Jessica Jones season 2 episode 8 review: Mother daughter time gone wrong

When we last saw Jessica Jones she had learned that he mother was still alive, but also that she’s been running rampant around New York killing people. Not only that but she also was told that her mother (Alisa) was responsible for killing the love of her life (a man named Sterling) and even though he turned out to be a bit of a scum bag, it didn’t help Jessica forgive her mother for letting her think that it was all her fault all these years that he was dead. Add to that the fact that her mother let her think she was dead for 17 years and Jessica is pretty far from forgiving her.

Unfortunately that whole “Jessica running off and taking care of business herself without telling anyone where she is” thing that she likes to do has come back to bite her in the you-know-what. After telling her mother that she doesn’t forgive her, Dr. Karl drugged Jessica and that’s where we are starting off episode 8.

Can Jessica forgive?

When Jessica wakes up she’s chained to a bed while Dr. Karl tries to explain things. He tells Jessica that he’s not in control of Alisa, that she isn’t a prisoner at all and that he’s not sending her out to kill people. Dr. Karl says that she hadn’t had violent outbursts like this in ages and he didn’t know what she was doing to those people, to which Jessica calls BS. He tells her that Trish’s investigation was going to expose him (and Alisa would become a lab rat) so Alisa took it into her own hands while Dr. Karl turned a blind eye.

Dr. Karl convinces Jessica that she might be able to talk some sense into Alisa, and she reluctantly agrees but wants to be untied first. As soon as she’s untied she texts the address of where she is to the cops telling her that’s where the killer is. After the message is delivered, Alisa holds Jessica down, telling Dr. Karl to lock them in the room, take the money they’ve saved and go to their safe place.

Mother – daughter time

Once Karl is gone and the are locked in the strong room together waiting for the police to show up Jessica and Alisa have some time to catch up further. We learned that Alisa and Jessica’s father were unhappy and headed towards divorce at the time of the car accident. She gave up opportunities to advance her career, because he didn’t want to move so she stayed where she was and resented him for it. In return he hated her for making him feel inadequate. She tells Jessica that her brother Philip knew that they were having problems after walking in on the in the middle of a screaming match and that’s why he started acting out.

Learning that her storybook family was really a lie was a tough blow for Jessica, but giving her more understanding of what their family was really like and the toll it all took on her mother was enough for Jessica to decide that they needed to break out of this impenetrable room. Alisa says there’s no way out, but Jessica knows that she was escaping at night and eventually finds the way out before the cops show up.

Jessica doesn’t exactly know what she’s planning to do with her mother so for now she brings her back to her apartment. Things seem to be going fine until someone tries to shoot at them through the windows – Alisa goes crazy and runs out into the night to find them as Jessica tries to stop further murders from happening.

Hogarth searches for a cure

After learning about the healer that saved Inez, Hogarth is on the search for him (a man named Shane), but he’s in prison. She makes a trip to the penitentiary and gets a few moments to talk to him. She offers to be his lawyer to get him out of this situation and in exchange she wants to be healed. Once he touches her hand and starts to feel her sickness, he gets ill himself and calls for the guard to come and get him. She still gets his charges dropped to a misdemeanor and for the first time Hogarth feels hopeful, so she goes home to celebrate with Inez and they hook up as we all saw coming from the moment they met. We don’t expect this so turn into some long term relationship, but if anyone could give Hogarth the challenge she needs in a relationship to keep it interesting, Inez is that woman.

Meanwhile, Malcolm looks into Hogarth’s case further and thinks he may have found something to use against Hogarth’s partners. When he uncovers that one of the partners is living a closeted lifestyle behind his wife’s back, Malcolm goes to the club and starts planting some seeds of doubt. Malcolm tells him that he was hired to get this information to blackmail him with, but that he can’t do it. When he asks Malcolm who hired him he says that it’s the other partner – Linda Chow. This opens him up to telling Malcolm secrets about Linda that he couldn’t find on his own.

After getting beat up, Trish pushes her combat/healing drug on Malcolm, promising that it’s not addictive and we were honestly shocked to see him take it. He’s a smart guy who’s been clean a long time and the old “it’s not addictive, come one just take one hit” line seems like something Malcolm has heard many times in his life already. After he takes it he realizes that he’s made a mistake and tells Trish to stay away from him.

Related – Check out our Jessica Jones episode 9 review!

CarterMatt Verdict

This whole season has been about learning Jessica’s past and what makes her the stubborn, bitter, hard drinking, closed off person she is today and this episode brought more light to her upbringing – something we’ve never really had before. These past two episodes have really opened up a window into her past in a way that we haven’t seen on a lot of other Marvel shows in this universe, but with the fact that Jessica Jones has always been more about her and her demons more so then about any one bad guy, this works for us.

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