The Flash Review: “Running to Stand Still”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, the midseason finale had some fireworks for us and it managed to entertain me throughout. That’s about all I can ask of an episode of the show, but I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed at this being the midseason finale.

The big villain teamup ended up being something of a secondary focus, and team Flash disarming the bombs made for a simple solution befitting a messy buildup. Mark Hamill as The Trickster was the DC small screen universe’s Diet Joker as always. Hamill is terrific on screen, but the character is barely distinguishable from Joker as it is. Captain Cold continued to be over the top and difficult to take, and may have even distracted from Hamill to some degree.

Patty’s story played out interestingly enough, but it was far too sudden a reveal to the audience for there to be a real payoff, though there was a nice bit of tension in Barry talking her down in the end. On that note, I really expected Barry to let her in on his identity, and much like it was with Iris, the longer he waits to do it, the stranger it’s going to feel.

Given that we were already told about Francine having a son, the big Wally West reveal in the end (I don’t see how that qualifies as a spoiler, but I’m sorry if you disagree), wasn’t the big cliffhanger I think the show wanted it to be.

The first half of the season is in the books now. The show continues to grow, and it’s been baseline good, but it’s still showing some cracks in the façade that I really expected to be gone by now.

Kyle’s Take

Yeah, none of the cliffhangers in “Running to Stand Still” worked as cliffhangers. I assumed Harrison Wells had been trading Zoom favors for a while, in an effort to keep his daughter safe, and the midseason finale only confirmed those suspicions. We also learned why Zoom didn’t kill Barry when he had the chance, but that’s a small thing and yet not as small as the villain team-up Jim mentioned earlier.

Weather Wizard was only a plot device to break Captain Cold out of prison (Cold has to be free prior to Legends of Tomorrow), while The Trickster cashed in on a Mark Hamill guest appearance a week and half before Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ release. I see what you did there, Flash. Sure, Hamill was The Trickster in the nineties Flash TV show, but the voice he uses in the current Flash is the one he used for the Joker in Batman: the Animated Series, so this comes off as The Flash wanting to cash in on two other popular franchises, because I didn’t hear chants in the streets of we need more Trickster. It’s as if the CW doesn’t believe in the Flash so it has to resort to cheap tricks. News flash: they don’t.

Captain Cold didn’t bother me as much as he bothered Jim from the sound of it. Maybe I’ve developed a touch of frostbite toward his overacting and I’m numb. The Patty story was okay. I liked Barry talking her down at the end of the episode, but her big reveal wasn’t just sudden, it was an expositional dialogue vomit and that’s not effective storytelling. No one spews that much backstory unless they’re on a couch and someone else is getting paid to listen. I also question the wisdom of Barry keeping his identity secret from Patty but for a different reason: Linda Park. Barry knew Iris his entire life, so he had to tell her, but why did he tell Linda Park his identity earlier this year? (I think he was duped into doing so.) Regardless, if Barry’s ex-girlfriend Linda knows, then his current girlfriend Patty should know.

I know it sounds like I hated The Flash this week, but it was a fun episode: lots of action. I just think “Running to Stand Still” was too apt a name for the midseason finale. The Flash has been running to stand still for most of this young season. I hope the second half gets off the blocks.

Want more Flash? Check out our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

iZombie Review: “Cape Town”

Kyle’s Review

iZombie’s mid-season finale had some fun. A zombie solving crimes is already a ridiculous premise, but “Cape Town” made plenty of tongue-in-cheek references to the CW’s other DC Comics TV shows when Liv dons a mask and spandex to fight crime. That’s right, iZombie presented Liv with the brains of a shop class, high school teacher by day, caped vigilante by night brain. The show could’ve gone the way of Liv building spice racks, but the obvious choice was Liv spouting justice one-liners and delivering monologues about Seattle’s dark underbelly. Seriously, I almost soiled myself with some of the one-liners. Per usual, the brains Liv is on for “Cape Town” worked, but I didn’t care for the expositional dialogue.

I’m not sure what iZombie’s viewership numbers look like, but the show must be getting a lot of newbies, since “Cape Town” hit pause two or three times to slather some backstory. Blaine introduced himself, which was odd, and then he spent five minutes recapping what happened to him in the first season. As if that wasn’t enough, Major did a similar thing with his would be zombie victim. He decides not to kill her and then vents his spleen for about five minutes, bemoaning his lousy year (everything that happened to him this season). What makes Major’s scene even more problematic is that he chose to spare a zombie call girl, who had no family and was willing to take her own unlife, rather than saving the horde of loving zombie dads with young children he offed earlier this season. For those not in the know, in iZombie’s world, zombies are humans who just happen to like the taste of human brains. Somehow Major not giving two shakes about fathers with children who will miss them made him more of a monster. Still, I’m writing off these two exposition hangovers as the show gaining new viewers and giving those viewers context, but there had to be a better way to do this.

Despite hitting rewind a few times, “Cape Town” made plenty of strides forward. I liked how Blaine is working behind the scenes in both the zombie world, which puts him at odds with Max Rager’s CEO, and that he has a man on the inside of Seattle’s largest organized crime syndicate, which gets his grubby fingers in Mr. Boss’s pie. I wasn’t sure how the show would stitch these characters together but I’m glad Blaine, a character who is trying to become a big bad, is the show’s touchstone between two current big bads. iZombie could have a large falling out at the end of this season and still have enough threads for next season, while developing a through line for the entire series. Even with all this going on in the background, we saw plenty of change with iZombie’s various interpersonal relationships.

I still don’t know if Major and Liv are supposed to end up together. Romance may be in iZombie’s air but the show does a decent job of not gagging its viewers with it. Major and Liv aren’t Ross and Rachel (Friends) or Penny and Leonard (Big Bang Theory). You didn’t see Major and Liv for the first time and know they were going to be together for a significant period of time. This separates iZombie from many other shows that hook up two of its main characters. Liv and Major keep things from one another, so their history of deception also leads to the conclusion they can’t end up together, but the best thing iZombie added was Liv questioning how much the brains she eats affect her personality. She knew Major was lying to her and the suspicious brains she ate last week gave her a push in not trusting him, and the only thing she likes about being a zombie is that she can help people and solve crimes, and this week’s vigilante brains had her taking a more active role in crime fighting.

I won’t say any more and risk giving away spoilers, but let’s just say iZombie continues to trend in the right direction, and the bombshells dropped at the end of “Cape Town” should keep interest high during the holidays.

Thanks for reading.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review: “Maveth”

Kyle’s Review

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s mid-season finale “Maveth” had some good moments but fell flat. Even though I didn’t think the show could continue its lightning pace through the mid-season finale, I was hoping they would maintain some momentum and I guess Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. did, but several of the ongoing threads got tied up too neatly for my taste.

I’ll try to continue this review without giving away too many spoilers but consider this a warning: there may be a few. I was disappointed in how the Ward story was resolved: he won’t be around anymore in spirit and yet we haven’t seen the last of him. The Fitz-Simmons-Daniels love triangle was managed well this year but (spoiler) with Will Daniels dead, it frees up Fitz and Simmons to get together. I’m sure Simmons will struggle with Will’s death and I might have to cry foul if Coulson tells Simmons that Fitz killed Daniels; he wasn’t Daniels anymore. I don’t care if Fitz and Simmons end up together but Coulson breaking them up over a misunderstanding would be a little hard to take.

I didn’t care for the foreign planet’s name Maveth. It’s not a bad name; I just wanted to see Ego. But “It” is a bad name. You couldn’t come up with a better name than It, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Maybe the second half of this year’s super monsters will receive a more suitable name when Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. returns. Speaking of super monsters, Lash returned and that’s a good thing. Something tells me Agent May will be more than willing to pull the trigger on her ex-husband again. While that fits with her character, I’d like her to struggle with the decision more. I’m not sure if Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will fit that into the narrative. Lash is an engaging character with ties to S.H.I.E.L.D. and he serves as a good counter-balance to It and Hydra.

The plottiness of “Maveth” prevented a lot of significant growth for many of the show’s characters—and much of the dialogue felt forced because the cast had to get through it and get on to the next scene—but Mack shined despite the writers squeezing as much as they could. Not only did he take charge, he had a subtle moment with Skye (Quake/Daisy) and this moment could bloom into a struggle among Skye, Mack, and Lincoln. I’m not saying this struggle will be a love triangle, nor am I advocating one, but so many arcs were lost in this episode (Coulson and Ward, no more Hydra power struggles, the Fitz-Simmons-Daniels love triangle, and we said goodbye to the planet Maveth) that we had to gain a couple in return. Many of the storylines that got wrapped up outlived their usefulness and I was glad to see them go, but there’s still another half to the season and that was a lot for one episode.

I enjoyed “Maveth,” in spite of its plottiness, and there are enough logs in the fireplace to keep Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. warm during its winter break.

Thanks for reading.

Grimm Review: “Rat King”

Kyle’s Review

“Rat King” picked up where “Maiden Quest” left off, but that meant that Grimm had to slog through a lot of plot and the titular Rat King didn’t get nearly as much air time as it needed. I mentioned Trubel walking into Nick’s fortress in my last review and the fact she’s there brings up one big question that doesn’t get answered. Nick’s home is supposed to be a secret, so how does Trubel (and the people she’s with) know where it is?

We spend most of “Rat King” exploring the intricate web Grimm is spinning between two factions (or among a half dozen wesen factions because we don’t know how many there are), but for every nugget they give us, the new information breeds five to ten more questions. At first it looked like the show had a plan for this season and we didn’t know what the plan was (I hope that’s still the case), but the more Grimm adds to this web, the more the web appears false. I like something happening in the background but I want an idea of what’s going on. Grimm is opaque for the purpose of being opaque.

I also tend to disregard the weekly wesen. Most of the time Grimm has decent small fires Nick and company have to put out, and these weekly wesen serve as a distraction to the longer story arcs, but we spent so much time on the ever growing, ongoing plots to the point that we didn’t see any progression in the Rat King story until two-thirds into the episode. That’s a shame because the little we saw of the “Rat King” was enough to leave me wanting more.

In fact, I wanted to physically see more of the Rat King. According to Grimm, the rat people merge into one big rat beast whenever they feel threatened, and that’s an interesting concept, since the rat people get harassed by another set of wesen early in the episode and turn the tables on their aggressors by the end of the episode, but while we saw a twenty foot rat beast, I was disappointed we didn’t see any of the merging sequence. I get that Grimm has a budget but even if the show didn’t have the money to show us the rat folk assembling Voltron, they could’ve handled the scene better. It doesn’t make sense for the rat people to run into their hovel and suddenly emerge as the fully formed Rat King. In what space did they transform? There isn’t a twenty-foot entrance to their hobbit hole and their hole didn’t explode. I know this is a small gripe, but there were moments where our point of view was obscured and the Rat King meld could’ve occurred outside the line of sight.

Still, I liked the Rat King story; I wanted more. This was a rare case of the ongoing plots getting in the way of the weekly story. Grimm usually does a good job of integrating the weekly wesen into the ongoing plots (“Lost Boys” is a good example from earlier this year) or they sprinkle in some plot within the self-contained story, but neither of those things happened in “Rat King” and both the weekly story and the ongoing plots suffered. I have hope Grimm will turn it around. Despite this minor setback, Grimm’s fifth season remains a strong one.

Arrow Review: “Legends of Yesterday”

Jim’s Thoughts

Well, part two of the big crossover event gave us the big kaboom at the end of the long fuse. My big complaint with part one, of course, was the slow setup, but I’d say the finale paid off in a way that was mostly worthwhile.

The flashbacks to ancient Egypt were more than a little hokey and stiff, but they weren’t allowed to dominate the episode, so they can be forgiven without too much effort.

The confrontation with Vandal Savage didn’t quite live up to what I’d hoped for. In the end, it really just felt like a pep talk and a few technical tweaks shouldn’t have made quite as much difference as they did. In short, it came off as oversimplified.

The development with Oliver and his son struck an effective emotional chord. Stephen Amell really flashed some acting chops in those scenes, and I think he’s shown some real development in his performance over the last few seasons.

On the Ollie and his son story, I have to say his decision to not tell Felicity seems odd, as is the insistence on the boy’s mother’s part that no one know. I get her not wanting her son involved with Oliver, but I feel the need for absolute strict secrecy needs to be better explained.

With that said, the show is running the risk of the audience turning on Oliver. He’s apparently regressing in his pledge to let people in, and that will frustrate some viewers. I’ll admit, if this ends his relationship with Felicity, I won’t be too upset by that myself.

All in all, this was a pretty strong crossover. The second part was stronger than the first, so I’d like to see pacing worked on for the next one, but it held my attention and made me glad to watch.

Kyle’s Take

I’m still not sure whether or not I ate the second half of a Kit-Kat. “Legends of Yesterday” had a lot of flair—as most superhero crossovers do—but I’m not sure we gained much for either series except at the very end. I won’t spoil the ending but what happens could have repercussions and there’s an opportunity for Arrow to develop next season. The Flash didn’t fare nearly as well. Velocity 6, the only thing truly gained for The Flash, developed outside the crossover.

I agree with Jim and liked Ollie’s father-son scenes (Amell was great), but Arrow set up Ollie visiting his son every time he’s in Central City, which will be every time his show crosses over with The Flash’s, so him not telling Felicity about William isn’t that odd because he’s not going to be a father for his son. Who cares if you share genetic material if you won’t be there for the child? Arrow put a fine point on it: he’s in Star City now. And you can’t be a father to a young child from thousands of miles away no matter how much Facebook, Twitter, and Skype would like to disagree.

I’m not quite sold on the explanation Arrow gave for William’s mother wanting to protect him from Ollie. I get why she wouldn’t want Ollie around, but the secrecy thing is odd when she gives him visitation rights. I guess she’s worried she’d lose control of the situation if the truth got out—that can be a huge motivation for a parent—but Arrow could’ve made that more explicit.

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t be hard on a crossover (see first paragraph: nothing gained for either established series), but this was the coming out party of two prominent heroes in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, and Hawkman and Hawkgirl got the shaft as much as The Flash and Green Arrow. Really? You’re going to waste time in Arrow and The Flash with Legends of Tomorrow backstory only to short shrift the two biggest members of Legends who didn’t get a full season of prep time? Arrow could’ve had Hawkman searching for Hawkgirl in the show or shows preceding this one in a semi-nod to Ghostbusters. I am the keymaster. Are you the gatekeeper? But no, Hawkman literally fell from the sky during the first half of this crossover, and both Hawkman and Hawkgirl got the Cliff Notes version to their origin. The ending was too easy as well and showcased why time-travel can be overpowered and overused (see last year’s reviews: bringing people back from the dead). All of this led to storytelling as substantial as the air between Kit-Kat wafers, but man, it was a lot of fun.

I’ll return to the father-son storyline, which was the strongest part of either episode, and pose an idea as to why it was the most effective part of the story. People can’t comprehend the end of the world no matter how much we envision it. We can’t fathom the universe ceasing to exist. We can’t even wrap our small brains around a force that could destroy a city in an instant. But we know of fathers and sons.

I hope I’m wrong and we see more of William between crossovers.

Do you want more Arrow? Check out our Arrow secrets page here. Thanks for reading.

The Flash Review: “Legends of Today”

Jim’s Thoughts

There was a lot to like with part one of the big Arrow/Flash crossover. The characters have definitely built a good chemistry, and it shows in their scenes together, even if the dialogue gets a little forced.

One of the big problems with these crossover events is they ask us to suspend disbelief a little more than usual. Case and point, if you followed my live tweets of the episode, I really didn’t understand why Barry wouldn’t have knocked out Damien Darhk and done team Arrow a huge favor. Instead of just pulling Oliver out of the fight, Barry could have won it for him. That’s the issue. These crossover episodes seem to invent new, temporary problems for the teams to focus on, rather than letting their respective storylines meet organically. Arrow has been dealing with Darhk, Flash with Zoom, but what we got was Vandal Savage.

Vandal Savage can be a great villain in the DC universe, but he was sprung on the audience without buildup, just to give the two teams a common enemy. The result of that is these crossovers are just holding patterns for the shows. They don’t really advance one story or the other, and my chief complaint with part one of the crossover is that it felt like a holding pattern within a holding pattern. The episode concerned itself more with squeezing as many cast members onto the screen as possible, leaving all the plot progress for tomorrow night’s follow-up.

Arrow/Flash came out as sort of a candy bar of a TV show. It didn’t do anything for me, but I enjoyed it while it was happening.

Kyle’s Take

“Legends of Today” had nothing but empty calories. I ate the candy bar, had fun while doing so, and I’m not convinced if I was eating a solo candy bar or one half of a Kit-Kat. Flash and Arrow took a break from their regularly scheduled villains, and that’s okay, but the scenarios are contrived and waste good DC characters. Okay, Rainbow Raider wasn’t that good of a villain last season, but Vandal Savage deserved better.

I’d also like to see the two shows meet organically but hey, at least we got another episode of nothing but Legends of Tomorrow build up. That’s the golden ticket in the candy bar nobody wants. You did catch the episode’s name: “Legends of Today.” At least they’re preparing for tomorrow today. Nudge-nudge. Wink-wink.

Despite these two major drawbacks, “Legends of Today” did introduce a couple of elements that could shake up both shows, and both elements came in odd places. Velocity 6, the serum Wells and Snow created, should factor into the season’s arc in some capacity, and Ollie learned he might be a baby-daddy. That last element could—and should—show up during the second half of this year’s Arrow-Flash crossover, but both shows have shown they can develop amnesia any given week. Based on “Legends of Today,” I’m not sure anything besides new side stories will come from this year’s crossover, but I’ll have fun as I watch.

Want more Flash? Head over to our Flash secrets page. Thanks for reading.

iZombie review: “The Hurt Stalker”

Kyle’s Review

I’m not sure whether iZombie wants me to root for Major and Liv or not; perhaps no show should force you to root for any couple. If that’s the case, “The Hurt Stalker” torpedoes Major and Liv’s relationship. This week’s episode takes iZombie’s trend of getting Liv on a brain just long enough to further the character and give her the push she needs in the right direction. We knew Liv would discover Major’s secret (he’s Seattle’s zombie killer) and I figured Liv would encounter a brain that would lead her there but I’m not sure if Liv knows anything definitive. What we do know is there’s trouble in paradise. Liv was on swimfan—or obsessed stalker—brains during the “The Hurt Stalker,” and that got her suspicious of Major but all she unearthed was him sleeping with another woman (presumably while they weren’t together), so his zombie killer identity could still be safe, for now, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

I’ve lost count of how many villains iZombie’s working into its second season. Major (sort of), the Barber, the head of Max Rager, and old reliable Blaine are all good choices for the big bad villain of the season, but iZombie isn’t as transparent as the other DC Comics shows (Flash and Arrow) when revealing who the season’s arch villain is and that’s enjoyable but it makes the show overloaded at the same time. I suspect Major will be outed by iZombie’s mid-season and the events during “The Hurt Stalker” could lead toward that and I’d be okay with a little clarity.

Still, iZombie fills its episodes with plenty of chuckles and surprises, so the unknown super villain fits. The most pleasant surprises this week belong to Detective Babineaux. I never realized, until “The Hurt Stalker,” how little Liv and Ravi know about Babineaux. Since he’s blamed for this week’s murder, the other two pry into his personal life. Apparently, Babineaux is A Song of Ice and Fire fan and when Ravi pondered, “I wonder what George R. R. Martin is doing right now,” Babineaux’s response—he’s a hard-boiled detective grunting about Martin’s lack of productivity—was priceless.

iZombie started with a heap of tropes but they’ve twisted these tropes into something fun, but with all the groundwork iZombie has made this year, I’d like some hint of what the payoff might be. The show has time and I trust they’ll give us another good cliffhanger by mid-season as well as the finale.

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. review: “Closure”

Kyle’s Review

“Closure” began with a cinematic opening that included Rosalyn’s death, and it didn’t take long before this week’s episode of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. resembled the animated Transformers movie. Nothing ties up loose ends faster than offing half of the characters introduced this season. Rosalyn’s death eliminated any thoughts she was a mole. Some may have thought she was a turncoat but I never questioned her loyalty: double crossing has been overdone on this show and she hounded Coulson because she thought he and his team worked for Hydra.

The increased body count wasn’t a bad thing. Rosalyn’s death gave Coulson the impetus to go after Ward, Hydra’s two sides (Ward and Malick) have joined forces, Fitz and Simmons’ story finished integrating with the Hydra/S.H.I.E.L.D. story, and we’re headed for a showdown on the strange alien planet we met earlier this year. We even saw Daisy (Skye/Quake) form her super team, sort of. Even the folks who weren’t featured in “Closure” had some nice moments: May’s pep talk with Mack, and Hunter apologizing for his failure of not killing Ward.

All things considered, “Closure” made some huge strides. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had its share of bombshells this season, but we received some nice pay off here. My only concern is that we still have another episode before the mid-season break and the last two episodes would’ve made good places to pause the series. Even though it falls way short, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is giving us its best Breaking Bad impression. I hope it can keep building its characters and continue its never-ending cliffhangers—at least for one more week.

Blindspot Review: “Evil Handmade Instrument”

Kyle’s Review

By focusing on a secondary character and hashing out some of last week’s issues, “Evil Handmade Instrument” started off like a filler episode, even though it was Blindspot’s fall finale, and then everything got turned upside down in the episode’s finale fifteen minutes. (Some spoilers are ahead; you’ve been warned.) In fact, the change was so drastic I did a double take when Jane got kidnapped. I had another one when the corrupt NSA big wig gets shot. And that’s before Jane finds out she’s the one who ordered her own mind wipe.

The above events would’ve been a lot for a full forty minutes but all this happened in the final fifteen minutes. To say “Evil Handmade Instrument” was uneven is an understatement because the prior twenty-five minutes or so dragged. Don’t get me wrong. I like the Patterson character but her backstory felt forced and I can see it as a means of approximating Jane’s past with Patterson’s, even though the two characters couldn’t be any more different. Then, you add the week’s villains, sleeper spies, and their tough luck backstories and you were forced to draw comparisons between Jane and the sleeper spies. These obvious plot devices are where “Evil Handmade Instrument” fell short. I could see the devices Blindspot were using and I wanted them to make like Monty Python and get on with it. Fortunately, they did in the final fifteen minutes.

I had the benefit of Hulu, so I could rewind. I could only imagine how lost someone would’ve been watching “Evil Handmade Instrument” in real time. Tons of live tweeters echoed “What!” at three or four instances, and those moments make Blindspot’s three month hiatus a break of beautiful speculation.

Jessica Jones Season One Review

Jim’s Review

With movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant Man, Marvel has shown it can flex its muscles with even its little known characters. The first season of Jessica Jones does perhaps even more to prove that point, even if perhaps not quite as successfully as some may have hoped.

One tool Marvel has used to sell some of its lower profile characters is humor. Of course, much of their fan-base has been critical of that tactic, but I don’t think there’s much room to question that it’s made certain projects more appealing to broader audiences. There’s some humor in Jessica Jones. It’s mostly sarcasm intended to show Jessica’s acerbic personality, though, and the show really doesn’t lean on it to entertain the audience. It comes through again when certain cast members are meant to portray caricatures of archetypal nosy or sanctimonious neighbors, but even here, it doesn’t seem to be trying for laugh-out-loud moments.

As I noted in my first impressions of episode one, the show leaned heavily on hard-boiled detective clichés, and while that became less of an issue as the season progressed, it never really went away. It seemed whenever the plot needed it, Jessica could pull a classic move like pickpocketing or planting a GPS on some unsuspecting baddie.

On the subject of Jessica’s powers, I’m glad the show didn’t feel the need to weigh itself down devoting much screen time to her origin story. We get it in flashbacks as so many shows are wont to do these days, but it’s a much more efficient way to move forward. On the other side of that, I couldn’t help but furrow a brow at some of the inconsistency in her powers. As Kyle and I have both made clear, any time you deal with comics and superheroes, you have to be willing to suspend disbelief, and that’s fine, but Jessica often seemed too breakable to me. Common sense tells us that a woman who can jump ridiculously high in the air and come down uninjured must have a heightened level of durability, but we see her cut and bruised so often that I found myself forgetting that. I think she was shown as more vulnerable to add tension, and to avoid giving her too much overlap with Luke Cage, but it wasn’t until the show was in the home-stretch that Jessica reminded us that she heals faster than most, and by that time, it came off as a detail forced into the story.

Kilgrave worked well as the main villain of season one. Tennant’s performance was solid, a good mix of creepy, horrifying, and charismatic, but without giving spoilers, I wanted his undoing (that’s not a spoiler. Did you really think he was going to win?) to be a little more than it was.

Ritter did well as Jessica Jones. The snarky, disaffected personality is something we’ve seen her play before, but when we see her portray the fear and trauma Jones carries, I think Ritter gets a chance to show her chops.

All things considered, I don’t think Jessica Jones was as well done as Daredevil, but Marvel set out to expand their universe, capitalize on some of their lesser known names, and give a female hero a leading role, and they succeeded with all of that. I don’t know that I would feel compelled to rewatch season one, but season one was absolutely good enough to buy my interest in season two.