To read my coverage of the first five episodes of season two, click here.
***SPOILERS FOR SEASON TWO AHEAD***
It’s taken me a little longer to finish season two of Daredevil than its first, but my overall feelings tend to stay on the positive side of things. While there were certainly some false notes, and I’ll get to those rather soon, the aspects of the series’ second season that worked did so remarkably, sometimes improving vastly on season one’s overall quality. The main issue the show had was that the problems from the debut season were still there, just spread out in different ways through different characters and storytelling techniques. Daredevil has a tendency to play rather dark in order to try to sell the gravity of the characters’ lives and the traumas they’ve endured, but in order to justify the overall bleak nature, they need their individual parts to shine. The atmosphere of dread, the performances and cinematic scope of the series still excel, with the latter even greater than the first season – there are shots in the last episode that look even better than the sneak peak of a certain tarmac sequence upcoming in Civil War. Here’s what worked, what didn’t work and what needs some time, but overall season two was an improvement to the first.
What dragged the season down:
Foggy:
Man, oh man, I thought I was going to be proven wrong about this but, as was the case last year, season two continued to push Foggy down a smug, self-righteous and infuriating path. The first two episodes we got of him were promising, a worrisome and supportive friend to Matt’s Daredevil activities, but as the season wore on, he began to grow more and more tedious in his storylines. I believe wholeheartedly that we were supposed to believe that Matt was in the wrong for ditching Foggy and Karen in the case defending Frank Castle, extenuating circumstances and all. I agreed with that point of view, but the complete disregard to Matt’s vigilantism isn’t just a frustrating character beat, but poor writing. Elden Henson may be partly to blame with the “above it all” nature of his performance, but if season three wants to improve on anything, it would be to immediately fix Foggy’s characterization. The purpose of the season finale seems to be that they’re all going their separate ways, juxtaposing the season one finale when they all came together again.
I want to like Foggy Nelson, and as he’s written we’re obviously supposed too. Yet, even when Matt was being a jackass 50% of the time this season, I still found myself more consistently frustrated with the former.
The “big bad”:
For all the lead up the show dedicated to the big bad, it ended up feeling rather tame. With the Punisher and Elektra both falling more on the antihero, morally complex vigilante side of the scale, it left Nobu (and, arguably, Fisk) as the season’s greatest adversaries to the heroes. There were separate threads here and there such as Karen and Frank Castle finding the man who orchestrated the massacre that killed his family, but even that storyline ended with more a whimper than a bang.
This is a shame, since it was the Hand/Black Sky storyline that fully kicked the series back into gear after stalling out for a few episodes as it grappled with how to handle the fallout of Frank being captured and Foggy, Matt and Karen’s law firm beginning to fall to pieces.
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While I don’t count myself as one of the many fans of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk, there was no question that he was a viable and present threat to our hero, demonstrating as much in the brief encounter Matt had with the imposing man in prison. Nobu provides fodder for some great fight sequences and sets the stage for what would seem like future storylines, but he isn’t very interesting on his own in the way the series has written him.
The middle act:
Last year, the show’s middle act was its strongest, fast paced and stringing the audience along with it as it escalated the threats and consequences that Matt faced on a day-to-day basis and then it kind of just stopped.
This time around the same thing happens, but it happens at a different stage – the second act. In the time where the show should have picking up pace, it instead hits a bit of a dull string of episodes, in part why it took me longer this year to finish them. While Elektra injected a necessary sense of life into those episodes, she isn’t enough to squash the feeling that the writers didn’t have a direction to point themselves in once the Punisher was taken in by the police.
Continue to page two for what I found needed more development to really stick the landing…
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What needed more time:
Karen:
I have such mixed opinions on Karen. On the one hand, I believe that Deborah Ann Woll more than held her own in her storyline, and her and Frank’s dynamic was so good you couldn’t help but wonder if the show didn’t at one point think that the best choice would be to pair those two off for the long haul and do the same for Matt and Elektra. The chemistry in those pairings speak volumes, and Karen’s belief in the law and its grayish hues aligned herself nicely with the Punisher.
I believed in the idea that she would make a good investigative reporter due to her gumption and willingness to throw herself into dangerous situations in order to uncover the truth. I just don’t believe in it happening so quickly. Maybe it’s the print journalist in me, but her getting her own (huge) office without having EVER being published pushed my limits of believability.
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And again, that ending monologue as she writes her piece on Frank Castle was ludicrous. That wouldn’t get published – it was pure nonsense. But I am happy to see Karen’s storyline and back story unfolding, if only we’d had some of the developments spread out a bit more.
Matt’s reconciling himself as Daredevil:
We had already gotten Matt’s ascent into Hell’s Kitchen vigilante, but this season, as is the case with so many superhero shows, we got Matt (purposefully or not) pushing the people closest to him away as he disappeared further and further behind his mask. The show could have put some more effort into making that a smoother transition, rather than writing it in such an abrupt fashion that it makes his loyalties seem displaced as he comes off more like a jerk towards his friends than a hero.
We get a sense of where this storyline could have gone in Matt’s last real conversation with Elektra when he tells her that when he’s with her, he’s free, that without Daredevil he’s as good as dead. It’s as much, if not more, insight that we’ve gotten from the character all season long. Matt can be a closed off character to those around him without sacrificing character beats that help further explain who they are and where their motives derive from. At the end of the season, it felt like we knew Frank Castle and Elektra better than our leading hero because we got the chance to truly delve deep on these two immensely flawed characters. While we didn’t agree with every action they took at least it had been written to explain the why’s of the matter.
Meanwhile, Matt is written to avoid his friendships, job and any other forms of life but Daredevil by the time Elektra shows up, and considering he’d been managing to grapple both aspects of his life for five episodes prior, it comes off more as contrived writing to move the plot along than actual, natural writing.
Continue to page three for what were the greatest highlights of season two of Daredevil…
What Worked:
Punisher and Elektra:
For everything that didn’t elevate its source material this year, these two characters more than made up the slack with confident and layered performances. Jon Bernthal and Elodie Yung both brought an incredible amount of weight to their performances, making characters that could have become caricatures the heart and soul of the season. Even greater still was the sheer physicality each brought to the table, Bernthal a hulking, intimidating presence until undone by the thought of his family was a living and breathing weapon, and Yung showing through action rather than words that her character was pure rage. Elektra being Black Sky wasn’t the best twist the show could have made, but it gives her personal dilemmas and demons even greater weight.
Daredevil’s relationships with Elektra and Punisher:
Adding to my last note, what stuck out to me was how much more I cared about the interactions between Matt and Elektra and Matt and Frank than I did with Matt and Karen and Matt and Foggy. The former two brought out the more interesting and divisive aspects of Matt Murdock’s characterization, making him a much more compelling figure. His shouting matches with Frank about morality, their begrudged team up, Frank’s annoyance with “Red’s” interference to Frank stepping in to help save Daredevil in his final showdown with Nobu and his men was a wonderfully progressed dynamic between the two men. Both are more similar than the other would care to admit, but either as adversaries or reluctant comrades, they make for an intriguing duo.
But the very best part of the season has to be the toxic but oddly sweet relationship between Elektra and Matt. There is no doubt that they bring out the very worst in one another, especially when it comes to Elektra’s effect on Matt. Each interaction they have, be it physical or emotional, is riveting and fueled with an abundance of chemistry. Both damaged at a young age, abandoned and lost, we believe Matt when he tells Elektra he’s his truest self with her, we believe Elektra when she says Matt is closed off. While it’s made to look like she died at the end of the season (in a fantastic fight sequence), it’s not hard to believe there’s more to come.
The promise of threats to come:
And here is where things get interesting. Fisk’s inclusion in the season, Matt’s foolish threat directed at Vanessa and Fisk’s outburst plus control over the prison all spell bad things for the Devil of Hell’s kitchen. Whether he’s brought back in a possible third season or plays the role of villain in the much anticipated (but far off) The Defenders, Fisk is coming back in a big way.
Some other thoughts:
*The fight scenes were just as good if not better than the first season, especially in the latter episodes when they were shot in ways that felt overtly cinematic.
*Charlie Cox was just as great this season but was given frustratingly little to despite it being his show.
*The dissolution of Karen and Matt’s relationship still seemed too quick to me considering all the build up they gave them. I also don’t see how they couldn’t have a quick conversation with the latter explaining to the further that the woman in his bed was there because she was dying.
*Stick’s involvement was fun but largely felt arbitrary.
What did we think overall? How about Matt’s confession to Karen at the end or Foggy’s new career prospects? Let me know in the comments!
Season Grade: 8/10
Best Episodes: “Penny and Dime”, “Guilty as Sin”, “Seven Minutes in Heaven” & “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel”.
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