Previously: Matt and Foggy have hired Karen as their secretary. The local mafia has things in motion but we're not sure what those plans are, or who is actually running the show. Daredevil rushes off into the night to rescue a kidnapped boy.
The second episode of Daredevil is all about the characters. Who is Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), and why has he chosen the life of a vigilante? Who are the people around him? It's a very talky episode, but it's nice to see the writers using the extra time given them in a series, rather than a movie, to really define just who these people are. While Cut Man doesn't really do anything for the plot, having more insight into our hero will strengthen the overall narrative.
The episode opens with blood dripping off the corner of a city dumpster. Daredevil (aka: Matt Murdock) has taken a vicious beating. We never see exactly what happened, but through his gasps of pain you can almost hear the broken ribs scraping his sides. Upon being found, he's carried to the apartment of nurse Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson). She wants to take him to the hospital, but insists that she not, saying that the men who beat him would destroy everyone there just to get to him.
Daredevil explains that he had gone after the boy we saw kidnapped at the end of the last episode. Thinking that he was being clever in finding the boy so quickly, it turned out to be a trap. Daredevil has been causing trouble for the Russian mob's human trafficking operation, and kidnapping the boy was a ploy to bring him out in the open. Daredevil escaped, but just barely. This is all explained to us in Claire's apartment, but Daredevil's grinding pain keeps us invested.
While Matt is bleeding out on a stranger's couch, Foggy (Elden Henson) and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) are out for a night on the town. Foggy is clearly smitten with the beautiful secretary, though all Karen needs at the moment is a good friend. If she's drawn to anyone it's the charming Matt or the mysterious masked man who saved her life. It's setting up the love triangle that comics readers know well, and anyone who has ever watched anything knows how it's going to play out. But seeing real actors bringing it to life makes it heartbreaking all over again.
One of the Russian mobsters, posing as a police detective, follows the trail of blood to Claire's apartment. Daredevil uses a fire extinguisher, his super powers and some good timing to knock the man out without a fight. Claire and Daredevil take the man to roof to question him about the boy. This is one of those shows where torture works. We've seen Daredevil snap before, going beyond subduing a criminal to extracting punishment (and lots and lots of blood). At one point Daredevil snarls that he's not just hurting the man to get information. He's doing it because he enjoys it. Claire doesn't believe that, but I might.
Much of the episode is spent in flashbacks to Matt's childhood with his father, boxer Battlin' Jack Murdock (John Patrick Hayden). Jack's relationship with his young son is one of the those perfect, Hollywood father/son relationships. So naturally, it's doomed. Jack is an okay boxer, but he has money problems. When the Irish mob starts offering him money to take dives in the ring he's not in a position to say no. Even though he's able to hide the arrangement from Matt for awhile he knows it pains his son every time he loses.
Finally, Jack is offered a fight he knows he can win against a hotshot new boxer. It's an incredible opportunity, and Jack is thrilled. The odds are three to one that Battlin' Jack can take him, but the mob tells him to lose. At first he agrees, but perhaps realizing that he can't keep fighting forever, he decides to provide for his son the best way he can even if it costs him his life (spoiler: it does).
Back in the present, the episode closes out with a six minute long single shot. Lest we forget that this is a fighting show and not a talking show, Daredevil tracks down the Russians in a crumby apartment building. So battered and exhausted he can barely stand, he still takes them on in one of this show's signature fights.
In some ways, the episode feels like filler, just padding out the order for 13 episodes. The character development and backstory is great, but one has to wonder if some of it couldn't have been worked into episodes where stuff actually happens. In the era of the binge-watch such indulgences aren't as obvious. After a ten hour marathon, who's going to remember a fifty minute stretch of character and only five of plot? Hopefully the next episode regains some of the momentum from the first.
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