In Review: Jessica Jones: Playing with Fire – Chapter 4 – This is Going to Hurt

Synopsis: Another visit to the Hellfire Club turns up new leads––then everything goes wrong.

The Story

Wanting to get to the truth of what happened to  Jamie, the young man whose murder she is investigating. Jessica pays a second visit to the Hellfire Club to try and figure out whether he was murdered or took an accidental overdose due to burnout. But before she can gather any useful information she is confronted by several thugs, which she dispatches with relative ease. But things begin to go really wrong when the club owner Shaw decides to take her on.

The Narration

Fryda Wolff continues to do a great job of the narration using a voice that is very reminiscent of how your old-time gumshoe private eye would narrate the action in an old-style noir movie. This form of intonation serves the story well when Jessica is mooching around the Hellfire Club for clues as Wolff narrates the nuances and subtleties of how Jessica Jones is scoping out the club and using her memory to disregard areas that are not of interest.

The actor also does a great job of describing the action beats as they unfold. Particularly when it comes to Shaw and Jessica’s shock at the realization that he has powers like she does, which is the last thing she needs.

Overall

Written by Vita Ayala, who we know for her work in comics. This chapter clocks in at roughly 19 minutes, but feels like ten given how fast the pacing is. The music does a great job of enhancing the story, but without being too much of a dominant feature. The action beats toward the end of the episode go by very fast and the description of the action when Jessica is fighting Shaw is performed and written so well that you can almost see it as a movie playing out in your head.

Overall. A great fourth chapter, which leaves things open for is likely to be a somewhat thrilling 5th chapter, which will come out next week.

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