Jess Archer Vs S:01 Ep:04

The students at Hudson High are very eager to seek out Jess Archer(Emily Williams) when they need her help. Some are just less embarrassed about thanking her than others. When Lacrosse team captain Troy’s girlfriend Kayden(Claire Autran) discovered that he was busted for selling answers to the mid terms. She was shocked and upset, but when she found out that Tess, oops I mean Jess was helping out. She was happy that someone was at least trying to help prove her man’s innocence. There was just no way she could fully admit how grateful she was and not have the whole student body find out about it. Kayden is after all the captain of the cheerleader squad and if word got around that she was nice to a comic loving geek. She might never hear the end of it, especially from those in her very small social circle. Since one of her teammates Melinda(Linsey Summers) used to date Jess’s sidekick Chase Pollard(Stefan Kumor). She would ask her to bring both sleuths to a private location so that she could properly thank them.

From the pilot episode, Melinda was very much a goth and to see her now as this cheerleader henchwoman was quite the personality switch. That’s not to say goths and emo kids can’t take an interest in school sports or that jocks and other preppies can’t listen to industrial music. It’s just not something I recall seeing at my school before. It’s obvious that she is still upset over the break up with Chase. Maybe Melinda joined the team in a way to extract revenge on him.. In her mind it makes since to be close to the ones who also hate her ex as much as she does. Even though there is still some hostility towards eachother, she does provide them with some valuable information on a jock named Jason(Carmen Carfagna). He tells her that in a few days, football will be king at the school and if she wants in on the action she should go out with him. So it turns out that Jess and Chase have another suspect to investigate. I wonder what will be revealed next week.

This episode was a lot of fun and I like we get a bit more time with actors Claire Autran and Linsey Summers because both characters they portray are very good. It’s going to be quite the treat what gets revealed on later episodes I liked the homage to Stanley Kubrick when Melinda tells Jess what would happen if she got caught smoking. From the music I thought it was A Clockwork Orange, but the visuals remind me of Barry Lyndon. For a small budget director Amy Taylor makes good use of the locations , the crew and the cast. It looks like something I would see on one of the big networks, and if this show got a bigger budget for next season. There is no telling how visually impressive it can get.