With both Wilson Fisk and Matt Murdock trying to cosplay through their new day lives, Daredevil: Born Again‘s second episode “Optics” finds itself with a lot of characters obfuscating their feelings and intentions behind a lot of half-truths and performative behavior. It’s a fitting feeling for a series clearly still figuring out what it wants to be; though it postures at different times as a courtroom drama, action thriller, and morality play, Daredevil: Born Again‘s sense of self is as twisted as its characters, which makes for an incredibly uneven, if intriguingly punctuated, episode of television.
Beginning with Fisk’s first days on the job as mayor (something Daredevil: Born Again smartly avoids trying to explain logically; the less we focus on how he got into the office, the better), “Optics” spends a lot of time watching Fisk convince everyone around him he isn’t full of shit. He promises a “return to law” and lords over a massive pothole for a publicity stunt – all the while defunding the police department and glaring menacingly at the police commissioner, who sees right through Fisk’s supposed attempts to reshape his legacy into something more akin to Fiorello La Guardia (who, I’ll note, was a socialist mayor who banned pinball machines and burlesque theaters… we’re supposed to believe Fisk’s father loved this guy?).
While it’s always a pleasure to watch D’Onofrio growl and tic his way through the beastly mannerisms of Fisk’s dramatic displays of ego, “Optics” sees Fisk tipping his hand a bit too early as he boisterously attends a cop funeral to posture in front of the commissioner, while also smirking through a brief interview with BB Urich (niece to the journalist Ben Urich, who Fisk killed back in the original series for contacting Fisk’s mother) – it’s all a shade too obvious, too simplistic, for the character as he’s always been written. Without any narrative restraints, the performance almost feels too big for its world; it’s most obvious in the scene where Daredevil: Born Again dips its hand into the increasingly-cliche Therapy: The Series bucket, his looming glares and awkward tics pulling all the energy out of the scene (where this time, Vanessa alludes to an affair as the real tension in their marriage… but let’s be honest, does anyone care about this plotline, except because Matt’s new girlfriend is involved?).
Back in Hell’s Kitchen, Matt Murdock finds his hands full when he hears a man being beaten in an interrogation room while he’s being called a cop killer. It’s here where Daredevil: Born Again seems to find its footing a little bit more surely, even if the story beats here are incredibly predictable: Matt learns his new client, who tried to stop two dirty cops beating up an informant, is the White Tiger we saw a news clipping of in “Heaven’s Half Hour”, making a neat parallel to our own red-spectacled protagonist – and leading Daredevil: Born Again into some semblance of consistency, offering a glimpse of what the new dynamic between Cherry, Kirsten, and Matt could be like throughout season one.
It’s certainly feels like a more familiar blueprint for the series, Matt and his legal team taking on the “impossible cases” to save the ‘little people’ of Hell’s Kitchen. Unfortunately, it’s buried under some cringe-y dialogue and a relentlessly blaring score, which never allow any of the episode’s tenser moments – like Hector’s nonsense first hearing, and Matt’s trip to Rikers to visit him later – to breathe. To its credit, watching Matt and his team try and deduce the larger context of the fateful subway platform fight almost captures the old rhythms of the original; however, Born Again is more interested in using this story as a blunt tool to unearth the devil inside Matt, rather than something used to parallel the actions of Matt and Wilson, and observing the ripple effects to reveal the truths both characters are desperately trying to hold back within themselves.
In the episode’s final moments, after the monstrously unsubtle therapy scene (itself grounded in some nonsense about Fisk showing “traditional values” by having his wife around – like he gives a fuck?), Matt goes to visit the informant, and is greeted by two corrupt cops ready to put a bullet in his head. As he brutally beats the shit out of them, Daredevil: Born Again unravels its most interesting wrinkle (though one it hasn’t exactly explored yet); what happens if Daredevil resurfaces without Foggy and Karen around as his moral compasses? We’ve already seen how Daredevil’s complicated relationship with religion leads him to unstable places (and also, how falling in love with a ninja assassin leads to all sorts of problems -hey, by the way, did we ever confirm that Elektra was actually dead?), and seeing how quickly he disposes of the two men prove he hasn’t been resting on his laurels eating cheeseburgers while he’s been “in retirement”.
Though the moment comes incredibly early in the first season, it opens up Daredevil: Born Again to an interesting set of possibilities – however, for it to realize that promise requires it to find the thoroughline between Matt and Fisk’s internal dualities and the other stories. Right now, there’s such an imbalance between these two parallel stories – after all, Fisk’s biggest issue is his wife’s infidelity, while Matt deals with the loss of everyone he loves being gone – that it makes their competing scenes feel incredibly dissonant, even if the series goes out of its way to try and make them adhere to a similar tone (the incredibly familiar, dark-but-punctuated-with-random-punchlines Marvel nonsense, most notably here when Fisk threatens the commissioner with a joke).
Though Daredevil: Born Again‘s second episode is held back by some thin writing (let’s just not talk about the forgettable Daniel/BB subplot forming this week) and an underwhelming inconsistency in delivery, “Optics” and its handful of intriguing developments around Matt help the episode recover a bit from the stumbling ineffectiveness of “Heaven’s Half Door”. Though it still remains to be seen whether the premiere’s narrative gambles will pay off (or ultimately, really mean much of anything), there’s certainly a sense of momentum felt in the episode’s brutal final minutes the 45 minutes preceding it lacked, a promising sign that the violent spark inside Matt may be what the show needs for its many competing elements to fall into place.
Grade: C
Other thoughts/observations:
- Love Matt’s crack about knowing how many cops are in the courtroom based on the potency of Drakar Noir smell.
- “Maybe… I don’t know what I am.” The dialogue in this episode is borderline awful in spots; Vanessa’s is the most obvious pain point, but there are many examples of characters speaking overtly, in ways the Netflix series was smart to often avoid (or just too busy throwing 48,371 The Hand goons at Matt).
- boy, Matt and Heather’s relationship is going well… we all know that means a disaster looms.
- Fisk making a point to the commissioner by eating a disgusting sandwich is comical in a way Fisk would never bother being.
- I do not want an episode where we learn about what Fisk did after getting his face blown off in Echo. I really do not care about his little time away – and I care even less about the impending reveal around the fracture in his and Vanessa’s marriage.
- There’s a noticeable Punisher-themed logo on the wrist of an arm Matt breaks at the end of the episode, the first nod towards the Frank Castle cameo we all know is coming (and I’m oddly intrigued to see… though The Punisher is a decidedly bad show, I kind of enjoyed the pulpy second season!).
- These BB Report cutaways are …. certainly a way for this show to fill time.
- I really do not like the Mr. Cashman character, grinning and staring vaguely in the background of every scene, reminding us of some larger, looming plot twist we don’t need this much foreshadowing for, because he’s inherently uninteresting.
- I still don’t understand why Fisk would give a shit about appealing to “more traditional voters” days after winning an election. That and the whole La Guardia thing really hit some surprisingly false notes.