Jessica Jones season 3
Jun. 16th, 2019 03:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakWithout much announcement, consistent with the way Netflix has threated its Marvel shows ever since the relative lack of success of Defenders, the third and final season of Jessica Jones was released on Friday. Thoughts, I have them.
First of all, like many another fan, I had assumed JJ3 would follow the DD3 template - reconciliation and eventual cooperation between the leads after the previous season ended with them being estranged. This sort of happened, but I had a sinking feeling early on that it wouldn‘t be the endgame, at least as far as the Jessica and Trish relationship was concerned, because Trish was utterly unrepentant re: Alisa‘s death and what regret she felt was how it made Jessica feel, but even there it came with some impatience for Jessica to get over it already and reconcile with her. Now, of course the Netflix Marvelverse had, with Frank Castle, an unrepentant killer as a lead of one of its shows, having started out as a positioned-as-sympathetic secondary antagonist in another. But note that Frank Castle didn‘t kill Matt‘s mother. (Or David Lieberman‘s, for that matter.) (Elektra, who killed Matt‘s and her sort-of-father, Stick, did not not end up redeemed but as Schrödinger‘s Elektra, state of existence unknown after having gone through a Liebestod experience with Matt. And she was not a member of the regular cast from the get go. ) So the fact that Trish ended up as the season‘s and Jessica‘s last opponent didn‘t entirely catch me by surprise, though due to the binge-watching, which led me loose track of the number of episodes, the earlier episode in which Jessica manages to catch Salinger, trap him into confessing and simultanously with Malcolm‘s and Erik‘s help keep Trish away briefly let me hope my suspicion was mistaken and we‘d get this as a happy ending - Jessica managing to bring down the seasonal villain while also saving her sister, Trish being left with a sobering „there but for the grace of Jessica go I“ experience. No such luck.
I note that Jane Espenson was among this season‘s writers, which makes me wonder why I didn‘t think about the Buffy and Faith comparison earlier. Not, I hasten to add, that the personalities and the initial relationship are very similar. They aren’t. But Faith, who had arguably the most successful redemption arc in the Jossverse, was also the one case where the narrative presented a superhero turned villain going to prison as both the right thing to do and as a part of said person‘s path to atonement. Now, in s2, it annoyed me that the show went out of its way to create a situation where a prison sentence for Alisa was not a viable option, because I happen to think that actually, a lot of more superhero stories could feature prison sentences (in less fantastical prisons than Arkham) instead of constantly pushing a narrative where it‘s either death or freedom and non-lethal laws of a civil society are for pussies. The MCU, tv branch post CW, additionally has the problem of presenting the Raft as some kind of supernatural Guantanamo Bay (used in s2 as one of the arguments why imprisonment isn‘t an option for Alisa). (Given that the actual Gitmo made it through all the years of the Obama administration and sure as hell won‘t be closed in the current one, though, I have no trouble believing in its existence in the MCU, as opposed to some other fantastical circumstances.) And yet, as opposed to I suspect many a watcher, I thought Trish going to prison, Raft branch, and Jessica, after Trish had crossed the line of brutally murdering an already captured and imprisoned villain, had announced her further career plans of playing judge-jury-executioner and had refused every attempt at dissuading her, choosing this for her (and it was an active choosing, rather than „letting it happen“ since Jessica put herself on the line to capture Trish fully knowing what would happen rather than engineering an escape a la Steve and Bucky worked for me, in terms of Trish‘s entire development from s1 onwards (which at no point included brainwashing; she killed because she decided to) and the show‘s consistent „letting bad stuff happen isn‘t an option if you truly are a hero“ message.
Coupled with „you can‘t be someone else‘s conscience and give your life for them this way“. This is most obviously rejected when Kilgrave tries to get Jessica to become this for him mid s1, but also when Jessica actually is willing to do this for Alisa in the s2 finale. (The dialogue even lets her point out the Kilgrave parallel.) S3 lets Trish observe Jessica used to regard her as an externalized conscience, and there‘s something to this; the s1 „playing house with Kilgrave“ episode has Jessica wondering what Trish would do, after all. But it also had her decide she needed to do not what she thought Trish would, but what she, Jessica, needed to.
Conversely, Trish started out living the superhero live vicariously via Jessica, but from the moment the possibilty - first via pills, then via inhaler, and finally via operation - to gain superpowers was there jumped at the chance, because what she really wanted was to be, if not Jessica, then a superheroine. She always had mixed motives - a genuine wish to help and outrage at injustice, fear of being helpless dating back to her abused child star youth, and hailing from that same youth the need to be the star, not the sidekick, that Dorothy had drummed into her. But she never thought she needed someone to check her ethics; she always was sure of her own rightheousness. Jessica never was, though her self doubt didn‘t stop her acting. But if there was one key factor making the difference, keeping Jessica on the heroic side and letting Trish descend to villaindom at the end of the season, it would be Jessica periodically questioning herself, while Trish never does.
The third season also compares and contrasts Trish with both Malcolm and Erik. Both share traits/aspects with Jessica and have their lives altered by her. Malcolm became a detective both because and in spite of Jessica, has anger issues in terms of how that relationship (didn‘t) work out and starts the season consciously living the anti-Jessica-life, as Jeri Hogarth‘s steadfastly employed P.I , wearing a suit, carrying out her wishes. Erik „self-medicates“ , as the euphemism goes, as Jessica does, with alcohol and otherwise uses his gift to make a living out of other people‘s vices; in a way, he‘s a male version of Jessica at the very start of the show. Meeting Jessica changes this and eventually leads him to helping people, not without screwing that up initially, too, but keeping at it. Yet while Jessica acts as an initial inspiration, he has to do the work himself if he truly wants to make a difference, something both the show and Erik himself recognize (hence Jessica and him parting amiably but decidedly at the end). If Malcolm carries the P.I aspect of Jessica, Erik the superpower aspect, and both the addiction and past trauma, they also share her ability to question herself. To wonder whether they‘re on the right path. Again, that‘s the difference to Trish, with the arguable exception of her last but one scene with Costa, if you see her „I‘m the bad guy“ as her long delayed moment of realisation and postulate that, like Faith in Sanctuary, in the end she accepts prison as her due, thereby starting her redemption.
Trish in this season is more a co-lead than ever, though not the only one; I would say, after three seasons, that it was essentially a show with three leads, Jessica, Trish and Jeri Hogan. (Who in this season again remains one of the most fascinating, shadiest characters in any Marvel incarnation. That truly was the role of a life time for Carrie Moss.) That two of the three are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning, and Jessica only isn‘t in the sense that she knows who she is, has come to terms with the past and has had romantic relationships that ended without tragedies (with Oscar and also with Erik) and in mutual affection, but definitely worse in terms of having lost, at least for now, the most important person in her entire life makes this, hands down, the bleakest of the Marvel tv shows. (Luke Cage getting a Godfather ending wasn‘t exactly uplifting, but given that Misty and Claire both are left reasonably well at the end of that season, the bleakness is less.) Which is definitely not what I expected when it all started. It‘s also not what I would have done, were I the show runner. And yet, I think it‘s done, for the most part, very well, if that makes any sense.
By which I mean: one of my problems with Luke Cage, s2, was that Luke starting the season if a case of hubris and ending it corrupted both felt externally mandated and not as a part of an organic arc. Both in that and the previous season, the characters pushing the narrative forward were the villains, most of all, but not exclusively, Mariah. By contrast, JJ s3 does feel like Jessica‘s story as well as Trish‘s and Jeri‘s. Jessica in s3 feels like an organic development from whom she was in s1; ditto for the two others. Illness not withstanding, Jeri‘s life is the result of her own choices. Trish‘s state definitely is. But if these two are in their own tragedies, Jessica is more in a passion play where she goes through trials by fire with only a few moments of hope and relief in between.
(Of which, btw, the Luke cameo wasn‘t one. Seriously, that was one of the moments I felt let down artistically, not in terms of shipping. JJ was always the show least good at acknowledging what happened in the other shows. This scene makes an effort with presenting us with a definitely post LC2 Luke, but then he delivers only a standard pep talk which could have come from anyone and doesn‘t do anything useful. By contrast, Danny‘s appearance in LC actually had a point, had dialogue specific to Danny and Luke and had him do things another character couldn‘t have done.)
Now, that the story with the three female leads, whose main relationships are for the most part with other women, with a female show runner, turned into the saddest one for said three leads, and not in a „screwed over by the patriarchy“ way on either a Doylist or Watsonian level (there is no male character suddenly getting the narrative role of either Jess, Trish or Jeri, Melissa Rosenberg didn‘t suddenly lose her position): again, not what I‘d have done, and I get why some viewers are furious. Then again, no one promised that the female centric tale would be a happy one.
Nitpicks and observations not related to this: Salinger as a red herring seasonal villain basically was there as a catalyst for Trish, and you could tell; he was a standard serial killer like so many others, which means compared to both Kilgrave and Alisa, both of whom had emotional power over Jessica because they were so very personal to her, he wasn‘t much.
Detective Costa continued to be Jessica‘s ally in the force in this season and got fleshed out more; I appreciate that he also turned out to be gay (and in a happy committed relationship) which means Jeri‘s former colleague and current rival wasn‘t the sole representative of male homosexuality on the show.
Jess having a secretary played by a trans actress and presumably also trans: also a welcome addendum, and in her matter-of-factness a great wry foil to everyone else.
Last season had most of the detecting being done by Malcolm and Trish, so I was really grateful this season gave Jessica ample opportunity to showcase how good she is at her profession of choice.
I think the show managed to walk a tightrope in terms of what it did with Dorothy Walker - at times comic relief, at times blight of Trish‘s childhood and Jessica’s „first bad guy“, but never less than real. Being an abusive parent and loving your child is sadly not mutually exclusive; hearing in this season that Dorothy herself was beaten by her husband didn‘t surprise me. And the flashbacks to Trish‘s childhood, showing the key moments in the creation of „Patsy“ by mother and daughter both, were devastating in their emotional power precisely because Dorothy wasn‘t a caricature in them. Incidentally, the last season paralleled Dorothy and Alisa at times; when Jessica comforted Trish after Dorothy‘s death, I was wainting for Trish to realise this, but no. (Which, sadly, at this point was ic.)
In terms of fanfiction: presumably the very last scene is meant to indicate Jessica will return to defy her inner Kilgrave voice telling her to give up, but given she just handed over Alias Investigation to Malcolm, a literal return to her office strikes me as anticlimactic. Actually I thought a road trip wouldn‘t be a bad idea for her (if anyone ever deserved a break...), but alternatively, I also could see her working with Matt, Foggy and Karen as their detective. And/or: Matt and Foggy decide to represent Trish as a way to take the entire „superpowered criminals get the Raft“ thing all the way to the Supreme Court. (Let‘s hope the Supreme Court in the Marvelverse is minus two posts filled by the Orange Menace with candidates and plus two different judges.) They win in that the Raft as currently used is declared illegal, but at the same time Trish still ends up in prison (just a normal one), because she is, without the shadow of a doubt, a murderer. (Given how brutally Matt beats up his villains, I can see him realising he just lucked out in terms of two of her kills being non-intentional on her part and empathizing on that score, but both Alisa and Salinger were very intentional and deliberated murders. If Jessica, Trish and Malcolm - who knows via Trish - keep silent on the Alisa murder, he still knows about Salinger.)
Also: this season finally pushed me into wanting Jessica/Jeri fanfiction, after previously occasionally going „hm“ but not really looking. Paradoxically, by the end of the season Jessica doesn‘t strike me as self loathing and self destructively enough anymore to start an actual affair with Jeri. But the occasional one night stand coming with ruthlessly honest dialogue and odd moments of mutual empathy? Sure. My scenario for this one would be a story set in during the five years between Infinity War and Endgame with half the population being snapped. Jeri‘s bound to survive the Snappening (and being frustrated by it - that would have been a painless, completely unexpected death, and of course she doesn‘t get it!) - and afterwards representing people claiming the fortune of snapped family members/friends (and then, if she‘s still alive, the other parties in the inevitable next lawsuit once the Snappening is undone). Jessica would try to find missing people in the immediate chaos of no one knowing who survived and who didn‘t, and be appalled to find out that of those who survive, Jeri might be the closed thing she has to a friend.
First of all, like many another fan, I had assumed JJ3 would follow the DD3 template - reconciliation and eventual cooperation between the leads after the previous season ended with them being estranged. This sort of happened, but I had a sinking feeling early on that it wouldn‘t be the endgame, at least as far as the Jessica and Trish relationship was concerned, because Trish was utterly unrepentant re: Alisa‘s death and what regret she felt was how it made Jessica feel, but even there it came with some impatience for Jessica to get over it already and reconcile with her. Now, of course the Netflix Marvelverse had, with Frank Castle, an unrepentant killer as a lead of one of its shows, having started out as a positioned-as-sympathetic secondary antagonist in another. But note that Frank Castle didn‘t kill Matt‘s mother. (Or David Lieberman‘s, for that matter.) (Elektra, who killed Matt‘s and her sort-of-father, Stick, did not not end up redeemed but as Schrödinger‘s Elektra, state of existence unknown after having gone through a Liebestod experience with Matt. And she was not a member of the regular cast from the get go. ) So the fact that Trish ended up as the season‘s and Jessica‘s last opponent didn‘t entirely catch me by surprise, though due to the binge-watching, which led me loose track of the number of episodes, the earlier episode in which Jessica manages to catch Salinger, trap him into confessing and simultanously with Malcolm‘s and Erik‘s help keep Trish away briefly let me hope my suspicion was mistaken and we‘d get this as a happy ending - Jessica managing to bring down the seasonal villain while also saving her sister, Trish being left with a sobering „there but for the grace of Jessica go I“ experience. No such luck.
I note that Jane Espenson was among this season‘s writers, which makes me wonder why I didn‘t think about the Buffy and Faith comparison earlier. Not, I hasten to add, that the personalities and the initial relationship are very similar. They aren’t. But Faith, who had arguably the most successful redemption arc in the Jossverse, was also the one case where the narrative presented a superhero turned villain going to prison as both the right thing to do and as a part of said person‘s path to atonement. Now, in s2, it annoyed me that the show went out of its way to create a situation where a prison sentence for Alisa was not a viable option, because I happen to think that actually, a lot of more superhero stories could feature prison sentences (in less fantastical prisons than Arkham) instead of constantly pushing a narrative where it‘s either death or freedom and non-lethal laws of a civil society are for pussies. The MCU, tv branch post CW, additionally has the problem of presenting the Raft as some kind of supernatural Guantanamo Bay (used in s2 as one of the arguments why imprisonment isn‘t an option for Alisa). (Given that the actual Gitmo made it through all the years of the Obama administration and sure as hell won‘t be closed in the current one, though, I have no trouble believing in its existence in the MCU, as opposed to some other fantastical circumstances.) And yet, as opposed to I suspect many a watcher, I thought Trish going to prison, Raft branch, and Jessica, after Trish had crossed the line of brutally murdering an already captured and imprisoned villain, had announced her further career plans of playing judge-jury-executioner and had refused every attempt at dissuading her, choosing this for her (and it was an active choosing, rather than „letting it happen“ since Jessica put herself on the line to capture Trish fully knowing what would happen rather than engineering an escape a la Steve and Bucky worked for me, in terms of Trish‘s entire development from s1 onwards (which at no point included brainwashing; she killed because she decided to) and the show‘s consistent „letting bad stuff happen isn‘t an option if you truly are a hero“ message.
Coupled with „you can‘t be someone else‘s conscience and give your life for them this way“. This is most obviously rejected when Kilgrave tries to get Jessica to become this for him mid s1, but also when Jessica actually is willing to do this for Alisa in the s2 finale. (The dialogue even lets her point out the Kilgrave parallel.) S3 lets Trish observe Jessica used to regard her as an externalized conscience, and there‘s something to this; the s1 „playing house with Kilgrave“ episode has Jessica wondering what Trish would do, after all. But it also had her decide she needed to do not what she thought Trish would, but what she, Jessica, needed to.
Conversely, Trish started out living the superhero live vicariously via Jessica, but from the moment the possibilty - first via pills, then via inhaler, and finally via operation - to gain superpowers was there jumped at the chance, because what she really wanted was to be, if not Jessica, then a superheroine. She always had mixed motives - a genuine wish to help and outrage at injustice, fear of being helpless dating back to her abused child star youth, and hailing from that same youth the need to be the star, not the sidekick, that Dorothy had drummed into her. But she never thought she needed someone to check her ethics; she always was sure of her own rightheousness. Jessica never was, though her self doubt didn‘t stop her acting. But if there was one key factor making the difference, keeping Jessica on the heroic side and letting Trish descend to villaindom at the end of the season, it would be Jessica periodically questioning herself, while Trish never does.
The third season also compares and contrasts Trish with both Malcolm and Erik. Both share traits/aspects with Jessica and have their lives altered by her. Malcolm became a detective both because and in spite of Jessica, has anger issues in terms of how that relationship (didn‘t) work out and starts the season consciously living the anti-Jessica-life, as Jeri Hogarth‘s steadfastly employed P.I , wearing a suit, carrying out her wishes. Erik „self-medicates“ , as the euphemism goes, as Jessica does, with alcohol and otherwise uses his gift to make a living out of other people‘s vices; in a way, he‘s a male version of Jessica at the very start of the show. Meeting Jessica changes this and eventually leads him to helping people, not without screwing that up initially, too, but keeping at it. Yet while Jessica acts as an initial inspiration, he has to do the work himself if he truly wants to make a difference, something both the show and Erik himself recognize (hence Jessica and him parting amiably but decidedly at the end). If Malcolm carries the P.I aspect of Jessica, Erik the superpower aspect, and both the addiction and past trauma, they also share her ability to question herself. To wonder whether they‘re on the right path. Again, that‘s the difference to Trish, with the arguable exception of her last but one scene with Costa, if you see her „I‘m the bad guy“ as her long delayed moment of realisation and postulate that, like Faith in Sanctuary, in the end she accepts prison as her due, thereby starting her redemption.
Trish in this season is more a co-lead than ever, though not the only one; I would say, after three seasons, that it was essentially a show with three leads, Jessica, Trish and Jeri Hogan. (Who in this season again remains one of the most fascinating, shadiest characters in any Marvel incarnation. That truly was the role of a life time for Carrie Moss.) That two of the three are worse off at the end than they were at the beginning, and Jessica only isn‘t in the sense that she knows who she is, has come to terms with the past and has had romantic relationships that ended without tragedies (with Oscar and also with Erik) and in mutual affection, but definitely worse in terms of having lost, at least for now, the most important person in her entire life makes this, hands down, the bleakest of the Marvel tv shows. (Luke Cage getting a Godfather ending wasn‘t exactly uplifting, but given that Misty and Claire both are left reasonably well at the end of that season, the bleakness is less.) Which is definitely not what I expected when it all started. It‘s also not what I would have done, were I the show runner. And yet, I think it‘s done, for the most part, very well, if that makes any sense.
By which I mean: one of my problems with Luke Cage, s2, was that Luke starting the season if a case of hubris and ending it corrupted both felt externally mandated and not as a part of an organic arc. Both in that and the previous season, the characters pushing the narrative forward were the villains, most of all, but not exclusively, Mariah. By contrast, JJ s3 does feel like Jessica‘s story as well as Trish‘s and Jeri‘s. Jessica in s3 feels like an organic development from whom she was in s1; ditto for the two others. Illness not withstanding, Jeri‘s life is the result of her own choices. Trish‘s state definitely is. But if these two are in their own tragedies, Jessica is more in a passion play where she goes through trials by fire with only a few moments of hope and relief in between.
(Of which, btw, the Luke cameo wasn‘t one. Seriously, that was one of the moments I felt let down artistically, not in terms of shipping. JJ was always the show least good at acknowledging what happened in the other shows. This scene makes an effort with presenting us with a definitely post LC2 Luke, but then he delivers only a standard pep talk which could have come from anyone and doesn‘t do anything useful. By contrast, Danny‘s appearance in LC actually had a point, had dialogue specific to Danny and Luke and had him do things another character couldn‘t have done.)
Now, that the story with the three female leads, whose main relationships are for the most part with other women, with a female show runner, turned into the saddest one for said three leads, and not in a „screwed over by the patriarchy“ way on either a Doylist or Watsonian level (there is no male character suddenly getting the narrative role of either Jess, Trish or Jeri, Melissa Rosenberg didn‘t suddenly lose her position): again, not what I‘d have done, and I get why some viewers are furious. Then again, no one promised that the female centric tale would be a happy one.
Nitpicks and observations not related to this: Salinger as a red herring seasonal villain basically was there as a catalyst for Trish, and you could tell; he was a standard serial killer like so many others, which means compared to both Kilgrave and Alisa, both of whom had emotional power over Jessica because they were so very personal to her, he wasn‘t much.
Detective Costa continued to be Jessica‘s ally in the force in this season and got fleshed out more; I appreciate that he also turned out to be gay (and in a happy committed relationship) which means Jeri‘s former colleague and current rival wasn‘t the sole representative of male homosexuality on the show.
Jess having a secretary played by a trans actress and presumably also trans: also a welcome addendum, and in her matter-of-factness a great wry foil to everyone else.
Last season had most of the detecting being done by Malcolm and Trish, so I was really grateful this season gave Jessica ample opportunity to showcase how good she is at her profession of choice.
I think the show managed to walk a tightrope in terms of what it did with Dorothy Walker - at times comic relief, at times blight of Trish‘s childhood and Jessica’s „first bad guy“, but never less than real. Being an abusive parent and loving your child is sadly not mutually exclusive; hearing in this season that Dorothy herself was beaten by her husband didn‘t surprise me. And the flashbacks to Trish‘s childhood, showing the key moments in the creation of „Patsy“ by mother and daughter both, were devastating in their emotional power precisely because Dorothy wasn‘t a caricature in them. Incidentally, the last season paralleled Dorothy and Alisa at times; when Jessica comforted Trish after Dorothy‘s death, I was wainting for Trish to realise this, but no. (Which, sadly, at this point was ic.)
In terms of fanfiction: presumably the very last scene is meant to indicate Jessica will return to defy her inner Kilgrave voice telling her to give up, but given she just handed over Alias Investigation to Malcolm, a literal return to her office strikes me as anticlimactic. Actually I thought a road trip wouldn‘t be a bad idea for her (if anyone ever deserved a break...), but alternatively, I also could see her working with Matt, Foggy and Karen as their detective. And/or: Matt and Foggy decide to represent Trish as a way to take the entire „superpowered criminals get the Raft“ thing all the way to the Supreme Court. (Let‘s hope the Supreme Court in the Marvelverse is minus two posts filled by the Orange Menace with candidates and plus two different judges.) They win in that the Raft as currently used is declared illegal, but at the same time Trish still ends up in prison (just a normal one), because she is, without the shadow of a doubt, a murderer. (Given how brutally Matt beats up his villains, I can see him realising he just lucked out in terms of two of her kills being non-intentional on her part and empathizing on that score, but both Alisa and Salinger were very intentional and deliberated murders. If Jessica, Trish and Malcolm - who knows via Trish - keep silent on the Alisa murder, he still knows about Salinger.)
Also: this season finally pushed me into wanting Jessica/Jeri fanfiction, after previously occasionally going „hm“ but not really looking. Paradoxically, by the end of the season Jessica doesn‘t strike me as self loathing and self destructively enough anymore to start an actual affair with Jeri. But the occasional one night stand coming with ruthlessly honest dialogue and odd moments of mutual empathy? Sure. My scenario for this one would be a story set in during the five years between Infinity War and Endgame with half the population being snapped. Jeri‘s bound to survive the Snappening (and being frustrated by it - that would have been a painless, completely unexpected death, and of course she doesn‘t get it!) - and afterwards representing people claiming the fortune of snapped family members/friends (and then, if she‘s still alive, the other parties in the inevitable next lawsuit once the Snappening is undone). Jessica would try to find missing people in the immediate chaos of no one knowing who survived and who didn‘t, and be appalled to find out that of those who survive, Jeri might be the closed thing she has to a friend.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-16 06:20 pm (UTC)Instead, we got what we got, and I have to say, I'm devastated.
Also, I have spent the past two seasons hoping for a Luke Cage cameo and *that's* what we got? Yeah. After that conversation, I knew that Trish wasn't going to be redeemed at the last moment. And there was no chemistry at all, which they had like burning in s. 1.
I like the idea of Jess teaming up with Murdock & Nelson -- I hope you'll consider writing it.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 10:16 am (UTC)Jessica at Murdock & Nelson: mind you, I'll have to do research about US legal business, about which I know only what tv told me!
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 02:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 02:29 pm (UTC)There's a commentfic prompt set for JJ3 spoiler stories over on sholio's DW, if you're interested in contributing or just reading or suggesting. I just posted mine to AO3 as well: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19252591
And if you need advice on US law firms, well, I only practiced for three years before fleeing to another profession for which I was better suited, but I did used to be a lawyer. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 10:33 pm (UTC)Aww, that would have been lovely.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-17 10:47 pm (UTC)Yeah, I was....not happy about that, to put it mildly.
I think my biggest problem with the whole season wound up bein Sallinger -- like you say, he was such a typical total Brilliant Serial Killer cliche, and he also didn't have any real connection to the characters, other than Erik's blackmail. Killgrave and Alisa were both deeply connected to Jessica, and Dorothy's been there all three seasons as a foil/support/villain for Trish. (Both DeMornay and Moss gave spectacular performances as sympathetic but deeply flawed characters, I thought.) He was sort of connected to the series by Jeri, but I felt they did that better in the first season with her and Killgrave. His scenes felt like they went on FOREVER and I just did not find the actor that compelling. Tennant really made me feel the vulnerability and self-deception underneath Killgrave's exterior, but this actor was just bland. (I had the same problem with Erik, and for me, two misfires in casting secondary male parts having such a big effect on the season was kind of telling.)
There were some really great bits (Dorothy and Trish, a lot of Trish and Jess, Jeri, everything to do with Gillian). But for me it wound up feeling more like DD S2 (B plot that dragged terribly, not much actual resolution, muddy characterization) rather than DD S3 (resolution for all the characters, organic and earned ending, hard-won reconciliations). Which is a bummer.
no subject
Date: 2019-06-19 07:50 am (UTC)