Netflix & Marvel’s Jessica Jones Season 2 Recaps By Penny; Episode 10 – “AKA Pork Chop”

Columns, Reviews, Shows, Top Story, TV Shows

Alisa is in prison now, shackled and with no less than 5 HEAVILY armed prison guards escorting her with guns trained as they escort her to the visiting area. Jeri and Jess are there waiting. They tell her the deal she’s being offered; confess to every murder she’s committed to protect Jess, and tell the authorities where they can find Malus. If she complies, she can stay in THIS prison where Jess can visit her. Otherwise she’s going to the Raft, (where Cap and his side were sent in Civil War), because she’s superpowered and highly dangerous. Problem is Alisa is still highly stockholmed to Malus and refuses to give him up. Jess doesn’t take her decision well, but then if YOUR mother chose the monster who tortured and experimented on her over you, would YOU be happy?

Trish is at ZCN, (MCU version of CNN), for her interview. But since she’s out of Cap Puffer she’s tweaking and she completely botches it. She hears a news report about Alisa’s arrest and gets Jess on the phone. They meet up at Jess’ place with Malcolm and Jess fills them both in on everything that’s happened, who Alisa is, what happened with Malus, Cheng, Malcolm has recovered from the Cap Puffer but in his eyes he thinks of it as him relapsing and he’s not happy about it. He confronts Trish about it and she admits she kept using it but it’s empty now and she can’t replace it so he can lay off.She tries to do the typical “Everything is Peachy” addict thing with him but he KNOWS better and tells her they’re both addicts but as he’s the only one who can admit it or who wants to stay clean, they can’t be friends anymore. As he leaves Garcia reaches out to Jess to see if she needs anything.

Trish takes the Cap Puffer to a chemistry lab, hoping they can reverse engineer a new supply from whatever traces of the super soldier drug are left in it. After examining the chemical components the chemists refuse, saying they’ve identified the main active compound and tell her it’s something toxic with SERIOUSLY bad side-effects while we the audience all collectively scream “WELL DUH!!!” Trish is not happy.

Jess visits Jeri, who introduces her to Shane. She says Shane is helping cure her ALS and is proof that some good did come out of Karl’s work. She fears Jess plans to kill Karl and hopes meeting Shane would convince her not to. Jess then goes to visit Alisa, and as they talk surrounded by guards, Jess is able to glean where Malus is without tipping off the guards and leaves to go find him. After being returned to her cell one guard named Dale decides it’s his turn to play with the Idiot Ball and tries to force a super powered woman who has turned multiple human beings into unrecognizable piles of meat to eat her dinner. This goes about as well as you’d expect, but Alisa reins herself in and chooses to NOT kill him, instead just forcibly removing him from her cell.

Jess finds Malus and at first he’s afraid she’s going to kill him. Instead she makes him an offer; she’ll help him get out of the country so Alisa will be willing to cooperate with police and avoid the Raft. He agrees. As Jess starts taking photos of him for Garcia to make him a fake passport with, (personal aside; where is Garcia getting valid passport chips to put in his fakes? Most countries have them now and they ain’t cheap or easy to get), she asks him how many more of them has he created. How many more like her, Shane and her mom are there? Karl is confused, as he has no idea who Shane is and never had a young male patient who could heal people.

Trish visits Alisa at the prison and begs her to know where Karl is so she can get permanent powers like Jess that don’t require her to constantly take a toxic drug. Alisa reminds her that everyone she killed she killed because Trish was poking her nose into IGH and she killed those people to derail her. She also accuses Trish of not actually giving a shit about Jess at all, of just being envious of what Jess can do. She says now that she’s back in her daughter’s life, Trish will always come second on Jess’ priority list. When Trish goes to track Jess down she finds her at Garcia’s place, and they get into a pretty heated argument after Jess tells her she let Malus escape on purpose. Trish can’t let it go and swears she’ll find him before he leaves the country. Pissed off and upset, she goes to bang on Malcolm’s door, and despite him not wanting to be around her, he caves and she bangs HIM.

Dale the prison bully has had electric shackles installed for Alisa and for some reason they don’t really actually explain he’s completely obsessed with getting Alisa to eat a damned pork chop. Another case of bad writing here, as there really is ZERO reason offered for why this idiot guard is so hell bent on making a woman he has no connection to eat a pork product. He’s just a bully for the sake of having a bully to bully a dragon. It irks me. Anyway he’s using the shock shackles to outright electrotorture Alisa until she complies and just eats the damned pork chop already, even if he has to forcefeed it to her drooling vegetable living corpse if he shocks her enough. The torture is interrupted though as Alisa has visitors. Jess meets Jeri on her way out from seeing Alisa. Alisa agreed to the deal and will confess in court tomorrow. As they’re leaving Jess fills Jeri in on Shane NOT being one of Karl’s patients, meaning for whatever reason, Inez is lying to her and the kid has no healing powers, or if he does he didn’t get them from Malus. Jeri refuses to accept this. After Jeri leaves Jess goes to see her mom, and spots the burns on her wrists. It doesn’t take much for Jess to figure out the Obvious Token Bully is responsible.

Trish convinces Malcolm to help her find Malus, under the guise of being concerned that Jess isn’t thinking clearly letting him escape and that he needs to face justice for all he’s done. Malcolm stupidly buys this and checks Jess’ Cloud, where he finds her photos of Karl for the fake passport and gets a GPS tag on them from the metadata. He and Trish head off. Meanwhile Jeri gets home from prison to find out the hard way Jess was right; Inez and Shane are gone and they’ve cleaned her out. Robbed blind and realizing she still has ALS, Jeri breaks down.

Jess follows Dale the Prison Bully while digging into his life. She learns while trailing him that this is NOT his first prison job. He had apparently been tranferred here from his last job after there were a few too many suspicious suicides on his shifts. Malcolm and Trish meanwhile find the hotel Malus is staying in, and track down his room. As Malcolm digs through the trunk of the car for a weapon to defend them with, Trish coldcocks him and stuffs his unconscious body into it, and heads up to see Karl by herself. Back to Jess, she’s followed Dale home, and while she’s looking around trips his security alarm. As she’s trying to sneak out before he finds her there, she discovers he’s much worse than just a bullying guard; he’s a goddamned serial killer with his own little trophy museum of every woman he’s murdered in a prison. Which is right when she gets a faceful of mace and Dale starts whapping her with his baton, gleefully screaming about how easily he can play this off as self-defense. Like the idiot he is though, he has clearly forgotten he’s dealing with a woman who can benchpress cars, and Jess, once she regains her composure, gets the baton from him and whaps HIM once in the head. A little too hard perhaps though, as he immediately crumples to the floor, most likely dead.

End of episode. See you tomorrow for episode 11.

Penny is a now divorced intersexed disabled lesbian in BC Canada. She's been watching wrestling and reading comics since she was a kid, and knows her stuff. She lives with her pets and passes her free time writing, drawing, doing paid photoshop work (including logos done for Pulse's Own Mike Gojira), and is a part-time Queer model.