I went into watching Jessica Jones with huge excitement for a gritty take on a noir-ish private detective in with all the true hard-boiled darkness they could muster, but what we got was just a decent show. I felt it drug out a little too long, with boring subplots and what definitely seemed like at least a couple filler episodes. Had some of the extraneous material (see a lot of Hogarth's storyline) been cut this could've been a much tighter series. Daredevil had the same issue, it ran just a little too long.
The acting was great for the most part, Tennant's Killgrave was wonderful- much better than I had anticipated. Mike Colter as Luke Cage was pretty awesome, and Krystin Ritter was amazing in the lead. Though at times she should be held to account for all the damn deaths that she essentially helped while trying to bring Killgrave in alive. Honestly, all her failed attempts to bring him in allowed for a larger death toll than if she would've simply tried killing him a few times. Of course, the show would've been considerably shorter, but that could've been a good thing. It just seemed a bit weird that she wanted to do the responsible thing by doing irresponsible things.
In an attempt to prove that the show is still worth watching I have to point out that the supporting cast is superb. Colter's Cage makes us laugh, we want to cheer for Jone's best friend Trish, and through the course of the season we like, then hate, then really like Eka Darville as Jones' neighbor Malcolm. He is easily, without a doubt, the best reason to watch this show- his story arc is extremely relatable and meaningful, and as far as I'm concerned he shows more character growth than any two others on the show.
What the show did absolutely brilliantly was handle the awful relationship with Killgrave and his victims. He is a sociopath that doesn't give a shit about conquering the world or taking over a city or any of that insanely huge stuff, but rather he's just looking for someone to be with him "on his level" that he doesn't need to control. He wants someone, Jessica, to choose to be with him. A huge change over the vast majority of typical Marvel villains, and it was a very welcome change. He's a villain we hate for his actions and feel sorry for for how he became this way.
Overall, I thought Jessica Jones was good, but had plenty of room to be better. With the upcoming Daredevil season 2, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and the eventual Defenders series' we can only hope to see more of Jessica Jones in all her badass glory.
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