Jessica Jones season 3, episode 1 review: A.K.A. The Perfect Burger

“Just keep your eye on the line. Don’t go over it.” Minor spoilers for Jessica Jones season 3, episode 1 follow.

After losing her mom again, Jessica Jones is back to her old ways. Drinking and investigating. There is one difference though, she’s started pro bono work for those who are really less fortunate and need her help.

Her little, unperfect life though takes a turn for the worse once Trish’s mom shows up because she needs Jessica’s help.

Trish is missing

After starting off the episode with a couple of investigations that prove to be annoyingly minor for Jessica, the meat of the episode really begins to take place when Trish’s mother arrives at Alia Investigations. It turns out that Trish has been missing for at least twenty-four hours and one of the only people that can reliably find her is Jessica, even though Trish killed Jessica’s mom in the previous season.

This initial set-up does a great job of conveying the theme that will more than likely prevail over the rest of the season and that involves Jessica’s (and the rest of the character’s) moral compass. There’re things that can be said about Trish beginning to create the Hellcat persona that she takes in the comics, but the most important thing is this set-up of the theme. This show has consistently presented a complicated view on morality and it seems to be setting up an even more complicated view on morality with this final season.

Everyone counts on Jessica

Of the actual plot of this episode though, most of it surrounds different characters expecting Jessica to simply help them, no matter what. It could be a random awful mother or someone that she’s known her whole life, everyone views Jessica as a tool and this episode does a great job of showing that. Jessica has been through so much in her life, and seemingly not even properly grieved her mother’s death at this point, but everyone is throwing their problems onto her.

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Jessica is really the only character that you can empathize with in this episode at all. As mentioned above, the theme of this season seems to be along the lines of “moral compasses” and the only one with one in this episode is Jessica, and actually Malcolm to an extent. With Jessica though, she refuses to acknowledge that she has one, let alone call herself a hero, which is drastically different from everyone else.

Pretty much every other character act like they’re heading true north with their actions, but the only one who actually is, is Jessica, despite everyone telling her otherwise. It’s a great intro into what is seemingly the main theme of the season, while also making you immediately empathize with Jessica again.

What’s weird though is that some of the characters telling Jessica these things are characters whose first appearance is in this episode. There were constant questions while watching the episode along the lines of “Who are you?” and “Seriously, I have no clue who this is, why are they here?” Which isn’t great when trying to build up a certain theme for a season and set-up the rest of the story.

The style remains (and doesn’t)

One the things that has always set Jessica Jones apart from other shows in the genre is its use neo-noir style, which it definitely doesn’t abandon here. This episode may even lean into the neo-noir style even more than normal with the heavy use of voiceover combined with the story being told. It creates such an inventive fun way that gets the audience into the mind of Jessica, while never feeling out of place.

The pacing remains the same as well in this season. Jessica Jones has never been a fast-paced show, often to its detriment, and yet again it’s the same here, again to its detriment. There’s nothing wrong with a slow pace as long as everything seems deliberate, but there are several points in this episode where that doesn’t feel the case. Some portions of the episode simply felt like filler, rather than having a purpose which is a huge detriment because it already slows down a slow-paced show to a crawl.

Another thing sorely missing in this episode, as it was in season two, is the heavy color coding. Much of the promotional material hinted a red hue style reminiscent of the purple style that was all-around season one, but it was nowhere to be found in this episode. Who knows if this will change in future episodes, but here, the shots often look very flat and boring because there’s not really a sense of visual style or flair to it.

Jessica Jones season 3 starts off just as the other two seasons have started off, slow-paced, with some missteps along the way, but interesting enough to continue to watch.