Hello, Friends from Work listeners. I'm Neil Sharnick, and this is Kyle Listen,

where I pitched to Kyle and to all of you, the Marvel Projects not yet discussed or explored on Friends from Work, typically content outside of the MCU, sometimes content that's growing increasingly MCU relevant.

Today, no suspense. Kyle Listen, it's time for you to watch Jessica Jones. By general acclamation,

2015's Jessica Jones, Season 1 is one of the best seasons Marvel Television aired on Netflix or

anywhere else. It's at 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, putting it behind only Daredevil seasons

one and three. There are many lists,

critics, and fans identifying this as the best of the Defenders saga, and there's a case to be

made. It's a really special project telling a superhero story as a mixture of classic film noir

PI story and supernatural Hitchcockian psychological thriller. As far as the quality

of the writing goes, the acting, all that, I have very few complaints. Any hesitancy I show just comes

from the fact that I find it all so effective, so affecting. I've started a rewatch several times

because the show's great, but until

now, when I had a specific reason to suck it up and press on for this podcast, I'd watch the

first episode and I'd say, yeah, that's chilling like I remembered. It's terrible. It feels like a

punch in the gut. I can't breathe. I need to go watch some moon girl or something.

I'm someone who watches TV to be uplifted. It takes a very long time for Jessica Jones to get

anywhere near uplifting. We've talked about the heaviness, the darkness of these Defenders saga

series, and I'm sorry, Kyle, but I think this is the darkest.

But I don't want to discourage you inordinately by overemphasizing this. My first time through,

man, I was always eager to press play on the next episode, and once I got going on this

rewatch, that was my experience again.

The front half of season one is really good, and the back half, I think, is even better.

...