Jessica Jones season 3, episode 6 review: A.K.A Sorry Face

In the latest episode of Jessica Jones, “A.K.A Sorry Face,” the Netflix drama slows to a crawl.

“A.K.A Sorry Face”, the sixth episode of Jessica Jones’ third and final season, continued the story by kidnapping Jessica’s latest love interest.

In the last episode, “A.K.A I Wish,” Jessica (Krysten Ritter) and Trish Walker (Rachael Taylor) went on a stakeout of serial killer Gregory Salinger’s apartment (Jeremy Bobb).

Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss) reveals the fraud and infidelity of her girlfriend Kith’s (Sarita Choudhury) husband Peter, who then commits suicide.

Meanwhile, Jess tries to help Erik Gelden’s (Benjamin Walker) sister Brianna. She also narrowly avoids death in Salinger’s disposal facility inside an abandoned train car and  patches up her differences with Trish over Jessica’s mother’s death in “A.K.A Playland” (2.13)

As payback for the blackmailing and as part of his vendetta against those with powers, Salinger then kidnapped Erik to close things out.

A kidnapping case to solve

Jessica and Trish try to track the corpse of Salinger’s eighth victim as Jess reluctantly gives Trish lessons on how hero work should actually work, and they reveal that Trish has powers to Dorothy, who doesn’t take it well.

Meanwhile, Salinger tortures Erik while bitterly complaining about his abusive father and his brother Donny, who was the favorite son until his untimely death.

This is Storyline A of the episode, and by far the most clearly plotted out.

Machinations of the law

Given the revelations of Peter’s suicide video against Jeri Hogarth’s sleazy practices, clients are leaving Hogarth and Associates in droves, including Rand Enterprises.

And Kith has no interest in hearing from Hogarth again, according to her son. But there’s a possible assault charge on the way, and a devious new plan to regain some publicity in the works.

As Storyline B, it works to fill time, but this thread was mainly laying the table for what comes next in the near future.

Out on the streets, a world of doubt

While all of that goes down, Malcolm Ducasse (Eka Darville) is searching the streets for Erik’s sister Brianna (Jamie Neumann), while questioning what exactly he’s been doing while working for Hogarth, where his relationship with his girlfriend Zaya Okonjo (Tiffany Mack) is headed, and what he needs to do in the future.

Storyline C felt off somehow, and it never really went anywhere or came to any firm conclusions.

Where things currently stand

Jess and Trish manage to break Erik loose, but the cops can’t pin a charge on Salinger without more evidence, which only Erik can provide. Given the intensity of his empathetic powers, a prison sentence would almost certainly kill him, leaving things up in the air for the team of Alias Investigations.

Zaya’s allegiance to Hogarth (or single-minded determination to advance her career) could wreck her relationship with Malcolm, who is trying to fend off an unwanted entanglement with Brianna.

Meanwhile, there’s still a lot of trust issues going on between Trish and her master-of-the-guilt-trip mother, who had the quote of the episode:  “My problem with Jessica isn’t that she has powers, it’s that she’s rude, violent and ungrateful!”

As the halfway point of the season’s 13 episodes, this was noticeable in the pacing. Things kind of just slowed down to maneuver everyone into the positions they’re starting the endgame from, leaving “A.K.A Sorry Face” ending with a clear path ahead for the characters to follow, but little reward for the viewers who watched them deliberate and argue up to that point.