At this point I'm probably further behind on Daredevil than anyone. So rather than do in depth recaps, as I did for my last Daredevil post, I'm just going to assume that if you're reading this you've already seen the episode. Hopefully this will make the posts a little shorter, a little punchier, a little more fun to read/write.
Episode four, "In the Blood" opens with its only flashback. Russian mobsters Anatoly and Vladimir Ranskahov (Gideon Emery and Nikolai Nikolaeff, respectively) are in a prison in their motherland. While the older Anatoly has been taking a beating somewhere, Vladimir was tearing into a dead man's torso. Apparently snapped off ribs make good shivs. That pretty much sums up their characters. Anatoly tries to work within the system, no matter how nasty that system happens to be. Vladimir, however, does whatever he thinks is necessary, which tends to be even more brutal.
We see it over and over again. The only guy who knows anything about their adversary (Daredevil, natch) is in a coma because he was thrown off a building (by Daredevil, natch). Anatoly will wait for him to wake up. Vladimir will slam a needle full of epinephrine into the guy's heart to make him wake up, knowing it'll probably kill him. Anatoly will talk to Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio). Vladimir just wants to make him mad. It's a move that gets Anatoly killed (in an inventive, but gut-wrenching way). Vladimir will probably blame Daredevil (Charlie Cox) and Fisk in equal parts. When Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) tells Fisk that he just started a war, even he probably doesn't realize just how many factions will be fighting.
This is episode where we really meet Wilson Fisk. The first time we saw him, in the last episode, it was just for one line. Here, we watch him bashfully ask an art dealer, Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer), out for dinner. The most dangerous and feared mobster in New York is a lonely, bashful schoolboy inside. Over dinner he mentions his childhood several times, and like a child, he can suddenly lose his temper when upset. He honestly believes that he's doing something good for the city, as any good villain should.
The person whom we see the least is our titular hero. This episode is all about Fisk. Were this on a regular television schedule, it wouldn't work. We don't meet our big bad until a month in, and when we do the majority of the episode is devoted to him? I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. It's just that the binge-watchable show is a different medium than television. Sometimes the new structure allows for more in-depth storytelling and character development, which is certainly the case here.
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