Flashbacks shed new light on the aftermath of the family’s car accident and reveal a painful turning point in Jessica’s adult life.

The second season goes deep into the “origin of Jessica Jones” as we learn about what happened to her mother after the car crash and this episode is as close to an origin story as I’d expect for the series. Taking place right after the accident and five years later, we see Jessica and Trish falling out as Trish’ singing career takes off and her drinking and partying gets out of hand.

The episode fills in a lot of gaps to the story of Jessica. We see where things just aren’t going right and she drops out of college. We see her falling into the wrong crowd in a way. We also see the “origin” of her leather jacket and “Alias.”

We also get a lot about her mother’s experience. We see her recovery and the experiments by Dr. Leslie Hanson and Dr. Karl Malus. We see the impact of their work in a negative way and we also see the good too. There’s decisions that are made that make sense for good and bad and the person we thought was a bad guy isn’t so much. But of course she is. She’s prone to violent outbursts and she’s dangerous. And we see how far she’ll go.

Then there’s Trish. We see a lot of bad here. While her going to rehab has been referenced multiple times in the series, we have no idea how bad it really was. This episode lets us see all of it and it’s bad. What’s going on in the “present” might seem like it’s a low for her but her actions here are far worse and out of control.

It’s all an interesting episode that adds a lot to the characters. We see Jessica slide to the character we know. We see Trish out of control. We see Jessica’s mother’s story too. There’s also the loss Jessica experiences. It’s her at her most vulnerable and it’s difficult to not feel some emotion at the ending of the episode as the two reconnect and talk. They’re both at a low point and the emotion flows from Krysten Ritter and Rachael Taylor. It’s the two’s best work of the series.

Overall Rating: 8.45