Ah yes, thanks, you’re right. Don’t know how I managed to space on that…
Just finished the season and really really liked it. Way better than season 1 IMO. Season one suffered from a pretty long lull after episode 4ish. Things that other people seemed to really enjoy like the Kingpin backstory and his machinations with Vanessa I found totally boring.
This season however, didn’t waste time with such fluff, and the backstory necessary was minimal. Even though I really liked it, there were a few story beats I didn’t quite enjoy like the right turn after episode 4 dropping the Punisher storyline and moving to Elektra, that seemed abrupt. I also didn’t care for Karen Page, detective extraordinaire. Foggy was great. Elektra’s fighting prowess seemed to fluctuate depending on plot which was odd, and her healing ability from a sword wound was phenomenal. One thing that was odd is Matt took off his helmet quite a bit in the later few episodes. This is usually done so the audience can see the actor’s face, but I found that unrealistic as DD wouldn’t be removing his mask all the time. Nobu even kicks it off which doesn’t make sense based on how it is attached, but oh well. I assume this means Punisher knows who he is now.
Did anyone catch the scene in the toolshed in episode 12 with Punisher, there is a vest hanging on the wall and the shape of the padding is clearly (well, I can imagine it a bit) in the shape of a skull. I thought that was a nice touch.
Really enjoyed this season. I may eventually go back to Jessica Jones - stopped watching after episode 7 because it was so poor.
I thought she obliquely referenced Luke Cage. She said she was stuck working nights because she’d given unauthorized help to “some big guy.” And she did offer to reach out to DD for Jessica in the other show, but JJ refused the offer.
Another thing I’m probably just spacing on right now is the shed with the hidden arsenal—is that a thing we’ve seen before? Was it suggested to belong to the Blacksmith? Or was it just a lucky coincidence that there happened to be a shed stuffed with weapons and body armor right there in the woods?
It belonged to The Blacksmith.
I was sure he was going to be revealed to more people, considering just a few minutes before the cop mentioned wanting lights on the roof, but nothing ever happened with that.
There is a bit of an issue with patient privacy and Claire just willy-nilly giving out names and contact information. Claire may bend the rules a bit, but she’s quite dedicated to her calling and I don’t think she’d lightly pass information between the vigilantes she patches up. It’s one thing to say “I know this lawyer” and give JJ contact information for a law firm that is public, it’s another to say “hey, I treated these other vigilantes, you might want to call them up…”
Just finished season 2 and, damn, that was good!
Random thoughts:
Yeah, that stairwell fight was awesome!
I was worried about how they were going to handle Punisher and Elektra in this series. I know Bernthal from The Walking Dead and figured he would be a good fit for Castle, but I was not at all familiar with the actress who plays Elektra. I thought they were both fantastic!
Scott Glenn is great as Stick. He does ‘tough and cranky old bastard’ really well.
Foggy was less annoying this season. Still annoying, just less so.
I am not familiar with Karen Page’s story in the comics, but I like her role in the series. They keep hinting at some dark back story for her. I’m glad Matt revealed his secret to her in the end.
My two complaints: First, not enough Fisk. But I am sure he will be back with a vengeance at some point. Second, the ‘big’ fight on the rooftop with Nobu and the Hand was a bit anticlimactic. For a series that has really excellent fight scenes, it’s odd that this one was underwhelming.
Oh, and it was good to see Rosario Dawson back–I’d watch her in just about anything. I like that she’s the link between this show and Jessica Jones and, presumably, the upcoming Luke Cage series.
We need a Punisher series, like, yesterday.
I’m glad that these Marvel Netflix series are pretty much occupying their own ground, with little to no connection to the Marvel movies or Agents of Shield (other than a couple of throw-away lines), though I am a fan of those productions as well.
Finished the series yesterday. I loved everything to do with the Punisher and would watch a series based just around him in an instant! The stairwell fight scene was incredibly shot and choreographed and the prison fight was realistically brutal. So intense.
I was so bored by the entire Hand/ninjas/Stick/Electra story and was really disappointed when Castle was all but dropped from the show for a while to focus on the Hand as the A-plot. That story is just so stupid I couldn’t care about it one bit.
It’s funny, the one part of *Daredevil *that I like the least - is Daredevil himself! Just stop moralizing about not killing anyone all the time! We get it! I just find his whole holier-than-thou thing so annoying especially since all the throwing people off roofs/down staircases/blows to the head/etc that he does should have resulted in at least a few deaths…
I was surprised at how gory it was. There were a few shots that were *really *not needed. (Close ups of bamboo shoots being forced under fingernails? Why? Urgh.)
Would you believe the actual comic book is even worse than that in some respects?
Just finished watching.
Like others, I think this season suffered from a surfeit of villains. In some ways it’s completely fair - New York is a big city and there’s no particular reason that Daredevil’s major problems should have the good manners to line up and confront him one by one any more than individual ninjas should. Being torn between two different antagonists has the potential to make for an exciting dilemma. Choosing to time this dilemma so that Matt had to choose between his lawyer and vigilante personas made for good interpersonal conflict but actually sold the dilemma short - what if the Punisher is casuing mayhem over here while the Hand are carrying out a scheme over there? What would Daredevil do then? There’s a lot of potential there for choices, consequences and character growth.
But in the end both storylines suffered. Matt never had to confront the fact that by failing to get Frank into mental care he enabled Fisk to manipulate and release him back on to the streets. Instead the show went soft on Frank, letting him keep his hands clean of innocent blood and giving him justified revenge on those who did him wrong while keeping him well away from Daredevil. It was essentially a Punisher origin story that could have been cut without changing much for Matt, who was busy getting dragged into the war. Again, this storyline felt underserved - the Matt/Elektra relationship worked but the Stick/Elektra one didn’t. It was never clear why Stick decided to kill Elektra having a) saved her life just recently and b) devoted years of time and energy to a strategy of not killing her. I’m still not clear what the great realisation was that changed his mind.
I was very disappointed by the ending. There had been a theme throughout the show that Matt was too reluctant to rely on other people. I suspect that his commitment to Elektra at the end was meant to show he’d overcome that, but she too is an extraordinary character who would enable him to play saviour/martyr (“I’d leave New York for you”) - not a Foggy or Claire who can offer him simple human support. When the Butch and Sundance moment seemed to be coming and the police were surrounding the building, I thought for a moment that the cops and Daredevil would work together - a demonstration that it takes the strength of the whole city working together and that the lone hero approach doesn’t work. That would have, I thought, directly reflected the themes the show had been working through. Particularly Foggy’s rant at Matt, which I thought was magnificent: “You bring all this on yourself!” It was entirely true and we needed to see Matt learn that lesson. Instead the police stand around and watch ineffectively, the Punisher shows up to kill people with Matt’s blessing and the ninja army turns out to be a dozen guys tops. Matt hasn’t learned much other than that it’s ok to kill people sometimes.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the show. But compared to the simplicity of Daredevil vs Fisk, this season bit off more than it could chew.
I agree.
Season 1 was a much better season as a whole, but this season did give me the comic booky action I really wanted.
The finale left me cold.
I was really disappointed that the Punisher only showed up at the end and sniped four ninjas and left. Frank should be outclassed in a ninja fight, but I still wanted him to get down and dirty.
I did like that they didn’t do a reset at the end and have Matt and Foggy and Karen back to being Nelson and Murdock. Foggy working with Hogarth is a nice twist. I’m still annoyed they back-pedaled on Foggy and Karen–the two of them had chemistry. Her and Matt are adequate but not fun to watch together.
Speculating on the Black Sky- Maybe the person (the little boy from season 1 and Elektra) isn’t “Black Sky,” but rather a vessel for Black Sky. Some mystical Ninja mumbo-jumbo identifies the potential hosts. Elektra was marked as a potential host at a young age but Stick successfully hid her until adulthood. The Hand then battles her in Hell’s Kitchen and re-identifies her as one of the lost hosts–her prowess was determined to make her the top candidate.
Stone urn puts Black Sky into the vessel.
Just finished it last night. The Yellow Peril (that was the bad guys’ name, right?) was so stupid and cliched and stereotyped that it just about ruined the whole season for me, as did Electra’s transformation into a waif needing saving in the last two episodes–and I don’t care if she could kick all kinds of ass, she completely lost her ability to make up her own plans, became very “Save me, Daredevil!”
Cut all that awful nonsense out of the season, and you’re left with a bunch of stellar actors in stellar roles. I love Foggy, Karen, Punisher, Fisk, Nurse Whatshername, and even Murdock. The conversation at the jail between Fisk and Murdock was some of the best TV I’ve seen in a really long time, as was the Punisher/Daredevil conversation at the cemetery.
I hope we’ve seen the last of the Yellow Peril, but I’m afraid they’ll keep on showing us Asian characters painting cherry blossoms and putting on ninja suits.
Yeah, sorry, none of that was actually in the series.
Right. The Asian characters weren’t
-Ninjas
-Who spoke English with heavy accents
-Who paint cherry blossoms and drink tea from elaborate tea sets
-Who meditate in front of bamboo screens
-Whose motivations are almost nonexistent compared to the motivations of the white villains (compare Nabu to The Punisher, Wilson Fisk, or Stick)
-Who deal in opium
I imagined all that, did I?
The villains who happened to be Asian were portrayed as they were in the comic books from which the series was taken. And as they were all foreigners who had little interest in “assimilation” it would certainly make sense that none of them spoke English that well. Hell, one of them lives in another fucking dimension and the other worships a demon god from another dimension.
And their motivations were fairly clear.
But you didn’t address my main objection, which was your false characterization of Elektra.
An article about the Yellow Peril in Season 1.
As for Electra, rewatch her conversation with Daredevil at the beginning of Episode 13. Listen for any trace of planning from her, any trace of initiative, any trace of independence. Is this the best they could write for Electra? Murdock is a great character, but part of what makes him great is how insufferably self-absorbed and self-important he is this season. Electra should have been giving him a metaphorical kick in the ass in that scene; instead, she’s whimpery and useless.
How does that change anything? So the racism dates back to the comic books–does that preclude them using any interesting characterization for them in the show? Did Marvel say, “No, you must not show what motivates Naboo”?
If your source material has lazy racist stereotypes, you can figure out a way around them if you want. The show writers didn’t do so.
Your assertion that it was racist doesn’t mean you’re correct.
Duh.