Daredevil
Season 2
(SPOILERS) A
sure indicator of a TV show’s quality is the degree to which you’re itching to watch
the next episode. If it’s immediately, the chances are it’s pretty damn good. Ironically,
given Netflix is producing product where the selling point is bypassing the
traditional week’s wait for satiation, their Marvel shows are failing in that
regard. Admittedly, Jessica Jones
worked that magic a few times, but for the most part Daredevil
has left me resoundingly indifferent.
And it’s not as if the second season
hasn’t gone for it in attempting to up the ante and all-round stakes. It’s undoubtedly
an improvement on the first run, but still ultimately a disappointment, and I
think the clincher as to why came with the ninth, and best episode. It barely featured
our central trio of Matt, Karen and Foggy, focusing on newcomer Frank “The
Punisher” Castle and the return of Wilson Fisk, now assuming his better-known
moniker of Kingpin. And it was riveting. Which rather suggests something is
seriously awry in either the character or casting department of
Marvel-Netflix’s Defenders
trailblazer.
It took me
two weeks to plod my way through the season, because nothing was really compelling
me to come back for more, certainly not the power of Christ. Yes, Frank Castle
is a great character, performed with extraordinary conviction and dedication by
Jon Bernthal (not that you’d expect anything less if you’ve seen him in
anything else). Every scene with Castle comes alive, and by sheer willpower
Bernthal makes the material seem more vital, more layered, and simply more engrossing
than it otherwise is. That may be why, when you put him and Vincent D’Onofrio
in a scene together (and it helps when that scene is also set in prison), the
results are electric.
But the
rest of it? The wholesale embracing of genuine supernatural elements is all
very well, but there’s something consistently pedestrian about the approach to plotting
and structure; it’s too systematic, insufficiently interweaving and entwining
its elements, unable to develop genuine intrigue and suspense. No sooner has
Frank been apprehended than Elektra (Elodie Yung) shows up, who should be
really interesting but somehow is just so-so vampish. It doesn’t feel as if the
writers have engineered her entrance as an “It never lets up for Matt” moment,
rather that they couldn’t work out how to juggle both her and the Punisher at
once.
It isn’t as
if any of the main characters aren’t serviceably performed, but there’s
something missing at the core. Charlie Cox plays a wimpily earnest moralist
with an uncompromising and staunch code – increasingly ridiculous with the
escalating bloodshed around him; it’s
one thing to go for realism at every turn, but you end up short circuiting that
foundation of your show when you make it seem as if the only way out of certain
situations will be to kill someone eventually, even inadvertently; this is only
further emphasised by the slaughter-happy antics of Elektra and Frank – effectively enough, but there’s absolutely no
spark to his performance, nothing to make you really invested in his labours
and obsession.
Angel frequently came to mind during this run – the
urban setting, the legal imbroglios, the characters who don’t stay dead, and
flashbacks and echoes from the past – and it always ended up looking better in
comparison. David Boreanaz’s lead was never anyone’s idea of an acting legend,
but his character actually had some edge, and more significantly, the Joss
Whedon (or more particularly, David Greenwalt) approach to narrative and
character arcs, Big Bads, rise-and-fall-and-rise-again plotting, was
consistently vastly superior (at least, after the rocky first season).
I don’t
care about the main characters in Daredevil.
Deborah Ann Woll was one of the most winning elements of True Blood, but Karen Page is entirely tiresome, only ever given beats
that emphasise her nature as a paper thing cliché; good-hearted, earnest,
empathic. When they resorted to giving her a job at the newspaper, complete
with pure wood guru-like editor Geoffrey Cantor, I was ready to bail. I’m not
remotely taken with her soporific liaison with Matt, either.
Part of the
problem may be the interminable rounds of moral debate that have dogged the
series, ones that no one has been able to deliver as anything less than turgid,
except possibly when Bernthal is spitting out self-justifications like they
matter. I get it, this is a series about vigilantes, and you need to discuss
crossing the line, but every
character spouting the same interchangeable dialogue, be it Karen, Claire
(Rosario Dawson) or Foggy (Elden Henson), or even Matt, when it’s the variation
of Daredevil doing his thing as a contrast to Electra and Frank doing theirs’ murderously,
quickly becomes a bore. Characters frequently take positions simply because the
scene requires a point of conflict (“Great,
lying to the cops. Smart, Karen”, reprimands Matt in 2.11, .380).
Added to
which, Foggy, or more particularly Henson’s porcine performance, is a perpetual
anchor around the show’s chances of swimming for a better shore. Every time
he’s on screen, given the same whining/ smart-alec/ self-righteous/ sanctimonious
(“You’re right. This city needs heroes,
but you’re not one of them”), or even self-aggrandising (“I’m really good at my job” – could have fooled me) dialogue for the umpteenth time, I’m at a loss why Murdock wants
to be in the same room as him, let alone best buddies and business partner.
It says
something that Michelle Hurd does her best to make Assistant DA Samantha Reyes
as objectionable as possible, but I’m
still on her side in any scene where she’s locking horns with Foggy. In 2.6
Regrets Only, when Frank, in custody,
refuses to speak to Karen with the portly curtained-haired werepig in the room,
I thought at last someone was going to call him out, but then Castle only goes
and lets him represent him (as a consequence of which we’re subjected to a
quite dreadfully written scene where Foggy has no idea what to say for his
opening statement, only to then give the most over-written, thoroughly rehearsed
speech imaginable when he decides to address the jury from the heart). Any
attempts to give Foggy more space and substance (“You’re the heart of this place” Matt tells him, omitting the part
about him being an interminably irksome windbag) fail dismally, and I suspect
it’s equal parts actor and material.
None of the
main (good) characters really come alive; they’re simply “types”. Kind of corny, with
undistinguished dialogue and interactions. This is standard, traditional,
old-style network TV in design, just with added bloodshed. Constant Buffy-esque
quipping would be a mistake, but that’s not the only way to imbue the
proceedings with energy. What works on the pages of a comic book doesn’t
necessarily as live action, and Daredevil
is consistently undermined by its sheer functionality. It does a job but
without any true flair, except when it comes to the action scenes.
Which is
one aspect that is undeniably top notch. The choreography of the extended fight
scenes, particularly those involving one guy against the many, is often giddily
kinetic and superlatively sustained (the standouts being 2.3 New York’s Finest’s stairwell fight and Frank’s
bloody prison brawl in 2.9 Seven Minutes
in Heaven, although Matt’s rescue of Stick via the latter’s instructions,
in 2.12 The Dark at the End of the Tunnel
is also first rate). They’ve finally got a handle on how to shoot Daredevil in
his revised mask so he looks imposing rather than Neanderthal (kind of
important to make your hero look at least vaguely cool).
And there are solid passages here and there, often
where characters team up for a mission, notably Matt and Elektra in Regrets Only as they go to a party,
break into offices, pretend to shag and beat bad guys up (a good blind gag too,
relying on the victim’s apologetic cordiality when Matt deliberately spills his
drink all over their target).
The return of Scott Glenn as Stick is engaging simply
because Glenn can’t help but be great. D’Onofrio has a magnificent opening ten
minutes in Seven Minutes in Heaven, charting
his prison time to date, that trounces his entire first season material put
together, and William Forsythe makes for a suitably worthy opponent. But come
the risen-from-the-dead ninja assassins, the whole deal with Black Sky and the
return of Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho), and I’m curiously unmoved by what should
be classic mystery and intrigue, the sort of thing Whedon could do in his sleep.
One easily
identifiable problem is that these Netflix shows are simply too long, their showrunners
insufficiently adept at devising sufficiently labyrinthine plots to sustain
them. There’s a surprising linearity that’s suggestive of the ‘80s or ‘90s. Eight
episodes would probably be ideal, in order to achieve tighter leaner, and more
focussed storytelling.
Despite
Bernthal’s commendable performance, I don’t hold out high hopes for his
solo-Punisher outing (even here, where the character is consistently the best conceived
aspect of the show, they fluff his catharsis and manage to make the Clancy
Brown – you don’t waste Clancy Brown on piffle! – the rather uninspired subject
of a reveal in the process. As soon as you make Castle central you inevitably
have to soften him, have him interact in human ways that make his mission
statement a constant source of conversation (even more so than here, and Karen
harping on every five minutes).
I wonder if
the broad brush, compressed, key notes approach of the Marvel movies isn’t the
best way to portray these characters, simply because their modes quickly reduce
to repetitive cycles; they can’t really
grow or change, so they’re stuck on a hamster wheel that inevitably draws
attention to itself. So far, Jessica
Jones has worked because it actually allowed its character some teeth and
trajectory, and its villain even more. Perhaps they do need Matt Murdock to kill someone (accidentally), only then we’d
have half a season of mind-numbing introspection before he finally comes back round
to the conclusion that his way is the right way.
Agree? Disagree? Mildly or vehemently? Let me know in the comments below.
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