Jess and Trish are standing on a secluded beach near a disused fairground throwing Will’s body out to sea. Jess talks about how her family used to vacation here, and at her lowest points she used to think about coming back here to off herself knowing no one would find a body here. Trish is sad that she ever thought about doing that but Jess reminds her she’s still here. Wipe go to wipe down and ditch the car Will most likely stole and Trish decides she wants to keep the small arsenal of guns Will had in the back knowing what’s after her. Jess says she needs to figure a way to claw more memories about what was done to her out of her brain since her past is killing people now. Trish has an idea.
Jess is laying back on a couch as a hypnotist attempts to put her in a state. Jess is reluctant to relax and go with it, having a bad history with shrinks. She tries to relax but she doesn’t have a “safe place” to think about. Trish encourages her to talk about what she’s already remembered, but Jess just isn’t having it. As they leave they run into Griffin, who is understandably miffed at Trish vanishing overnight. Jess leaves so they can talk.
Jeri’s partners are trying to convince her to take a buyout severance to save the firm from her bad publicity. Lynda is her usual (insert rude expitive here) self. They hint at knowing she has a health issue and Lynda slutshames her like a complete twat. Jeri refuses to accept any forced retirement or buyouts, insisting her dying is the only way they’ll be rid of her and that’s still a long way away. They tell her she better think about accepting their generous severance package or else they’ll force her out, and they leave her fuming in her office.
Jess arrives home in time for Malcolm to show her the eviction notice the new super dropped off. He asks if she connected with Trish and Jess handwaves it as Trish just missing a few calls. She storms down to the super to ask him what the hell and the smug douchebag, who as a Latino man show ABSO-EFFING-LUTEKY know better, pulls the “you’re not a protected class so I can be a bigoted shit to you all I like and I convinced the landlord to back me up so haw haw fuck you be out in 30 days” that I guarantee he’d raise hell over if someone tried it on him. (Can you tell I REALLY hate hypocrites?)
Griffin and Trish are having a fight about the risks she took last night, as he was worried sick. He tells her that his “unstable ex” who left him while he was overseas covering the war in Iraq wasn’t actually unstable. She was just tired of being the girl left behind to worry. He says he understands that now because last night HE was that person. He asks Trish if she’s a target and she lies to his face and says no, but she also says until this is over he’d be safer if he stayed away for awhile.
Foggy enters Jeri’s office with the partners’ severance package and tries to convince her to fight it. She dumps on him for caring and treats him like crap. He tries to tell her no one should go through this alone. She says she’ll be happy to try. And they STILL haven’t actually said what the diagnosis is.
Jess is monologuing about death and things that are worse as she puts together a whiteboard of facts and clues for her investigation. She lays down to sleep, and later apparently wakes up with an IV in her arm. She stumbles around her apartment until she’s attacked by the Meat Face Man from her spotty memories and then wakes up. Malcolm arrives to distract her from her nightmare by presenting her with proof that Garcia has a past, showing her his criminal record for fraud and cheque forging. He wonders how she knew he had a past and she points out how skittish the cops made him. He then wonders why the Landlord replaced Alfredo with Garcia. Jess asks who Alfredo was, and Malcolm explains he was the old super, a nice old man whose wife made everyone empinadas on Sundays. They surmise Garcia must have something on the Landlord. She sends Malcolm to talk to the landlord. After he leaves she spots something on her whiteboard and leaves.
She goes back to the abandoned IGH hospital facility, which oddly has working lighting now, and looks around the room she remembers being tortured in. She finds some writing on wall that leads her to look for a Dr. Leslie Hanson, but she finds that the last 20 years of Hanson’s life has been completely erased even from the internet. Trish talks about her fight with Griffin. Jess admits she looked into him and found him to be an actually decent human being. Trish is floored.
Jess managed to find an address for Hanson despite her life being erased, and she and Trish break in to look around. The apartment is too clean, barely looking lived in. The landlord of Hanson’s building enters to inform them the apartment’s been rented and the lady that was there moved out a week ago. He says she stored some boxes in the basement, so they go down to look. They smell something moldy and find the boxes had been burned and doused. When they check to see if anything usable is left, a burnt skull rolls out. They wonder if it’s Hanson’s.
Malcolm meets with the landlord to talk about Garcia. The landlord is gay and thinks Jess sent Malcolm to sway him with hotness, and shuts the door in Malcolm’s face, siding with Garcia. Jess meanwhile is at a city morgue to meet a coroner named Maury. Or so her internal monologue says. Instead she hacks his pc looking for something while Trish plays lookout. Trish goes to talk to Maury himself and bribes him with fancy restaurant reservations, and we realize what Jess was up to as Trish asks him to look at the “case that came in last night”. Jess hacked the head into the system.
Malcolm is pissed that Jess sent him to the landlord as beefcake. He fills her in on the Landlord’s “Cambodian boyfriend”. Jess gets an idea and clogs the toilet with tampons as an excuse to get Garcia into her apartment. While he fixes the toilet, she goes down to search HIS apartment, but finds his son awake. She distracts him with superhero stuff and searches the places while the kid rambles about Captain America. When Garcia comes back, she calls him on forging a passport for the landlord’s boyfriend. He dares her to prove it. She leaves after he points out she probably has no one in her life who matters to her as much as his son does to him.
Trish is listening to some surveillance audio when Griffin comes by with stuff to cook dinner wit and catches her off guard, getting himself flipped onto his ass for his troubles. They talk and Trish admits she’s in over her head. He tells her as a reporter hunting a story that’s a good place to be.
Jess wakes up on her floor as someone knocks on her door. It’s Jeri, offering her the complaint from Cheng that could become a lawsuit. She rips it up and asks Jess for 5 minutes of her time. Jess doesn’t want to work for her again, but gives Jeri the 5 minutes. Jeri wants her help finding leverage to prevent her partners from forcing her out via the medical clause. She finally tells us what the diagnoses was. She has ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Technically because of this medical issues clause, (which was what Foggy was so pissed about earlier), it’s perfectly legal, however skeevy, for her partners to force her out. She admits she was actually tempted to take the severance package and die on a tropical island making love to beautiful women, but given the last years of her life will be a horror show, she wants to go out on her own terms.
Trish is on air bullshitting about doing a series on the unsung heroes of medicine so she can get people to call in about Dr. Hanson. Hanson herself calls in, and is apparently NOT the moldy burnt skull. Hanson wants to meet and talk. Jess thinks she’s walking into a trap, but Trish is dead set on the meeting. Jess hot-tips TMZ that Trish and Griffin are on the outs to guarantee too much paparazzi at Trish’s door for her to go anywhere to force her to skip the meet, then calls Malcolm to also come watch her. Jess goes to the meet instead. Hanson is less than enthused about meeting Jess instead, but knows better than to stand up to her. Hanson wanted to tell Trish the truth, and Jess asks her about IGH. Hanson thinks IGH were good people who saved Jess’ life. She sets her straight about how messed up the experiments were.
Malcolm arrives at Trish’s place. Trish is less than amused. She answers the phone and tells her publicist to make the TMZ bs go away so she can leave the apartment. Another few calls and Maury calls. THE PLOT SICKENS! The crispy skull WAS Hanson, so who is Jess meeting? Trish tries to call Jess and gets voicemail. She asks Malcolm to help her get past the paparazzi so she can go get Jess. Fake Hanson is raving about how wonderful the IGH experiments were and how Jess would be dead otherwise, and how superpowers were just a side effect of the treatments interacting with “certain DNA”, (Read; Inhuman DNA). Jess says they should have let her die with her family. Fake Hanson goes aggro, calling her an ungrateful bitch, and Jess decides that if she did survive for a reason it was to make sure they never do to anyone else what they did to her. Fake Hanson hulks out and throws Jess through a booth. Jess returns the favour throwing her into a wall. She asks Hanson who she really is but fake Hanson bolts. Jess runs into Trish and Malcolm outside as paparazzi take pictures, assuming Trish and Malcolm are a thing, and someone who is probably NOT papo takes photos of the trio from farther back as Fake Hanson escapes in the confusion.
End of episode. See you tomorrow for episode 4!
