Daredevil - 'Seven Minutes in Heaven' and 'The Man in the Box'

"None of you seem to understand. I'm not locked in here with you; you're all
locked in here with me."

We begin 'Seven Minutes in Heaven' with a flashback, detailing Wilson Fisk's arrival in prison, confrontation with resident prison boss Dutton and rise to power through favours and payoffs. Then we cut back to his meeting with Castle, and get to watch the two lock horns like a pair of bosses.

Back at Chez Murdock, Elektra nurses a poison-stabbed Matt back to health and also calls in a clean-up crew to get rid of the bloodstains and ninja-corpses, leaving the loft looking frankly pretty spiffy; more like a home than ever before. Despite this show of her nurturing and domestic sides, they talk about murder and she can't deny that she likes killing people. She will never change in that, Matt tells her. She will always be a killer, he will always be against killing, so they have to 'stop corrupting each other.' Unlike Frank Castle, however, he sees no imperative to see Elektra put in jail; either because she's hot or because she knows who he is. Which makes no difference, it all reinforces this Season's main conclusion that Matt Murdock is a self-righteous dick. We see this again when Foggy comes buy to mend bridges and suggest a time out, and Matt basically says: Sure; let's wind up the office and never speak of this, or anything else, again.

Fisk tells Castle that Dutton was involved in the carousel massacre and procures him seven minutes for a little chatette. Castle refuses to be Fisk's man, but Fisk is totally open with him: Yes, he gains, but so does Castle. 'The tide raises all ships.'

Karen finds evidence of a John Doe who was disappeared from the carousel crime scene. Working with Ben Urich's old editor, since neither Matt nor Foggy is in a state where they want to know, she learns that the man was an undercover cop. Impressed, the Editor offers her Ben's old office.

Castle kills Dutton's minder, extracts some information on the three-way clusterfuck that was supposed to be a massive drug's deal before the supplier, an enigmatic figure known as the Blacksmith, got wind of the police sting. He didn't show, the gangs got twitchy and lead flew. "There were a hundred bangers and every finger found a trigger," Dutton tells Castle; his crusade will never be over. Castle stabs him, then agrees. The guards refuse to let him out of the wing and release the other inmates to 'close the circle', but see the photo above for how that worked out.

"You're dead."
"There is no such thing."
Good answer.

Afterwards, Fisk visits Castle and tells him that he has a gift for violence and that he has changed his mind. Now that he runs the prison, he's going to get Frank out to do what he does. In a close fought confrontation, he takes down Castle one-on-one, just to remind us that Wilson Fisk is not the passive money man Castle initially takes him for, and then has him smuggled out.

Murdock finds the Yakuza accountant and through him a Hand complex called the Farm, where captives including the accountant's son are being drained of blood into a massive sarcophagus. The rescue is briefly interrupted by a ninja who takes away the coffin and reveals himself to be Nobu, whom Matt thought had burned to death last season.

I really liked that they troop in for a fight and find Reyes in sweats and
completely non-combative. It's a really clever use of posture and costume to
indicate the character's frame of mind.

In 'The Man in the Box', our heroes are called to the courthouse when Castle's escape is noted. Reyes is defensive, but open, confirming all of Karen's findings about the sting (and Matt and Foggy's reaction to how much she knows is priceless.) The DA is rattled because a copy of Castle's X-ray turned up in her daughter's schoolbag, but before she can take action the room is sprayed with gunfire: Reyes is killed and Foggy hit in the shoulder.

Karen and her editor realise that the people who set Castle up are being killed, but are too late to save the ME who falsified the autopsies of his family. Karen doesn't think this is the Punisher's MO - one shot, one kill, he told her - but everyone else is convinced that he's gone off the deep end. She goes to get her files to take to the cops, but the editor insists on a police escort. "You wouldn't have pulled this patriarchal shit with Ben," she accuses, which he accepts, responding: "I'll never make that mistake again."

This show has a lot of these table shots.

Matt visits Fisk, threatening to have Vanessa's visa cancelled if Fisk doesn't tell him where the Punisher is, but Fisk just beats on him while the guard stands by and tells him that once he gets out, he will come after Nelson and Murdock and make the city wish it was still dealing with Frank Castle. After this, Matt sits on the roof of the hospital where the kids from the Farm are being treated on the QT by Claire Temple. He's brooding, a lot, and Claire can't even persuade him to visit Foggy.

On the upside, the accountant's son Daniel wakes up. So that's good. Right?

A smooth-talking ninja tries to kill Elektra in a private airport. She kills him and tells him she doesn't care what the Hand do, but he tells her that Stick sent him.

Castle finds Karen at her apartment. He swears he hasn't killed anyone since getting out, but she holds a gun on him anyway until someone shoots up the room from outside.

"Jennifer. Jennifer."

And at the hospital, an army of ninja arrive. Claire runs to the ward and finds the kids all up and about, Daniel having brutally murdered his father. The lights flicker off and everything looks set to go completely to shit.

Okay, so this is a pretty busy couple of episodes, but Daredevil could offer something like Shadowhunters a few good pointers on how to manage a busy episode. There's almost no slack time, no forced and uncharacteristic stupidity - Matt is being a prat, but that's been flagged for ages - and everything happens in its right time and order. Amazingly, amid all the action, these episodes also successfully call back to Season 1, bring us up to date on Fisk and move the plot forward. It's some impressive work.

Jon Bernthal continues to impress as the Punisher, particularly opposite d'Onofrio's Fisk, who makes the usually hulking Castle look small by comparison. Next to this, Murdock's first face to face with Fisk is a bit lacking, but of course Matt is constrained by the secret identity against bringing all of his moves, as it were, to the table. Increasingly, however, Daredevil is one of the least compelling parts of this series, and for the record my current dream PI spinoff is Punisher & Page.