Daredevil - 'New York's Finest' and 'Penny and Dime'

"My plan worked poifectly."

Following his fight with the Punisher last episode, Daredevil finds himself chained up on a roof. His mask is still on, because the Punisher doesn't care who he is underneath; he cares about the Devil, and deconstructing his MO. I said last week that one of the problems with the Punisher is that he represents the potential invalidation of the superhero milieu by pushing his Charles Bronson ethos into a four colour world, and Daredevil pulls off quite a coup by making that the text and not subtext*. He calls Daredevil a half measure: He puts criminals down and they get up again; Punisher puts them down and they stay down, never to kill again.

Karen is determined to find and help their client, although Grotto calls to make it clear he isn't interested in their help after the stitch up at the ambush. She gets angry with Foggy for not helping her, but Foggy of course knows that Matt is in serious trouble. He goes to see Claire Temple for help searching the hospital system. She makes a reference to her actions in Jessica Jones getting her in trouble with the hospital and has little time given the huge influx of gunshot gangsters as the Punisher's actions spark an all-out war. She softens a little as Foggy uses his legal kung fu to talk down a pair of feuding gang soldiers from a knife fight in ER and they confirm that Matt is not in a hospital.

Back on the roof, Daredevil tries to convince the Punisher that his way isn't needed; that there is always hope and redemption. He senses a potential connection on realising that his captor is also a New York Catholic, but Frank - his name comes out in conversation with an old Marine who lives in the building - has lost his faith and no longer believes that there is any hope of redemption; not for his targets and not for him.

Karen confronts the DA's assistant (he may be the Assistant DA, but I'm not sure,) and persuades him to let her swipe some of the Punisher files, including one for the prime suspect 'F.Castle', including an x-ray of a skull with a bullet hole in it.

To force Daredevil into a corner, Frank gives him a gun and one bullet, then drags out Grotto, puts a gun to his head and forces him to confess to killing an an elderly couple before offering a choice. Shoot Grotto or shoot Punisher to save him; either way, Punisher is right. Daredevil takes a third option, shooting a weak link in his chains, but can't close fast enough to stop Grotto getting shot. He puts Punisher down, but Grotto dies, and I quite like that while this does point up the limitations of Daredevil's approach, it's not definitive and doesn't break him.

"I will kick your ass with an empty gun duct taped to my hand."

Before he gets knocked out, Frank manages to fire a grenade into a rack of bikes outside the Dogs of Hell clubhouse (while whispering a mantra: 'One batch, two batch, penny and dime,') drawing out the gang. Daredevil gets Frank to a lift, but seeing the old man from earlier about to fall foul of the bikers he jumps out and we get the first corridor fight of the season. With an empty magnum taped to one hand and a chain still cuff to the other, Daredevil fights his way past about twenty bikers down a narrow stairwell, and once more it's fucking epic.

I know this is getting long, but this is a dramatically charged pair of episodes.

As we move into 'Penny and Dime', a retired Irish gangster named Finn (played by Tony Curran, who was in Blade II and played Thor's granddaddy in The Dark World) comes to town to lead the hunt for his son's killer. Elsewhere, the staff of Nelson and Murdock are the only attendees at the funeral of Grotto and are moved by the bleak nihilism of the priest's eulogy.

It's all about that stare.

The Irish track Frank down as the Central Park Carousel, drug and capture him. Following their trail, Daredevil - sporting a new and almost indestructible helmet and gloves - finds a wounded survivor of the capture and extracts the location of the Irish mob's torture dungeon. While Finn takes a drill to Frank's feet and threatens to do the same to his adopted dog if Frank doesn't give up the money he took from the massacre in episode 1, Karen does some detective work to locate Frank's old house. There she finds military memorabilia, but also pictures of a wife and daughter, and a well-read children's book including the refrain 'One batch, two batch, Penny and dime.'

Daredevil arrives and starts fighting his way into the warehouse. The gangsters sent to fetch the money are blown up by a booby trap and Frank busts loose, having expected capture and sutured a razor blade into his arm wound, the crazy bastard. He kills Finn, but is half-dead by now and has to let Daredevil help him out, impressed despite himself with the 'half measure's' abilities.

Daredevil rests Frank against a tombstone in a cemetery (and I'm hacked off I can't find a screenshot of that, because the parallel with the poses in 'New York's Finest' is beautiful) and Frank, suspecting he may be dying, tells his story: How he came home from fighting a war to his wife and daughter; how he refused to read her the book because he was exhausted from travel, but promised to do so the next night; and how she was killed before he could make good on his promise and died in his arms. It's a story that jabs all my emotional buttons, and Jon Bernthal sells the fuck out of it. I am never refusing to read my daughter a book again.

Maybe I'm just poisoned against her by the Daredevil movie,
but after Bernthal's tour de force, Elektra's reveal was a huge
let down.

The police arrive, and Daredevil tells Officer Friendly to take the collar, having realised that he isn't different enough from Punisher. He can't be the one catching the bad guys; it has to be the proper authorities getting the collar, the good cops (the ones who haven't been killed by crazed supersoldiers anyway.) After a slightly muted celebration, Karen walks Matt home and they make a date for dinner. He goes in and smiles, tentatively happy for the first time in who knows how long, before starting up to realise that he isn't alone. There's a woman on his sofa; a woman named Elektra.

After these two episodes, I categorically withdraw my objections to the Punisher's appearance. While he puts the methods of heroes like Daredevil in question, the level of reactive violence his actions bring ultimately undermine his approach, while his backstory perfectly explains his reasoning: Why doesn't he believe in hope and redemption? Because his hope and his redemption were torn from him. It's not easy watching, but it's superbly done. I really don't know how they plan to change gears for the slinky ninja.

* I don't know the comics, but apparently this was a comic plot that they lifted almost straight.