In the normal course of things it might have taken Kelly and I upward of a couple of months to watch Daredevil S2, but: i) we came back from England and promptly caught colds; ii) the first eight or so episodes, with their unflinching look at the ethics of vigilante action, were especially well-crafted and intriguing; iii) every little thing Foggy and Karen did was pure, unadulterated magic. Except maybe the gist of her think piece at the end. And hey, it’s her first feature, so I’m willing to forgive.
The end, though I enjoyed it, was fuzzy in a lot of ways. It felt crammed, with far too much shoehorned into it and a few missteps.
Where Daredevil excels, in my writerly opinion, is primarily in the non-supernatural drama, in the relationships between its three principals. It does other things very well too, of course: fight choreography, stunning graphic novel visuals, chewy moral quandaries, systemic corruption, and beating the crap out of Matt himself.
Where it falls down? In making Hell’s Kitchen seem less like 2016 New York, post Chitauri disaster or no, and more of a relic from the crimey, hard-nosed Eighties. It’ll reference Matt’s Catholic damage–Claire’s lecture about same was tiresomely on the nose–but it doesn’t drill down to give any kind of real sense of what that’s like. Most of all, the villain plans are thready. At the point in the story where we move from character exploration to OMG, gotta usher everyone to the bigtime battle scenes, the baddies’ machinations unravel. And not in an Oh, I see what you were trying to pull off there, Boyd Crowder, sucks to be you kind of way.
Fisk’s scheme, in S1, made a lot of sense… for a time. Raze the Kitchen, build towers for the well-heeled, divide up the inevitable neighborhood crime rackets and make billions on both the legal and illegal ends of the transaction. Okay! We understood who stood to gain and who would be hurt.
Still, his plan fell apart when he turned on his own syndicate.
The S2 baddie is on a quest, for religious reasons. They need their plot coupon-y spoiler spoiler plot thing, for their Holy War. A war with whom, really, besides Scott Glenn? And afterward they’re going to… do what, exactly, with Hell’s Kitchen? With Matt’s “My City,” out of which they should posthaste get? Are they gonna have that city? Slaughter whoever shows up? Forbid any sneaking around on the rooftops and in the cellars by non-ninja-individuals? I can’t think of a single Nelson & Murdock Avocados at Law client who’d truly be affected by total ninja domination of the Kitchen’s dark corners. None of the Hand stuff meshes particularly well with Frank’s story, which is about a failure of law enforcement and the system. Frank’s mess is at the heart of what Nelson Page Murdoch are struggling with.
I get that Matt needed a distraction so he could let down the team, I do. I get that the whole story couldn’t be Frank. But Frank works so well that Nobu & Co. feel grafted on.
As for Frank’s Boss Monster, that whole thing collapsed into a huge and disappointing coincidence.
Still, 90% of what I saw I loved. I liked where the characters ended up, I think Matt’s final choice was the right one, I’m super-curious about what Karen will do now, and I may well rewatch the whole shebang quite soon. And I’m hoping that S3 takes us into the vigilante piece they missed examining: Matt is an altruist vigilante, while Pun (as Wolverine always called him) is an agent of vengeance acting, at least in the beginning, on his own behalf.
What did you think?
