Daredevil: Why Born Again?

A review of the first half of the new season, plus some open questions, plus other stuff...

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Now to the Devil

I’m starting with this image, from a scene that played in all the trailers for this series, because it’s the scene that most clearly supports my opinion that this is the best season of Daredevil. Possibly this is an unpopular opinion as I know people hold that first season up on a pedestal on top of a water tower on top of a tenement in Hell’s Kitchen… so…

***YES THERE ARE SPOILERS SO READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL***

For me it comes down to the story and the efficiency and effectiveness of its telling. Let’s do efficiency first:

Every season of the earlier iteration of this series had at least 2 episodes that we could have done without. In fact, every season of all the Defenderverse shows had some fat that should have been trimmed, but wasn’t because of contracts. So what you get is what we call “vamping” in TV. That’s when you’re doing a live show and there’s time to kill so the people on camera just make shit up to talk about for a bit. Karen’s backstory in Daredevil Season 3… most of The Hand story in season 2 (you kind of start to get why Kevin Eastman made up The Foot to mock The Hand)… 2 middle episodes of Punisher… I would argue 7.5 episodes of The Defenders and 13 episodes of Iron Fist…

So far, no fat on the Born Again bone. The show tells you exactly what’s going to happen to its two main characters in that diner scene (more on that later) and then everything that happens in the story brings us closer and closer to that climax. Now there are another 8-10 episodes coming, so plenty of time for the show to go off the rails for an episode or two. But so far, it’s done an admirable job of moving Matt and Kingpin a few inches closer to collision in nearly every scene. Born Again has not one wasted episode thus far.

Now the effectiveness, arguably the harder mark to hit in storytelling…

The season starts with the death of one of Daredevil’s best friends, and the departure of the other. I say good riddance to both. Nothing like a fresh start. Also nothing like giving us something more like the Bullseye we deserve.

SORRY COLIN…

This show basically ignored the way we left Bullseye back in the original series on Netflix, and just gave us this amazing, deadly marksman, and put him directly into one of the series trademark marathon scenes of ultra-violence.

Then Kingpin runs for Mayor and he and Matt take a break to grab some brunch. They tell you exactly who they are in that scene by denying it. They both claim to be beyond their violent past lives. They’re both lying, and one of them is also lying to himself. By the end of that scene, you know where they’re both heading for the whole season, and this setup is the beginning of a slow burn that never feels slow.

I assume Kingpin in behind everything bad happening to Matt, and not just because that’s the plot of “Born Again” in the comics. There are clues… Kingpin refers to Bullseye’s rampage in that diner scene in a way that set off all my internal “he made that happen” alarms go off… Vanessa and Kingpin JUST HAPPEN TO pick Matt’s new girlfriend as a marriage counselor… Also Kingpin is ALWAYS 10 steps ahead of everyone so of course he’s behind a lot of it.

It’s not PERFECT

Fair is fair - I have two bones to pick with the series… First the title. OK I get it, like the character’s show is back so he’s “born again”… but Frank Miller’s “Born Again” run on Daredevil is so good and this story resembles it almost not at all. Most of the show’s plot is lifted directly from Charles Soule’s run on the book from 20 years back. It’s still fantastic… it just has less to do with “Born Again” than that Will Smith movie had to do with “I Am Legend.”

The other bone is smart characters ignoring obvious things right in front of them so that the story can progress. Why doesn’t Matt question Bullseye’s motivation for killing Foggy? How can Vanessa possibly not know that Fisk has her lover locked up or disemboweled somewhere?

Anyway… I love the show and look forward to them messing it all up in the second half.