Amph Marvel's Daredevil (Born Again, Now Streaming Again)

ahhh, here we start to separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to those brave binge watchers. I'm totally chaff. I'm only 2 eps in, probably do #3 tonight and #4 at some point Sunday / Monday then basically settle into a once or twice a week schedule from then onwards.

 

My binge watching is purely down to a fortuitous scheduling of a random day off where I was meant to be tiling the kitchen floor

Lets just say we still have the same crappy tiles on the floor today that we had yesterday morning and my missus is currently more grumpy with me than normal.

 

Watched the first episode, definitely off to a good start. I don't have time for full out binge, so it will probably take me two weeks at least to get through the whole season.

 

Just finished the season opener, Bang.

Spoiler

Pretty much from the pre-credits scene you can already feel the difference in pacing and tone. Yes, I mean that as if to say it's an improvement. That's not to say that is doesn't follow thematically or artistically from where Season 1 finished. It's still hardboiled and gritty, but it's fun. Season 1 got so entrenched on the gloom and darkness that it, at times, suffered from Battlestar Galactica syndrome in that the journey felt dour. This time around, even when violent, there's a flair to the pacing that keeps you watching and rooting for the character. The banter between Matt, Foggy, and Karen is great while even Turk (the arms dealer) is great to watch. Meanwhile, Punisher is the thrill ride that was promised in the trailers. Again, as dark and intense as his character is, he is fun to watch which is a contrast to Fisk. Fisk was an excellent character, but I felt sad for Fisk most of the time. With Punisher, i'm punching the air in the same way I was for Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight.

Cannot wait for the remaining 12 episodes.

 

Just watched #4. If the people that vote for the Emmys don't give Bernthal his due after that graveyard scene, then they're all dead inside.

 

Yeah, that stairwell fight was pretty damn spectacular. But the editing wasn't as seamless as THAT other fight. Nonetheless, daaaaymmn.

 

Not really that important IMO. There is a passing reference, a direct reference, and a character that shows up in DD S2 from JJ, but I don't think it is important to understand them and how they connect at this stage. That I think will change once Defenders comes out, in what, like a year or so?

 

OK so I finished Season 2. Thoughts:

Spoiler

In many ways this show is, like the Flash, a perfect comic book story. Split into two broad arcs - one concerned with the Punisher, the other with Elektra, the series starts strongly and gives us the first proper Punisher I think we've seen. I've read some Daredevil in the past, and so the character is familiar enough to know that those moments Matt was being a bit of a martyr aren't necessarily bad writing but how conflicted he is between his humanity and his stricter moral code.

But Punisher? I read a lot of Punisher, up to and including Suicide Run and then for the first few arcs of the Welcome Back, Frank arc.

The first half of the season is really solid. After Punisher has been taken down, Murdoch ends up taking his case and this is where it gets wobbly. Vigilantism has hit the MCU following the events that culminate in the Avengers film. Daredevil is the first, but Jessica Jones has been doing her thing and Luke Cage is coming. So when the ordinary person with some training but no special powers reaches breaking point, is this the natural conclusion of that path or an aberration devoid of any moral core?

Unfortunately the show doesn't explore this enough, nor does the whole Blacksmith arc really go into detail as to why it all unfolded. Frank doesn't have closure on why his family died; he doesn't know Reyes didn't clear the park (as far as I recall it). He knows Blacksmith orchestrated it but was the implication that the Colonel was punishing him for not joining his outfit sooner? It's a bit of a jumbled mess.

So, in effect, is the culmination of the Elektra/Hand storyline. That's not to say it lacks satisfaction but if we're being honest it felt like one more episode was needed to flesh that out more. And I almost wonder if Elektra might not have been a really good Season 3 arc - though she had to disrupt Matt's nascent relationship with Karen. If she destroyed it, it would be hard to see them come back.

All in all, I enjoyed this, but Season 1 was infinitely stronger. Charlie Cox is still an excellent lead, Elodie Yung was fantastic as Elektra, and Bernthal's Punisher had that Steve Dillon look going. Plus they effectively adapted this:










If I gave season 1 a 9/10, I would give this 7.5/10. I still enjoy it, and it's tonally perfect for the darker comics it comes from (Flash is tonally perfect too, but Daredevil's always fit better in the Marvel Knights, grittier style of book). It just needed more episodes, or less plot, to really exceed its first season's quality.

Bring on Netflix's The Punisher.

 

Just finished. Wow, that was intense and quite enjoyable.

 

Watched 2&3 tonight. Definitely enjoying the ride.

Someone made a reference to BSG a page or two ago. Same thing happened to me, I was going to drop DD after 3-4 episodes because of the rather hopeless tone. I stopped watching the Walking Dead for that reason (in the middle of Season 2, EP 1). Glad I stuck with DD, though.

 

Yes, that was me.

I never wanted to stop watching Daredevil in Season 1, but some of the darker moments felt plainly mean spirited more than gritty or engrossing. Fisk executing Anatoli being the worst of those moments. But, at the same time, most of the "uglier" moments are mainly within the first six episodes. It becomes more nuanced after that which, in my opinion, is when the show demonstrates its true strengths. Nelson vs. Murdock being my favourite S1 episode.

 

yes but that was necessary to establish the whole concept of Fisk as basically an unstable manchild. You could see his awkward insecurity in dealing with Vanessa, but his unbridled rage and strength? That had to come out too.

In other words they needed to convey the power of the Ultimate universe Fisk:

 

Yep, that's true and I definitely got that impression. But, that depiction of Fisk was brilliantly captured when he pushed over an entire marble table after Gao leaves his apartment only for Wesley to be screamed at when he walks back in to assist Fisk. If this was the first time we saw Fisk loose his cool, it would have made the point just as brilliantly (if not better) because we can see that when under pressure and in circumstances that are beyond his control he throws childish tantrums.

In fact, in that same episode, when Vanessa comes to see him he tells her to go away only for her motherly soothing tone to bring him down to Earth. Again, I think that establishes Fisk's lack of control and childish antics brilliantly because it shows how he can both lose comprehension of logic but also be guided back to logic in the same way of a child.

Despite being quite macabre and depressing, I totally condone the scenes we saw of Fisk's backstory because of its origins which are rooted into Rabbit In A Snowstorm. That cell scene was a very poetic ending to his story (at least for now).

 

I finished last night at ~3:30 AM. I really loved this season, it's a nice improvement on season 1 (which I also love) in terms of accentuating the show's strengths and downplaying or correcting its weaknesses. It wasn't perfect by any means, and I definitely think it peaked early during the first four episodes, but all-in-all I thought it was pretty great. I continue to love Charlie Cox's portrayal of Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Foggie really comes into his own, and Karen feels more actualized as well. Elektra is a bit more mixed for me. I thought Elodie Yung did a great job with the role, none of my issues are with her, but there are some ways that the story handles her character that I was not entirely okay with. In fact, there were some decisions made with her that flat out baffled me, but whatever.

Oh right, the Punisher. Just as some history, while I've loved Daredevil since I was a kid, I've long hated the Punisher as a character. As a foil for characters I do like (Captain America, Spider-Man, Daredevil), I like him. As an aspect of a universe I'm invested in quite a bit, I like him. As a character, he's always left an uneasy feeling in my gut, mostly because I couldn't see him as a hero even when the story insisted he was, and I find his core fanbase to be somewhat terrifying and unhinged. But in the MCU tradition of perfectly casting its heroes, and occasionally taking characters I hate on the page and making me love them on screen, this season left me feeling all sorts of ways about Frank Castle.

Jon Bernthal is a freaking revelation as the Punisher. Everything about Castle that I hate in the comics was done here in such a way that I couldn't help but root for the guy, even when I knew I shouldn't be. It's almost entirely (but not completely) down to Bernthal's disarmingly human and vulnerable approach to the character. All the season's most emotional and impacting moments are completely down to him; his delivery, the way he throws himself into the role, all the little humanizing touches like calling Daredevil "Red" or the nursery rhyme. He's just shockingly good, and the sooner he's back on screen the better.

 

finale spoilers below

Spoiler

I thought Elodie Yung has done a pretty good performance as Elektra, that said I am far more familiar with her and her personality AFTER her resurrection. So I can't really judge her performance against the source here as I'm not familiar with her before she came back. I do expect when she comes back to NOT get the crap beat out of her every episode and to essentially be the ninja killing machine who wades through hundreds of elite Hand ninjas at once like a flaming sword through an army of butter. And also have a more dour, serious, and fatalistic personality.

 

more spoilers on finale relating to Elektra

Spoiler

Heh, actually guessed that. She's not Greek, probably Elodie Yung's actual ethnicity, she was just adopted by the Natchios family. Also was named Elle originally too.

 

Just finished the second episode.

Spoiler

Really really enjoying the subtlety. There are so many moments were they could have gone grim and gory but they shown restraint and instead have settled for incrementally letting us into the Punisher's world. I was expecting the scene in the pawn store to go berserk, but they cut at just the right moment. I'm also liking that Foggy and Karen are taking the reigns of the show a little more. This leads me to wonder: is Elektra really all that necessary? There's plenty happening at the moment.

 

I'm not really that familiar with Elektra's character. Mainly the broad strokes (former lover who turned ninja assassin, will eventually get killed by Bullseye and be resuscitated by Stick's crew). But is her characterization in this series (spoiled, bored rich girl with a dark sadistic streak) on par with her comics counterpart?

 

^I'm only onto episode 5, but yes it is in line with some portrayals of Electra. She wasn't really like this in the main continuity of the comics, where she was a fairly well-balanced young woman until her father was murdered and she was recruited by the Hand. The TV series is using Frank Miller's loosely out-of-continuity Man Without Fear miniseries/graphic novel for its characterisation, which has Electra already pretty ****ed-up and off the rails when Matt first meets her.

 

Elektra's big moment of truth seemed lifted out of the movie Hellboy. I can't imagine what this experience must be like for comic book fans who have probably seen every possible plot point endlessly recapitulated in slightly varied forms. There was a lot of potential to explore the differences between the Punisher (revenge killer), Elektra (born to kill and loves it) and Daredevil (so careful to reduce his targets' brains to cornmeal mush without actually killing them), but Karen's fantastically trite editorial summation of season 2 is infuriatingly bad. Awful, awful writing. Maybe Ender was right and they rushed it, but I don't see how one more episode could have saved the trainwreck of an ending.

Agree with others that the final third of the season is disappointing after a strong start.

The X Files rule also at work here. Once a show sinks its teeth into a far reaching global conspiracy with supernatural overtones, it has almost certainly jumped the shark. Nuked the fridge.

 

Comic. Book. TV show. With blind main character that can see due to superpowers.

Why do you insist on being that guy, dude?