Jessica Jones season 2 episode 2 review: AKA Freak Accident

Jessica Jones runs smack dab into a web of male insecurity and anxiety when Jessica and Trish split up on the IGH investigation.

If “AKA Start at the Beginning” was too glib about accusations of workplace harassment, “AKA Freak Accident” makes up for it and then some. The second outing of Jessica Jones season 2 is all about power dynamics between women and men, masculinity, and that pervasive damsel in distress trope.

Jessica, Trish, and Jeri are all contending with some unsettling stuff this episode, but let’s discuss Jess and Trish first. They take separate routes in tracking down information on IGH, but come up against past abusers.

Jessica goes after Dr. Kozlov, who she believes experimented on her after her childhood car accident. Meanwhile, Trish makes contact with the film director who sexually abused her as a kid in the hopes he can use his influence to get her access to Metro General, where Jessica woke up with her powers.

As Jess discovers when she walks into a shiva, Kozlov was officially killed in a “freak accident,” but she suspects foul play at the hands of one of his former patients. This leads her to Will Simpson who, as you’ll recall, has been following Trish around and looking generally deranged. After finding Whizzer’s comments on Trish Talk‘s blog, Jess assumes Simpson killed him and Kozlov, and is planning to take out Trish next.

Jessica is wrong, as it turns out. After getting Dorothy, Trish’s mother, to spit out Trish’s whereabouts, Jess finds her foster-sister at a movie set in Brooklyn. Trish has Simpson tied up and wounded. He’s adamant that he didn’t kill Kozlov or Whizzer, and warns of a monster that IGH has sent after Trish. In fact, Simpson reveals he’s been following Trish to protect her from said monster, the very same creature that snaps his neck at the end of the ep.

Frankly, Jessica Jones‘ IGH conspiracy stuff — which reminds me a lot of The Initiative snoozefest from Buffy‘s fourth season — is a lot less interesting than Jessica and Trish’s interactions with the men in their lives.

Trish puts herself back in Max the Perv Director’s orbit so she can help Jessica, and Rachael Taylor does an excellent job showing what a toll this takes on her character. In the scene where she confronts Max about their “relationship” (she was 15 and desperate for a movie role and he was 40 with a boatload of power), she’s basically quivering from rage, disgust, and fear.

As for Jessica, she faces off with her new super (as in superintendent), Oscar, who is in a custody battle and wants to stay clear of his tenant’s drama. But Jessica sees through him: she doesn’t get under Oscar’s skin, but her abilities do.

“What did I ever do to you besides move your ugly fridge?” Jessica asks. “Oh, I get it. You hate people like me. I threaten your masculinity or whatever.”

She hit the nail on the head. Whether Oscar is conscious of it or not, it makes him uncomfortable that Jessica is stronger than him and thus doesn’t need him. His savior complex is the most egregious, but most of the dudes in this episode are struggling with one.

Malcolm feels important for the first time in a long while when Trish asks for his help and not Jessica’s. He seems downright sunny after he punches Max in the face after the Perv Director claims the 15-year-old Trish seduced him. Simpson, of course, convinces himself he’s Trish’s knight in shining armor. Yes, he’s stalking her, but he’s also shielding Trish from IGH’s wrath, get it?

Meanwhile, Jeri tries to wrap her head around the still-mysterious but clearly terrifying diagnosis she received last episode. Since emotion and self-reflection aren’t really her thing, she drowns her existential despair in drugs, booze, and sex — something she might have picked up from Jessica.

It’s a distraction, and one that she grows tired of quickly. When she kicks the sex workers she hired out of her apartment, she spills some red wine and breaks down at her table. I expect we’ll learn more about whatever is going on with her in the episodes to come, but it must be really bad. Only a real tragedy could visibly intimidate the inscrutable Jeri Hogarth.

Next: Jessica Jones S2E1 recap: AKA Start at the Beginning

Misc.

• Jeri actually has to deal with an annoying dude and his complex, too. Pryce shows up at her door and expects Jeri to fall all over herself asking for his help. Boy is he barking up the wrong tree.
• So I guess that’s the end of Simpson. I realize why his death is necessary for the plot, but I wish the show had kept him around a bit longer. His connection with Trish is compelling and he serves as an interesting counterpoint to Jess and her fellow supers.
• Obviously before this season ends Trish will hook up with Malcolm, and Jess with Oscar, right?
• The whole a character is so engrossed in their own pain they don’t notice a red light turn green trope needs to be retired ASAP.
• Trish tells Max that she hasn’t had a drink in 10 years. I wonder if she, like Jessica, used booze to self-medicate after experiencing a trauma?
• Jessica Jones pokes fun at Spider-Man:
  • “With great power comes great mental illness.” — Whizzer
  • Griffin: “I know she’s in trouble.” Jessica: “Because of your scroty-sense?”