Born Again Properly

What a difference a week makes. The fourth episode of Daredevil: Born Again was so much better than the third, it was like night and day. Mind you, it wasn't perfect. The writing was good and the performances were very good but the direction felt odd at times and the music overenthusiastic. I suspect the problems here were due to this being a Frankenstein's monster episode, with pieces from the original incarnation of the series not quite fitting with the new version.

The episode has two credited writers, David Feige and Jesse Wigutow. I suspect David Feige (who, it seems, is not Kevin Feige's brother) was brought in after the show was restructured and that Wigutow was the original writer. This Feige has the distinction of being an actual lawyer and you can very quickly see the difference in quality. This is the kind of person both She-Hulk and Daredevil: Born Again ought to have hired from the beginning if they really had their hearts set on being lawyer shows.

I wasn't impressed by one of the episode's key moments, though. When Matt managed to convince the pretty Latvian to bring the shoplifter's sentence down to twenty days, and there was a contrast between Matt thinking he'd performed a miracle and the guy's perspective on how hard it is to live on the streets and escape them, I felt like I'd seen the scene somewhere else. I wish I could put my finger on where exactly. But the music was much too foregrounded in the Daredevil version of the scene--the term is "Mickey Mousing", fittingly enough. Quoting Wikipedia:

The term "Mickey Mousing" is also used as a pejorative to imply that a technique used in productions aimed at adults is too simplistic and more appropriate for a juvenile audience. The technique is also associated with melodrama.

Overall, I felt like Daredevil's theme was way overused. I did like Matt flirting with the Latvian woman, though, and would've preferred to see him with her rather than the psychiatrist lady.

I enjoyed a lot of Matt's plot but I think Wilson Fisk had a much stronger showing last night due in large part to Vincent D'Onofrio having material he could really sink his teeth into. You could see the conflict on his face when he was listening to Michael Gandolfini's grovelling. I also liked the tension between Gandolfini's character and Zabryna Guevara's chief assistant character. Her telling Gandolfini he ought to just stop talking was perfectly timed.

Fisk was good across the board in this episode, though, whether he was awkwardly sitting through the children singing or struggling with the realities of bureaucratic procedure. After he'd been nerfed on Hawkeye and Echo, it was so nice to see something like the old Netflix Fisk back again. It's a bit cathartic, too, as Trump is starting to act even more like Fisk in real life. It's nice to be reminded that, in a saner world, this kind of behaviour is easily understood to be villainous.

This episode finally brought in Jon Bernthal as the Punisher for one scene where he and Matt have a confrontation. The premise of the scene felt a little odd. I kind of wonder how Frank knew about Foggy's death and what it meant to Matt. Is there a superhero message board? But, okay, maybe word got around somehow. The energy between the two actors was great and it was nice having the screenplay chew on the concept of vengeance. I also liked the talk about the philosophy of deterrence and punishment. It was really refreshing having one of these shows engage with intellectual topics.

To cap it all off, I liked the last scene with Muse, a comic book character created in 2016 who apparently does "art crimes" like those featured in David Bowie's Outside concept album from 1995. It's kind of odd having a blind superhero fight a graffiti artist but I think we're supposed to believe Matt can somehow "see" and recognise the Punisher logos everywhere. I kind of don't like that but I did enjoy some creative uses of Matt's powers in the episode, like his detecting the cop telling the truth and the way he found the shell casing from the bullet that killed White Tiger. Oh, I thought the daughter of White Tiger gave a pretty unconvincing performance. She becomes his successor in the comics, taking on the White Tiger name and costume. Hopefully she'll be played by a different actress should that ever come to fruition in the MCU and hopefully she won't be a tactical dunce like her father.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet 1926

We looked for kingdom dreams in butcher shops.
In there, a map of blood describes a plan.
Where civil thought in hasty action stops,
You'll find emerged a craven breed of man.
A swirling pool of sugar water falls.
The sky was spiked with sickly candy ooze.
The atmosphere congealed to sticky walls.
This kind of winning's really just to lose.
A super collar chokes a super man.
A bluer suit cannot replace a sky.
A gruesome showing faced a moral ban.
Computers make the truth a tired lie.
Touch not the grass lest it touch thee in turn.
The wiser steward knows the time to burn.