Thoughts on Daredevil season two (episode two)

For a guy who binge-drinks at Josie's ever night and never sleeps, Mat's in damn good shape.

Oh hey, Daredevil's not dead after all! He totally survived being shot in the forehead and falling off a building. The dumb-looking costume did its job, and kept him safe from dying after being shot in the head and falling off a building.

I'm not really sure about the mechanics of that scene, as he ended up unconscious on another rooftop, though. Maybe he dragged himself there? Or bounced off the ground and landed on another rooftop, like a super bounce ball? I don't know.

I enjoyed watching Foggy race from rooftop to rooftop looking for Daredevil, but, because he is, as Grotto calls him, a "doughnut of a lawyer" instead of a super-ninja like Daredevil, he can't just parkour from rooftop to rooftop, but has to run all the way up and down each building, using the stairs and/or eleavaors.

--They decided not to show how Foggy dragged big, bloodied Matt, all decked out in a devil-shaped suit of armor, from that rooftop to his own apartment, but I would have enjoyed seeing that.

--Say, isn't there some rule about how you're supposed to handle someone who has a head or neck injury? Aren't you supposed to not move them? Because unconscious Daredevil gets moved around a lot in this series.

--In this episode, Foggy again expresses his valid concerns that Matt is going to get himself killed one of these days, and that is going to cause some pretty big problems for him, above and beyond mourning his friend. Like, for example, if and when Daredevil gets caught or unmasked, alive or dead, that's going to be the end of Foggy's legal career, which is something he and Matt have worked on building together their whole lives.

My friend pointed out another reason for Foggy to be upset with Matt: He has to do all the lawyer-ing. With Matt spending so much time recovering from head injuries, Foggy and Karen have to do all the legal work, all the paper work, all the running of the office. Matt Murdock may be a pretty good friend and a pretty good vigilante, but he must be the worst co-worker.

--I liked the scene where Karen went to check on Matt, and let him know in no uncertain terms that she knows he's hiding something serious from her, something that results in his frequent injuries and failure to show up at office. In the same conversation, she demonstrates that she doesn't know--or even suspect--that he might be Daredevil.

Which makes me wonder what exactly she thinks Matt might be hiding. Does she think he's a raging alcoholic? ("Bit of the hair of the dog that bit you?" she asks when she sees a broken glass in the corner, that he dropped after his super-senses got temporarily haywire). Does she think he's in some kind of blind guy fight club? In deep with loan sharks to feed his terrible gambling addiction? What?

--He was awfully defensive about Daredevil too, when Karen suggested that Hell's Kitchen's embrace of their violent vigilante may have given rise to The Punisher, who similarly takes justice into his own hands.

--His recovery lead to a pretty good opportunity to show us shirtless Charlie Cox, though. The Netflix Marvel shows, like the Marvel movies have been big on shirtless men, while the ladies are hardly ever scantily clad. It's refreshing to see so much "female gaze" in these mass-media adaptations of stories from a medium so dominated by the male gaze.

--Is it just me, or does Deborah Ann Woll get prettier each episode?

--I think I'm already over my reservations about Jon Bernthal's Punisher. He seemed appropriately big and menacing in this episode.

--I wonder why Matt thought a hoodie and a back pack would be a good "disguise" for his visit to his tailor and his bloodhounding of The Punisher's lair...which was not the meat-packing place in the first episode, after all; instead, it's just a dingy apartment filled with guns and ammunition and explosives...which Matt discovered, but failed to call the police and tell them the location of. That's twice now Daredevil's failed to call the cops when discovering a major lead on The Punisher.

At the very least, he could have worn his old mask, the one he wore through the majority of the first season, when visiting his tailor. That, at least, would disguise his identity and better hide the fact that he was blind, should the tailor be able to see his face...which viewers could whenever they showed Matt in long-shot from the tailor's POV.

--I don't know how I feel about the D.A.'s office being the ones who came up with the name "The Punisher." Now that I'm thinking about it, coming up with a supehero name doesn't sound like something Frank Castle would do himself, so I don't know where his acquiring a name (and a costume) from would feel natural. I've never read the earliest Punisher comics, so I have no idea what the original, in-story origins of his codename and identity actually were.

--Punisher vs. Daredevil fight, round two! Are they going to do this every episode? Daredevil loses...again. Dude needs a sidekick or something. Maybe he should hire Jessica Jones, P.I. to help him with this case...