[84/100] What’s funny about *Daredevil* for me is that I like essentially every character in the show except, well, Daredevil. That struck me when I watched season 1 as the show was airing live, and it holds true for me now as I return to season 3 years after it aired. Karen, Foggy, Fisk, and even newcomers like Ray, Poindexter, and Sister Maggie are all more compelling to me than the series’ protagonist. So considering that this episode is founded on Matt, as the title portends, reuniting with Karen and Foggy after a season apart from them, my reaction is a big “ho-hum.” It’s nice, and proper, that Matt apologizes to his friends for freezing them out, and admits his mistakes with humility and without resistance. But the truth is that I don’t really care about Foggy or Karen’s relationship with Matt as much as I care about them independently of him, so seeing them all together again doesn’t have the same impact on me that's seemingly intended. That goes double for the material with Karen and Matt in the crypt together. I’ve never been particularly enamored with them as a pairing. (For the record, I think Karen has better chemistry with Punisher and even Foggy, and I think Matt has better chemistry with Clare Temple and, mild spoilers for a future show, but also Jennifer Walters[/spoilers].) So as much juice as putting them together after spending ninety-nine percent of the season apart ought to have, all of their heart-to-hearts and supposedly charged, forced closeness doesn’t do much for me either. Maybe if there were more electricity between them, the scenes would sizzle more. But as is, we mostly hear them tell each other things the audience already knows or has actually seen. So while it’s theoretically important that these close allies know the emotional details of one another’s lives, in practice, there’s not much in the way of revelation or meaningful reactions between them. All we really get is Matt having the inspiration to “provoke” Fisk from Karen’s ploy, and a tortured, “No, you can't kill Fisk, it’ll blacken your soul” speech from Karen. Maybe I’m more cynical now than I was when season 2 aired, but the debate over it feels pretty tired to me. We’ve seen Kingpin be responsible for countless deaths, even when he was behind bars. We’ve seen him go to jail and only use that as a way to get the feds in his pocket before he gets out again. As Ray points out, we’ve seen Daredevil send tons of guys to the hospital, many of whom probably find their lives changed forever by their injuries, even if we’ve never seen him take a life. After all the blood Fisk has spilled, and the innocent people he’s threatened, the pitches from Matt’s allies are comparatively weak. Karen’s pitch is, “No, don’t be like me who’s still haunted by the blood on my hands,” when her situation with her brother is so insanely different from Matt’s situation with Fisk. (The James Wesley thing is admittedly closer, but that doesn't seem to be the central part of her pushback.) And Foggy’s pitch is, “No, even if Fisk has manipulated the federal justice system, surely the same won’t be able to happen with the state justice system!,” which seems blithely naive from a character who rarely seems that way. I get that this is part of Daredevil’s whole deal. Him struggling with his moral code after a crisis of faith is a solid beat. But geeze, Fisk is a real lousy test case, especially when everything we see suggests that Matt is right in the context of the MCU when he responds that Fisk is too wealthy and powerful to be brought to justice by the system. This debate is part of the DNA of Daredevil, so I don’t want to slate it too hard. But the other side of the coin is that the writers don’t do a particularly good job of making the decision of whether or not to take out Fisk seem like a tough call. All of that said, the rest of the episode works well, particularly the cat and mouse game that emerges from trying to get Matt and Karen out of the church’s crypt without running afoul of Poindexter or the other G-men corrupted by Fisk. I like Sister Maggie showing some resourcefulness on her own, keeping Dex and Ray off Matt and Karen’s scent. It makes her an active part of this and shows her efforts to make some of this up to Matt. And I like the solution with Foggy, where he effectively surrenders Karen to Officer Mahoney and the NYPD. Not only does it lead to a tense jurisdictional stand-off, but it builds on past relationships with people our heroes can trust, shows Foggy’s good reputation with the cops, and at least gives some cover to the “state authorities could be trusted with Fisk” theory he throws out there. Likewise, we get the faintest hint of humanity from Fisk here. I love the vignette where he goes to visit the woman who has the painting that Vanessa gifted to him. Her painting him as no different than the Nazis who originally stole the artwork and brutalized her family is as powerful a rebuke of him as we’ve seen. The fact that he seems to take her recriminations to heart, at least a little, to where he reasons that Vanessa wouldn't want him to take the painting back from a Holocaust victim and seems to let it be, shows that there’s at least a modicum of decency in the man. Maybe, through his partner’s love, he has the potential for self-reflection and perhaps even change. Or maybe not. The way he brutalizes the bodyguard unlucky enough to be the bearer of bad news about Karen suggests this isn’t a kindler and gentler Kingpin. For all we know, he’ll have the painting’s true owner quietly taken out later. And the fact that he’s out and managed to silence an angry crowd suggests his powers of propaganda and manipulation have not fallen by the wayside. But my other favorite parts of this one are Dex and Ray. Again, it’s impossible to call Poindexter sympathetic in all of this. But he’s also comprehensible in his dogged pursuit of Karen, because his psyche is twisted into thinking that being perfect in all his pursuits is the only way to make himself worthy of love. You don’t want to see him succeed, obviously, but you also get the sense of someone who’s been manipulated into thinking that Fisk is his north star and replacement father figure, and he’s desperate to avoid letting Kingpin down. That is pitiable, even if it’s not good. And Ray is steadily climbing the ranks of my favorite characters in this series. He is in such a tough position, not wanting to let innocent people get hurt, but also wanting to protect his own family from Fisk’s forces and Dex’s ire. His struggle between doing what’s right and what’s necessary is compelling as all hell. Watching him try to redirect Dex, smooth over tensions between the FBI and NYPD, and ultimately tip off Mahoney as to what’s going on is the best thing in the episode. And he pays for his good choices, which is a sign of good storytelling. Watching him have to race home to protect his family from Fisk’s henchmen is terrifying. Daredevil protecting the Nadeems from their attackers is heartening. And even if the idea of getting Ray to testify against Fisk as the solution to all these problems seems, again, painfully naive, the idea of Ray and Daredevil working together again, of Matt recognizing that Ray’s a good man in a bad situation, and revealing his secret identity as a sign of trust, works like gangbusters. After the complexity and highpoints of this season, the plan to bring down Fisk and the moral equations behind it feel too simplistic to me. But there’s still plenty of good character moments and tense puzzle boxes to be opened along the way.

Good episode but something is bugging me. Daredevil and Dex fight hard hitting eachother in the face but few minutes later none of them got any scrapes. Wiping of the blood makes all the bruises and scratches disappear!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA