Jessica Jones - 'AKA It's Called Whisky'

"Secretly photographing someone isn't very... Oh; hang on."

We open this week with Jessica and Luke getting enthusiastically groinal, and suddenly the rather awkward sex scene from 'AKA Ladies' Night' clicks into place, because they are completely different together now that they're sure the other won't snap like a dry reed. Netflix is working to ratings, however, so their Man of Steel, Woman of Steel, World of Cardboard shenanigans are interrupted by Reuben from upstairs asking them to keep the noise down and then we jump cut to after and the two of them discussing powers. She admits that she used to do the hero thing, but the good she did is outweighed by the bad.

The A plot of the episode, more or less, is the continuing quest to prove Hope's innocence. Public opinion is against her, so Jessica persuades Trish to do a talk piece, but when Jeri converts this into an interview with Hope and then pushes an insanity plea, Trish goes off on an attack of Kilgrave which ends with him calling the studio to ask isn't it a bad idea to publicly insult a mind-controlling murderer? Sure enough, a cop swings by and tries to murder Trish while Jessica is seeking the surgical anesthaesia she believes will disable Kilgrave's powers.

She does this first by trying to coerce Jeri's wife, then by taking her addict friend to hospital after he mistakenly walks into Robyn and Reuben's flat and gets hit with a bowling trophy. She throws the almost unconscious Malcolm at a nurse in a palpable betrayal of trust to create a distraction, getting the drugs, but almost certainly losing a friend.

Thankfully, Trish is tougher than she looks - we establish this in a scene in which she is able to throw Jessica, and it is notable that Jessica doesn't push back and use her superior strength to try to frighten her into being more careful - and she is able to hold out until Jessica arrives. Jessica uses one of her anesthaetic shots to fake Trish's death and trigger the cop's programmed need to return to Kilgrave. Through this, she is able to track and almost confront her nemesis, but with a nice family set to kill her and the cop ordered to jump off a roof, he gets away.

In the B plot, Jessica's increasingly intense relationship with Luke - a later scene does for his bed what invoicing disputes did for her door - is cut off when she finds the photograph of his dead wife in his bathroom cupboard, not because she's his dead wife, but because Jessica killed her under Kilgrave's control, perhaps explaining her initial fascination with him.

'AKA It's Called Whisky' firmly establishes that if we're looking for a villain of the week show, we can fuck off. Even more than Daredevil, Jessica Jones is going story a season. And why not given the Netflix instant delivery model? It continues to be hardcore noir, with betrayal going hand in hand with loyalty; Jessica willing to sacrifice a friendship to catch Kilgrave, but not a mind-controlled cop's life. As with a lot of noir, it doesn't overflow with attractive characters, but makes it easier to take sides with its truly horrible villain.