The Defenders

The Defenders.

Built as it is to binge, I thought it as apt to do a single, whole-series review of The Defenders as to do a blow-by-blow, especially considering my current rate of writing.

The Defenders, for the sake of internet historians of the far future, was Netflix’s answer to the Avengers, bringing together their corner of the MCU and uniting the four superpowered Defenders of New York who aren’t Spider-Man(1). Mind you, it takes its sweet time doing it, being a couple of episodes in before anyone actually meets up.

Danny Rand and Coleen Wing are chasing the Hand around the world when they get a tip off from a dying man that the real fight is in New York. They track down a weapons shop in New York and find a whole mess of dead martial artists. They confront the team sent to clean the crime scene, but they turn out to be a group of black youths offered the work by a man in a white suit. One of them is the brother of Candace, the hostess who was murdered at the end of Luke Cage, leading to the much anticipated ‘Luke Cage vs. Iron Fist’ event, in which Danny Rand bloodies his knuckles on Luke’s indestructible skin, before finally knocking him down with the Iron Fist. Then they both run from the law.

Now I have a lawyer. Ho-ho-ho.

Elsewhere, Foggy gives Matt some overflow, pro bon cases to help him kick the Daredevil habit. One of these is the case of Jessica Jones, who sort-of takes the case of a missing architect because someone calls to tell her not to. This leads her to an apartment full of explosives, and later brings the architect himself to her office with a gun(2). This particular Mexican standoff is interrupted when Elektra shows up, all Black Sky, to knock Jessica about and kill the architect. Matt shows up as her attorney, but she gives him the slip and is able to see him doing some ninja parkour shit(3).

Then there’s an earthquake.

Luke gives Danny an earful about privilege, and the four each make their way towards Midland Circle, an upscale newly built corporate headquarters full of evil and built on top of the big hole from Daredevil Season 2. Danny goes in all corporate to declare war on the Hand, only for their leader, the mysterious Alexandra, to order him captured. There follows a massive fight, with first Luke, then Matt and Jessica showing up to help, and the four of them finally being driven off by Elektra.

This restaurant scene has been a focus of the hype, and it was pretty cute.

Our totally not a superteam repair to a Chinese restaurant to regroup, with Matt and Danny explaining to Jessica and Luke who the Hand are(4) and that they will go after their loved ones. Stick then pops up to let us know that the Chaste – who were formed by the Elders of K’un-Lun, incidentally – have, other than him, been wiped out, give some deep background and name the five fingers of the Hand – Alexandra, Madame Gao, Sowande – the man in the white suit – Bakuto and angry Japanese challenge-seeker(5) Murakami. These five were booted out of K’un-Lun for trying to live forever and have been at it ever since. From scenes of the Hand, however, we learn that Alexandra blew the last of their stores of ‘the substance’ to resurrect Elektra. Jessica leaves, Alexandra catches up with them, but Jessica returns and hits the Black Sky with a car before another big brawl, in which Matt stuffs it by going after Elektra alone and trying to get through to her.

Our heroes get police protection for their friends, but play it coy with Misty for the sake of tension. Luke is able to capture Sowande, and from Alexandra’s actions and his taunting they realise that the Hand wants Danny. Stick kills Sowande after he tries to escape with Danny, and the rest of the team decide that Danny needs to be kept off the front line until they know what the Hand want with him. Danny isn’t having it, because he’s the Immortal Iron Fist, damnit, so they have to tie him to a chair. He and Luke bond a little, but then Stick uses drugged incense to incapacitate Luke and tries to kill Danny. Unfortunately, he drags it out too long, Matt and Jessica get back from finding the architect’s plans to blow up Midland Circle and bury whatever the hole leads to, and in the end Elektra clashes the party, kills her father figure and kidnaps Danny, before murdering Alexandra and declaring herself the new boss of the Hand.

Punchy punchy kick kick.

 Jessica, Luke and Matt are picked up by the cops in suspicious proximity to one stabbed guy and one decapitated corpse. They eventually break out of the precinct and go to Midland Circle, where they fight the remaining fingers of the Hand to an inconclusive result. Colleen meets them with a stack of explosives, which she and Clare go to set up while the others go down to rescue Danny, who has let himself be gulled into fighting Elektra, allowing her to redirect the Iron Fist and open the dome structure buried deep beneath the city, which turns out to be a vault covering a dragon’s skeleton. Because why the fuck not.

Gao explains that the Subtance is basically ground up dragon, and that removing the bones from beneath New York will basically fuck the city’s foundations, because never mind rock and roll, they built this city(6) on dragon’s bones. The others arrive and a battle royale ensues, while Coleen and Clare set charges and battle Bakuto and some goons. Misty shows up with the assist, and gets her arm sliced off before Coleen decapitates Bakuto, who inconsiderately falls on the detonator controls, starting an unstoppable countdown.

Matt gets the others to evacuate, while he tries once more to get through to Elektra, despite the fact that she was a dangerous, thrill-seeking egoist at her best. Murakami gets thrown off the lift, Gao gets fatalistic, Jessica catches the falling lift by its cables and Luke persuades the police to evacuate before the building comes down on top of Matt, Elektra, Murakami and Gao.

Nuns!

The police drop the matter. Jessica reopens Alias Investigations. Luke goes home to Harlem. Danny offers to pay for Misty’s treatment at a state of the art hospital (presumably doing great work with robot arms,) then crouches on a roof like he’s Daredevil. And Matt wakes up in what appears to be the Budapest convent hospital from Dracula.

So, that was The Defenders, a perfectly serviceable series which takes the uniqueness of the four Netflix Marvel series and combines them into something kind of generic. The best stuff stylistically is when they’re operating apart and cutting from the visual style of one series to another between scenes – perpetual darkness for Matt Murdock, seventies sepia-toned for Luke Cage, washed out noir for Jessica Jones, entirely bland television colours for Danny Rand(7) – but that only carries the story so far, and when they unite the series proves to share Iron Fist’s lack of a distinct visual language. Sadly, it also shares the lacklustre martial arts work, although having the other three means that you get their distinctive styles, and say what you will about Charlie Cox’s Daredevil, but there’s a thesp who put the hours in on his fight training.

Name dropping historical events liek s

The story is decent enough, but suffers somewhat from being basically what the League of Shadows/Assassins is all about in Batman/Arrow – take one city, add ninjas, stir until well and truly done – but with less ruthless Utopianism and more dragons. Elodie Yung does her best with what she’s given, but Elektra is just too much of a cypher and the Black Sky prophecy too vague for the show to paint a compelling picture of the Hand’s internal power struggles. It is also unclear how using up the last of the Substance makes them vulnerable when Bakuto has come back from the dead and can still shrug off bullet wounds in the chestal area. They still seem to have little to fear save decapitation and massive organ failure, putting them just one down on Connor MacLeod.

The Fingers of the Hand are a mixed bag, with Sigourney Weaver a menacing presence, but never a physical threat because of the characters frailty. Murakami has quirks, more than character – only speaks in Japanese, seeks a challenge(8) – and while Sowande has some personality, Bakuto is as bland as everything else coming out of Iron Fist, leaving Madame Gao to do most of the heavy lifting. It was also frankly disappointing that, after Stick warns Luke that Sowande can mess with the functions of his body and kill him without physical trauma, Luke turns out to be as impervious to the old pressure point deal as he is to blades, bullets and harsh language. 

And watching Danny try to kung fu Luke is priceless.

Truth to tell, Luke Cage is a bit of a problem here all around, his power set being basically a massive fuck you to all martial artists. One on one he could have a good fight against someone agile enough to make him wear himself out, but it never happens. Occasionally he gets slapped around by Danny or Elektra, but he really just gets up again. Danny, meanwhile, once more demands the question ‘how did you become the Iron Fist?’ I know he plunged his hand into the molten heart of Shao Lao, but how was this yoyo the greatest martial artist in K’un-Lun when he gets his arse kicked so much? He’s really got nothing but the Fist going for him a lot of the time, and not even that when he’s trying to charge off despite knowing that’s what the Hand wants, or getting suckered into shattering the vault created by a former Iron Fist. Never has a character so ably converted a strength into a liability.

Despite this, some of my favourite character moments in the series are between Luke and Danny, and I confess I’m broshipping them more than a little, and that at least is something that they’ve got right. Luke Cage might have another solo series in him, but I’d definitely take a Heroes for Hire show over Iron Fist season 2.

Speaking of characters, let’s talk about journeys.

Welcome to the Jungle.

Jessica Jones begins the long walk back to humanity, and probably has the best arc of any of the leads. Now in part this is because she appears at the start of the series slightly regressed from the end of her first season, still refusing to take on the cases being thrown at her since she became famous, and by the finale is seen opening up the office again. Luke Cage has a lot to do with that, of course, giving her the chance to cauterise one old wound for reals, but working with a team, be it ever so dysfunctional, brings her out of the darkness. It’s a shame not to see Trish and Malcolm play more of a part in that, but so it goes. We’ve got a lot of characters knocking around and some of them are going to miss out. I did like that they acknowledge her turning this particular corner by greeting Malcolm with something other than an angry insistence that he stop trying to get her to act like a human being.

Luke Cage and Danny Rand do their best work playing off each other. Danny is a big picture guy, while Luke looks after his own. They help each other see things from another perspective, with Luke knocking a sliver of sense into Danny, and Danny showing Luke that he can’t always protect his own by being insular. It’s disappointing that Danny doesn’t grow more significantly during the course of the series, but he is at least forced to confront the fact that he has issues, even if he doesn’t really do anything about them.

The big problem with Elektra is that she is less a character and more Matt
Murdock's issues.

And finally, Matt Murdock, who… Well, if he had died in this series, it would have been no more than he deserved, and actually an apt ending to the arc established in Daredevil. Unfortunately, they kind of take a weird direction with him. He is pitched as the team’s natural leader, but besides his reflexive secrecy, he repeatedly prioritises saving Elektra, even after she proves herself to have utterly embraced her dark side, leaving the team to their own devices because of this. One of my friends was pondering to what degree Jessica Jones gets a pass for being a bitch because she’s pretty, but Matt at least is willing overlook frankly a lot of murder, purely because he really fancies Elektra. I get it; she’s his dark reflection, and saving her means he is not damned, but this is an arc which does not sit well with this ‘natural leader’ thing, an informed trait if ever there was one.

So anyway, that’s The Defenders, which if nothing else provides strong evidence that secret ninja magic crime cults may be over as a thing. Compared to their appearances in Daredevil, the Hand just don’t seem all that mysterious. The Five Fingers are near-immortals with thousands of years behind them, but only Madame Gao has the right sort of unearthly feel to her. Sigourney Weaver does fine work with what she has, but lacks the time to get properly established. They just come off as regular – if highly successful – criminals, and even the dragon bones that they are digging for don’t really feel as epic as they ought.

In fact, ‘not as epic as they ought’ is pretty much the watchword of the series. Like the Avengers movies, it has a lot to fit in, and in doing so doesn’t reliably do any of it much beyond ‘quite good.’

(1) The fact that Spider-Man is a thing in the MCU does sting The Defenders’ cred a little. I mean, even if Iron Man has moved upstate, the friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler is only in Queens. Does spider sense not work on ninjas? Does MCU Spidey even have spider sense?

(2) The second of many times I thought Malcolm was going to get fridged.

(3) Not sure how she manages this, since she’s a good PI but he’s supposed to be able to track a heartbeat at half a mile.

(4) A spiel which goes down like a cockroach sandwich.

(5) That is literally his character: He’s angry, he’s Japanese, and he seeks for something to challenge him.

(6) And by implication, given how much time they spend talking about this being ‘just a city’ and that Elektra can expect to see many cities fall, many, if not all cities.

(7) Seriously, the sin of Iron Fist – well, one of them – is not really having a style to back up its lack of substance. It’s almost unique in being a series that needed its foreign language scenes to be dubbed instead of subtitled.

(8) And yet is not determined to pit himself one on one against the Iron Fist (which would probably be disappointing) or even the Black Sky.

Daredevil '.380', 'The Dark at the End of the Tunnel' and 'A Cold Day in Hell's Kitchen'

What does it say that SBL now looks like Foggy's absolute BFF?

As we hit the final stretch, all hell breaks loose, so I'm not sure if I'm going to keep this all in order.

Ninjas attack the hospital, not to kill the donor kids but to 'rescue' them, murdering two security guards and a nurse to do it. In the aftermath, Claire discovers that the ninja she pushed out of a window had already been autopsied once and then quits rather than take part in the administration cover up. Foggy gets a visit from Slutty Blonde Lawyer, who has been so reasonable this season that I feel I ought to use her name (Marci Stahl), and who makes an offer to float his name, as people have been impressed by his handling of the Castle case, even if ultimately they lost.

Yes, she's back from 'further than China'.

Karen lies about the Punisher's presence at the latest shooting and is put in protective custody, which she ditches to meet up with Castle. He takes her to a diner where they talk, until he tells her to get everyone under cover as someone is going to try to kill him. He takes out the shooters and tortures them for information on the Blacksmith before finishing them. Meanwhile, Daredevil gets the same info from Madame Gao, the Blacksmith's last real rival.

Frank hits the Blacksmith's heroine shipment and corners what appears to be the boss, but Daredevil appears and tells him that the man is lying. Then a contingent of heavily armed shooters pop up and open fire, blowing up the ship Frank has rigged, killing all of the shooters and apparently Castle in one Kaiser Soze of a blast. Disconsolate, Karen isn't sure what to do with her story, but her editor advises her to find the new story: The real Frank Castle.

Once more, Clancy Brown.

To find out who that is, she visits Castle's former CO, Colonel Schoonover. He tells her about the camaraderie of soldiers and about Frank's knack for impressions, but the heartwarming stuff is somewhat spoiled when Karen spots a photograph of the Colonel's unit and recognises one of the shooters from the docks. She tries to get away, but Schoonover is not fooled and holds a gun on her. He gets her to drive out into the woods, but the car is t-boned by a pick-up after Karen receives a nod from the not-as-dead-as-you-might-think Frank Castle in the form of an overly-loud in-car cassette soundtrack.

Three's a crowd.

Elsewhere, Elektra takes out Stick's followers and Matt is only just able to stop her from killing Stick. They are then attacked by ninjas who kidnap Stick. Matt goes after him, following advice from Foggy in a slightly awkward non-reconciliation scene to look for disused subway tunnels. The ninjas stop using weapons so that Daredevil can't track them, but Stick tells him to use their infrequent breaths. When Elektra shows up to kill Stick, however, it becomes clear that the Hand were after her all along, as she is the Black Sky (or a Black Sky; I'm really unclear on this, especially as apparently the Hand serves the Black Sky instead of seeking to control them.)

They bust out after Matt persuades Elektra that no-one gets to dictate her destiny, and Nobu orders the death of Daredevil.

Carrie-Anne Moss visits for a patented Daredevil 'talk across a table', which
is rapidly becoming the series' version of the West Wing's walk and talk.

Foggy gets a job with Hogarth, Chao and Benowitz (Jessica Jones' sometime employers) with a possible partnership in the future.

Karen sees Frank execute Schoonover in the latter's cabin in the woods, which turns out to contain a secret arsenal. Karen runs back to the city, where she is kidnapped by the Hand along with nineteen other people who were saved by Daredevil. One, the ex-marine from earlier this season, is murdered for speaking out, and the others taken to a disused building, but Karen persuades tragicomic repeat offender Turk Barrett (the small time gun seller who is regularly roughed up by Daredevil*) to activate his lo-jack.

Love triangles are the Devil's work.

The police arrive and fall into a standoff, but Daredevil frees the hostages, armed with his new billy club (which is so Batman it's basically magic) and Elektra shows up to help, also kitted out by Melvin. They fight just so many ninja, and also Nobu. Ultimately, Elektra takes a death blow meant for Matt and considers it a triumph, taking the Black Sky away from the Hand. Daredevil fights Nobu as the other ninjas are picked off by the Punisher and ultimately throws him off the roof to his death.

Not that the fall kills Nobu, but Stick is waiting there to cut his head off.

So peaceful. Not going to last.

We wrap up with Frank blowing up his house and walking off, having decorated a set of body armour with the image of his own skull. Stick and Matt bury Elektra, and the Hand dig her up and put her in the coffin that they feed blood to. Foggy closes the tab at Josie's. Karen delivers a piece on heroism for the paper, to the effect that the rest of the world can fuck off: New Yorkers are heroes just for daring to leave their apartment to buy coffee (okay, actually it's written to New Yorkers, and especially Hell's Kitcheners, telling them to be proud of their cesspool of a neighbourhood and doesn't put anyone else down.) I suspect it would have been more moving if it hadn't been so reminiscent of a Denis Leary monologue.

"For identification purposes, I am not in a love triangle."

Matt meets up with Karen at the defunct offices of Nelson & Murdock and tells her he is Daredevil, which would have been more touching if he hadn't just got through telling Elektra that she makes him feel more alive than anything else in the world. I hate love triangles; they always sell someone short. It is however an interesting parallel with the finale of last season, which closed on Matt truly becoming the Daredevil. Here, although he says, 'I'm Daredevil', he's actually exposing Matt Murdock to Karen's unveiled scrutiny.

So, that's season 2 of Daredevil, and volume three of the MCU 'street' division. It wasn't as strong a series as the first, with the Hand in particular a weaker antagonist than Wilson Fisk because they were too mysterious, and because their origins were frankly too distant and hazy to be relevant. Both Matt and Elektra basically poo-pooed most of the legends of the Hand from start to finish, because they basically have no place in this street-level universe. Also, what's up with that hole?

My guess: They were looking for Reva Connors' flash drive and got carried away.

And then we have a Luke Cage teaser, complete with gratuitous rap. It's good to know they're not defining that character by race.

* Apparently Barrett is appearing in Luke Cage, so I'm guessing his move to Harlem isn't going to work out as well as he hopes.

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.

Daredevil - 'Semper Fidelis' and 'Guilty as Sin'

"It feels like something's missing."

As Frank Castle's day in court approaches, the defence team is struggling. While the women of New York City seem to love him, the men want to burn him alive*, making jury selection problematic. Matt's frequent absences to service the mystery client anger Foggy (the one who didn't want to take the case) and worry Karen, especially as Castle refuses to attempt a positive defence on grounds of PTSD or insanity** and it's hard to argue against the colossal weight of evidence that he did, you know, shoot a lot of people. Foggy is also doubtful of his ability to lead a trial, seeing Matt as the front man in court despite Karen's encouragement.

"Swear to m... Wait, that's the other guy."

In Daredevil mode, Matt is drawn further into the Yakuza investigation. Roughing up a creepy racist linguistics professor to reveal the secrets of the code he developed for the ledger, they learn that there is a shipment of something coming in by train, and set out to intercept it. What they find, however, is a box car full of sand and a truck load of Yakuza with machine guns, and after a late night of scar-comparison and first aid, Matt is late for the trial in the morning, leaving Foggy to deliver a tour de force opening statement to the effect that this court is out of order.

The last hope for the defence is to prove Reyes corruption sufficiently to force a mistrial and buy time. Unfortunately, Elektra apparently feels bad for cutting into Matt's prep time and intimidates the key witness, invalidating his testimony. Matt's double life is falling apart, that happiness he caught a glimpse of dropping away into a big, dark hole.

"Well, this feels symbolic."

And then he and Elektra find an actual hole, because it turns out that what the 'Yakuza' have been up to is digging a two-story pit under Hell's Kitchen; as you do.

As we move into 'Guilty as Sin', Matt and Elektra are attacked by ninjas whom Daredevil can't 'see', because they make no sound, not even a heartbeat. Elektra tells him to focus on their weapons, but they still get whupped until suddenly Stick drops in and kills all the ninjas. Together with references to former Yakuza boss Nobu and the Black Sky child, Stick links this all back to teasers in Season 1, and when he assures Matt that the gut-stabbed 'Ellie' has had worse, Matt realises that Elektra works for Stick, and has done since before they met.

And like that, Elektra clicks into place, her weak spoiled rich girl backstory revealed as at least a partial fabrication, her willingness to kill explained, and her own attraction to Matt made real instead of a part of her thrill-seeking persona. It's not as powerful as the Punisher's big moment, but then what is, but kudos for turning that one around.

Clancy Brown, ladies and gents.

Meanwhile, the trial is going - relatively - swimmingly. Frank's former CO describes what a God-awesome, stand-up guy Frank is; the kind who'd slaughter thirty Mujahadin to get his peeps home (I'm actually not sure how this helped, but apparently it did,) and a psychologist describes how Frank has been knocked into a state of permanent fight or flight, unable to react to anything except with sudden emotionality. With a manslaughter defence on the table, Foggy decides that Castle has to take the stand and that Matt has to lead the questioning.

Stick explains that this is all part of 'the War', and describes the history of a struggle between a vast criminal army called the Hand and the utterly ruthless but generally well-intentioned Chaste. Elektra was his student and she was supposed to bring Matt back over to them, but instead he made her soft. He encourages her to leave with him, but instead she opts to stay with Matt, the only person who thinks that she might be good. Basically in a fit of pique, Stick shows Karen straight through to the bedroom where Elektra is recuperating and then stomps off to 'get the band back together'.

"Well, that could have gone better."

Matt's questioning of Castle somehow turns into a bravura closing statement accusing the DA of corruption and the police of being overworked in the wake of the Wilson Fisk (remember him?) debacle and drawing applause from the (in-court) audience. Unfortunately, Castle chooses that moment to launch into a rant about how he's sane as anything and would totally do it all again and he's guilty so nyuh, leading to him being dragged out of court and the case for the defence collapsing. Matt thinks he was got at, but Foggy accuses him of provoking Castle and launches into a tirade worthy of 'Nelson vs. Murdock' when he learns that Matt has been moonlighting with Elektra, the woman who almost screwed his career before it began. "Stop pretending these things just happen to you," he demands, and Matt has indeed been acting as if he has no choices for a while; as if he is at the mercy of fate instead of its agent.

Then a ninja attacks. Matt defeats him, but backs off when he realises it's just a kid, only for Elektra to step in and highlight her reform into Matt's school of non-lethal vigilantism by slitting the boy's throat while he's down.

And in prison, Frank is escorted to see the man who persuaded him to sabotage his own trial.

Yay!

'Semper Fidelis' and 'Guilty as Sin' are not short on action, but they are very much the trial episodes, and this has proven divisive, with some finding the courtroom scenes too slow and dull by comparison, and others remarking that not enough was made of the process. It does feel as if the trial of the Punisher could have been a season all to itself, but they make a decent job of it here, even if I am convinced that the courtroom protocol was all over the place. The sudden ending was a bit disorienting, but brings in Fisk, which is all to the good.

'Guilty as Sin' kind of brought home what my problem with Elektra was, and it's actually not Elektra; it's Matt. It's Matt lying to his partners, to his best friend and his girlfriend, over her that makes me dislike her. Speaking of Foggy, it's interesting to see once again that the series is playing up the idea that while Matt is the hero, Foggy is the better man, and speaking of Karen, the moments between that dead-end couple were precious; every time they got into that whole thing of Matt saying that murder is wrong and Karen saying vigilantes are bad and each looking like they'd taken a gut punch I wanted to hug them both. Karen's parting shot - "This city does need heroes; but you're not one of them." - was both heartbreaking and yet another clear piece of evidence for the fact that you should tell your loved ones if you're a superhero.

I hope we don't lose Karen when she leaves what's left of Nelson and Murdock, but I can't see it would be much fun for her to stay at a firm where she's had a non-starter almost relationship with both partners.

* Seriously, the montage has a straight gender split.
** As a former law student, I especially liked that they referenced M'Naghten.

Daredevil - 'Kinbaku' and 'Regrets Only'

"I'll be honest, this isn't my ideal date."

Much of the episode 'Kinbaku' takes place in flashbacks to Matt's relationship with Elektra, a rich girl he met while in college. She was wild, impulsive and passionate, bringing the tight-wound Matt out of himself, and she kidnapped his father's killer and encouraged Matt to murder the man in cold blood. For shiggles.

In the present day, Nelson & Murdock struggles with a dying caseload, but Elektra offers a princely sum for helping her in negotiations with Roxxon's Japanese division. while she claims to need a lawyer, it quickly becomes apparent that actually she is setting herself up for a brawl with the company's majority Yakuza shareholders. When Matt goes to confront her for trying to drag her into her business, he hears gunfire from below them and she dumps his Daredevil costume on the table.

It's time to dress up right."

We open 'Regrets Only' therefore with a Yakuza fight which, while technically excellent lacks a lot of the intense brutality which has been the hallmark of the series' truly great action scenes. Given her knowledge of his identity, Matt agrees to work with Elektra once, on the condition that no-one is killed; at least by them.

Meanwhile, Karen persuades Matt to persuade Foggy to take a new defence client: Frank Castle. The public defender assigned to him is deep in DA Reyes' pocket and Reyes is looking for a complete whitewash and a change of venue to see the Punisher executed across state lines and secure her political future as an anti-vigilante crusader. Slutty Blonde Lawyer admits to Foggy that Reyes is already gunning for one Jennifer Jones and plans to go after the Devil of Hell's Kitchen once the Punisher is dealt with. Karen is determined to see that he gets real justice and is represented as the tragic figure he is and not as an unmitigated psychopath.

The series continues to grind at my parental emotional
vulnerabilities.

While largely only willing to talk to Karen, after a long and heart-wrenching spell of reminiscence, Frank is persuaded to take a deal which will assure a single life sentence with a possibility of parole, only for him to flip on them at the arraignment, plead not guilty and swear that Reyes will 'burn with me', hinting that she might have been involved directly with covering up the facts surrounding his family's death (in a crossfire between the three gangs he was targeting,) concealing his military career and head wound, and putting a DNR order on him when he was hospitalised. Reyes moves heaven and earth to speed the trial forward, and Castle agrees, apparently eager for his day in court.

Elsewhere, Matt is playing superspies and... Man, this stuff is weird. It's taking the series outside its comfort zone, and not entirely successfully. Matt helps Elektra steal a keycard so that they can break into an office and locate a secret vault which I almost expected to contain Malcolm Merlin's Black Arrow costume. Elektra is clearly intent on being a bad influence on Matt, but I worry that the character is Yokoing the show.

In the aftermath of their theft of a ledger, the boss hints that he might not actually be Yakuza, so I wonder if they are actually the Hand or if Elektra is currently with the Hand and the 'Yakuza' are associated with their enemies. I guess we'll find out. For now, however, I find Elektra to be a far less compelling addition to the show than Frank Castle and we still don't really have a proper villain for the season.

Daredevil - 'New York's Finest' and 'Penny and Dime'

"My plan worked poifectly."

Following his fight with the Punisher last episode, Daredevil finds himself chained up on a roof. His mask is still on, because the Punisher doesn't care who he is underneath; he cares about the Devil, and deconstructing his MO. I said last week that one of the problems with the Punisher is that he represents the potential invalidation of the superhero milieu by pushing his Charles Bronson ethos into a four colour world, and Daredevil pulls off quite a coup by making that the text and not subtext*. He calls Daredevil a half measure: He puts criminals down and they get up again; Punisher puts them down and they stay down, never to kill again.

Karen is determined to find and help their client, although Grotto calls to make it clear he isn't interested in their help after the stitch up at the ambush. She gets angry with Foggy for not helping her, but Foggy of course knows that Matt is in serious trouble. He goes to see Claire Temple for help searching the hospital system. She makes a reference to her actions in Jessica Jones getting her in trouble with the hospital and has little time given the huge influx of gunshot gangsters as the Punisher's actions spark an all-out war. She softens a little as Foggy uses his legal kung fu to talk down a pair of feuding gang soldiers from a knife fight in ER and they confirm that Matt is not in a hospital.

Back on the roof, Daredevil tries to convince the Punisher that his way isn't needed; that there is always hope and redemption. He senses a potential connection on realising that his captor is also a New York Catholic, but Frank - his name comes out in conversation with an old Marine who lives in the building - has lost his faith and no longer believes that there is any hope of redemption; not for his targets and not for him.

Karen confronts the DA's assistant (he may be the Assistant DA, but I'm not sure,) and persuades him to let her swipe some of the Punisher files, including one for the prime suspect 'F.Castle', including an x-ray of a skull with a bullet hole in it.

To force Daredevil into a corner, Frank gives him a gun and one bullet, then drags out Grotto, puts a gun to his head and forces him to confess to killing an an elderly couple before offering a choice. Shoot Grotto or shoot Punisher to save him; either way, Punisher is right. Daredevil takes a third option, shooting a weak link in his chains, but can't close fast enough to stop Grotto getting shot. He puts Punisher down, but Grotto dies, and I quite like that while this does point up the limitations of Daredevil's approach, it's not definitive and doesn't break him.

"I will kick your ass with an empty gun duct taped to my hand."

Before he gets knocked out, Frank manages to fire a grenade into a rack of bikes outside the Dogs of Hell clubhouse (while whispering a mantra: 'One batch, two batch, penny and dime,') drawing out the gang. Daredevil gets Frank to a lift, but seeing the old man from earlier about to fall foul of the bikers he jumps out and we get the first corridor fight of the season. With an empty magnum taped to one hand and a chain still cuff to the other, Daredevil fights his way past about twenty bikers down a narrow stairwell, and once more it's fucking epic.

I know this is getting long, but this is a dramatically charged pair of episodes.

As we move into 'Penny and Dime', a retired Irish gangster named Finn (played by Tony Curran, who was in Blade II and played Thor's granddaddy in The Dark World) comes to town to lead the hunt for his son's killer. Elsewhere, the staff of Nelson and Murdock are the only attendees at the funeral of Grotto and are moved by the bleak nihilism of the priest's eulogy.

It's all about that stare.

The Irish track Frank down as the Central Park Carousel, drug and capture him. Following their trail, Daredevil - sporting a new and almost indestructible helmet and gloves - finds a wounded survivor of the capture and extracts the location of the Irish mob's torture dungeon. While Finn takes a drill to Frank's feet and threatens to do the same to his adopted dog if Frank doesn't give up the money he took from the massacre in episode 1, Karen does some detective work to locate Frank's old house. There she finds military memorabilia, but also pictures of a wife and daughter, and a well-read children's book including the refrain 'One batch, two batch, Penny and dime.'

Daredevil arrives and starts fighting his way into the warehouse. The gangsters sent to fetch the money are blown up by a booby trap and Frank busts loose, having expected capture and sutured a razor blade into his arm wound, the crazy bastard. He kills Finn, but is half-dead by now and has to let Daredevil help him out, impressed despite himself with the 'half measure's' abilities.

Daredevil rests Frank against a tombstone in a cemetery (and I'm hacked off I can't find a screenshot of that, because the parallel with the poses in 'New York's Finest' is beautiful) and Frank, suspecting he may be dying, tells his story: How he came home from fighting a war to his wife and daughter; how he refused to read her the book because he was exhausted from travel, but promised to do so the next night; and how she was killed before he could make good on his promise and died in his arms. It's a story that jabs all my emotional buttons, and Jon Bernthal sells the fuck out of it. I am never refusing to read my daughter a book again.

Maybe I'm just poisoned against her by the Daredevil movie,
but after Bernthal's tour de force, Elektra's reveal was a huge
let down.

The police arrive, and Daredevil tells Officer Friendly to take the collar, having realised that he isn't different enough from Punisher. He can't be the one catching the bad guys; it has to be the proper authorities getting the collar, the good cops (the ones who haven't been killed by crazed supersoldiers anyway.) After a slightly muted celebration, Karen walks Matt home and they make a date for dinner. He goes in and smiles, tentatively happy for the first time in who knows how long, before starting up to realise that he isn't alone. There's a woman on his sofa; a woman named Elektra.

After these two episodes, I categorically withdraw my objections to the Punisher's appearance. While he puts the methods of heroes like Daredevil in question, the level of reactive violence his actions bring ultimately undermine his approach, while his backstory perfectly explains his reasoning: Why doesn't he believe in hope and redemption? Because his hope and his redemption were torn from him. It's not easy watching, but it's superbly done. I really don't know how they plan to change gears for the slinky ninja.

* I don't know the comics, but apparently this was a comic plot that they lifted almost straight.

Daredevil - 'Bang' and 'Dogs to a Gunfight'

If they are trying to love triangle Nelson, Murdock and Paige I will be very
sad.

The brutal punchbag of the MCU is back, as we return once more to Hell's Kitchen for Season 2 of Daredevil.

In the wake of Wilson Fisk's fall, the old gangs are looking to reassert themselves, but there's a new player in town. Several gangs are hit by what at first appears to be a team of military-trained shooters, but is soon revealed to be a single man, armed to the teeth and willing to pursue his quarry to the gates of hell itself; or into a busy hospital.

Our heroes are drawn into this when a wounded Irish mobster named Grotto approaches them for help negotiating witness protection. Matt and Foggy try to track the killer, while Karen gets Grotto to a hospital, but the killer attacks them there. Daredevil prevents the kill shot, but after a knock-down, drag-out fight, takes a bullet to the skull.

They call him the Punisher, but does he make puns? He does not.

The next morning, Foggy finds Matt unconscious on a rooftop, because the police suck, and manages to get him home. His helmet stopped the bullet, but not the concussion and as well as a severe headache Matt realises that the shot may have impaired his hearing, leaving him with only touch to access the world.

We get to meet the shooter a little more in 'Dogs to a Gunfight'. Known to police as the Punisher, we see him buying a police scanner from a porn shot, before taking a bat to the owner after he tries to sell him kiddie porn, so he has that in his favour. Ultimately, however, the scanner gives him away, the sound leading Matt to his hideout after following a blood trail.

That was when the LAN party got serious.

With Matt benched, Foggy and Karen negotiate with the hateful, political DA, who is only willing to recommend protection for Grotto if he wears a wire to meet a former colleague. This however turns out to be a trap for the Punisher. As the meet turns into a war zone, Karen tries to go out to help their client. Foggy won't let her, but rushes out when Daredevil appears and comes under fire alongside the Punisher. Both vigilantes fall through a roof, but Daredevil loses his hearing again, and when Foggy reaches the hole, both are gone.

Daredevil still has its brutal flare, although on the basis of the season opener we don't yet have a narrative to match the rise and fall of Wilson Fisk. Now, season 1 didn't have Fisk until several episodes in, but his presence was felt, and so far season 2 only has the Punisher, a hard man anti-hero who makes Daredevil look like a soft touch. He's a physical threat and presents the question of where a vigilante draws the line, but for all the series attempts to parallel him and Daredevil, there is a clear line: Daredevil preserves, Punisher... well, it's all in the name really. Fisk was such an effective antagonist for Daredevil because he was, in his own way, a preserver.

Also, Punisher has always presented a problem in a comic book universe, simply by existing; that of thematic dissonance. Superhero comics are predicated not just on the viability of a man in spandex punching muggers, but on the superiority of that approach over a more militant solution. If the Punisher is an effective character, every superhero who refuses to use a gun or to take lives, or even who only takes lives in extremis, becomes a little bit more of a dumbass.

For the Comedian to be right, Nite Owl has to be wrong.

Hell; if the Punisher is this good, what is Iron Man for?

Arrow - 'Beyond Redemption', 'Haunted', 'Lost Souls' and 'Brotherhood'

New digs.

As Arrow marathons go, this week's really sucked, but we're almost there now, with only the second part of the big Legends of Tomorrow crossover event to go to get up to speed (well, plus this week's episode by the time we sit down to watch again.)

In 'Beyond Redemption', Lance and Laurel struggle with the fact that Sara is back, but basically as a blood-crazed feral beast, regardless of Laurel's insistence that she'll be fine in time. Sara refuses to tell Oliver on the grounds that he'd put Sara down like a dog.

This place gets more 'STAR Labs' every day...

Meanwhile, the SCPD anti-vigilante task force have gone rogue to put together a retirement fund for the imminent collapse of the city that pays their salary, forcing Lance to work with Team Arrow to stop them. Oliver suffers a bout of suck and gets taken hostage, but Lance talks the leader of the team down by appealing to her sense of duty and to the idea that nobody is beyond redemption, speaking not only of Sara but of his own deal with Darhk, which Oliver now knows about. He offers to hand himself in, but Oliver asks him to be their inside guy in Hive.

Full disclosure, I don't actually know if this is a pixie bob.

In 'Haunted', Sara escapes from the basement where Laurel was keeping her chained to a wall until she remembered she wasn't an animal and starts hunting down skinny brunettes with pixie bobs, instinctively seeking to curb her bloodlust by killing her killer. Fortunately, she gets distracted in each attack by maiming her would-be victim's other assailants, so Team Arrow are able to retrieve her before she does more damage than kicking the snot out of Thea one time. There is a worrying moment where it looks like Laurel might actually be trying to let Sara kill Thea in the hopes of restoring her, but I think that was just us taking the least charitable view of Laurel's actions because we don't like her much.

Oliver is pretty mad that Laurel lied to him, especially since he might be the one person who can help. Back in his flashbacks, he'd been recruited to work security on a drug farm on Lian Yu, where he also meets another interloper: A mouthy, British interloper.

It's that guy!

Yes, it turns out that Oliver Queen knows John Constantine, and as Constantine owes him a favour the surly betrenchcoated one comes to Star City to perform a ritual which allows Oliver and Laurel to retrieve Sara's soul and reunite it with her body. He also notes that he has heard of Darhk and recommends that they run.

Ensouled or not, 'Lost Souls' shows that Sara still has that bloodlust swinging, even as Thea's begins to put in a return appearance. The fact that Laurel didn't try to set Thea up is confirmed when she doesn't bring up that whole 'kill your killer' solution when it becomes clear that Sara wants to beat some fools to death. It's also somewhere around this point that Thea starts dating Oliver's political consultant, Alex, whom I presume to be either evil or doomed; possibly both.

This is not good. I have seen good, and this is not what it looks
like.

Having decoded a message from Ray, Felicty finds not his last words, but a call for help, his experiment having miniaturised him and having since been captured and kept in a lab. With help from Palmer Tech employee Curtis Holt - polymath genius, bronze medal Olympic decathlete, base jumper, possible future Mr Terrific and the Arrowverse's second 'just deal with it' married gay guy - she tracks him down, the mission given extra urgency when they learn he is being held by Damien Darhk. Ray is retrieved and resized, but Darhk is able to retroengineer a dwarf star alloy power source for a techno-artefact macguffin.

The unacceptable face of civic leadership.

'Brotherhood' sees Diggle discover that not only was his brother assassinated by Hive because he was a rival drug smuggler, but in order to recruit him into their ranks (although I am baffled that anyone would choose to fake someone's death by hiring a lethal sniper who uses curare-tipped bullets for extra fuck you to take a kill shot.) Recruitment turns out to include a yellow pill that renders one susceptible to suggestion and destroys DNA (which must have long term health risks.) Diggle decides that his brother's neglect of his duty to his family (in particular his wife and son) render him unworthy of aid, but the team insist on getting Andy out and finding out what really happened to him.

Thea goes apeshit on a creeper during a date with Alex (seriously, in what appears to be a pretty swish bar this guy hits on her after Alex has been up from the table for ten seconds,) which he takes surprisingly well, adding weight to the 'evil' column. Later however, she gets in a fight with Darhk, but escapes when he turns out to be unable to suck out her soul, instead draining her bloodlust and having a painful turn himself.

Meanwhile, Darhk offers help with Oliver's campaign for Mayor in return for not trying to clean up the harbour. Oliver considers getting into bed with Darhk so he can be the inside man and not have to risk Lance, but Diggle convinces him instead to fight in the light of day.

In flashback land, Oliver saves one worker from death, but kills another when a suspicious fellow guard manipulates the man into attacking Oliver. This turns out to be the first worker's brother, just so that Oliver has another secret to keep while he tries to work out what drug producer and magic collector Baron Reiter actually wants on Lian Yu.