Jessica Jones Season 1 Episode 10 - AKA 1,000 Cuts
Trigger Warning: The following post may touch on volatile topics such as rape, sexual abuse, PTSD, domestic abuse, divorce, murder, and suicide.
I am not an expert on any of these subjects, and I do not claim to be. If you are offended by anything I say, please let me know.
After cutting his cage’s failsafe wire, Hogarth gets told by Killgrave to take him to “someone [she] trusts” in order to tend to his wounds. This someone turns out to be Wendy, meaning the poor nurse gets even more roped into Hogarth’s maelstrom. Stuck, Wendy decides to talk about how badly she’s been treated in their marriage to Killgrave, asking how one goes about avenging a death by “1,000 Cuts.” Once the creep is all patched up, before he leaves, Killgrave tells Wendy to get her get her vengeance, cut, by cut, by cut.
A common complaint lodged towards Jessica Jones season 1 is that “it only has 9 episodes of story,” that the narrative of Jessica vs Kilgrave runs out of steam, that there are too many false stops when Jessica should have gotten Kilgrave under her control, going as far back as episode 5, and the season should have ended there. Personally, the story of a rape victim trying to both remain in control of their life while also trying to find a way to stop their abuser from hurting them anymore sounds like a story that doesn’t lend itself to a clean and easy narrative. Real life stories of fighting back against their abusers can feel drawn out past the point of caring, and damn near hopeless (for example, look at the lawsuit between Ke$ha and her former producer Dr. Luke, where for a time I had feared that her career would be over once the judge ruled against her). More often than not, these stories can feel like they were all for nothing, which feels like the point come this episode’s end, when after being released from prison by Kilgrave, Hope Shlottman opts to kill herself, which was foreshadowed as early as episode 2. This isn’t entirely all for nothing, though. While, yes, Jessica’s desire to free Hope from prison legally is shot down in a truly cruel way, Hope did what she did so that nothing would stop Jessica from killing Kilgrave and finally putting an end to him.
True, not every scene in the series has Jessica or Kilgrave, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not serving the story. A good example of that is Jessica’s occasional employer, Jeri Hogarth. Jer’s been present since the first episode, asking Jessica to serve that guy a subpoena, as well as having an affair with her secretary, Pam, while still married to Wendy. What I haven’t mention, and wasn’t brought up until the latter half of the season, was that Wendy pulled a number of shifts at the hospital to put Jeri through law school. In return, Jeri expressed her appreciation through distance, to the point of still taking business calls during their tenth anniversary. In addition, she avoided telling Wendy about the affair (in the second epiosde Pam tells Jeri that Wendy found out anyway), tries to take Pam to the same restaurant the she proposed to Wendy to before coincidentally bumping into the latter on said date, cashes the favor Jessica owes her for supplying Hope’s abortion pill by asking her to find dirt on Wendy so the divorce process turns in her favor, and then keeps Hope’s fetus in hopes of using it’s cells to try and replicate Kilgrave’s power. It’s now wonder, after Jessica’s failed attempt to make Wendy sign the papers, that Jeri’s wife promises to unleash all the dirt she has on her unless she gets 90% of Hogarth’s assets.
Basically, Jeri Hogarth would be boarderline unwatchable were she not played by Carrie-Anne Moss, exudes an authority, self-assuredness, and charm that a character like this needs. To her credit, she does appear to genuinely care for Pam, saying she wants to spend the rest of her life with her, and even proposes to her. Still, she is suspect the moment she starts talking about how good a man with Kilgrave’s skill set would be good for her law firm, clearly obsessed with winning than she is with actually being in the right. When experimenting with Hope’s fetus goes nowhere, she decides to cut the wire in Kilgrave’s cell that would have electrocuted him and saved his mother, before realizing what a horrible mistake she’s made and tries to run away. It’s too late though, since again, Kilgrave makes her take him to Wendy, and subsequently makes Wendy kill Jeri slowly. It’s only due to Pam’s intervention that Jeri is spared, with Wendy winding up dead and Pam getting arrested for her trouble.
Poor Pam. All this time she’s been portrayed as this sweet woman who happens to be a mistress, her patience with Jeri’s hands off as possible approach to the divorce slowly but surely eroding, as well as her temper cracking when Jeri lies to her face and Pam knows it. By the time she is in jail, she’s fully convinced that Jeri manipulated her into murdering Wendy, turning her into a criminal. Obviously, it never comes across that Jeri is that predictive, but it doesn’t matter because Pam is done with her, refusing to even let Jeri serve as her lawyer. Jeri’s journey throughout season one serves as a counterpoint to Kilgrave’s, showcasing how women are capable of being active abusers as well, ultimately serving the shows themes.
Conversely, there is a character in the show who does feel tacked on, doesn’t feel organic to the show, and who’s major point is to make things worse: Robyn. Robyn is the sister of Ruben, the man who Kilgrave killed in episode 6. Unlike Jessica, who the show takes so much care into showcasing her flaws to the point where I still watch the show despite her actions in episode 6, everytime she is on screen she is loud, shrill, and just unpleasant to listen to, constantly accusing Jessica of being a “cougar” because she talked to Ruben occasionally. At the very least, Pam had the line “I’m catholic,” which was used both to deliver background information as well as slyly letting Jeri know she won’t be buttered up so easily by an engagement ring, helping to create dimensionality for the character. Robyn does hang up posters looking for Ruben, but the attempt to make her come across as worrying for her safety are tinged by what it came before, making it feel like she just wants him in her site at all times (intent vs execution and all that) Both Ruben and Robyn just feel less like characters than they do plot devices, with Ruben’s biggest contribution to die, and Robyn’s biggest contribution being to LEAD THE KILGRAVE SURVIVORS IN A REVOLT ON JESSICA’S ROOM, FREEING A TIED UP KILGRAVE, AND ULTIMATELY RESULTING IN HOPE’S SUICIDE!!! Admittedly, the group was already getting antsy over Jesica not giving any updates on Kilgrave, but this still feels really tacked on.
It’s these series of events that makes me think the twins were added on in the last minute, since neither of them are mentioned or appear in either the pilot or the finale (Melissa Rosenberg, the showrunner, wrote the former and wrote the teleplay for the latter). What’s worse is that after checking the time code for each episode, AKA 1,000 Cuts is the shortest episode of season 1. When you take away the 80 second intro and the 2 minute credits, the episode is only 43 minutes long, and the rest of the episodes rest on an average of 50-55 minutes. Episode 12, Robyn’s last appearance, does a better job at humanizing her, but too little too late. If you don't want her to feel crowbarred in, add more time to give her backstory (how exactly do Ruben and Robyn afford to live in the same apartment as Jessica, exactly?) instead of giving Jessica a fantasy sequence of running away rom Kilgrave on a white horse (seriously), or make her more upset and blithering when she learns the truth of what happened to Ruben. As is, though, this is by default the worst episode of season 1, barely beating out the bottom because of AKA You’re a Winner.
Favorite part: To further prove how self-serving Kilgrave is, he talks about how, for one moment, there was a period where Jessica stayed with him of her own free will. Jessica proceeds to throw it in his face, that she tried to escape when she was left alone, only for Kilgrave to stop her and nearly cut her own ear off. Jessica still has the scar to prove it, too.
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