[86/100] Hey! It’s the long take episode! This is always a treat, and this season’s installment is no exception. Hell, it might even be the best one the show’s done yet. It’s been a while since I’ve watched the first two seasons, or the other Defenders shows for that matter. But this certainly feels like the longest and most ambitious of them.
It’s particularly impressive how the sequence comes through in different stages: you have the confrontation with the prisoners, the confrontation with the guards, the discussion with the head of the Albanian crime family, and then the grand chaotic escape in the midst of a prison riot. I’m sure there’s hidden cuts I missed here and there, but stitched together like that, you feel the sense of Matt’s progress, and the way that each bit of success along the way only thrusts him into another challenge.
Given how many of these kinds of oners the Defenders-verse has pulled off, it’s worth asking – at this point, is it just a gimmick? I don’t think so, at least not here. There’s a purpose to framing Matt’s trials and tribulations in the prison this way. It adds immediacy to the experience. “Immersion” is the watchword of the day, and getting rid of the cuts like this, relying on the Steadicam, presenting it all as a single excruciating experience helps put the audience alongside Matt and underscores what a dangerous, potentially deadly excursion this is.
You feel the damage that Matt takes as he progress from phase to phase, you feel him having to catch his breath, you feel the precariousness when he has to make his case to the Albanian mob boss, you feel the utter chaotic peril of one of the mobster’s henchmen having to ferry him through an active prison riot. It means that when Matt comes out with the name of the man who was Kingpin’s stooge, it means more because we viscerally understand what he had to go through to get it.
The choreography and orchestration of it all is supremely well done. But beyond the impressiveness of how the production team pulls it off, the way the bravura sequence serves the story is what makes it stand out.
Unfortunately, the rest of the episode can’t quite meet that standard, which is no sin. Karen is still on her own beat, and there’s something to be said for her and Matt coming at Kingpin from different angles. Presumably, they’ll collide sooner rather than later. But in the meantime, here getting cross with cat-callers, and haranguing a source for information shows her putting in the shoe-leather to get her story, albeit in a much more traditional way.
Foggy is, somewhat predictably, making himself a single-issue candidate for the DA’s race, founded on getting Fisk back behind bars. It’s a solid enough pivot, and I appreciate that Marcy’s a big part of getting him there. But the scene where he wins over a bunch of skeptical cops is a bit stock, and his Cinderella run to the polls seems inevitable.
But hey, at least we get him and Karen going over the fact that Matt is alive. I appreciate the fact that Foggy keeps his promise not to lie to Karen about Matt anymore and spills the beans. And I appreciate that Karen is simultaneously relieved and furious about it. The reactions make sense, which I appreciate.
Ray gets a bit of a stock storyline here too. I’m sure it’s setting up something, and I appreciate the impulse to explore the familial pressures and impact on loved ones that being in the line of duty the episode is going for. But the scenes about Ray’s kid being scared are told, not shown, which takes away some of their power, and the discussion around it feels more After School Special than it does grounded prestige drama.
That just leaves Kingpin and Poindexter which, apart from the long-take sequence, is the most interesting thing in the episode. In truth, I wish we didn’t get the scene where Kingpin is watching Daredevil in the prison and able to directly call and threaten him. I wish the show spent a little bit longer playing coy about what Fisk’s game is, and his abilities are, despite his incarceration. But now we know.
And it makes his interactions with Poindexter all the more intriguing. Dex wants to harass Fisk, add to his punishment. So that means doing middle-of-the-night spot checks and taking bites out of hamburgers. But Fisk no-sells all of it, taking all the fun out of Poindexter’s efforts to ruffle his inmate’s feathers.
Instead, Fisk turns the table. Who knows if he planted the story about the botched FBI transfer, or tipped off the Office of Professional Responsibility to put the screws to Poindexter, or if he’s just taking advantage of an opportunity that fell in his lap. Whatever the arrangement, he earns a bit of gratitude for not telling Poindexter’s supervisors that he killed some of the Albanian mobsters while they were unarmed and begging for their lives.
It is, of course, a ruse. Now, Poindexter owes Fisk, whether or not he wants to admit it. He paints them as not so different, both victims of unfair coverage in the press. He flatters Poindexter’s ego, praising him as a top agent who shouldn’t have to justify himself. All the while, you can see Kingpin molding his next soldier, pressing on the little cracks in the psyche tht might give him an advantage. And the devilish, barely there smile at the end of it tells you all you need to know about his sinister intentions.
Of course, we can’t end on a note that good. Instead, somehow, Matt has passed out, and his cab driver’s been replaced with one of Fisk’s men, and he’s launched into the Hudson or something. Sigh. It’s such obvious schmuck bait. The kind of thing that’s never going to stick and doesn’t even come with excitement over how Matt will escape this predicament because it’s such a cliché. But I guess we’ll find out more in the next episode.
Overall, most of “Blindsided” is the usual meat and potatoes Defenders-verse material. But Kingpin’s manipulations of Pondexter, and the latest virtuoso long take sequence, elevate the episode and make it worth watching on their own.
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