Jessica Jones, the character, is rather bitter, sarcastic and owns a dark personality, as revealed by the first episode of the show Jessica Jones. She often displays rudeness, foul temper, and lives alone in an apartment without a lock in the vast New York City. The cinematography of the show therefore exemplifies many dark elements, from certain dialogues to settings to color schemes, to mirror closely to her dark personality.

Jessica Jones’s Apartment

The first episode begins with a backdrop of New York City during night time, followed by Jessica Jones’s narration: “New York City may be the city that never sleeps, but it sure does get sleepy around here” while overlooking a shady part of the city. In addition to laying the foundation of her current job as an investigator, this opening scene gives a glance towards her sarcastic personality and her self-confidence due to her preference of being a night owl in such a vast and potentially dangerous city. This self-confidence begins to mold into more of self-centeredness as the viewers begin to find out that despite being an investigator and wielding superhuman powers, Jessica Jones’s main motive is to simply be able to thrive each day and keep her powers under cover over excelling in her job, even though she has managed in completing each investigation assigned.

During one of her sleepless nights, Jessica Jones leaves her apartment to pretty much stalk on other people through a balcony of a run-down building like her own apartment, appearing to be one of the side effects of being an investigator. Then, all of a sudden, a man-like figure approaches to her face then disappears instantly, sending her into what appeared as a PTSD panic. This same PTSD panic, which initially seemed very uncharacteristic of the otherwise emotionless Jessica Jones, repeats again two days later in the morning, one of the few scenes during daytime in the first episode. The imaginary man therefore appears to the viewers as some sort of villain who may not only know about her secret powers and be stronger than her but may very well have encountered her before and tortured her, as the echoing audio following each time she encounters him in her mind suggests.

Jessica Jones’s Only Weakness: Her PTSD

Finally, the first episode successfully lays the cinematographic foundation of, for the most part, all other episodes of the show, starting with the title pattern of “AKA” before its name to display Jessica Jones’s sarcasm regarding most everything. A few of the following episodes also run for nearly an hour, with several long takes to not only make each episode function like a small version of a movie, but also to center most of it around Jessica Jones, the self-centered protagonist. Overall, although the episode was rather dark for my taste, it is rather intriguing to see a female encompass a role such as Jessica Jones in television and I am certainly excited to see more of it!