Daredevil - 'Into the Ring' and 'Cut Man'

This 'victory scene' sums up Daredevil in a nutshell. It's dark, it's raining,
and everyone hurts.

This Marvel/Netflix co-production is a revolutionary concept, a show released all in a oner via a streaming service and thus bypassing the usual television channels altogether. From my perspective, this mostly means that it doesn't vanish past my radar like Agent Carter did, which I am still bitter about.

Daredevil opens with 'Into the Ring', which introduces us to our central cast of characters: Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox*), blind vigilante, and his partner 'Foggy' Nelson (Elden Hensen), newly-minted defence attorneys; Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), an accountant accused of murder who becomes in short order their first client and unpaid secretary/third partner; and an eclectic class of multinational hoodlums working for 'him'. It also swiftly sets a scene; New York has recently undergone 'the incident' (that is, the Chitauri invasion of The Avengers) and Hell's Kitchen is ripe for redevelopment in the wake of that. Murdoch, and to a lesser extent Nelson, are determined to make a difference in a neighborhood that has stopped caring.

Page is accused of murder after stumbling across a pension fraud orchestrated by the mob. Alerted by a contact in the police, our hero lawyers show out to defend her ('You don't have any money; we don't have any clients. Maybe we can help each other.') Within the space of an episode, all three characters show up as delightfully complex, with Page in particular getting to be a victim, a fighter, a suspect and a friend.

"Why do you wear a mask? Were you burned by acid or
something?"
"No, it's just that they're terribly comfortable."

'Cut Man' builds on this, with Nelson and Page bonding as Murdoch bleeds out on the couch of Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) before rallying to save a kidnapped child. It's main purpose seems to be to introduce Temple as the future Daredevil's medical contact, as well as continuing its flashback arc with the death of Battlin' Jack Murdoch for refusing to take a dive.

Daredevil is the MCU's answer to DC's Arrow, inasmuch as The Flash is the Arrowverse's answer to the MCU. Far more than Agents of SHIELD, it's the gritty, dark corners of the MCU, and this shows in every aspect of the design, from the relentless dark of the Hell's Kitchen night, through the homemade costume, to the regular rainfall and the bone-jarring, knock-down, drag-out style of the fight sequences. Daredevil's bit is that he knows how to take a hit ('We're Murdochs; we always get hit.') and they play that hard.

Two down, eleven to go, and I'm completely over the lingering spectre of Ben Affleck.

* That's right, our new Matt Murdoch is English. And was the bumbling swashbuckler in Stardust. Deal with it.