Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 3 Review – “The Scales & the Sword”

It’s been awhile since Daredevil: Born Again spent time in a New York city courtroom (it was season one’s “The Hollow of His Hand”, specifically) – and in that time, the soul of New York and Marvel’s revival series have changed considerably, making this an intriguing opportunity to compare what has evolved, changed, or even devolved in the season of episodes between Born Again‘s two courtroom affairs. Unfortunately, “The Scales & the Sword” doesn’t do much to seize on that opportunity, offering up a rather paint-by-numbers approach to the trial of the Swordsmen and Fisk’s latest play to keep himself one step ahead of his masked, and unmasked, rivals – “The Scales & the Sword” isn’t a the nadir of the series, but it’s definitely the first episode of season two to feel like it’s taking a sizeable step backward rather than forward.

The real issue with “The Scales & the Sword” is how little the episode really digs into the core themes of its titular story; instead of Jacques Duquesne’s trial setting the emotional and moral tone of the episode, it’s merely a piece of a much larger, more tonally confusing mosaic, an episode without a driving, definitive moment, a stirring or unsettling turn of character, or even an exciting, unexpected plot development. For an episode with such big moments as the Duquense trial (overseen by a rather overzealous, corrupt judge played by The Wire‘s Deirdre Lovejoy) and Fisk blowing up the Northern Star with the immigrant loading crew still on it, “The Scales & the Sword” feels rather disengaged from its own material, more concerned with hapless, superficial aesthetics (like a crooked, shifting angle depicting a corrupt judge, or catching Daredevil’s new chest logo ever-so-cleanly in the pale moonlight) than the more interesting questions of sacrifice, purpose, and corruption lying quite obviously at the heart of Born Again‘s many different stories, all of which eventually just funnel their way back to Daredevil and Kingpin glaring and breathing heavy at each other, as we all wait for them to bloody each other in the season’s obligatory fight scene.

It’s not just a lifeless courtroom drama that makes Daredevil: Born Again‘s third episode feel slight and underwhelming; the somewhat intense focus on Heather in the episode’s middle act is really the biggest culprit, as the series continues to struggle to depict any sort of internal conflict with Matt’s former lover and current legal adversary, someone whose traumatic experience with a criminal (why she still calls Muse a vigilante astounds me – it makes no sense!) has driven her to do the bidding of an evil, self-effacing fascist. Strangely enough, Heather doesn’t appear to display any regret when it comes to rubberstamping evaluations for Fisk – and even though Daredevil: Born Again tries to explain this a bit by displaying a budding bit of comradery between her and Vanessa, it is thoroughly unconvincing in the few moments where it feels like a series challenging itself to engage and build on its characters in a deep,mmeaningful way.

The nods towards a more significant, dynamic arc with Heather are also seen with Karen, who has been reduced to an early season two version of herself, where she frets over Daredevil going out to fight in the streets, gets told she’s adopting the mentality of Frank Castle, and then shoots a gun at a faceless bad guy to establish that she’s not just useful for chasing down leads. At this point, it is almost embarrassing how thinly Karen has been translated from her OG Netflix form, into being Matt’s girlfriend and increasingly-passive sidekick in Born Again‘s second season. There’s a devolution of character that’s really disappointing – and at times, it is easy to ignore it amidst Born Again‘s faster pacing and louder theatrics, but when episodes like “The Scales & the Sword” try to bring her to the forefront, the differences in her character become incredibly glaring and frustrating – which then intertwine with the episode’s incredibly thin thematic underpinnings, snowballing into an episode that is more perfunctory and less impactful than clearly intended in its script.

That weightlessness is most acutely felt in the episode’s climax, where Fisk hears of Daredevil’s break-in at the Port of Red Hook (which is… also at the Northern Star? Maybe having your torture chambers and gun smuggling operations in different areas? This is just lazy for such a savvy crime lord). After a ten-minute scene of incredibly mid fighting and shooting, “The Scales & the Sword” tries to surprise the audience with the aforementioned explosion of the ship – conveniently after all of the guns and important info were removed, of course – but it’s a moment that doesn’t really resonate, the result of Fisk and Murdock’s latest round of cat-and-mouse amounting to a handful of dead dock workers that Fisk has already planned to use against the vigilantes politically, even further rendering their presences, and death, moot as a dramatic storyline.

For a season that is supposed to be about a clash between fascist power and a groundswelling rebellion (one with increasingly loud ties to the real world, between Fisk and the AVTF), it’s troubling how neutered and lifeless the core conflict of Daredevil: Born Again has felt this season. The stakes just aren’t there; Matt is fighting Fisk because he’s amassed a ton of power – so much so, that Fisk doesn’t even feel bothered by the presence of larger powers when they’re in the room (in this case, the state governor), which erases any potential tension in any of the scenes he’s in. Matt and Wilson, in their own ways, are characters who feel like they’re running on auto-pilot, their actions defined more by the expectations of their characters, rather than anything internal or dynamic that is driving their actions across the episode, and season.

(Also… there are dozens of superheroes in New York. Nobody has anything to say about Fisk’s little endeavor except Daredevil and the freaking Swordsman???)

It just makes for unexciting television, ultimately, a series that feels like it is going through the motions of character and story rather than truly embodying it and exploring it in exciting ways. Daredevil: Born Again‘s second season seems to be getting more and more comfortable with playing it safe and sticking to the hits, instead of trying new directions and ideas for its iconic characters to further illuminate the decisions and choices they make (both of which appear to be growing more omniscient as the season continues; Daredevil and Fisk read each other like books for two people who rarely interact). Throw in a handful of incredibly obvious, thin subplots as flimsy support, and you’ve got all the telltale signs of a sophomore slump forming in the abbreviated second season of Born Again – though maybe the big explosions of the Northern Star will provide the creative reset button season two needs as it hits the halfway point.

Other thoughts/observations:

• I really wish I liked Daredevil: Born Again‘s fight choreography, but it just doesn’t hit with the same impact and weight, especially as more and more distracting camera tricks are thrown into the mix. Like much of this series, it feels like a slightly sterilized version of what was, and just doesn’t hit (literally) the same.
  
• Seriously, is nobody going to explain the difference between Muse the serial killer, and The Swordsman, the vigilante, to Heather? How dumb this show has made her is so frustrating.
  
• Buck and Daniel are on a collision course with each other…. one uses guns and one uses gossip, who will win?
  
• White Tiger 2.0 shows up at the docks to… slash a few tires? I get what they’re going for her, but the slow-mo shots of her sheathing a knife with her uncle’s name in it are corny.
  
• ….anyone heard from Bullseye this week?