I've never been particularly drawn into the Marvel universe (or any comic book-based franchise really). There's something very formulaic about so much of the material, and the ways in which each story ties into another only made the idea of watching anything within Marvel's brand more daunting than exciting.
Jessica Jones, at least in its first season, eschews a lot of the token Marvel-isms of its movie universe to tell a deeply human story. Near endless fistfights and upbeat one-liners are replaced by noirish posturing and a sardonic wit. Instead of heroes banding together to face a generic evil, survivors meet to deal with lingering trauma. For me, what's most compelling about
Jessica Jones is its focus more on the fallout from super-beings doing their thing and less on presenting a threat for the titular hero to overcome.
Jones is, to put it bluntly, unremarkable as a superhero. She has the general super strength and healing, but a bullet or broken rib will put her out of commission almost as easily as it would anyone else. Really, the "gifted" characters of the show are far more likely to shy away from their powers than they are to run around showing off their abilities. None of the super-powered really use them to do "good" (Jessica tries but finds it a rather fruitless task and one that only exposes her to the season's villain) and the writers treat them as broken people stumbling through their lives instead of the heroes we expect. Add to this the show focusing as much on Jones' combating David Tennant's sociopathic Kilgrave as it does on Kilgrave's victims coming together for group therapy and what results is a very fresh twist on a bloated genre of entertainment.
Which isn't to say I was completely enthralled with
Jones throughout, but the show hit upon so many points I rarely see touched within the superhero genre that my attention was kept throughout. Before the big bad for the season appears, the show comes as close as anything has to being a serialized version of
Watchmen or
Astro City. That said, my main gripes with the season were when it leaned too heavily on the superhero/sci-fi tropes that have played out countless times in other stories.
The super soldier riff involving the cop was probably the biggest turn-off for me. I was really happy when the series took an unassuming victim of Kilgrave and empowered him by having him actively trying to make amends with Trish and join in on the fight against the guy that manipulated him. But then the standard comic book silliness reared it's head - He was in Special Ops! Oh, and he was experimented on with drugs to make him a super soldier! I did like how it led to Trish having her little power moment when she downed his super pills, but overall it was a really forced way to keep his character relevant to the show.
My other main gripe is one that I feel like happens in a lot of shows/movies/etc. where a super strong character is pitted against a villain of far less strength and yet the writers drag out how long it takes for that villain to meet his end. As much as I can buy Jones going out of her way to save Kilgrave's would-be victims instead of pursuing him as he flees, the show relied far too heavily on having Jones abandon pursuing Kilgrave altogether once anything got in her way (e.g. when Hope kills herself and Kilgrave runs out the door, Jones sticks around after saving the others instead of sprinting after him). Those little instances took me out of the threat of Kilgrave as a villain and made his final comeuppance rather underwhelming and suspense-free to me.
Despite those criticisms, the show offers something unique in the Marvel mold that a naysayer like me can get behind. If it keeps up its unique focus on the effects the super-powered have (good and bad) on normal everyday people just going about their lives, then I think this show can be something really special.