Wilson Fisk spends all of Daredevil: Born Again Episode 4 with red knuckles, and neither one of us at the table had the right answer for why.
This is the very first Daredevil after show, and I’m excited about it. Joining me is my good buddy Gonzo. You know him from Nerd Fights, and we’re going to be doing these from now on. There’s no rating here and there’s no real format. The review is its own video, and that’s where the breaking down and the number live. This one is you and your buddy, you just watched the episode, and you’re talking about it. Spoilers, in case you weren’t paying attention.
Gonzo’s first impression was that he likes the direction. There wasn’t a lot of fighting, and they’re actually building character. Agreed. Can you imagine, building character and taking your time with it. I’d heard a lot of people after last week saying he needs to start being Daredevil a little bit, and I found that episode quite compelling anyway. This one’s equally compelling. You can call it filler, and I almost did, but filler isn’t fair. It’s a setup episode, and a couple of things in it were chunky.
The Counseling Scene Is Playing Dodgeball With Accountability
Gonzo went first, and he went straight to the counseling scene, because it was making him mad. His problem is the lack of accountability. She cheated on him. Her answer is that it was because of her daddy, and somehow Fisk is the one sitting there apologizing for being a faithful husband. Then the question comes, “Do you feel safe around him?” Oh, he’s the one. Gonzo put it better at the end of the night: they were playing dodgeball with accountability.
He wasn’t for it at all. He understands trying to humanize Fisk, but don’t turn him into some simp.
So I asked him if he watched Daredevil back in the day, the Netflix one, because Fisk was very much a simp back then. And he gave me that. But back then they were building the characters, and he loved her very much. Now it’s whatever you want me to do, babe.
I get the feeling Fisk is seeing all of it through the lens of his decision to be mayor. He thinks he’s got to become something normalized, and bro, how do you go from being the primal animal you were to being civilized in a way you’re not accustomed to?
He Has to Hear the Same Song Twice
The best example of that is the way the whole episode keeps building tension in him. First he’s got the kids singing. Then he’s got to go to the other place, and it’s the same song. That was my note. You can see him building up and building up. That singing got on Gonzo’s nerves so bad, and if it got on our nerves, the show did its job and Fisk did his, because you could see the tension in him too. I feel it, bro.
And then we finally get the answer on the knuckles. For a guy who isn’t doing the stuff he used to do, why are his knuckles red?
We were completely wrong. One theory at the table was that Adam was already gone. The other was that Fisk wants to redo that whole area because he’s got bodies buried there and he’s going to build right on top of all of them. Nah. Then the end shows you Adam, and it shows you the evidence of Fisk punching the wall and getting it all bloody. At least they revealed it instead of letting us guess the whole time.
The Son Fisk Never Had
What’s that kid’s name? I keep going by his actor’s name, Gandolfini. That’s the Gandolfini son. Gonzo loved him. He didn’t at the start, he was sitting there going, “Who’s this goofy little kid from The Sopranos?” And then the kid shows his talent, and okay. He knows what he’s doing.
His little speech to cover his rear was something else. The more I watch him and Fisk interact, the more I sit here and go, he’s becoming Fisk’s kid. The son Fisk never had. Fisk called it mentoring, but this feels paternal.
That scene wouldn’t have worked if you didn’t watch Fisk’s face. While the kid’s talking you see the rage, and then all of a sudden it turns into, wait a minute, this kid is something else. I’m going to beat the crap out of him right now. But I can’t. I want to, but damn, he’s good.
I can’t figure out Fisk’s assistant, the assistant mayor lady, whatever her name is. Gonzo says she has an agenda, she wants to run everything the way you’re supposed to. I don’t know if it’s an agenda as much as her trying to at least do this normal. But did you hear what she said while the kids were singing? “I was here before you, I was here before him, and I intend to still be here way after you’re gone.” She’s watching out for her own.
Then there’s Fisk flat out having the conversation about how in the world they elected a former criminal. He says that he, of all people, should know about forgiveness. And I’m like, dude, you got elected as the full-blown Kingpin.
Matt, Frank, and the Friend Who Was Gone in a Minute
I felt like they bounced back really fast. Most of Matt’s issues stem from the loss of Foggy and the decision not to be Daredevil anymore, which comes out of that whole scenario. And that part happened so fast that Gonzo almost forgot who Matt was talking about in that scene. I was right there with him. I’m sitting there going, Hector Ayala?
I said in my review of last week’s episode, watch, he’s going to Daredevil his way into tracking down Frank. That’s exactly what happened.
Gonzo was excited to see him. He said he needed that rage, and Frank’s intensity helped. The curveball for him was Frank telling Matt he came there for permission. Permission for what? Then Frank explains it, and then they get to Foggy, and it makes even more sense. But Foggy was gone too fast for it to hit the way it should. He wasn’t even there a minute. Dude was just gone.
I love that he’s talking like Frank. The writers did a good job making him sound like the character we know, and that made me happy.
Gonzo did say he seems a little distraught, and in the comic books he wasn’t like that. He was more collected. Here he looks like a loose cannon. He does. He’s got a very Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon thing going. And he’s apparently still operating in New York, which I didn’t expect.
We both had the same inkling of a thought, because we’ve been so betrayed by the main characters in the first episode: is this the only time we’re going to see the Punisher? Did they tease us with the one scene? They’d better show him some more. Have him actually punishing people, especially with the police using his symbol.
White Tiger Deserved Better Than a Walk to the Bodega
Gonzo had a modification to what I said in last week’s review. He wanted to know more about White Tiger than the Puerto Rican. He wanted “this is White Tiger, and by the way, he’s Puerto Rican.” He didn’t want “this is a Puerto Rican, and oh, by the way, he’s White Tiger.” Understood. He thought the ending credits were done well. The monologue was meh. Not terrible, but meh, because he hears it all the time. The coquí. Yes, he knows about the coquí.
For me it’s that they spend so much time on the wrong things. Victor DiGiovani said it in last week’s comments:
“As cool as White Tiger was, I feel the show did him dirty by not giving him a full sequence where we see the majesty of White Tiger play out. Not just blurry frames in a security camera. This episode should have been like episode seven or eight, where we get to see White Tiger doing all this stuff. For that matter, the show should be giving us a lot more vigilantes, some good, some bad, doing stuff all over the city, because at this point masked vigilantes objectively are known for having saved literally half of humanity. You can’t just blanket condemn them all like you could in the old days of superhero stories. You need to show legit reasons why people might be doubting that the people wearing underwear on the outside might not be good guys all the time.”
I think he’s right. They go too quick. Here’s White Tiger, and goodbye.
And how he died. He doesn’t go out running over the rooftops. He’s walking in the street. Do something more heroic, bro. He looked like a dude who bought his costume at the costume shop, got hungry, and was headed to the bodega for an empanada. It was rough.
Reading It Like a Comic Book Reader
Rob from Comics Explained said something after the first episode that I’ve been chewing on all this time. There are a lot of people complaining that it’s not the Netflix one. And it’s not. His point was that maybe the reason he accepted it is that he’s used to reading comic books, and he’s used to a new creative team having the same characters and it suddenly feeling mildly different. It wasn’t shocking for him.
This episode and last episode feel the most like the old series to me. Slower paced, just like the old series. It took until the end of season 1 before he even got the helmet on, and they don’t seem in any rush to get him back there. They want that tug of war, and Gonzo’s okay with that. He pointed out there were issues in a comic series that were setup too, and I guess that’s how we took things in, growing up reading comic books.
I wasn’t a big Daredevil reader until Frank Miller’s run. I’d read The Dark Knight Returns and I asked, is there any more stuff like this? They told me they’d just put out a trade paperback of his Daredevil run. So that’s what I’m used to. Years later there are other runs where he’s less of a Daredevil and more of a lawyer, and I feel like that’s where we’re living right now. That’s fine, and I’m down. But I’m ready to start seeing us do some stuff.
Did you notice Brian Michael Bendis is listed as a consultant? An actual consultant. So they’ve got some real comic book bona fides in there.
I did think it was weird that Fisk, a couple of episodes ago, was talking about a guy who dresses as a spider. No, he’s Spider-Man. We shouldn’t be in this weird early MCU mode where nobody knows anybody. They can say it. He’s in the MCU. They probably can’t show him, because Sony would have to be involved. Gonzo’s read is that Fisk doesn’t know who Spider-Man is. If he’d encountered him like in the comics, he’d call him out by name. Until then he’s some spider guy. I can see that.
What Has to Happen Next
My thought for next week is that Fisk knows something has to happen. He’s told them it’s okay to go through the normal channels, but I feel like he tells his right-hand man, and his right-hand man says “got it” and goes and does stuff.
Does Adam ever get away, or is Adam done for?
And the girlfriend. Does she ever let Matt know she’s dealing with the mayor? Gonzo says they’re going to have to, probably toward the end of the season, and it’s going to be betrayal and hurt feelings, because you know how writers do it at the end. Some kind of conflict of interest is coming.
Are the cops legitimately still going to be a problem? One of them is out there telling Matt they know where he lives, and Matt looks at him and basically says, well, I guess you should’ve brought more people. That was awesome.
Somebody commented that Luke Cage and Jessica Jones are potentially next season, or even going into the Defenders as a thing. Okay, that’s fine. So what are we getting this season? Just Frank? If we don’t get more of something, they’d better give us more Daredevil.
Then there’s the character at the end, the guy taking the blood. I can’t remember who that character is. Gonzo wanted to say Bedlam, and said he’s probably wrong. What I do know is the actor. Remember the kid in the bookstore who asks for her signature when she’s signing books, back in episode one or two? That’s this guy. They announced his casting, and nothing can be a secret anymore. In the comic books that character is an Inhuman, so I’m interested to see if they even remotely touch that, because there’s not a lot of supernatural in this show. Though the guy Matt’s working with did say it could have been a Skrull.
Gonzo’s good with two episodes of setup. He’s ready for some action now, a good fight scene or something big. Next episode, something’s got to go down. I’m the same way.
Overall I liked this week. A lot of it was footwork, but I liked the character beats. It was setup, and I didn’t mind it. Gonzo dug the Punisher scene, couldn’t stand the counseling scene, and can’t get the singing out of his head. I’m going into the rest of this kind of blind and letting it happen to me.
My rating is in the full review, which is its own video. Tell us what you thought of the episode, whether you’re excited for the next couple, and what your predictions are. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. Never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.
