There’s an awful lot of fighting going on in Episode 4 of Daredevil: Born Again, and it’s the fight against a man’s personal darkness. Wilson Fisk, Matt Murdock, both fighting what’s deep down inside.
Hot on the heels of last week’s episode, Matt finds himself in the aftermath of losing Hector Ayala, trying to figure out what it all means. His life seems riddled with loss lately. The loss of Foggy, the loss of Karen, the loss of Hector. And as each of those losses compounds on top of the others, he has an encounter with the police officer he had to deal with during the case, who not so undercover threatens him. Matt has the good sense to say, “If you are going to come after me, make sure you have more men than you did last time.”
And I was just like, okay, clearly that’s the tone they’re going to be setting for this thing.
Fisk Finds Out What a Docket Is
Michael Gandolfini continues to just rock every single scene he’s in. There’s a really cool one where he mistakenly gives some information to that reporter he’s really into. Rather than her being respectful of their friendship, she uses it, and he gets in trouble.
Meanwhile, Wilson Fisk is having to hold everything together. He’s got these big pie-in-the-sky ideas of what he wants to do, and in the meantime he’s got the kid sitting there leaking information, and he’s got the head of his campaign, now his chief of staff, who’s just trying to steer him away from having the worst mayorship of all time.
Fisk’s idea is that he wants to take a corner of the wharf that’s been utterly rocked, broken down and run down, and remake it, in the hopes of turning this black eye on the city into something respectable. Then he gets the wake-up call. Yeah, it’s going to take time. You have to do all these things you talked about, all these steps of bureaucracy. And ultimately he asks where he even starts, and she literally has to tell him it all starts with getting your meeting on someone’s docket. It’s nice that he just goes, all right, well, let’s start there, let’s do that.
In the meantime he has to go to all of these mayor functions. A recital at a local elementary school, followed by a luncheon at a constituency event, where both the kids and the adults sang the same song, which I thought was hilarious. And you can tell Wilson Fisk is slowly starting to lose it. He’s sitting there like, I don’t know that this is worth what I put into it.
The Therapy Scenes Aren’t Working
Then we go to the next therapy session between him and Vanessa. My guy on the after show was not about the therapy scene, and I don’t know that I thought it was all that great either. It felt like a lot of cliches. It very much feels like they’re trying to redo the Sopranos type therapy sessions, and while they’re not horrible, they’re not good.
The acting’s fine. They’re very ham-fisted scenes. The only work they’re giving the actress who plays Heather is the cliche stuff. She’s looking concerned, this and that.
At the end of the session she brings up Adam, which is the affair that Vanessa had. Both of them are saying things, and the whole time I’m thinking to myself, she’s got to know about Fisk’s storied past. And as a result, she’s got to be thinking he might have removed Adam. I know I was thinking it. So when they go to leave, the doctor asks Vanessa, “Do you feel safe?” And Vanessa says, “Yeah, I know my husband. He’s capable of many, many things. Harm is not one of them.”
Which clearly we know is not the case.
Either way, they’re working out their stuff, and it’s gotten boring. If something doesn’t happen between them soon, I don’t know that I’m going to have the attention span for that B plot anymore.
Matt Takes a Backseat
Have you heard me talk about Matt much yet? There’s a reason. He kind of takes a backseat in this episode.
He has a case. There’s a Black gentleman who apparently stole some Fiddle Faddle, so caramel corn, at a local bodega. It gave them a brief moment to have some kind of a lecture, and I felt it got a little preachy in that moment.
Overall, though, this was not a bad episode. It was just a connective tissue episode. It wasn’t even a character based one.
Frank Castle, and Whose Name Matt Won’t Say
I said it before: Matt’s going to find out, because of who he is, and he’s going to go out. I believe firmly this is the inciting incident that gets him back in the suit.
So Matt Daredevils his way into tracking down a piece of evidence. The evidence eventually leads him underground, to some sort of abandoned subway office, a utility station or something. And sure enough, Frank is there. That’s right. The Punisher.
They have a conversation. Jon Bernthal’s doing his best Punisher and Frank Castle-ishness. And the entire thing boils down to Frank believing Red is coming to him for permission. He’s going, “Say his name. Say his name.” This whole thing. I honestly thought they were talking about Hector Ayala, White Tiger. Apparently they weren’t. Apparently they were talking about Foggy. And I don’t even understand why.
I will say this. The two actors, Charlie Cox and Jon Bernthal, came together and it felt like they had never parted ways. Daredevil and Punisher, Frank Castle and Matt Murdock, Jon Bernthal and Charlie Cox, all those relationships melded and the chemistry was still there. Frank gets on his nerves. He gets annoyed because Frank gets on his nerves, and it’s this whole thing.
The Button That Wasn’t There
So much so that at the very end of the episode, Matt comes home. His girlfriend’s there. Apparently she has a key or a way to get in, whatever. After they spend the night, he goes up on the roof in the middle of the night, and you find out where his little secret Daredevil costume area is. We get that scene from the trailers where they pan across all the different Daredevil masks that have existed, and there’s quite a few of them. There’s gray and red, there’s yellow and red, there’s black and red, there’s red and red. I say red because of the eyes.
Matt’s going to have to figure out what he wants to do. I expected him to choose to put on the costume this episode. And if that’s what I expected, then as someone who has written actual film and TV before, I can tell you the audience was expecting it too. Not doing it this episode was a misstep.
Even if you tell me the whole episode’s about something else, fine. Then get me to the button at the very end of it. He puts the mask back on. Or maybe we don’t even see that. All we see is a red glove. We see the mask get picked up, and then we just see the back of him as he jumps off the building. That’s it. Maybe the thing goes and attaches and you see a little CGI silhouette float away. Now we’re ready for the next episode.
Instead, we’re going to have to waste time next episode on that same contrived nonsense.
I just complimented this show for having good writers last week. So when a filler episode comes along that doesn’t feel like it’s being written well, it grates. It grates like someone chewing on a snow cone. If I hear that, it makes me shiver top to bottom. That’s how this made me feel. It had me on edge. Underneath my fingernails itches. That’s how annoying it was. And I’m just sitting here going, guys, how do you go from writing a spectacular episode to making some really basic rookie mistakes?
Nobody Drives to the Bridge
I’m more looking forward to what’s coming because of the setup. See, I’m willing to admit the setup is important. I get that. But you’ve got to tighten up a little bit, because we only have a finite number of episodes. So let’s see the story progress. The worry on the after show was that we’re not going to get any more Frank, that that was it. And I’m worried about that too. There’s not a whole lot here that’s that compelling.
One of my all-time favorite audience members, who’s constantly in the comments and whose comment I pinned on last week’s episode, brought up the fact that last week we should have seen White Tiger white tigering. We didn’t.
And if you watch the numbers, not a lot of people are watching this. You can look at that and call the show bad, but a lot of folks have lost faith in the MCU. I’m not one of them. But if they’re not careful, well, they’re not getting the kind of grace they used to. Which means every single episode needs to be a tightly wound ship. And I fully know they’re capable of it. They did it last week.
I’m not super impressed. It’s a filler episode, and I say filler tongue in cheek, because the truth is it’s a bridge episode. The funny thing about a bridge is nobody says, I’m going to go to this bridge. A bridge is never the destination, and it’s smack in the middle of every destination you want to get to. So that’s where we are right now. We’ve just crossed the bridge and we’re going into next week’s episode, which I do hope and believe is going to have some daredeviling in it.
We will see.
The Verdict
Daredevil: Born Again Season 1 Episode 4 lands at a 6.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.
Because of what it is, that’s the number. It’s a short episode and there’s not a whole lot to report. It definitely is a filler, but I’m excited for what’s coming, and I have a feeling the more we get into all of these things, the more this show is going to have the opportunity to really start to stretch.
I’d love to hear your ratings and your scores. Did you think the episode carried itself well, or did you want that mask on before the credits too? The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. And never forget, everyone loves a know-it-all.
