Daredevil - Into the Ring

Let me start by saying that I never saw the reportedly terrible Ben Affleck movie based on the same character. But I thought that Evanescence was going to revolutionize rock music, which might reveal more about who I was in 2003 than anything else. All that to say, the entirety of my experience with Daredevil, which isn't much, comes from pages of comic books.


If you don't know who Matt Murdock is, he's one of Marvel's less popular Batman. Blinded at a young age in a car accident that got toxic waste in his eyes, he developed super hearing, touch, smell, etc. But since Hearing-Man didn't look good on a comic book cover, when he grew up he became Daredevil. Unlike Bruce Wayne, however, Murdock doesn't have a huge bank account to fund his vigilantism. So he takes up law.

In the first episode of the new series from Netflix, we see Matt (Charlie Cox) and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson, who, I don't care what IMDB says, will always be best known for The Mighty Ducks) setting up their first law office in Hell's Kitchen. The show is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), after the events of The Avengers where New York City was nearly destroyed. This works out well for Matt and Foggy, because they can get office space cheap.

The destruction of New York (called here, The Incident) is also good for business, construction and mob alike. Nelson & Murdock's first client is the secretary for one of the major construction companies, Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll), who discovers that her boss is embezzling enormous amounts of money. After being framed for the murder of a coworker, it's Nelson & Murdock to the rescue. After a second attempt on her life, it's Daredevil to the rescue, in a brutal, yet beautifully choreographed fight. Meanwhile, we get a few glimpses of the city's criminal underside.

For an introductory episode, it was nice not to be bombarded with information. Matt's origin, such as it is, is covered in brief flashbacks. Comics fans know that we've still got some important characters to meet, most importantly Daredevil's nemesis Wilson Fisk (aka: Kingpin). Far from spelling things out for the viewers, you have to be paying attention to notice that Matt's superhuman hearing allows him to monitor people's heartbeats as a sort of lie detector. The episode's most obvious weak spot comes in the first ten minutes, when Matt spends an eternity in a confessional booth, reminiscing about his father. It's a nice bit of history, but if this show were on network TV the scene would have been trimmed significantly.

Otherwise, everything about the episode is perfectly crafted, from the sound design, to the cinematography, to the viscous fights. That's the second time I've mentioned the brutality of the fights and it's worth mentioning again, because this is not the family-friendly Avengers. There is blood and the crunching of bones, human trafficking, and a hint of nudity. Yes, it's Marvel. But it's Marvel after dark.

My biggest question going into this series was how they were going to tie it into the wider MCU. The answer so far is subtly. "The Incident" is handled in the same way many real world shows handled 9/11."Our city was nearly destroyed by aliens, so now what?" There's none of the hang-wringing that characterized early episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, "Our city was nearly destroyed by aliens, what does it mean?" The different attitude is refreshing and rings more true to life.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the characters evolve. And since it's on Netflix in its entirety, I can watch another episode whenever I get the chance.