In Review: Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire – Episode 5 – A Visit from Old Friends

Synopsis: After Matt Murdock gets her out of jail, Jessica pursues new leads in Jamie’s disappearance.

The Story

Having been beaten and somewhat humiliated by Shaw at the Hellfire Club. Jessica finds herself in jail and uses her one phone call to reach out to Matt Murdock who owes her for a job she did involving an Ice Cream truck. When Murdock arrives he brings his partner Foggy Nelson along, which doesn’t do to much to improve Jessica’s mood. Murdock is business as usual as he reads off the details of the case and eventually gets to the charges. To sum up. Jessica has gotten a bit of break-in regards to their being no charges under the condition that she keeps away from the Hellfire Club and stays away from Shaw, which is going to be problematic to her investigation into the death of Jamie, which means a different approach is needed.

Now out of Jail. Jessica decides to approach a Drug Dealer who sold to certain people that frequent the Hellfire Club and digs for information on the whereabouts of a guy called Brandon who was a friend of Jamie’s.

The Narration

Fryda Wolff continues to do a sterling job of the narration and is pretty much embodying the role of Jessica Jones brilliantly. The scenes she voices with Matt Murdock and Foggy are pretty good insofar as establishing the mood and Jessica’s reactions to the two lawyers. I think the strongest part of Wolff’s performance in this episode is when she is narrating the scene involving Jessica and the drug dealer. I loved the tension that Wolf manages to create with the various dramatic pauses throughout these exchanges.

Overall

This was one of those transitional episodes, which sets things up to move the story into a slightly different direction, but thanks to some clever writing from  Elsa Sjunneson-Henry. It didn’t feel like a transitional episode. The character interactions were a lot of fun and given just the right mix of dramatic tension and humor to retain my interest.

Overall. A solid outing, which moves the story along at just the right pace.