The Devil's in His Kitchen

[setsuled]

The first episode of the new season of Daredevil: Born Again does feel more solid than season one. I don't know if this indicates a better season overall but the pacing felt more natural, conversations didn't feel oddly crammed into blocks of a few minutes. The action scenes are better but still nowhere near the level of the old Netflix series. The performances are good with one new supporting character being a standout.

During the whole Paul Dano non-controversy in which Quentin Tarantino criticised the actor, Tarantino also took a swipe at Matthew Lillard. This basically confirmed for me that Tarantino had not watched Twin Peaks season three because anyone who's seen that amazing 18 hour work of art knows that Matthew Lillard can be really impressive. As a new character on Daredevil, he infuses a lot of life and intrigue into the scenes he appears in.



He plays Mr. Charles, some kind of fixer working for Fisk. A lot of people are talking about how eerily Wilson Fisk's "Anti-Vigilante Task Force" resembles ICE under the Trump administration, especially considering that people who worked on the show claim everything in season two was written two years ago. I don't necessarily believe that. Although the makers of the show obviously wanted to avoid the schizophrenic quality of Born Again's first season, Disney and Marvel are, I think, too addicted to late stage tampering to have abstained from it entirely.

But Vincent D'Onofrio's version of Wilson Fisk was always based on Trump, at least a little, even in the first season of the Netflix series. He was a greedy, tacky landlord in that, just like Trump was primarily a greedy, tacky landlord in the '80s. Though one of the best things about the Netflix Daredevil series was how complex Fisk's character was. I think some people are afraid of making villains too sympathetic so they actively avoid making them complex. But one thing Andor showed was that you could reveal the humanity of your villains without making them enviable. The audience sympathises with Dedra Meero but no-one would want to follow in her footsteps.



So the Anti-Vigilante Task Force (AVTF) resembles ICE because they work for a Trump figure and they're a bunch of chubby guys in bullet proof vests, beating up innocent people. They're a simplistic bunch of comic book thugs; it's not hard for them to superficially resemble something because they're not very complex. So I don't find the parallel very interesting in itself but I do find it interesting that such a broad, two dimensional villain resembles people in the news. Partly this is an indication of the oversimplified narrative presented in modern news media, partly it's an indication of a real moral void in American leadership and law enforcement.

So far I'm not getting a whole lot from the character development this season though I did like the conversation between Karen and BB about her uncle. I really like the line Karen repeats, "The easiest people to manipulate are manipulators." I think that's a line from the old series, I'm not sure. In any case, it's a surprisingly astute observation from a show like this.



I didn't like the dialogue doubling down on the "Nelson, Murdoch, and Page" thing that seems to be retconning the old law firm to have included Karen as a partner. Does she have a law degree now?

Daredevil: Born Again is available on Disney+.