Daredevil recap – Seven Inches of Your Time

“Daredevil” Season 1 Episode 8 Recap, “Shadows in the Glass”

Andy — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 22:02:01 +0000

Daredevil Week(s) continues with the arrival of Netflix’s Marvel’s too many apostrophes’ Daredevil. David has shepherded us through Frank Miller’s classic run, two of DD’s most famous origin stories and the not-classic Daredevil movie. Now the billy club has been passed on to me.

“Shadows in the Glass”

After seven sterling episodes, Daredevil keeps getting better, with “Shadows in the Glass” clocking in as my favorite to date. It’s a Kingpin-centric episode, ceding the spotlight to the tremendous Vincent D’Onofrio, as Marvel’s best villain they’ve created since 2011’s Thor with Loki.

So many comic book movies or just movies with a hero and an arch-nemesis posit that these men and women are two sides of the same coin, that they have more in common than they want to admit. That one decision or one moment neatly defined them as a hero, or as a villain. Daredevil luxuriates in the grays between good and evil, and instead of what normally feels like posturing and building a rivalry out of nothing, succeeds in making you believe that Daredevil and Kingpin are similar, frightfully so.

We see the stark contrasts of Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk’s morning routines. Fisk, every morning when it’s still dark outside, wakes from a nightmare. Then he makes like the Hannibal of Hell’s Kitchen and cooks up a fancy omelet for himself. Afterwards, he selects a suit from one of the innumerable in his massive walk-in closet, matches it with an accompanying dress shirt and selects his cuff links, the unaccompanied cello suite no. 1 from Yo-Yo Ma gaining in intensity in the background. It’s operatic, sweet sweet Marvel music, as the Kingpin looks at himself in the mirror. Instead of seeing the dapper crime pin we now know, he sees a horrified bloody kid staring back at him.

This kid is quite obviously himself, and we explore the blood on his hands and face, the blood that Wilson Fisk painstakingly tries to rinse off himself every morning, but never goes away. The permanent musk of evil that permeates his past, present and future.

Marvel has never created a villain like this before; they’ve never taken the time to explore the inner workings of the Big Bad. Instead, each movie merely cuts and pastes a new CGI-laden Heavy with MacGuffin-murky aspirations (and now, with an even bigger Heavy in the background pulling the strings; Thanos is the other side of Kevin Feige’s coin). Maybe they think they don’t have the time, but even on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Agent Carter, their villains are predicated on twists (The Clairvoyant!), reveals (TRAITORS!) and secrets (HYDRA!), without the care devoted to characterization.

Matt’s morning is no less painful: he can’t see his reflection, but if he did he’d see the fresh blood on his face and hands, and perhaps the blood that he’s been soaping off himself since the accident. Since his father’s death, since Stick. He limps through an apartment in tatters, the outward reflection of his inner turmoil. Wilson Fisk goes to pain-staking measures to keep his environs pristine to protect himself from lapsing into the chaos and anger, that when he does, results in car door beheadings.

They both handle their dreary lives in different ways, but they’re both living dreary lives. Matt and Wilson have different morning routines, but it all boils down to the same: they’re both alone.

After being alone on her crusade against Union Allied, Karen has brought in Ben Urich, Foggy Nelson and now Matt Murdock. Murdock cautions against their tactic, that they need to steer the battle onto their turf: the court of law.

Fisk has dealt with the Russians, but following the death of Black Sky, he has a new problem: Nobu (Falling Skies’ Peter Shinkoda) and the Japanese. Wesley wonders why he continues to be a part of their organization, and Fisk merely states that Nobu is a “necessary evil.”

We jump to the past, where (duh) Willie Fisk’s Dad is a dick. Bill Fisk (The Wire‘s Domenick Lombardozzi) is running for city council, working with Rigoletto, and instead of fighting in the ring like Jack Murdock, he fights with his wife. He also gives his pudgy son (a surprisingly really good Cole Jensen) a beer, desperate to make his son a man at all costs, who quickly spits it up. We now can make the assumption that DD is a better drinker, considering Matt took a sip of scotch and only made a face.

The Willie Fisk flashbacks veer dangerously close to being over-the-top and cliche (deadbeat, drunk dickhead Dads are sadly commonplace in superhero lore), but Domenick Lombardozzi brings unreal intensity and fearlessness to portraying just the worst human. Daredevil just takes a bit further. We know Bill is going to hit his wife and Wilson’s Mom, and something awful will happen from there, but the route we get there just is a bit more brutal and intense than one would expect, which could be said for Daredevil in its entirety. After finding out that his son got bullied, Bill tracks down the punk who did, dragging Willie along with him, and just starts wailing on the teenager, forcing Wilson to kick the kid over and over, a warped stepping stone to becoming a man in Bill’s mind.

In the present, Officer Blake has woken up, posing a problem for Fisk, since Blake likely won’t be so enthused about taking a bullet and nearly dying. Because of the city wide vigilance for the Man in Black, the security for Blake is beyond even Fisk. He doesn’t own all of the cops after all. His solution? Officer Hoffman (Daryl Edwards), Blake’s partner, who can get to him. Hoffman grew up with Blake, the two are partners and the best of friends. “How much are those years worth?” Fisk asks. Gulp. Hoffman has no choice, not really, but still cracks: “How long till I do something to piss you off?”

Hoffman goes to Blake, with a meatball sub AND a needle of death. He injects Blake, who wakes up as he does it. Nobody gets off lightly in this show. Hoffman apologizes, but it’s too late. That’s when not-DD bursts in, knocks out Hoffman, and manages to get a confession from Blake before his death. Of course, Blake’s death is pinned on DD, with Hoffman able to claim he was accosted, using the same ploy for his benefit that he and his partner used when we first were introduced to them.

Meanwhile, Nobu isn’t the only one getting frisky with Fisk: Leland’s bitter about being attacked by the Man in the Mask, concerned that he knows about his involvement. He also mentions his son Lee in passing, and you can bet your ass that a season 2 will involve his son becoming The Owl to avenge his father’s death (that will likely happen by the end of this season 1).

Every time we get a snippet from Fisk’s depressing past, we see Wilson wake up, and start the routine over again, getting at that egg protein breakfast. We don’t see Murdock wake up again; this is Fisk’s episode. Or maybe it’s Madame Gao’s (Law & Order‘s Wai Ching Ho) episode, because she’s brilliant every time we see her, and I love that she is the person Fisk respects the most. Gao comes to him TO HIS PRIVATE HOME (not only without an invite; nobody’s supposed to know about his castle in the sky), and basically makes Wesley useless. She knows that Fisk can speak Chinese, and she can also speak English, and has known from the start. Fisk excuses Wesley and the two talk, Gao concerned with Fisk’s direction, that he’s become sloppy and emotional like the Russians. She warns him to restore his house to order, or she’ll deal with Leland and Nobu directly. Will a 1,000 year old Chinese woman really squeeze out the Kingpin? I wouldn’t bet against her. After she leaves, Fisk flips a table and when Wesley returns to calm him down, Wesley continues to be useless. It’s the first time we see Fisk treat Wesley rudely on the entire show.

But Wesley’s the man for a reason: he brings Vanessa to his place. Fisk wants her to leave, but she doesn’t back down. He’s afraid, he admits, and then tells him his story.

Every morning, Fisk wakes up and stares at his white walls, at his white painting. This connects beautifully with the flashbacks, as Bill forces his son to stare at the wall and think about what kind of man he wants to be. He’s 12, tops, but it’s never too early. He should be a King, not a “fat pussy.” Marlene, Wilson’s Mom, stands up for her son, and her reward is a beating. That’s when Willie Fisk chooses what kind of a man he wants to be. He stands up, grabs a hammer, and hammers his father to death, yelling “keep kicking him” over and over as he pummels his father’s corpse. It’s a shocking moment even when you know it’s coming, and it’s made crazier by his Mom’s calm reaction. “Get the saw.”

Vanessa, like his Mother, has a chillingly calm reaction to what she hears. “You’re not your father, you’re not a monster, you’re not cruel for the sake of cruelty,” she purrs, talking Fisk down. With her power over Wilson, Vanessa may very well be the most dangerous character of all.

The next morning, Fisk wakes up from his usual nightmare, but this time, Vanessa is beside him, and there are two omelets on the kitchen table. Wilson is no longer alone, and as we find out, that makes all the difference, leading into the best ending of the show thus far.

The Man in Black comes to Urich in one of the most moody, gritty, rainy scenes of the show, which is saying something. He gives Urich a name for his King and a story for his paper. While the evidence is he said she said, Fisk losing his anonymity would be a powerful attack on the Man Who Would Be Kingpin.

But Fisk strikes first, as we get a brilliant voice over from Urich, the powerful words from the story of a “man in the shadows” that he’ll never print. For Fisk goes public before he can be outed. Wilson switches the narrative, pledging aid for Hell’s Kitchen and promising to save the city in such a way that Oliver Queen would be proud, attacking The Man in Black. You “can’t live in the shadows” or be “afraid of the light,” a powerful lesson that Wilson Fisk has learned, turning the tables on our hero.

Matt Murdock is devastated, shocked, and alone. Similarly, Daredevil stands alone in the MCU, forging its own path outside of Infinity Gems and acronyms, and stronger for it. Unlike Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which only succeeds when it uses the greater universe its a part of, Daredevil is better for removing itself from it, an insular and breathtaking piece of art.

“Daredevil” Season 1 Episode 7 Recap, “Stick”

Andy — Thu, 16 Apr 2015 20:39:16 +0000

“Stick”

Daredevil was so successful right off the bat because it threw the audience right into the action. While he wasn’t (and still isn’t) called Daredevil, the Man in the Mask was more than a competent fighter. He was already fighting crime. Marvel eschewed the traditional origin story at the top, and instead, sprinkled it across the first three episodes in pretty damn effective flashbacks.

But how the hell can Matt Murdock fight? How is he such a badass? Well, part of the answer finally comes in the seventh episode of the series, where we’re introduced to Stick (The Silence of the Lamb‘s Scott Glenn), the also-blind, also-badass gruff mentor to a young Matt Murdock. One scene with Glenn and we know immediately how Daredevil is so awesome from the moment we see him.

“Stick” opens in Japan, with a man in the shadows chopping the hand off and then the head, of a panicked Japanese man. The man in the shadows asks after “Black Sky,” a mysterious weapon being transported to New York.

Foggy’s busy ranting about “the devil of Hell’s Kitchen.” He’s a “terrorist without the ist,” and he wants to punch him, believing him to be a coward, turning into the J. Jonah Jameson of this show for a scene. Matt believes the MIB should be defended in court and not in the press. He’s right, but also pretty darned biased, and we all know life doesn’t work like that.

Foggy’s antsy and wants to do something, and that apparently means starting a law firm softball team, which would be awesome, even though they have 3 members and one of them is blind. He invites Karen to go to the batting cage, but she rebuffs his offer for a “thing.” Foggy thinks she’s up to something, because everybody is (except for Foggy, who’s gloriously transparent).

Last episode, DD got the name of “Leland Owlsley,” the accountant in charge of the money dealings in Fisk’s empire. He pays him a visit. When Matt hears someone using a walking stick approach, he’s distracted enough for Leland to taze him and drive off. Leland had a chance to finish this show right then and there (though Stick wouldn’t have let him). But still, you’d think Leland would maybe shoot/attack DD while he’s down, considering how much trouble he’s caused and how much he’d be rewarded by Fisk. Instead, Stick does the wise/ass/gruff mentor thing.

In the past, Matt’s living with nuns, a sitcom waiting to happen, and they’re desperate for help with this poor screaming kid. Enter Stick, a man who wants cash to help. Immediately, he changes Matt’s attitude: that he’s lucky to be alive, to have these gifts, and that nobody’s going to feel sorry for him and he should stop feeling sorry for himself. It’s a no nonsense approach to the ice cream social. Speaking of, Stick hilariously points out the flavors inherent in the dessert: can taste the specific diaries, the dirt off the hand of the server, the chemicals…no wonder Stick is so skinny. I’d never want to eat anything if I had that kind of knowledge. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to food chemicals.

Then, the training montage begins, because Matt needs “skills for war.”

Ben Urich, meanwhile, is pulling the gruff mentor routine on Karen Page, with an eerily similar message: “Stop complaining.” It’s a hard case, and complicated, they just gotta “straighten out that spaghetti.” Okay, so Stick would never say that.

Apparently Detective Blake is in a coma, surviving the gun shot. Daredevil loves comas. On the subject of the vigilante, Urich pontificates: “There are no heroes, no villains, just people with different agendas.” Urich just drops truth all goddamn day.

Apparently, Stick’s been absent from Matt’s life for 20 years. Why is he back now? Well, to save everyone from a horrible death, silly. He follows Matt to his apartment, disappointed to see the kid gone soft, because he has a bed and “soft stuff.” Women are a distraction, he barks, then goes for a crappy German beer, hypocrisy incarnate. Stick warns him that he needs to cut loose all relationships, friends, women, whatever. “They will suffer and you will too. Relationships aren’t for you and me.”

Of course, that’s because Stick projected his entire life and mantra onto a 9 year old boy. Daredevil started with a 9 year old boy sipping scotch at the behest of his bloody Dad. Now we see an old man beat the shit out of said 9 year old boy (who can still do crazy kicks and leaps!). I haven’t mentioned Skylar Gaertner at all through my recaps, and while I think he’s been great for a child actor in most respects as “Young Matt,” when he gets emotional, the overacting is painful, as it in the aftermath of their training.

After time has passed in the flashbacks, Matt gives Stick a bracelet, made from the ice cream cone wrapper from their first bonding moment. It’s touching, and that’s the problem. Stick crumples it up and abruptly ends their training. “I expected more of you,” he says, shattering Matt Murdock.

Stick also attacks Matt’s “no kill” belief, that they’re essentially “half-measures” that will come back to haunt him. Stick wants his help to take down Nobu (the head of the Yakuza/Hand presence) and the Black Sky. Matt offers help, but only if Stick promises not to kill anybody. He does, but not without a comeback: “Pussy.”

Page visits Ms. Cardenas, bringing groceries. Cardenas wants to pay her back, but Karen wants information instead. Before she does, Cardenas continues to tout our boy Foggy, telling Karen that she can tell he loves her by the way he looks at her. Karen clearly feels uncomfortable, and it makes me wanna cry that she’s leading on Foggy like this. Cardenas then describes a bald man and a tattooed guy that hung around the building as enforcers (but not Enforcers).

I’ve touched on it previously, but I’m continually impressed with how Daredevil handles languages, and bilingual speakers, and infusing Hell’s Kitchen with its melting pot of ethnicities and languages, and not force feeding us subtitles. It feels more real because of it.

After their rendezvous, Karen’s IMMEDIATELY accosted by said bald and tattooed men, and it looks bleak, until FOGGY TO THE RESCUE. He throws a softball at them, then attacks them with the bat, and then Karen finishes one of them off with some mace. They really need to start this softball team. It’s a wonderful moment, but instead of being thankful for her life, Karen wonders why he’s following her. Because he’s WORRIED about you (and kind of creeping, to be fair).

At the docks, not-DD goes about taking down the not-Yakuza. Nobu opens the crate, and “Black Sky” turns out to be a young boy. Stick aims and takes a shot with an arrow at the boy. DD deflects it, allowing the boy and Nobu to get away.

Well he gets away from Matt; not from Stick. While Matt was dealing with Nobu’s men, Stick went and killed the boy. This betrayal puts them both over the edge: “I needed a soldier, you needed a father.” The two have an intense, brutal and thrilling fight (one of the best in a series chock full of them), after which, a bloody Stick grunts, “Maybe there’s hope for you yet.” He makes to leave, but before he does, he leaves Matt with his wooden sticks. “You’re going to need them.” I love how important and dignified these nondescript wooden batons are treated. They’re like the equivalent of Buffy’s stakes.

In the wreckage of their fight in his apartment, Matt finds the bracelet his younger self gave to Stick. Aw. I love emotional and physically abusive relationships.

The two big takeaways from the episode are this: after saving her ass, Karen brings Foggy into the fold with Urich, introducing him to Urich’s playing cards map of the city’s crime scape.

The second: Stick is going to be a big player the rest of the season (or next), if not immediately. He meets a massive scarred man, in front of a fire, “no idea” if Matt will be ready when “the doors open.” The guess is that this is Stone, one of Stick’s other pupils, and a fellow soldier in the war against the Hand (the secret ninja organization that Nobu most definitely works for). It’s the first Easter Egg-y larger picture ending of Daredevil, and arguably, its most compelling.

“Daredevil” Season 1 Episode 6 Recap, “Condemned”

Andy — Mon, 13 Apr 2015 22:48:17 +0000

“Condemned”

An episode of Daredevil wouldn’t be complete without an interrogation; this episode has countless, following the massive bombing of Hell’s Kitchen, with not-yet-Daredevil caught in the middle.

He and Vladimir (Nikolai Nikolaeff) are pretty much screwed, with the cops surrounding them. But they’re cops, Hell’s Kitchen red-shirts, and after another awesome fight (Daredevil has better action than ANY show on TV), the two manage to escape.

Vlad, of course, doesn’t want to escape with the Man in Black. He thinks he killed his brother, and wants payback. While the rest of the episode around them doesn’t operate this way, in many ways, Vlad and Matt find themselves in a classic bottle episode, and the results are incredible. Matt tries to clear things up, that Fisk killed Anatoly. He wants to put Fisk on trial. Vlad’s counter proposal? “Suck my dick.” Their back and forth is tremendous throughout (“I don’t speak asshole,” Matt retorts), with Nikolai Nikolaeff taking a character that seemed as stereotypical and ridiculous as his real name and making him a multi-faceted and even sympathetic villain. The more time you spend in this twisted, dark Hell’s Kitchen, the more you realize there isn’t a wasted moment or character on this show.

Foggy and Karen have survived the explosion, and manage to bring an injured Ms. Cardenas to the hospital. In a brief melding of the two worlds, Claire whisks Ms. Cardenas away. We also learn Foggy is bleeding and hurting big-time himself, once his heroic deeds have been completed and he can think of himself again. Foggy’s the best.

Vlad, however, is fucked up. He’s been shot, stabbed, exploded on, yet he clings to life somehow. To save him, Matt calls Claire for help stabilizing the wound. “It’s not as easy as it looks in the movies,” she spits, but hey, this is TV. Rather, this is Netflix, and the solution becomes cauterizing the bullet wound with flames (the bullet’s still inside him, mind you). It’s another ingeniously brutal moment in the show, but Vlad’s screams alert a nearby cop. The poor cop, a new recruit and someone not on Fisk’s payroll, joins the interrogation brigade, and gets tied up. But before being gagged, he manages to call in the situation, putting Daredevil well up shit creek.

The cops arrive for what has been termed a hostage situation, and before they can just blow the building up and solve their problem, Ben Urich arrives on the scene. The man knows police procedure, and would know if anything iffy takes place. Fisk’s solution? Invite all the media, make it a circus, with Daredevil at the middle of it. Fisk is brilliant; this episode especially showcases his artful skill as a tactician, a Puppet Master behind the scenes.

Vladimir points out Daredevil’s hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of every superhero who doesn’t kill. He won’t kill Vladimir, but he also won’t let him die even though that’s what he desires. He’s only keeping him alive for information. Matt thinks he’s different, but “you’ll get there.” You’re a “man like us,” Vlad threatens. I mentioned earlier that I hoped this show wouldn’t tackle Daredevil’s unwillingness to kill, but I was wrong. It’s never been tackled this powerfully, or as darkly, that Daredevil’s own demons might overwhelm him. It feels more Shakespearean than comic book/CW.

While Nikolai manages to somehow own it, Vlad’s ability to not die borders on superhuman. He almost dies, flatlines, and incurs all kinds of punishment a completely healthy person wouldn’t be able to bounce back from, let alone someone already on the brink of the afterlife. This episode is essentially an extended and dramatic interpretation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail‘s “I’m Not Dead Yet” scene.

He manages to fake DD out by pretending to die (which fools all of us, since he should be dead), before engaging in an impressive (that he can move at all) fighting scene that knocks them down an entire floor. Matt gets knocked out, but when he comes to, Vlad’s still there, unable to move, but still alive, waiting to stab Matt with biting sarcasm. Except again, he’s about to go, for real this time…until Matt resuscitates him, hammering at his chest, Jack from LOST style. Vlad’s body needs to be sent to all of the research facilities.

In the midst of the two sides of the same coin (maybe?) Matt/Vlad one-act play, there’s a wonderful scene with Foggy in a hospital bed, determined to go out and find Matt. He’s worried about him (and should be). But Karen stops him: you’ve played hero enough for one day. She pecks him on the cheek. “Helluva first date,” Foggy grins. “I’ve had worse,” Karen says, as she exits. I love these moments on their own, but my favorite part? When the camera zooms out to reveal that they’re sharing the room with another family, that this private moment wasn’t so private after all.

Vlad and Matt’s stand off is interrupted by Wilson Fisk himself, bringing us the first interaction between DD and the Kingpin. Even if it’s over a comm device, it’s chilling. Again, Fisk suggests they’re not too different.

And Fisk clearly has the upper hand. When DD rebuffs his offers to capitulate, Fisk promises he’ll pin the bombings on the masked man, kill Vlad and “call the day a push.” That’s pretty much exactly what happens, and feels more than a push for Fisk. It feels like a victory. He hires a sniper to shoot Officer Blake, adding more fuel to the fire, as the Masked Man becomes branded a terrorist in the media, Condemned.

Throughout the episode, Matt has been talking with Claire, and she calls him with the news of his outing as a villain. Matt apologizes to her, that she was right, that he can’t love her, and that she should stay way. It’s heartbreaking, since Claire is wonderful, even if we’ve seen so many variations of this scene in comic book adaptations.

Our boy can’t catch a break: the cops are going to go in, and the only possible escape is through the sewers. Except he can’t lift the grate on his own. Luckily, Vlad has super powers and helps. There’s still little hope, with a cop army nearby (a ruthless one who kills the innocent cop) but Vlad decides to play hero, to defend the sewer while DD can escape. Just as importantly, he gives our masked man a new name to use in the war against the Kingpin: Leland Owlsley.