A Modicum of Daring

Last night's new Daredevil: Born Again was one of the better written of the Born Again series. It's kind of a low bar, though, and there were a few weak bits in the teleplay by Devon Kilger and Jesse Wigutow. But I appreciated how the story got weird at points.

This episode had some of the best moments for characters introduced in Born Again. There was some nice tension in BB's visit to Blake's mother's house. It was the first chance BB had to make a difficult decision, for the actress to convey some kind of internal conflict, and she felt real for the first time. Blake's assumption that the data drive he found in BB's coat was connected to the Fisk parody broadcasts was pretty extreme but not in a bad writing way (even though it was clearly ADR), more like a legitimate paranoia way. Blake's actually shaping up to be an effectively tragic character.

I really liked the moment when Cashman tells Heather to choke him. There's an eroticism in the scene that makes her trauma uncomfortably confusing, as real trauma often is. It makes Cashman into a truly Satanic character and makes Heather a lot more interesting than she ever was in season one.

I like Jessica Jones a lot, especially the first season of her series, but her first scene in this episode was annoying and her meetup with Daredevil felt superfluous. The scene with her daughter annoyed me because it introduced yet another peculiarly fearless kid like Leia in Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ant-Man's kid in Ant-Man 2 or a dozen other examples. I suspect there's a mandate from Disney that discourages writers from portraying children as frightened. And the scene introduced another annoying potential "pass the torch" kid character. The only one of those that's been any good was Yelena and Thunderbolts tanked despite being a good movie.

The fight scene between Daredevil and Fisk was good though I think they've long since milked that white painting dry of all dramatic potential. I also liked the continuation of Karen turning into more of a Punisher sidekick than a Daredevil sidekick, despite the fact that her dialogue was some of the stuff I was able to predict before it came out of a character's mouth.

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.