon, were often separated in not just tone from the greater Marvel comic world. That connection does get deeper in later episodes, however.
Krysten Ritter is absolutely right in the role of the troubled, alcoholic former-hero-turned-private-investigator Jones. And Mike Colter is, so far, a solid choice (no pun intended) as Luke Cage. In addition, Carrie-Anne Moss plays the cold corporate lawyer Jeryn Hogarth with a solidness and style that Calista Flockhart wishes she brought to Cat Grant on Supergirl.
The cinematography and directing is occasionally as inspired as Daredevil, but not consistently so, but that is still leaps beyond what we get in most broadcast network TV shows. The writing is top-notch, though, as one would expect from the limited sample that includes Daredevil.
I am trying hard as I write this to not binge watch the whole series. So far, I am losing that fight, and you will probably do so as well, it is that good.
