Daredevil: Born Again Season 2, Episode 4 Review – “Gloves Off”

As Daredevil‘s stories have grown larger and more grandiose in its Born Again era, it has shifted away from some of the more reflective, philosophic inquires seasons two and three of the Netflix series were intensely focused on. Sure, the Netflix series had some very Big plots, from The Hand’s presence in the first two seasons to the trio of of Kingpin, Frank Castle, and Bullseye’s villain origin stories – but with characters like Foggy and settings like Clinton Church, Daredevil‘s voice and identity came from the dichotomy of its spiritual explorations and its violent imagery. Daredevil: Born Again has offered up many of these similar things: the blood spurts, the cat-and-mouse game between Fisk and Murdock, the constant self-examination of Hell’s Kitchen and its inhabitants. But with a less spiritual tone, and a bigger reliance on consistent plot momentum, Daredevil: Born Again‘s attempts to re-interpret the themes of its predecessor have mostly felt glib; season two’s fourth episode, “Gloves Off”, is perhaps the strongest step in the direction of the original series – but its attempts to merge old and new together results in something that is more limited and familiar than I would’ve hoped.

Born Again opens on another morning in the life of Benjamin “Tom” Poindexter, scored to Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind”. After making his way to Bel-Air diner, Benjamin orders a banana milkshake (gross), calls in a fake 911 call, and murders every agent who shows up, in a scene that spiritually, feels like a twisted inverse of his massacre at the New York Bulletin offices back in Daredevil season three. Then, Benjamin was working as an agent of Fisk, killing journalists to hunt down a witness; here, he asks the public to bear witness to his disturbing attempt at redemption, violently taking out an entire AVTF team, before leaving to presumably resume his hunt of Wilson and Vanessa, following his thwarted attempt in “Straight to Hell” (following his previous thwarted attempt, in OG season three’s finale, “A New Napkin”).

It’s a strong opening sequence, one that allows Born Again to reach into the darkest depths of its predecessor’s penchant for blood and mayhem – and for the first time, it feels like it is pushing Poindexter truly back into the fold of the series, where he always serves as a fun proxy between Daredevil, who always tries to appeal to the unsettled, broken human within Dex, and Kingpin, whose remains Dex’s “north star” (as he used to call the woman he stalked, before Kingpin had her unceremoniously executed) in the worst ways imaginable, haunting Dex around every corner with the power he now wields over everyone in New York. Although Dex insists he’s gotten his “mind back”, his mid-episode fight with Daredevil is as clear a sign as ever that ol’ Bullseye might be an effective battering ram, but is as destructive and dangerous without even a whisper of a leash to hold him back.

Unfortunately, this plotline mostly just leads Daredevil back to a familiar place; and while it is welcoming to see Clinton Church return as a regular setting, and to see Murdock and Poindexter alike contend with the paths their cascade of recent choices have sent them down, it is again repeating the stories of Daredevil season, without really anything new to say. Poindexter is evil personified – but Daredevil has to be ok constantly putting out the campaigns of blood and terror he inflicts on everyone, because otherwise Daredevil would have to compromise the promise he made to his best friend (the one that is now dead, following Daredevil’s previous failed commitment to facile pacificism at the end of every Daredevil season). The problem is not really that Daredevil continues to make this decision, but that Born Again simply waves it away as being inconsequential, rather than something of significance to continuously test the wavering morality of Matthew Murdock (a man who is now in love once again, this time professing his feelings to Karen in the perhaps most unconvincing romantic gesture scene in the MCU).

Elsewhere, “Gloves Off” shows how much season two is struggling to keep other characters engaged in the main story – and perhaps more maddeningly, refuses to give any of its secondary characters anything but a suggestion of a subplot (most notably with Kirsten, whose reliance on a failing legal system gets an uninteresting twist when her offices get torn apart by the AVTF). We occasionally get a random shot of Angela del Toro staring solemnly at her White Tiger necklace, a seconds-long nod to Daniel and BB’s own interlocking stories – and oh yeah, remember the whole thing where Fisk was selling weapons to Shaggy? It’s a sign Daredevil: Born Again tries to busy itself with so many different subplots, while leaving core characters like Karen to exist on the sidelines and fringes of Born Again‘s story.

I mean, have we ever seen such a passive, useless version of Karen, who seemingly exists now purely to give Matt emotional stakes, and to burn through exposition on demand? Forget about characters like Sheila, Heather and Cherry, who have completely vanished after prominently featuring in season two’s opening hours – Born Again‘s overstuffed narrative presents itself with a necessity to cut corners, and an episode like “Gloves Off”, which ostensibly is supposed to build to the violent, emotional climax of Fisk’s charity boxing match (which… why did we not really talk about this at any point, despite being a cornerstone of Fisk’s many nefarious plans and attempts to continue winning over the idiot, drooling populace of fictional New York?) bears the brunt of it, as all of plots collide and trip over each other to get into place for the final sequence.

Much of the rest of “Gloves Off” is a complete wash, albeit one that smartly leans on busy, strong visual language to keep things moving to the big showpiece, where Fisk’s id is tested with a conveniently cinematic irony. Before it gets there, though, “Gloves Off” spends a lot of time whittling its thumbs until an AVTF-costumed Murdock shows up at Clinton Church, briefly getting into a debate with someone working there over grace and forgiveness, before getting into another bloody conflict with Dex – where once again, Murdock insists on Dex not making a martyr out of Fisk, something he’s got to be tired of talking about after two season finales of taking punches and bullets from Dex for the most corrupted mayor MCU New York has ever seen.

The only real interesting part of the episode, it turns out, is the one place where Born Again feels confident pushing its narrative forward; by putting one of its OG main cast members in mortal danger. In season one, this was Foggy’s death, which pushed Matt to the limits of his own morality and Catholicism – in season two, it is Dex using one of Fisk’s pieces of merch against him to push him to his own limits (though these are less about moralism, and more about Fisk’s own hubris), throwing a glass memento at Vanessa, which Fisk blocks – except for one jagged piece, which defies the laws of physics and somehow embeds itself in Vanessa’s temple in the episode’s closing seconds.

Whether she lives or dies, the end of “Gloves Off” is a clear demarcation point for Born Again – and it is a moment that stands to finally advance some of the many, many disparate plot pieces, weaving them back together as it sets Fisk and Murdock on yet another collision course. The problem is, regardless of Vanessa’s fate, it ultimately leads Born Again back into the same territory it occupied in every preceding four seasons of Murdock’s life (save for the back half of season two, once Fisk went into prison and set up Castle for the show’s single most violent fight sequence); ultimately, Born Again feels like its rehashing old stories, without the same introspective obstacles it offered its main characters the first few times these stories came around.

It also stands to curb Vanessa’s arc before it really even gets started; since her initial appearances, Vanessa’s always been something Daredevil has flirted with exploring, but too often funnels her away into a sidekick, an intoxicating presence that ultimately is just a shallow motivating piece for the show’s main antagonist. This season, Born Again was beginning to tease out a different story for Vanessa, one where she considers a life where power, money, and influence are no longer the pure motivating factors of her life. There was a sense her paranoia, combined with her recognition of Fisk’s endless pursuit of power, was beginning to push her character into a more interesting place – and now, with her life hanging in the balance, she’s once again reduced to a motivating factor

On the surface, “Gloves Off” is a return to form for Born Again – it has the trademark blood spurts, a nod of existential rumination, and a propulsive climax, one that stands to hopefully kick some of the show’s deeper themes and explorations together. Unfortunately, within the confines of “Gloves Off”, its attempt to recapture old magic feels a bit like cosplay (albeit one with a liberal use of “fuck”), as its emphasis on plot over character ultimately betray some of the attempts to nod towards the deeper, darker

Other thoughts/observations:

• Boy, BB and Angela are both equally way too trusting – no way I’m letting the ONLY copy of my key evidence be taken away on an SD card with no backup around.
  
• Some of the action editing is so poor: the most egregious example is probably when Bullseye shoots someone off a motorcycle. We never see him taking off the other person, restarting the motorcycle, or even driving off, just a rushed shot of a vague body speeding offscreen as Matt watches on incredulously.
  
• The performance of Daniel’s character continues to outshine the effectiveness of his character’s plot.
  
• why did this Matterhorn guy agree to fight Fisk? What was Fisk’s “Born Again” project raising money for? What was the point of this fight again?
  
• It is way too easy for Buck to just run around shooting everyone he wants. He’s obviously going to die a shitty death at some point – and honestly, he just makes me miss Wesley.
  
• Yes, the director snuck in his own song into the episode, even though it doesn’t quite set the tone for the scene as I think was intended.
  
• The governor is a silly character. That’s really all I have to say about her.
  
• Has Daredevil not learned that anytime glass and Bullseye are involved, people get sliced up really badly?