Daredevil - 'The World on Fire' and 'Condemned'

The fact that this episode at no point used the song 'I Don't Want to Set the
World on Fire' is a travesty.

Having rescued Claire from the Russians, Matt brings her back to his place and invites her to move in with him, in a touchingly awkward scene which progresses their relationship to a romantic level.

The rest of the episode is Matt trying to track down the Russians, while the Russians - duped into thinking that the man in the mask killed Anatoly - are looking for him. Informed that Fisk might also have had a hand in it, Vladmir calls for all out war, but Fisk turns the tables, sending suicide bombers to annihilate the Russians at their mustering points.

"You have failed this... no, wait..."

Tipped off to a conspiracy of corrupt cops, Matt is present and almost caught in the blast. Still dazed, he is nearly arrested, but beats up the cops, who turn out to be corrupt and goes on the run with the injured Vladimir, still wanting information on Fisk. This is what leads into 'Condemned', which I felt I had to roll straight on with.

Meanwhile, Foggy and Karen seek justice for an old woman persecuted by a slum landlord. They even help to fix up her apartment a little, before the warehouse next door explodes. It's a little cosy to be playing alongside the big escalation, but gives Foggy a chance to be his own kind of hero and develops the potential relationship between the two.

Ever a man to take a chance, Fisk uses this as a romantic gambit, coming clean about his activities to Marianna over an intimate dinner as buildings explode outside the window like the denouement of Fight Club. Vanessa Marianna is building into an interesting character, not a criminal herself, but apparently very willing to accept Fisk as a criminal, and to buy into his reasoning. It helps that that reasoning seems very sincere; he genuinely believes that tearing down the old is the way to renew Hell's Kitchen.

'The World on Fire' is notable as much for some innovative imagery as for the catastrophic shift in the plot progression. In particular, Matt's perception is depicted for the first time, in golden-red tones - he describes it as the titular 'world on fire'. In another key scene, one of the reptillian Madam Gao's blinded couriers sits alone in a car, singing a haunting song while the camera pans back and forth, revealing Murdock suddenly there and then gone.

"This show is brutal."
"And yet I can't look away."

In 'Condemned', Foggy and Karen continue to sit on the very literal sidelines, with Foggy turning out to have been injured in the blast:

"Oh, that explains it."
"Explains what?"
"The stabbing pain in my side."

The two spending most of the episode in hospital, watching events on television and trying to call Matt, who is too busy taking phone advice on cauterising gunshot wounds from Claire.

Murdock ends up on top of Vladimir so often it's like these
two episodes really want them to kiss.

The meat of the episode has Vladimir and Murdock trapped in a warehouse with a captive cop (alas, poor Officer Sullivan, who proves himself a good and brave cop before being offed by the evil SWAT team to further frame the man in the mask.) Matt wants answers, Vladimir is basically wallowing through a lifetime of piss and vinegar to accept help from someone like Matt, and deeply derisive of his attempts to make a difference. Meanwhile, Fisk shows his true muscle, deploying a force of dirty cops and a sniper to take out several officers in the Masked Man's name.

And then he calls Matt, using a police frequency to talk to him for the obligatory 'we're not so different' conversation. The big realisation for Matt, however, is not that he is like Fisk, but that he is woefully underequipped to take him on. His plan was to gather evidence and take him down, but Vladimir scoff at this: "He owns cops, judges, everyone." At last, he gives Matt the name of the money man before making his last stand. "He has what you think you want, but it won't be enough. You see that now?"

"Card Sharp? Blackjack? No, too ethnic. Ace of Sp... Definitely not!"

'Condemned' has some strengths, but all in all is kind of an obligation; a series of events that have to happen at some point, especially the first contact with Fisk, which could have had a lot more weight to it. The absence of action compared to the previous episode takes away one of the series' strengths, and the tension is not quite enough to match it. The best thing about it is Ben Urich's search for the truth, which he models using notes written on playing cards, as if working up his own card-related superhero identity.