Yeah, that was another thing I noticed... just about anytime called out Jessica on her bullshit, it just so happened that they were being a massive hypocrite when they did it.
Still recently posted show, so I'm using this:
like the whole time Trish keeps going on about how much Jess's mom is supposedly manipulating her. Like, seriousl?. You're an expert on giving this advice after a few days? But *she* gets shitty whenever Jessica has apparently done the same thing for the last 15 years or so about Trish's self-absorbed, gloryhound of a mother.
Or the fact that NOBODY answers their fucking phone. So many of this season's conficts would have been resolved if there wasn't so much widespread "eh, I don't feel like talking to this person right now" exactly when a critical bit of information is trying to be relayed by EVERYONE. If it is that important, at least also shoot a text.
But back to the "trauma porn" aspect:
It was literally every aspect of this season. Yeah, it makes "good drama" but fuck...
okay, so mom gets to get tortured by the prison guard, only to have him get accidentally offed by Jessica, and then the "nice one" that takes over for him just so happens to get killed because she flies into a rage because she just so happened to see the news report where the doc died?
Or Jessica is able to defuse the situation of Trish getting killed, RIGHT BEFORE the cops come busting in with guns drawn, and one of the first responders just so happens to have a mad-on for powered people and just has to kick the hornet's nest?
Or that Trish just so happens to shoot Alisa in the head RIGHT AFTER she decides she's going to turn herself back in to save her daughter... because that was the instant she got the wild hair up her ass to go do it AND just so happened to figure out where they were going and just so happened to beat the cops there?
And that it Dickhead Price just so happens to send his friend in to steal all of Jessica's shit just so he can steal her cases, and just so happens... you know, I'm really tired of writing "just so happens", and I've only cited a few examples. The whole season is full of them.
I hope whatever "awesome" you are alluding to is where it's going. I say that as someone pretty unfamiliar with the source, so I pretty much came into all of the Defenders as not really a fan one way or the other, as I was only vaguely familiar with Daredevil, and those were kind of auxillary meetings from other comics I had, but not many specifically about Matt Murdock himself.
But overall, I'd say the biggest and truest problem comes from trying to do to much. What I mean by that is, season 1 got heaps of praise for being such a damn good metaphor for an abusive relationship. And I think that praise created pressure to do it again. Except instead of having good story with an underlying narrative, we got about 4 different underlying narritives; addictions, traumatic loss, psycologically abusive families, and a degree of mental illness all fighting to be the central focus for that same praise from season 1, and instead, they all meet in a trainwreck which makes none of them nearly as good.
Saying all this makes it sound like I hated it. I really didn't. I just think this was a misstep that is hopefully setting up something better down the line in a Jessica 3/Defenders 2 kinda way.
Especially with all the "You could be more..." always being thrown her way. And the moment after saving that family with her mom on the highway seemed like it should be a pivotal thing, but again, with all the downtrodden shit shoehorned all over the place, it felt like that was glossed over and possibly not something that will be mentioned again.
And even saying all that, it *still* wasn't painful to watch like Iron Fist was.