Daredevil - 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm' and 'In the Blood'

After twenty minutes of searching, Wilson still hadn't found the rabbit.

A man brutally slaughters three mobsters in a bowling alley, but due to a weapon malfunction - a point that bizarrely gets its own flashback - is unable to do so swiftly enough to escape the police. Wesley, the smooth-talking associate of Hell's Kitchen's mysterious underworld overlord, hires Nelson & Murdock to defend the man, over Foggy's protests.

There's an interesting reversal here, and Foggy's reluctance to take on the reptilian Healey as a client despite the money deepens him as a character. Murdock's decision to defend the man simply so that he can get to him once he is released and beat information out of him further develops the idea of something very dark indeed inside of him.

In an odd departure, Karen Page swings off into an essentially parallel storyline, investigating the Union Allied scandal on her own time and tapping veteran journalist Ben Urich (Vondie Curtis-Hall) for help. Urich is reluctant, not out of fear for himself, but for her, knowing that the idealistic are often the first casualties of corruption. Also detached from the main action is the first introduction of Vincent d'Onofrio as Wilson 'Kingpin' Fisk, seen buying an art from Vanessa Marianna (Aylet Zurer) in a scene that would be quite touching if Fisk were capable of speaking in anything but a sinister growl.

Actually, it's kind of touching because of that. He comes off in this and the next episode as a man who has real trouble actually relating to people, but wants to. We first see him with his back to the camera, examining a white-painted canvas with his fists clenched. He has money, power and should have self-assurance, but like Matt Murdock there is a devil in him that he can't escape.

I hope you like Charlie Cox's pecs, because I get the feeling
we'll be seeing a lot of them.

'In the Blood' develops the hell out of Fisk, as he assays an awkward romance with Marianna which is ultimately interrupted by a bloodied Russian mobster trying to pay his respects in a posh restaurant. The mobster is bloodied because his attempt to get to the man in the mask through Claire Temple has ended in another savage beating, athough neither so savage nor so terminal as Fisk's reaction to being embarrassed in front of his prospective girlfriend.

Claire Temple means another episode's work for Rosario Dawson, and another slow week for Elden Hensen as Foggy Nelson, who is peripherally present, but not actually doing much. Actually, I can't say for sure given the chain viewing nature of the series that he was even present. I think this is the episode where Karen buys a fax machine when Urich tells her she needs cover for being at an auction of Union Allied's shit, and he's there when she brings it back.

The crux of Daredevil's mythology is that he and the Kingpin are two sides of the same coin, and these two episodes work that idea until it's sweating. They are both established as Hell's Kitchen boys, bound to their city, but Fisk grew up away from it, hence he wants to rebuild it, Tobacco Row style, while Murdock wants to save what's there. If I wanted to draw yet more parallels to Arrow, I might point to the similar aims of Malcolm Merlin and Oliver Queen, although Murdock is more about protection than punishment. We also establish not only that they both have their devils, but that they are in some sense in control of them, able to rein them in and unleash them in their own time, Murdock taking an entire trial before confronting Healey, and Fisk calmly excusing himself and attempting to salvage his date before finally and protractedly murdering his underling.

The violence of the series continues to be extreme, and in places the brutal grind is replaced by a more graphic style that is even more off-putting. It's a major selling point of the series, but one that is not to all tastes and is particularly jarring when references to the rest of the MCU drop in.