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Jessica Jones Recap: Tell Me Something, Boy

Jessica Jones

AKA Hero Pants
Season 3 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 3 stars

Jessica Jones

AKA Hero Pants
Season 3 Episode 10
Editor’s Rating 3 stars
Photo: David Giesbrecht/Netflix

“My adoptive mother was just murdered and I’m supposed to be at the mortuary, but don’t let that stop you,” Jess tells the homicide detectives doing a very aggressive search of her apartment and office. “What are they looking for, the Lindbergh baby?”

Jess, alas, has no alibi, and someone beat Officer Nussbaumer to death. “Your hands have been murder weapons before,” says one of these very rude cops. Jess’s knuckles are clean, but her desk does have a file in it that says “NUSSBAUMER” in big capital letters so, yikes. This officer is taking Nussbaumer’s death very personally because one of these teenage drug dealers was mean to her one time. They’re also not thrilled that Jess’s connection to Costa got Costa suspended.

At the funeral home, we learn Dorothy — forever the stage mom — left very specific instructions for her service, even selecting a playlist with a bunch of Trish’s songs on it. PLEASE tell me this means the return of “I Want Your Cray Cray,” the lamest bop that ever bopped! She also wants Trish to give a eulogy. Outside the funeral home, our two cops are on hand to harass Trish some more.

I love that we get to see how characters’ relationships with their abusers, or with people they know to be abusive, are complicated. Jess is clearly touched to find the camera Dorothy gave her as a 16th birthday gift, and to learn through Hogarth that Dorothy left two things to Jess in her will: “the remaining contents of my liquor cabinet” and an armchair Jess always sat in after school. There is still humanity and affection there, even though Jess knows Dorothy was an abusive, manipulative mother. (It’s weird though, given this understanding, that Trish has such a toddler-level grasp on what it means to be a good person or an evil one.)

Erik arrives at Alias to deny killing Nussbaumer. “I’m innocent. That’s my alibi.” Erik, that is … not how alibis work. When Erik splits, Malcolm shows up to tell Jess he’s ready to get his job back; his first assignment is to treat Erik as a suspect in the Nussbaumer murder. Malc tries to come clean about how he “did bad things” in Hogarthland, and Jess’s perfect response is, “If the new you is less of a sanctimonious asshole, then it’ll be an upgrade.” Turns out Nussbaumer’s badge is missing, which at least gives team Alias something to go on.

With the cops eyeing her front door, Jess sneaks out by jumping out of the window. (Really mixed reviews re: the caliber of police work in this alternate NYC.) She goes to Erik’s place and he’s all “do you want me to make my case again?” ERIK, YOU NEVER MADE A CASE. Jess tells Erik that Dorothy was abusive, “the first bad guy” she ever fought, and I wonder is there really time here for this romantic encounter? Then again, I’m very into Jess being so not into this make out that she does not even put down her glass of bourbon. Plus it turns out Jess was just honey-trapping this idiot so she could snoop while he was sleeping. Go Jess, go! She finds his stash of files — a to-do list of dirtbags to deal with in some extra-judicial fashion, one assumes. No Nussbaumer badge, though. She slips out while he is sleeping because she is the hero of my heart.

In other questionable hook-uppery decisions, Brianna is Berry no more, but she is looking for a place to crash and has no friends but Malcolm, a man she barely knows. “I won’t force any more blow jobs on you,” she promises, but as soon as she tells Malcolm that he is a good person, he kisses her, and I guess he just skips Dorothy’s funeral to have sex with her. I … do not buy any of this! But I do continue to condone these gratuitous shots of Eka Darville’s perfect abs.

And as long as we’re closing the loop on exes and such, a Kith update: This guy, Dmitri, who is not willing to settle in this case of Peter’s extortion, was an abusive prick who beat his wife. Kith is the person who helped the wife get out of that relationship, so Dmitri blames Kith for the dissolution of his marriage. Ah, a recurring Jessica Jones trope: men who treat women like shit. Jeri tells Trish that her leverage against Dmitri is his bad taxes, but getting access to them requires “coloring outside the lines.” Jeri and Trish have the same M.O.: Justify taking the law into their own hands when it suits them because they, and they alone, get to decide who is bad and who deserves what’s coming to them. At first Kith is horrified at this suggestion; later, when she thinks about leaving her son with no one when she gets hauled off to prison, she caves. Time to involve that “powered person” whose identity Jeri recently confirmed.

For the funeral, Jess changes into ripped black jeans and a blazer, to be respectful. Krysten Ritter gives a good alone-in-the-mirror cry, no? While she’s out, the police show up at Alias with a warrant for her arrest. As Trish gives that eulogy about how her mom thought wasting talent was a sin, we catch a glimpse of her hands: black and blue as the second-best Backstreet Boys album. Jess slips out of the service, into her hooded coat, and starts spying on … TRISH. But she gets interrupted by the police, who pull up out of nowhere to arrest her.

This means she misses those sounds of a struggle over at the Jace Montero trailer. Erik, though, can hear what’s going on inside. You don’t need a magic migraine to know that situation is no bueno.

Jessica Jones Recap: Tell Me Something, Boy