Thoughts on Daredevil season two (episode one)

So dumb.

•I still really, really dislike TV Daredevil's costume, and Netflix showed a pretty thorough visual recap of the first season before the first episode of the second season, giving me another chance to see that original, all-black, non-costume costume right before his big, dumb, bulky body armor suit. Because I am a masochist, my friend and I re-watched the 2003 Daredevil film shortly after watching the first season, and the one thing it did better than the TV show was that it had a better Daredevil costume (especially the cowl).

Now wouldn't Charlie Cox look great in this outfit?

I've said it before, but I'll say it again since I'm back on the subject. I'd prefer a TV Daredevil costume much closer to the one he's currently wearing in the comics, all black with some red highlights (gloves, boots) and a cowl more like the one Ben Affleck rocked.

•The opening sequence, in which a gang of ski-masked wearing, gun-toting thieves who apparently just robbed a silver briefcase store but neglected to arrange for a getaway car are taken down one-by-one by an unseen, off-screen Daredevil is pretty fantastic introduction to Daredevil and his ninja skills.

•I wonder if they are eventually going to address the fact that Daredevil is basically a sadistic crazy person with a semi-split personality. The way Charlie Cox plays Matt Murdock, he seems like such a nice, charming sweet guy, but when he justifies his vigilante activities to Elden Henson's Foggy in their first scene together, he brings up an instance where he stops a drunken wife-beater from attempting to murder his spouse, who they were unable to fully protect simply through their lawyering. Murdock notes that he put the bad guy in the hospital, after breaking both his arms and inflicting some other grievous injury...was it a cracked sternum? Something like that?

I mean, way to go saving the day and all, and I'm sure the serial abuser deserved to get a taste of what he was dishing out to his wife, but Jesus Matt, did you have to break both arms? Doesn't breaking one limb kinda make the point?

•It's pretty impossible these days, even when one doesn't read the articles under the headlines on the comics sites noting who has been cast as who in what show, to avoid learning details about shows like this (and even if I did stay off the Internet all together, I would have seen the ads for the show prominently featuring the two new characters). But I really kinda wish I didn't know The Punisher was going to be in this. Because they spent a significant time building up the threat this episode, with the climax of that build-up probably being the revelation that it wasn't a gang or squad or team of people using military-grade hardware to slaughter various Hell's Kitchen's gangs by the dozens, but that it was "just one guy."

Maybe they could have mo-capped Bernthal and had Tim Bradstreet draw a CGI Punisher over him...?

•I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Jon Bernthal's Punisher, as he's not really on-screen all that much. The Punisher I see in my mind's eye these days is the one from Garth Ennis' Max run, which means something of a cross between an ogre and a middle-aged Clint Eastwood. This Punisher is certainly being portrayed as something close to Ennis' maniac-serial-killer version from the Max comics series, which reinforced that image of him in my mind before appeared on-screen.

I'm not sure who looks like that Punisher--Scott Eastwood with some Lord of The Rings-style camera trickery to make him look three feet taller than Daredevil? Ron Perleman?--Bernthal but seemed too normal-sized, rather than the bigger-than-life force of nature he's portrayed as here.

•Boy, do they really sell The Punisher as a bat-shit insane, slasher-movie villain, as opposed to the anti-hero, guy-who's-willing-to-cross-that-line vigilante of the previous movies or the pre-Ennis (and some post-Ennis) comics. The Punisher I've read comics about certainly wouldn't be above torturing bad guys or anything, but that whole sequence in his lair, with victims hung on hooks with sides of beef, all sorts of industrial flesh-cutting equipment in the next room?

If the Punisher-cave was simply more poorly lit, or at least had flickering light bulbs, it would seem more like a place for Leatherface to hang out than The Punisher.

•I was actually pretty surprised that he and Daredevil had a fight within the first episode, especially considering the build-up before Wilson Fisk ever appeared in the first season. Their fight was pretty fantastic at the outset--I really liked the way Daredevil essentially moved him across the rooftop while they fought--but once we got to the slow-motion kick, it lost its momentum (Daredevil screaming like Tarzan before tackling Punisher from above wasn't a very sneaky ninja move, either).

•I was a little surprised by the fact that Punisher held his own so well against Daredevil in a fistfight, but, again, that may be simply because I'm bringing with me my own perceptions and impressions from reading comics about these guys, where one is a master ninja with super-senses and the other is just a big guy with guns. We haven't learned much about this Punisher yet, so far all I know he was trained by Stick or The Hand or discovered the lost city of K'un-L'un.