Daredevil - 'The Path of the Righteous'

The interview process was highly aggressive.

Fisk rushes Vanessa to an emergency room, the victim of poisoned champagne. Preoccupied by this, he seems oblivious to Leland Owlsley's suspect behaviour and leaves Wesley to field a call from his mother. Meanwhile, Claire visits to replace Matt's stitches and Foggy wakes up in bed with slutty corporate lawyer from 'The World on Fire', because apparently his reaction to Matt's betrayal has been to lose all self-respect. Karen tries to assemble the Avengers to act on the new information about Fisk, but Foggy and Matt are mired in self-pity and Ben is still mad at her for tricking him, and all point out that it's unsubstantiated hearsay anyway. The only person who seems to care is Wesley, who kidnaps her and tries to recruit her to call off Ben Urich's investigations.

And then she shoots him dead.

After the dark night of the soul that was 'Nelson vs. Murdock', 'The Path of the Righteous' represents less the dawn than the bit just before that which is even darker. It's only brief moment of hope comes when Claire's repeated advice that Matt should get some body armour leads him to seek out Fisk's tailor. Melvin Potter is a genius with mental health issues (and fairly realistic ones at that, as far as I could tell.) When it becomes apparent that he works for Fisk due to a threat to the woman who acts as his touchstone of stability, Matt recruits him to create a suit for him, 'a symbol', in return for which he will make sure Potter and his friend are safe from Fisk.

But then there's that ending and man, that ending. It's such a brutal turning point, and serves as a real sucker punch given that Karen was basically the only one keeping it together throughout the episode.

I've got two more episodes of season 2 to go, but it's really picking up.