Daredevil on Netflix viewing thread (open spoilers)

Cafe Society
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It’s possible that the writers meant for Wilson Fisk to be a sympathetic character, but I suspect not. Letting us in on his personal drama only makes us all the angrier at the way he victimizes others. I mean, I appreciate that he’s more complicated than we generally find him in the comics, where he’s just a sneering villain that nobody can seem to touch. In this show we explore his motivations, and his part of the story is built up around the one pathology: he is vulnerable to having the people he cares for hurt.

Surely they can’t expect sympathy for the devil here, as it were. We’re supposed to be infuriated by Fisk’s hypocrisy, and I certainly am. The threat he wields again and again against his enemies is to hurt the ones they care for, and we see that this is precisely because that is where he himself is most vulnerable. It’s the classic trope of the bully who intimidates others to quiet his own insecurities. Letting us in on his insecurities only makes the fact that he never acknowledges that he’s the monster he sees in other people.

You could say it’s more complicated, that in one sense the viciousness his father tried to instill has replaced the compassion with which he might have responded to the world’s underdogs. Maybe it’s a struggle, or maybe a lack of self-reflection makes them work harmoniously. In any case, I hate that piece of shit. I keep wanting someone to point out his hypocrisy to him, but there’s a good reason why writers avoid this kind of on-the-nose discussion of characters’ motivations.

82

You haven’t watched the last episode yet, I gather.
Also, Daredevil SHOULD elicit some Nolan Batman comparisons because Nolan’s Batman trilogy comes from a couple different Frank Miller story arcs and this Daredevil series also comes straight from a Frank Miller story arc.

83

Man, that last episode. I dunno. I was with the series all the way through the previous 12 episodes. I was kind of pissed when they killed Ben Urich. I understand why it happened from a plot reason, and if it had been any other character in that role, I’d have been okay with it. But now Ben Urich is officially dead in the MCU. Nobody else can use him now. And just after they got Spider-Man back, too! But, in the context of the show, it was still a powerful scene, and Kingpin needed a “win” at that point to keep up his status as an effective antagonist.

And then the last episode. It started off really well, and kept building. Matt taking out a room full of armed cops, entirely off screen. The Godfather-esque take down of Kingpin’s empire. Kingpin’s rant in the police van. “I am the malady that beset him on the road!” All fucking brilliant.

And then Matt shows up in the full Daredevil suit, and suddenly I feel like I’m watching a middling episode of the Highlander TV show. The show seemed to lose it’s ground. I just couldn’t buy any of these characters taking someone seriously when they’re dressed like that, and I couldn’t take him seriously, either. And I’m not quite sure why. The suit seemed too stiff, for one, like the Batman costume from the first Michael Keaton movie. And the horns, and maybe the way Cox was holding his head, gave him this weird protuberant look to his forehead, like he was hydrocephalic, or something. And he has eyes. The other costume costume got a lot of mileage out of that eyeless mask. There was something unsettling about it, how you didn’t really know where to look on his face when you couldn’t make eye contact. (Also, Cox did a great job of acting with most of his face obscured, which I understand is no small feat for an actor.)

I suspect they’ll tweak it some before the character’s next appearance, and hopefully turn it into something that really works on the screen. But as it was, I found the last fifteen minutes or so of the series a real let down, particularly given how good everything had been up to that point.

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Two little details from earlier in the series that I really liked, though:

When Karen asks Matt what he misses about being able to see, he says, “The sky.” Which makes total sense. He can “see” by echo-location. But there’s nothing in the sky to get an echo off of. Even with all his powers, the sky is just a great empty void to him.

At one point, when Foggy gets angry about something, he says, “Frickin’.” Nobody else in the series uses fake TV swears. Just Foggy. Which is perfect.

85

I thought the outfit looked fine except for the helmet. The horns just didn’t work. They should do some work on the helmet before his next appearance.

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Like Miller, I found myself kind of missing the black mask once it was gone. It did make DD seem more ruthless. The new suit looks good at a distance and in silhouette; up close it’s a bit tacky and athletic-looking. I’m hoping they’ll tweak it for next season. Obscuring his eyes would be a great idea (though I expect Charlie Cox would have a different point of view).

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Yeah, I think the horns are a big part of what doesn’t work. The stiffness might work itself out just by having Cox spend more time in it, until it’s broken in better.

<rimshot>

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I guess I’ll have to look at it again, but the costume didn’t bother me. It wasn’t yellow, that’s what I cared about. Also that he finally had an actual costume, for crying out loud. But admittedly it does make it all of the sudden a more comic-y world.

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I really liked it as a subtle acknowledgement of the MCU as a single Universe with cohesive continuity connecting the various movies/shows …but then I did the math.

That flashback scene was, what?, 25 or at least 20 years prior to present day? On Agents of SHIELD, seven months ago, the actor who played Creel was 36 years old. Assuming the character to be approximately the same age as the actor, he’d have been between 11 and 16 when he fought Murdock’s dad.

Did Creel get anything along the lines of slowed aging when he got his powers?

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Just because the actor playing Creel is 36 doesn’t mean the character is that age. He could conceivably supposed to be in his early to mid 40s, which would make him 19-20 and a young and up and coming fighter when he took on Murdock.

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I’d guess the flashbacks were more like fifteen to eighteen years ago. Young Matt appears to be about 10, and he and Foggy are obviously just out of law school, seeing as how they have had no trial experience.

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It doesn’t help us that the actor playing young Matt is the same age for different time periods, even though Matt the character is aging. It just makes it harder for us to judge how long he spent in his various stages. We do have some clues, though.

Matt saves the old man from being run over, and is blinded by some type of chemical goo.
Next in the timeline (as I judge it) is Matt sitting at the table, reading his Braille (school)book, which would’ve taken at least a little time to learn.
Then, an indeterminate amount of time later, Jack Murdock decides not to take the dive and is murdered.
Some time after that we see Matt in an orphanage, apparently suffering the most he ever has from his enhanced hearing, possibly from his grief over his father’s death, possibly because his ‘power’ just decided to jack itself up higher/stronger as time went by, possibly because of puberty onsetting, possibly a combination of all three, possibly some other reason entirely.
At this same time he’s writhing in his bed at the orphanage, we see Stick arrive.
Then we see Stick training Matt, both in martial arts and in the use of his echo-location, the echo-location being the tougher to master, I’d bet, and the martial arts being tougher to learn for Matt because he’s using a sense that no one (save possibly for Stick, and a few others) has ever had.
Then Stick leaves, and in that same episode, adult Matt says to Stick that it’d been 20 years since Matt had last ‘seen’ him.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that Matt was 8 when his accident happened. He learned Braille quickly, his dad failed to take a dive very shortly after that scene (of explaining Braille to his dad), his anguish in the orphanage was very shortly after that, Stick’s training lasted a few more months before he left. I’d say if all of that happened in under a year, I’d be surprised.

Matt and Foggy graduated from law school, then did internships (for how long?) before starting up their own practice. Going by the timeline suggested above, Matt would be in his late 20s. Having his age be 6 at the time of his accident would still (by my estimate) put Matt at 27. Matt could also have been rounding, as opposed to being exact, when he told Stick how long it’d been (it could have been 18 or 19 years, for instance).

I would put Matt’s age, at the very earliest as the series opens, as 25, and more likely 26 or 27. What do you think?

93

Missed the edit window, but it should be known that I have only viewed up to episode 7, I believe, so there may well be more factors that help us guess at Matt’s age. And of course spoilers don’t bother me, else I wouldn’t be in this thread, eh? :slight_smile:

94

Matt specifically tells Stick he was nine when he went blind.

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I think the part of that scene that was the biggest WTF for me was when Wilson Fisk, a man strong enough to lift and throw DD five to ten feet into a dumpster, a man with considerable weight, is flailing away furiously with DD’s magic breakable staff, landing blow after blow on his upper arms which appear to have the equivalent of leather armor (I know they are reinforced with something cut proof, but still).

sparks are flying from the blows. WTF? And how are his arms not in tiny little pieces after a beating like that? Now, I don’t follow DD all that closely, but I have never heard that his suit was made from Vibranium or Adamantium or any other sort of unobtanium material, so what gives? Unless those arm shields were 1/4 inch thick solid plate steel, he should have been a pile of goo.

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Thanks, I didn’t remember that. So, even if Matt was 9 when he met Stick (more likely he was 10 or older) and adult Matt was rounding up to 20 years from 19 or 18 or even 17 when he stated how long Stick had been gone, then we can guess that Matt’s current age is at least 26 years old at the start of the series. My personal guesstimate at Matt’s age when Stick left is 11 years old and 29 or 30 at start of series.

As a side note, I just realized I’ve been doing what my wife is always on me about: picking a show apart instead of just enjoying the story. :dubious:

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In general I agree. But this is a world where they’re already ok with Iron Man and Captain America dressing silly. And a giant green guy.

98

Didn’t Melvin specifically tell him the black parts could deflect bullets but the red ones could maybe take a knife?

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I guess it’s just not plausible for a live-action hero to survive the kind of punishment DD does without some protection. I’ve seen a lot of fights in the comics where Daredevil takes on guys with knives, and AFAIR he never gets hit. That wouldn’t really fly with the hard-edged, more realistic take the showrunners wanted for Marvel’s DD.

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For anyone who’s interested, here’s an alternate opening sequence …done Night Court style!!!