Review: Daredevil 1.12 - The Ones We Leave Behind

Well, we thought we were in the darkness before, True Believers. Hell’s Kitchen was beating down our heroes relentlessly and there was nowhere to go but up, right? Right?

Clearly, if you’re still reading and keeping up with the series: very, very wrong. There’s plenty more down to go. We start by catching up with Karen, shaken by her actions at the end of the last episode, and going through some pretty typical behavior for a person who is clearly in shock. When she’s finally drunk herself to sleep, she has nightmares of Fisk in her apartment, attacking her for what she’s done. As she tries to come to terms with her own demons, she has to play middleman to the “mom and dad are fighting” dynamic of Matt and Foggy from the past couple episodes.

In the hospital, Vanessa wakes up (thank christ--she’s too good an actress to waste as a character in a coma for long), and tells Fisk he won’t be moving her; she’s happy right here. Fisk goes after the people who killed Wesley while Foggy tries to get his ex to look over evidence that her firm’s client, a one Mr. Wilson Fisk, might actually be an evil monster, and Matt manages to follow one of Madame Gao’s delivery guys to the warehouse where the heroin is packaged. He also manages to burn it down--score one for the good guys. Meanwhile, Ben Urich tries to get his piece about Fisk’s childhood published, and is let go from the Bulletin in the process. We get a brief moment to hope he will get whisked away to the Daily Bugle (because Spider-Man rights, guys), but instead, once again, all of our hopes and dreams come crashing down around us.

This episode is the first time that Matt gets to be Daredevil in a tangible way, as well. In previous episodes, he’s dangled men from rooftop edges, he’s gotten in awesome fights, and he’s been super Catholic. In this episode, he finally gets a sequence where he tracks someone by sound, runs over the rooftops to track them down, and then comes back to fuck their shit up. The technical aspects of the chase are incredibly well done, from the camera moves on the rooftops, to the way they chose to represent his super-hearing (soft focus with one man in sharp focus instead of the CGI radar sense is the way to go), and it’s just fun to see the guy jumping all over rooftops on the chase. It’s just this side of old-school, swashbuckling adventurer Daredevil.

The highlight of this episode is the really clever structural twist it plays on the audience. In the pre-credits scenes, we see Karen attacked in her home by Fisk. He shows up behind her, in the dark, waxes philosophic about the things she has taken from him, and just as he begins to assault her, she wakes up. It was all a dream, we laugh, as we sigh a little in relief. Fast forward forty-five minutes. Ben comes home from being fired from his job, intending to write a tell-all expose about Fisk. He pops open his bottle of whiskey and begins to type, just before Fisk shows up behind him, in the dark, waxes philosophic about the things Ben Urich has taken from him, and then he, in a fit of rage, strangles Ben Urich to death. Up until the end of this episode, I was waiting for the camera to cut back to Ben, asleep on his keyboard, or asleep in the chair in his wife’s hospital room.

Marvel’s Daredevil is not afraid to kill the characters who have been around for decades when it’s what the story calls for, and that is something that gives me great faith in it as a new television property. It is also the number one reason it breaks my heart. See you back here with all the rest of the gang for the final episode group review. Stay alive, kids.

Stray Observations:

• “It gets easier the more you do it” is a line that could have gotten laughs, but D’Onofrio’s delivery is haunting.
• “I think they call that loyalty, or something.” God bless you, Leland Owlsley.
• I am thoroughly humbled and disappointed with myself for not realizing until this episode that the symbol they stamped on the heroin at the end of the first episode was the Steel Serpent symbol--one of several Iron Fist teases in this episode.
• People apparently learn how to sneak up on each other professionally in Hell’s Kitchen.
• “Hardcore parkour!”
• Matt must go through like, at least 2 canes a day if he’s just throwing them away in alleys.
• “You sound like a whore.” “Well, I learned how to be one from you...dad!” is how that line should have played. Luckily, I’m not writing for this show.
• Madame Gao thoroughly does not play--apparently even Brubaker thinks she might be Crane Mother?

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Score: 5/5

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Daredevil 1.12 – “The Ones We Leave Behind” Director: Euros Lyn Writer: Douglas Petrie Distributor: Netflix, ABC Films, Marvel Studios Runtime: 60 Minutes Exclusively on Netflix

Review: Daredevil 1.11 - The Path of the Righteous

It’s been 11 episodes, and there have been a few lives taken in the Kingpin’s consolidation of power over Hell’s Kitchen. But this is the first time that one of the good guys has had the power in their hands to take a life--and taken it. (No, I’m not counting Stick as one of the good guys. If there’s ever been someone who is chaotic neutral to a tee, it’s that old fucker). Superheroes make a lot of bluster about not killing. Some people find it old-fashioned (“Why doesn’t Batman just kill the Joker?” says everyone), and it drives a lot of people towards “edgier” characters like the Punisher or Deadpool. Daredevil is traditionally pretty firmly in the “no killing” camp, with the exception of the several times he’s tried to kill Bullseye. Apparently, in the MCU, Daredevil is anti-killing, but Karen Page isn’t. Karen Page is a woman with secrets, and apparently those secrets can be lethal.

This episode starts and ends with big bangs: Fisk and crew crash a hospital to get some emergency care for Vanessa, and of course, Karen takes a life. In between, the thematic arc of the episode (and arguably, the series) begins to come to a head. Hell’s Kitchen is full of people like Matt and Fisk with the devil in them, and some of them strive to do the right thing in the face of that wickedness, while others strive to serve their own needs. When it boils down to it, we all agree that it’s probably not right that Matt dresses up in a costume to try to kill a man to protect the city, but Fisk’s people make it pretty clear that they are only in it for the paycheck, even if Fisk himself is on some kind of crazy fascist “I will fix this city if I have to ruin the city to do it” track.

This is one of several of the moments in the last half of the series that really cement Matt’s desire to become something bigger. When the series started, he was one man in a mask trying to help tourists who were getting mugged, or women in danger. Now, as the threat is getting bigger, so is Matt, going so far as to ask Melvin Potter to make him “a symbol.” There are a few more nails in this coffin coming down in the next couple episodes, but the acceptance of the need to put on a costume and become something more than just a man in order to serve the city is a step from vigilante to hero. It’s also a pretty direct Dark Knight trajectory that continues through the back half of the season, but one other way that Daredevil outshines Dark Knight is the arcs of its supporting cast. Ben and Karen have some really good moments in this episode, hell, even Foggy and his lawyer with a heart of fool’s gold ex-girlfriend have some charming interactions.

As per usual, the end of this episode of Daredevil left me reeling. For as much as this show sometimes sinks into standard crime drama, there are some technical achievements on the storytelling side and the actual filming side that make it shine. That final scene with Karen and Wesley goes on for roughly six minutes, and where the nu-famous fight scene from “Cut Man” is a six-minute release valve, this one is a slowly inflating balloon, waiting to pop. It’s the fact that Wesley can respond to “Is that supposed to scare me?” with “No... but this is” while pulling out a gun and it doesn’t play for laughs; it’s the fact that the whole conversation is allowed to play out without cutting away or characters defusing the situation. Daredevil knows when to punch some guys for a long time, and when to just let their characters cut each other with their words.

And back I go into the next episode. I’ll see you tomorrow, gang.

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Score: 5/5

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Daredevil 1.11 - "The Path of the Righteous" Director: Nick Gomez Writers: Steven S. DeKnight & Douglas Petrie Distributor: Netflix, ABC Films, Marvel Studios Runtime: 60 Minutes Exclusively on Netflix

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Stray Observations: 

• Sad Matt Murdock with a balloon is my new favorite reaction picture.
• There is mention of the Japanese getting a whole city block--Coming Soon: Shadowland?
• “Martyrs, saints and saviors all end up the same way: bloody and alone.” Damn, Claire.
• I don’t think I know how confession works. I thought, if someone came into confession and said “I’m going to kill this person,” the priest had to run that up the chain to the cops, as it were. Matt is always coming into church and being like, “Hey, I tried to kill Fisk again yesterday. Didn’t take, but I’m gonna try again. Us Murdock boys, we always get back up.” And the priest’s reaction is usually something glib about lattes.
• More sage Ben Urich adages: “We all do what we can... Sometimes, it’s enough.”

Review: Daredevil 1.7 - Stick

“Stick” is a tough episode for me for a couple reasons. On the one hand, Stick is a character that I have never gotten; from Man Without Fear through to his and the Hand’s involvement in Brubaker’s run, he’s never clicked for me. On the other hand, this episode seems destined to be the breather between two larger halves of the season, especially being as it is the exact midpoint. Luckily, it’s the tough episodes of Daredevil that are the most rewarding. The episode starts out by introducing Stick in a particularly brutal, ninjatastic fashion, but the scene quickly shifts back to the home turf of Hell’s Kitchen, the busiest neighborhood in New York. Matt uses the information he managed to earn from Vladimir last episode to track down Fisk’s money man: Leland Owlsley. Owlsley, who is consistently the most rational person on the show, has a quick meeting with Nobu before being accosted by Matt. The coming of Stick is a distraction, and Owlsley manages to get away. Stick tells Matt he is back for part of the war he’s always talking about, to take out a Japanese weapon called the Black Sky. Matt agrees to help him, if Stick promises not to kill anyone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Stick can’t keep that promise, even when Matt finds out who Black Sky truly is. Matt kicks Stick out of his city, and Stick tells a mysterious man (credited as “Stone”) that he doesn’t know if Matt will truly be ready for the coming war.

The real highlights of this episode for me are twofold: we get to see some of the ninja mysticism that’s been part-and-parcel with Daredevil since the Miller/Janson days during a break in the very grounded, gritty realism stuff; and we get to see young Matt’s training, explaining how he went from a kid who had seen a handful of boxing matches to a grown man who can do kickflips and all kinds of crazy shit. I, personally, think that the kid playing Matt does a stellar job, especially for a young actor. He never veers into the saccharine of most child-actors, and he manages to look convincing while doing kung fu. Luckily, even if he weren’t great, he and Charlie Cox get to play off Scott Glenn, who is amazingly cast. I’m not familiar with the guy’s work before this, but he’s just the right combination of grizzled old man and restrained nobility that it fits Stick to a tee (as far as loving Scott Glenn in the episode--don’t hate the player, hate the character, as they say).

“Stick” also does right by the show in that it doesn’t let itself just be a filler episode. Sure, it’s the only episode where Stick or anything really resembling the Chaste show up (I would say the Hand entirely, but I think later episodes would prove me wrong...), but it starts to build the moral question posed by Vladimir in the previous episode. Vladimir insists that when Matt started down this path, he got in the cage with animals--and animals don’t stop fighting until one of them is dead. Will Matt have what it takes to really bring down Wilson Fisk? Will he be able to kill him? Should he? Matt lives in a world of greys and uncertainties, and Stick, for the raging asshole that he is, lives in a world of stark black and white. Things are wrong, things are right, who gives a shit, you do what needs to be done.

This episode puts Matt on the path he walks for the rest of the season, hell on his left, heaven on his right, and the devil in front of him. There’s no right way to go, there’s no right thing to do, there’s only the morality one blind Catholic man with super senses can land on to save the city without losing himself.

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Score: 4/5

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Daredevil 1.7 - "Stick" Director: Brad Turner Writer: Douglas Petrie Distributor: Netflix, ABC Films, Marvel Studios Runtime: 60 Minutes Exclusively on Netflix

Review: Daredevil 1.6 - Condemned

So I’m going to preface my review with this trivia nugget: Daredevil is the comic book that made me want to write comics for a living, so, to paraphrase Daniel Plainview, when I say I’m a Daredevil guy, you’ll know that I’m telling the truth. I’m gonna try and shut that off as much as possible during these reviews, but if you see some foam on your computer screen, that’s just me and my unbridled excitement. Episode 6 is what I’m going to casually call the mid-season finale. In a regular, broadcast television medium, this episode would be the one right before the winter break. There’s a shift in the direction of the character’s mission, where what was a fairly random search becomes a laser focus, there are some excellent fights, and public opinion of the Masked Man starts to turn.

After the last episode’s events, Daredevil has to beat up some cops (who, in fairness, are in Fisk’s pocket), and hightailed it to an abandoned warehouse with Vladimir, who is probably going to bleed out at any second. While they hole up, take a hostage, and try to wait out the police presence that gathers outside, Ben Urich does his reporterly duties and tries to get the story out of this mess. Simultaneously, Karen and Foggy get Mrs. Cardenas to the hospital, where Foggy discovers that the sharp pain in his side is not a stitch from being out-of-shape, but rather from shrapnel that is in his person.

The main thing that makes me say this episode would be the mid-season finale is the context of having seen the next episode, so I’m not sure how well that holds up, but this definitely feels like a confluence of plot threads, even down to the fact that the nurse who admits Mrs. Cardenas at the hospital is Claire. The first five episodes spend a lot of time building the web around Daredevil of Foggy, Karen, Ben, Fisk, the Cabal, and six ties them all into a neat little knot around Matt.

Having said all that, this is one of my least favorite episodes of the season, even on a second watch. Let it be known, there are great moments. There’s the first conversation between Matt and Fisk, there’s a sniper shootout to turn the public 100% against Matt. The downsides are attendant to the upsides, though; the conversation with Fisk goes on forever, and has more of that “we’re not so different, you and I,” schtick, and the sniper beat is played somewhat ambiguously, so that you’re not sure who the target is for a little bit.

But then, beneath all that, the Fisk/Matt discussion does hit on a lot of thematically relevant points for the rest of the season. For as much as they’re both damaged children grown into adult bodies, they are two sides of the same coin. Matt is going to save this city one person, one case, one building at a time; Fisk is going to destroy it, block by block, and rebuild it, for the beautiful people.

This is pretty typical of an episode of Daredevil. I start out liking it, I find things that I don’t like, and then I talk myself into ways that they make the whole show work. And for the record, I think it’s fair to review these episodes because they’re divided up that way on Netflix, but I think we all know this show is intended to be one 13-hour movie, so this feels sort of like reviewing each chapter of a book independently of the others. There may be good ones, and there may be bad ones, but they’re all building towards one end goal.

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Score: 4/5

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Daredevil 1.6 - Condemned Director: Guy Ferland Writer: Joe Pokaski & Marco Ramirez Distributor: Netflix, ABC Films, Marvel Studios Runtime: 60 Minutes Exclusively on Netflix