A Total Rant On Something Pointless. sigh.

On the GRAVE Disservice and Manipulation of One Jessi XX By Kyle XY and The Writers Of This Sow, Or...This Show Is So God-damned RIGGED!!!

Okay, so, I’ll admit that I am a late starter to this show. I only recently started watching it when I had nothing else better to watch one insanely boring night, and I figured…what the hell? So, I tuned in and watched, and was immediately smitten with the character of Jessi XX. I’ll admit that when I first heard of the teen drama KYLE XY, and saw the promo commercials for it, I knew that it was going to be a disappointment in some ways. And I wasn’t wrong: every other character in the show, except Jessi, of course, is so focused on the ‘ME-ME-ME’ aspect that they’re all convoluted, selfish and manipulative. HOWEVER, what gets me, is that one of the characters—Mrs. Nicole Trager, the matriarch of the Trager family, whose supposed to be this understanding and caring psychologist—is treating Jessi, and yet in her in notes says that Jessi ‘lacks empathy’, is ‘socially manipulative’ and ‘remorseless’. I am prepared to argue in this essay as to why Jessi is probably the most unjustly demonized character on the show.

Okay, so…I watched the episode ‘Psychic Friend’, this being my first introduction to Kyle XY, and I immediately—for some reason—identified with the character of Jessi. I don’t know if it was her soulful eyes or the clear indication that this is a girl who has been beaten down by life and is just reaching out for a hand. I usually identify with those types of characters because point blank, they have meat to them to chew over and analyze the various flavors. I knew, right then and there, that I was hooked on the show, but only to see Jessi. Call it a ‘sistamance’ (you know, a totally innocent friendship with your sistah (friend, whatever)…something…look, if guys can have totally platonic bromances, then what can girls have? Exactly!). So, I decided to find the last two seasons’ episodes on Kyle XY and hunker down and watch them.

Let’s just say that I didn’t even make it to episode two of season one before I got irritated with all the Kyle/Amanda time. Anyway, I skipped straight on to Season two, and I was rewarded with JOY. Jessi’s character is the most well-rounded of all the other characters. Here you have a human being that is basically a blank slate: she has not been influenced by anything in the world and is pure innocence. Then enter ebeel MadaCorp and Jessi’s character is portrayed (quite unjustly) as the antagonist of the show. She does things, and every other character foolishly believes that all of the actions done were of her own accord. Point blank, they weren’t. Nothing Jessi did was her own fault, and I’ll prove it too.

Firstly, the “murder” in the woods: she is completely innocent in that action because we all know that murder, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, is a premeditated act. She didn’t wait, watch and plan to kill the guy, it happened because he was a twisted, sexual pervert and she did the world a service by ridding it of one sick f**k. Now, some of you may think that the moral ambiguousness of her actions is totally up for debate, but I submit to you that she perceived a danger and acted on instinct. She was not possessed of the higher reasoning processes or logic that most of us were raised with (and some who still don’t even employ it either way). So, accountability of her actions is null and void where she is concerned. You can’t prosecute a baby if she accidently pulls a trigger, can you? No, and basically the brain that Jessi possessed was that of a baby, who in no way shape or form understood the logic or right or wrong about her actions.

Second, MadaCorp and its inability to not f**k with human beings. Everyone seems to readily accept Jessi as being inherently evil, even though in the end it gets revealed that MadaCorp messed with her head and made her do the things she did, or rather: planted suggestions and she acted on them. For example, they clearly programmed Jessi to do as her “sister” Emily said, but only because Emily “loves [her]”. That one statement means that Jessi was powerless to refuse the suggestions that were implanted. When she “betrayed” Kyle, she was obeying the suggestions planted in her brain and took the information from his mind. She is consistently demonized for these actions even though it can clearly be determined that she had no control over her own mind or what she did: MadaCorp and its employees were the ones pulling Jessi’s strings; every time she acted defiant or rebellious, she was brought in and “adjusted”.

That, in unto itself is enough to mess with anyone’s head beyond repair, and if you don’t think so, think of MadaCorp’s tampering as a higher form of brain washing. Most victims of brain washing are permanently scarred for life by what their captors did to them, what they subjected them to. With Jessi, she’s been permanently scarred, permanently damaged, and is certainly trying to make amends for actions that weren’t even her fault, and yet she is still treated like a ticking time bomb.

Third, with the incident that happened with Lori, I fully blame that on Jessi’s inability to deal with, or understand, human emotions or how to cope, and deal, with them and their aftermaths. She has the mind of an infant, and what do infants do when they usually can’t communicate what they’re feeling, when they want something or don’t understand how to maturely process their emotions? They throw tantrums, they cry, they scream, throw things, act out rashly without understanding the consequences (until, of course, they are taught). Now, what happened with Lori was a bad thing; however, when Jessi came to understand that her actions were wrong (as proven by her inability to understand why the police would be involved in the incident with Lori’s attack, when she and Declan were talking in the café were Josh works, and when she was FINALLY made aware of what she had done and returned the necklace back to Lori anonymously), she tried to make amends so as to alleviate herself of guilt and to seek redemption from her prior actions.

Ah yes, and lastly, let’s get into the episode where she jumped off the roof. Now, she seems to be exceptionally demonized in this particular episode and—I am happy to report—that in this episode too, Kyle XY showed what a manipulative, conniving and selfish bastard he really is (I always knew there was something shady about that kid). Anyway, I understand where Jessi’s frustrations were coming from. Since the time she first arrived to the present, she has been pushed from one extreme of emotions to the other, with no clear anchor either way as to who she is, what she is or what she is meant to be. When she returns to the school, she is overshadowed by the things she had done, not just to the people there, but also to those that live and work outside of its walls: from the Tragers to the asshat in the woods, she is haunted by those memories. She is haunted by memories of Declan, haunted by what MadaCorp had done to her, how they had stolen the life that she had wanted so desperately to have—even if it were just faked memories—and how every person that she’s ever trusted was lying to her, manipulating and abusing her for their own ends.

Now, she comes back to the biggest and most daunting cesspool of all: High School, where any little thing you do, can follow you for the rest of your high school career. And, it seems, especially at this school, where the shallow student body votes on who’s who of their own number: who’s the slut, who’s the perfect couple, etc, etc. Jessi is thrown back into this hostile environment and forced to deal with the peers that ignored her or were completely hostile to her from the get-go (let’s all remember Lori’s little dupe at being Jessi’s ‘frienemy, shall we?). And, if you have ever been in that type of environment, or are still dealing with that type of atmosphere, you can remember how nerve-racking and daunting it is to take on.

So, Jessi lashes out in the only way she knows how: she uses her special abilities to be seen, to be heard, to be known, to be more than just that weird girl with the strange tendencies. People see her, like her and want to be around her. She’s not alone. Now, most of you would argue that she’s got Kyle, so that makes her not alone. HOWEVER, let’s remember that when Kyle was going through all his bullshit, he knew he had a place to go back to, a home to call his own and a family that would catch him if he ever fell. Let’s remember that Kyle has had a support system in the Trager family since the very beginning, that—aside from ol’boy at the group home punching him in the face—he has always had a much easier time of it than Jessi has. No one has been there to anchor her, support her or care for her, and Taylor—the man who claims to be her father—could very well be manipulating her for Latnok.

And then, she is antagonized…again. By everyone. Now, I’ll admit that showing off wasn’t a very good thing, but her secret is her’s to share. Not Kyle’s. Kyle can disappear and not have to share what he has, but she can share it. She was thrust into a situation that she is barely able to cope with and now she has to be manipulated by Kyle because he’s a pansy-ass, who’s afraid of being extraordinary (this is where, I feel, that HEROES should come in: Sylar should so totally go Medieval on Kyle’s ass). Anyway.

Kyle manipulates Jessi because he is selfish. He wants to keep the nice, comfortable life that he’s living, and he doesn’t care who he hurts or what he has to do to maintain it. He has friends and people that love him and care about him and sacrifice for him and adore him, and he wants to keep it all. Everything he does, he claims is for the greater good, no matter if it isn’t actually good for everyone. He holds to this belief that his moral compass is straighter than everyone’s, when it’s just as fallible as any human being’s. He made that judgment call, even before he was fully conscious, when he downloaded Zzyxx’s mainframe into his mind. Now, if Adam Baylin had still been in charge of the company, would he have even been allowed to complete that action? No, but he still assumed control over something that he had no business attempting to control, regardless of whether or not, the information was right or wrong. He keeps that knowledge locked in his own head, so that he holds all the keys and all the power and if he ever wanted to, could use it against his captors and MadaCorp, or anyone else.

And THEN to add insult to injury from that episode, he has the nerve to sit there and listen to Jessi pour her heart out and then give her some bullshit lesson about how she’s supposed to only ‘be herself’ and everyone will accept her’ crap. Seriously? Because, I can tell you, everything in the world, EVERYTHING, is about that first impression, the way you look and how you act upon that first meeting. Why else is Jessi so demonized if everyone is supposedly suppose to look underneath the surface and see the real you? BULLSHIT! Kyle only told her that crap so that she’d keep her mouth shut and so that his happy little world wouldn’t be ruined, where as her’s could fall the f**k apart. He needs to be needed, and so he creates the situation so that he can continue to be the one everyone leans on.

Now, onto the writers.

They irritate me because it’s not like I can’t see what they’re doing, and it was kind of the reason that I avoided the show in the first place. Let’s get something straight: I don’t like Amanda, and soon as I saw her and her plaintive, woe-is-me looks from the first season’s promos, I knew that I wouldn’t like her character, that the show was going to be some angst-ridden teen drama that ‘Not-Another-Teen-Movie’ was spawned to criticize and make fun of. She’s a stock character as far as I’m concerned, with no backbone to speak of and seems to NEED to be protected from the rest of the world. She has no depth, and nothing that inspires me to think: ‘day-um, that is a sweet character you might say…ROUND!’ She’s a Mary-Sue of epic proportions. She’s a goody-two-shoes, easily taken advantage of stock character, and it’s a pity that she hasn’t been killed off because of her own stupidity. She doesn’t even fight for Kyle when she sees Jessi going for him, she just stands around and whines and cries and THEN, when Kyle says, ‘Oh pity me, oh pity me, I’m the lonely bleeding heart teen that woke up from a pod and doesn’t understand the wrong that I do, forgive me sweet, sweet Amanda! FORGIVEEEEEE MEEE!’ She cries and goes back to him, EVERY TIME.

And, let’s not forget that shoot-me-in-eardrum disgusting music that they play every time she’s around! Every time, I saw it it reminded me of that scene in Not-Another-Teen-Movie, where the girl of everyone’s dreams steps into the room and no one can do ANYTHING until her theme music stops playing and she finally moves on. You know the one, that annoying bitch that just needed to fall down the steps and break her neck? Yea, that one. She’s easily able to be walked over and yet people are enamored with the walking-doormat, claiming that it’s great to see that kind of purity and innocence in a TV character. Okay, okay, purity and all that is well and good, but honesty, how many people go for so-naïve-it’s-sickening? Seriously?

Okay, sorry, I digressed a lot in that last paragraph, what I meant to say was: I hope they didn’t add Jessi as the foil to Kyle and Amanda getting together in the end and Jessi gets the short end of the stick. She’s a character that’s been emotionally and mentally battered and abused, manipulated and screwed over and this is just one more time that the writers can’t seem to utilize her character and make her kick some serious ass. Like, seriously, if Kyle had embarrassed you in front of everyone, I don’t think you’d be willing to hear him out. I think you’d probably kick his ass and then hear his lame ass apology while you tell him: ‘I WON”T LET UP UNTIL YOU GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSE AND SCREAM ‘UNCLE’!!!’ Or mayhap that’s me.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: they’ve made an extremely complex character with this chica. She has depths, she has the emotional angst that all good storytellers should infuse their characters with; she’s amazing, gorgeous, beautiful and brilliant, but what I always see of her, is that she’s thrust into situations where she comes out last. With Lori and Declan, she actually LIKED Declan. She wanted to be with DECLAN. She didn’t manipulate her way into his life, didn’t sabotage anything, didn’t betray him. Her heart pounded when she met him, she felt genuine feelings for him, but then MadaCorp terminated that when they made her go for Kyle, and the writers terminated it even more when they wrote that bullshit ass storyline and stuck with it. They brought Declan and Lori together (of a sorts) and are pushing Jessi between Kyle and Amanda just to give some romantic tension and drama so that Kyle and Amanda will eventually get back together, get married, have disgustingly chipper, super genius kids, get old and die (good riddance). Of course, Jessi will be the doting “aunt”, who’ll secretly wish for Kyle, but pine for him from afar. Once again, Jessi gets the short end of the stick.

And please, don’t feed me that bullshit about Cassidy. So, all Jessi is good enough for is the evil guy? Let me guess: evil guy sees girl, girl is evil guy’s target, but evil guy—in being around girl—ends up falling for girl, evil guy turns away from life of super top secret evil, gets with girl, both have angsty-guilt-ridden love affair, girl’s super powered counterpart gets mad, super powered counterpart sees error of his ways, girl stays with evil guy, evil guy’s company gets mad, kills evil guy and super powered girl is left all alone once again.

Seriously, that better not happen or I’m raiding the studios and writing this crackpot storyline right: Jessi with Kyle. Amanda with….her piano, Declan and Lori and Josh and Andy, and everyone lives happily every after.

ROUND!












PS: Upon watching the indignity of Jessi getting talked down to by Lori in Episode 16 of season 2, I realize that none of these characters understand the trauma that she—Jessi—has to endure and cope with. I get it: Lori got her ass kicked and that was a scary experience, but at least she was in control of herself at the time, at least afterwards, she was still in control of herself; she was able to pick herself up and understand that the actions done were not her fault. HOWEVER, no one seems to want to face up to the fact that Jessi was programmed to be a specific way and that that programming got messed up.

If Lori’s all twisted about her getting her ass handed to her, and then having that be a ‘traumatic experience’, try not even being in control of your own body, never knowing who you are or who you could be at any second because something could go wrong in what someone else did to you that you had no say so in. Try living with the knowledge that at any point in time, you could become a walking killing machine and not even realize or understand that you’d done something wrong until you find out about later when you think you’re this sweet and innocent kid. Try having every memory that you ever thought real or true, being a manufactured by-product of someone else’s sick and twisted game.

/rant…hopefully