Dear Jessica Jones,
I won’t take up a lot of time here.
To the point: your entire season is premiering tomorrow (November 20th) on Netflix, and I thought I’d take a moment to exercise a few thoughts/hopes I have for you…
- Please be dark.
- Please be devastating.
- Please be sensitive.
- Please be smart.
More to the point:
Please give me the hard-drinking, hard-sexing, sarcastic, damaged heroine I’ve never really had — in the vein of all those classic embittered film noir men I’ve seen rendered in mucky grey over and over again.
Please give me David Tennant being deliciously evil.
And I mean Evil.
Please don’t make him an anti-hero who exists as the nuanced protagonist of his own tale (Vincent D’Onofrio already brilliantly covered that territory w/ Fisk in Daredevil).
Please don’t make him someone that needs to be explained.
But please don’t make him stupid…
Make him brilliant and petty and unexplained and chillingly ruthless.
Jessica Jones, you have a chance to give me (and all of us) the first real want-to-see-him-go-down-with-fiery-vengeance Marvel villain. Don’t blow it.
And finally — please please please give me a broad, diverse and interesting cast, where no character is treated with lazy token-ism gloves.
In this age of Peak TV*, my fuse for tolerating mediocrity seems to be shortening by the week. Frankly, I’m feeling more than a little burned. out.
Does that put an unfair expectation on you?
Probably. (And I honestly am sorry about that).
But it’s Peak TV in America, and it’s cutthroat.
HOWEVER…
I promise I want you to be good.
And hell — even if you are none of the above…
Even if you defy every one of my expectations and hopes…
Then please at least let it be in the service of something else good and worthwhile that I haven’t even considered yet.
Be even better.
Because — in the words of a classic superhero plea — I need you to be.
Sincerely,
Clarice
PS: Ohmygodcanwealljustwatchthattraileragain???
*The Linda Holmes’ NPR article is great, but here are a couple other reads on the discussion of “Peak TV” if anyone is interested: Alan Sepinwall for HitFix; Maureen Ryan for HuffPo; and this discussion had over at The Atlantic.