Remember back in 2015, when I reviewed every single dang episode of the first season of Jessica Jones? A couple years later, here I am up at The ARTery, compromising by reviewing just the first five episodes of the series’ new season, which is available for streaming on Netflix now. Bad news: It’s not as good as the first. Good news: It’s still good, but I think the loss of Kilgrave as an anchoring antagonistic force really throws the show off its rhythm. There’s a lot going on here, a lot, and a lot more to come based on revelations in the episodes I saw that are clearly going to pay off later on.
But Krysten Ritter was as much an anchor in season one as Kilgrave, and she’s an anchor here, too. The show is mostly about her; it occasionally cuts to people who are not her, and when it does, it occasionally grows a bit wobbly. I’m not sure “wobbly” is the same thing as “bad,” of course, but I know the pacing is going to get worse before it gets better. (Can we stop making these shows 13 episodes long per season? Please?) All the same, if you like Jessica Jones, you’re going to watch it, and you’re probably going to enjoy it, so you’ve probably already tuned me out. I could just make a bunch of fart jokes here and you’d never know.