Daredevil

[Albert B. Rampage]

Season 2 is coming out in a few hours. Is anyone else excited?

I never liked the actor for The Punisher, John Berenthal or something? But damn after watching him in unconvincing roles like in Sicario and The Walking Dead, do I think he is PERFECT for The Punisher in DD. Elektra is so visually pleasing too ah-ha...ha...

MORE NINJAS.

Awww yissss who else is going to marathon it?

[Faraday]

Yup!

The Punisher is fucking awesome, so far.

[Albert B. Rampage]

I finished 8 episodes and collapsed of fatigue. Will finish today.

So far this season of DD is better than se1 and Jessica Jones by FAR.

Elektra, ninjas, Stick, Punisher. Awwwwwyissssss!

[SirCakez]

I'm only two episodes in so haven't seen Elektra or the ninjas yet, still focused on Punisher. Punisher has been fantastic so far, he was casted well and I love how he is being portrayed. The whole mystery aspect of the first episode with how they think it's an army of men the whole time then realize it's only one dude at the end was great.

[Albert B. Rampage]

Yes the casting is phenomenal!!! Damn good job.

[hiplop]

I've only just started episode one but holy shit am I excited

[SirCakez]

Just finishes episode three.
Holy shit that fight scene was amazing.

[hiplop]

it was unbelievable!!! So so well shot

[SirCakez]

Yeah fantastic camera work. If they are doing one of those every season I'll be very happy.

[Majiffy]

Would that be the hallway single-camera shot that I heard about?

[hiplop]

that was first season? but this one is a similar vein, ya

[SirCakez]

Yeah the hallway fight was first season. This one was on a stairwell, but it was similarly filmed, with little cutting and a "following the action" perspective, if you will.

[GreyICE]

This season didn't work at all. But as a failure, it was a glorious one. So many great scenes, so many great moments. Do we care that they don't really make sense when you look at them in order? Spoilered review below.

Spoiler:

So, this reveals one of the great flaws of the full season model Netflix made. Namely, you can go back and meddle. With TV, once an episode airs, its events (for good or ill) occurred, and you can only erase them with a dream sequence or some other clumsy plot device. With this full-season model, you can refilm, changing the plot, altering how the series goes. Unfortunately you can't change the scenes you already shot, and the results are incoherent to outright schizophrenic.

You can see the shape of the original plot beneath the mess. Elektra shows up, probably for one episode to do with Roxxon, then isn't seen again until the grand finale with Stick and the Hand. The introduction of the Hand is in the hospital, triggering the finale, and the plot with the Punisher splits into Punisher/Hand with no forewarning. It would have been a surprise villain with a surprise finale, coming literally out of left field with the reintroduction of Stick at the weirdest possible point. The hand reanimating the dead was introduced with no warning, adding supernatural to a show that had none, and left unexplained, baffling the audiences.

Clearly that wasn't unacceptable. So instead, the reshoot began, and on a very rushed schedule. Instead of running off with the ledger, Electra sticks around! We get CGI hand ninjas who flip out across rooftops and are shot by Stick in a scene that's straight out of

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

(the miserable movie version). Matt blows off the trial (and scenes were cut from it) in order to spend more time with Elektra (not fighting crime).

The results make Matt look like an unutterable ass. Fighting crime? Understandable. Instead of preparing for his court case, he's saving a man's life, or stopping a beating, or capturing guns before they get into the wrong hands. But no, in the edit he's chasing around the Hand.

And the Hand's master plan? To dig a giant hole in the ground. Yes, really. This produces so many moments of hilarity it's really hard to describe. Like when Matt blows off his briefing to go chase down a railcar that's literally full of dirt. Yes, dirt. Not mystical voodoo dirt, not drugs under the dirt, it's just dirt. The best part? A squad of Hand is guarding it. How deep on the shit list do you need to be to get dirt guarding duty? Well this hand squad is there, and they go down like the mooks they are.

Elektra gets wounded fighting over the hole in the ground, and they rush her back to Matt's apartment in that Stick scene I was mentioning. This is also the last time we see the hole in the ground. Truly worth it guys, amright? Stick cures the poison, sews her up and saves her life... odd to think in a week or so Stick will be sending assassins to kill her.

We get an amazing scene with Punisher on a boat, finally tracking down the Blacksmith. The who? Probably the guy whose minions Daredevil had been fighting during the court case, except that was all cut for Elektra, so now there's really no introduction to this scene at all. Daredevil says that just this once he'd be willing to let Punisher kill someone, the sort of emotional declaration that would be a lot more meaningful if we had a single fucking clue who this Blacksmith was, but instead just leaves us kind of bewildered. After the long scene where he struggled with killing Fisk and ultimately was unable to in Season 1, after the struggle on the rooftop over killing the criminal who murdered innocents, telling Punisher he's fine with him killing someone whose name we just heard maybe five minutes before feels way out of character.

There's too many good moments for me to call this bad television. Fisk screaming in Matt's face, taking control of the prison. Everything with the Punisher up to and through the trial (ignoring the Matt is elsewhere non-plot garbage). Foggy, becoming more and more awesome. Karen, growing from assistant to journalist. The (true) introduction of Elektra, where they perfectly hit that old lovers/old friends dynamic (too bad the revised plot had them banging like rabbits during that, oh well). The hand were kind of scary when they weren't CGI (basically everything after the kids in the basement). Although they were still super mook level on the rooftops (there were four who just kind of stood there for the longest time doing literally nothing. We're talking minutes).

But this screams executive meddling. It reminds me of Rami too much - he wanted to do Sandman because he's interesting, the executives wanted Venom because Venom is cool. Punisher is the perfect foil for Daredevil. Both lost their family, both turned to violence to stop crime. The scene with the gun smuggler? "I'll be out in a week!" Daredevil wasn't accomplishing anything by stopping him. No one gets out in a week when Punisher stops them. It speaks to the hypocrisy of the 'vigilante who doesn't kill' because if things are so bad that a vigilante is required, if the system is so flawed that it cannot handle these criminals, how can you expect it to contain them after you don't kill them? It plays off the Catholicism that ran through the first season so strongly - can a murderer be forgiven? Can you wash away those sins? Do they deserve mercy and the opportunity to change, or do they deserve punishment?

Elektra is yet another Frank Miller female character (did you know Karen was originally a prostitute who quit to become an actor, then became a prostitute again and then died? Thanks Frank). The depths of "old lover who shares his love of violence" speak to no deep themes. Stick's return was clumsy, his reasons for wanting to kill Elektra unexplained, the entire segment contrasts so strongly with the punisher. Even the fight scenes are worse with the hand - poorly choreographed American TV nonsense where blows swing and then *cut* people fly and then swing a blow *cut* that they jump over and smack back *cut* they're bleeding. Punisher scene fights were a masterpiece.

You can feel where their hearts were, and where their orders from above were. They didn't line up. The result was a mess, an unbelievable mess, that won't hold up. It's hard to revisit any of this, because the deeper you look at it the more it falls apart, and that means most of it has to be in the past, its impact inferred in broad strokes. This is more than a little worrying, for obvious reasons. Still, there was too much good acting for me to give up just yet. But Season 1 was unquestionably better.

[chamber]

Plot didn't work and daredevil's arc didn't work but I think the rest of the character arcs carried it

[GreyICE]

Oh I'm not saying it's bad TV. But man it veered really close to being a total train wreck. Phenomenal acting rescued it (even Elektra and Stick were great actors). Punisher arcs were all amazing up until the last one. Still not going to go down as the sort of success that Season 1 or Jessica Jones was. CGI ninjas flipping across the rooftops alone would see to that. I kept waiting for Shredder to show up during that sequence because that was some Grade A Foot Clan bullshit.

[Ollie]

Awww yissss

Awwwwwyissssss!

[Oman]

Punisher was awesome.

Elektra was terribad.

I thought we were honestly headed for greatest series ever until about ep 5. Gonna watch Jessica Jones again to wash the taste out of my mouth.

[Albert B. Rampage]

I REALLY liked Elektra. Awesome character. Reminds me of my gf.

[Albert B. Rampage]

What I didn't like:

Punisher monologue scene in graveyard
Biker fight in appartment building
Final fight with ninjas
Too much Nobu. Was hoping for his boss to show up. Hes mid management.

[BROseidon]

Yeah they should have just kept this season about Punisher. Transitioning into the Hand/Chaste stuff just made it off.

They could have sowed the seeds of the Hand/Chaste plot (still have some of the Exxon stuff), but they could have moved it more towards the end and only had them getting part way through it to set up for S3 or Defenders.

[SirCakez]

What I didn't like:

Biker fight in appartment building

What
how

[Albert B. Rampage]

What I didn't like:

Biker fight in appartment building

What
how

Too dark. It didn't make sense why they wouldn't just shoot him.