Fair warning - there’s going to be more than one post with this particular topic. Why? Because I’m only on episode five. Yes, I know, I know, but I have to keep writing (and writing a lot) if I’m going to hit my deadlines, and I can’t just binge Netflix for a day straight.
…which doesn’t mean I don’t want to.
Alas, I had stuff to get done, so here I am only five episodes in, and for a spoiler free review, I want to acknowledge a few awesome parts.
I realized very early on that my perception of there being SO MANY WOMEN in the show was the 17% fallacy. After a little while looking at male characters and female, they really are about even on screen time and important roles. I just have a mental bias that sees it unevenly. And I think it’s pretty damn awesome that the show is challenging that.
There’s a quote I saw floating around Tumblr which said when you have an even amount of men and women, each individual man or woman doesn’t have to be representative of their gender. I think that’s pretty damn important to remember. It’s definitely something I try to emulate, though I didn’t see it put into words until Mad Max: Fury Road came out. I’m happy to see the trend continuing and the characters on Jessica Jones are fantastic.
I admit, I’m not a huge fan of some of the actors involved, but each of them have just blown me away. It’s nice to see David Tennant again, even if he’s being a horrible, terrible, nasty human being. The consistency of his behavior as a villain is really neat to see. I feel like too often a villain is immediately softened by showing that they actually care about children or puppies. Not so, with Kilgrave. Krysten Ritter, as always, is amazing in anything she does. (If you haven't seen "Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23" and you aren't averse to sitcoms with truly awful protagonists, get thee to Netflix with haste.)
Also, I admit, I’m glad they’re calling the villain Kilgrave, and not “The Purple Man” because sometimes things that work fine in comics just sound silly when you say them out loud.
More later, when I’ve watched the rest of the season…