Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, Episode 7 Review – “Art for Art’s Sake”

With its tidy wrap ups of the Muse and Luka storylines, “Art for Art’s Sake”, for better or worse, represents the end of Daredevil‘s middle arc, whatever was preserved from the show’s first creative team finding its conclusion on the floor of Heather Glenn’s office and Wilson Fisk’s favorite dinner joint. There are a few threads left hanging from the Matt Corman & Chris Ord’s Born Again template – Angela, Daniel and Adam chief among them – but for the most part, “Art for Art’s Sake” is the hour of Muse’s becoming – and more importantly, the moment where Daredevil and Kingpin’s arcs begin to pull towards each other’s gravity, and away from the season’s middle arc of court cases, therapy sessions, and torturous artists swirling around Hell’s Kitchen.

And boy, what a disappointment the Muse arc turned out to be; after teasing Muse in recent episodes as some formidable, amorphously-defined horror lurking beneath the city, Muse is revealed to be a fairly ineffective antagonist, an angry teenager who disappeared 60 people without anyone noticing, and was able to run an entire chemical paint-creating factory in one very-not-hidden room in a subway tunnel. Despite his evocative appearance and Very Disturbing bullet point for a character, Muse’s reveal and downfall is so immediate and clumsy, it renders all of the intrigue around his ‘work’ and behavior entirely null and void. After teasing his presence for a half-season, he amounts to a laughably bad therapy session (“You’re the key,” he tells Heather, “don’t you see?”) that takes place while Angie Kim fills in Kingpin on all of the clues we probably should’ve learned about him during the task force’s brief investigation.

The workmanship of it all is so poorly crafted; one can almost feel the writer’s room discarding the entire Muse idea like a hot pile of dog shit, running through the bullet points of his character (disturbed for unknown reasons, liked art, killed his live-in taekwondo teacher, could afford the most expensive therapist in New York) with exasperation, so it can get to the part where Daredevil beats the shit out of him and saves the day – at least, until Heather picks up Muse’s handgun (which… lol at him having guns) and shoots him in the chest, in the latest attempt by Daredevil: Born Again to push Heather Glenn closer into the core of this series.

To what end? It remains unclear, because her character’s been nothing but a fulcrum for Matt and Wilson’s individual arcs; her screaming “anyone in a mask is a coward!” and taking someone’s life doesn’t inherently make her more interesting and/or central to Born Again – but for some reason, “Art for Art’s Sake” visibly shifts to make Wilson’s therapist and Matt’s girlfriend incredibly central to the plot of Daredevil: Born Again. This would be fine, of course, if the series had made her anything more than a cypher for a few rehashed ideas about purpose – and through the presence of Wilson and the instant transformation of Muse

Elsewhere in Hell’s Kitchen, Daniel also finds himself aspiring to embrace his true self; that of a fucking weasel, as he decides to threaten BB (who herself remains strangely void of personality, another integral part to the voice and delivery of Born Again‘s story given no room to develop) to ensure she keeps Daredevil’s role in Muse’s defeat hidden from the public. It’s an interesting scene, another example of Born Again assuming investment in characters when there’s been little done, outside of their introduction and the one subsequent shared scene in question (when a drunken Daniel provided a bunch of off-the-cuff remarks for BB to use). In theory, there’s a story to be told about how easily corruptible those who pursue power can be – but Daredevil: Born Again doesn’t really seem interested in any of that, and would rather all of the male Fisk loyalists stick to their one note of character.

The odd, strangely arranged plot beats continue into the other stories of “Art for Art’s Sake”, the most obvious example of this is when a frustrated Luka makes a proposition to Vanessa to take out her husband (second place goes to Kirsten’s annoyance at Matt and Cherry’s whispering friendship). Luka’s one-man rebellion springs up out of nowhere, and exists only to remove any sort of mystery around whether Vanessa and Wilson’s ultimate loyalties still laid with each other; in theory, this idea could’ve fostered some tangible intrigue around a lot of the Fisk-related stories, since his domination over NY has been so quick and faceless (save for the couple sneering rich people in the previous episode).

But it’s not really holding the kind of dramatic thrust the series so desperately needs it to, because the episode’s climatic moments feel almost preordained in their predictability; Muse falls, Daniel mimics his boss, and Cashman takes out Wilson while he chomps on yet another fancy dinner in cartoonish fashion. There’s nothing about these stories that is surprising or exciting; like the Muse/Daredevil fight cinematography, Daredevil: Born Again consistently cuts out the middle of every story, focusing squarely on the genesis and climax of each story in ways that make all of it feel a bit staged and facsimile. It’s so frustrating and disappointing to watch Daredevil fight Muse in a frenzy of quick cuts and camera spins, removing any weight to their actions and interplay of their fighting decisions – watching the machinations of the show’s other major plots has held a similar feeling, watching a series that consistently cuts out the sweat work of being a TV show, digging into the what and why behind its characters and story beyond the most flimsy, superficially explored ideologies and conflicts.

Heading into its final two episodes and the impending creative reset, it seems Daredevil: Born Again is happy to abandon most of the middle of its first season, moving away from the legalese and nascent serial killer investigations into a much more focused, head-down story of Wilson and Matt’s fated paths to each other, a tale no doubt to engage with Daredevil‘s more violent, driven side. Will it be enough to restore faith after a half-dozen episodes sputtering through plot after plot, unable to anchor itself on any kind of dynamic character arc or focused central idea? Only time will tell, of course, but for most of its running time, “Art for Art’s Sake” ends up being a fitting title in a lot of ways I don’t think was intended by its creative team.

Grade: C-