Daredevil S1E2 Review: In Which Daredevil Is Found In A Dumpster

Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 2: Cut Man 

This episode doesn’t really impress me as much as the first episode, but on the other hand it just feels like such a different beast from most of the other superhero TV shows out there in that Daredevil, the titular hero… gets his ass handed to him. Really hard. The first half of this episode features this new character Claire Temple (who’s apparently merged with the character of Night Nurse from the comics… neither of whom I am familiar of) finding a severely wounded Daredevil in a dumpster, and spending like a good ten minutes just playing ‘tell me your secret you mysterious person’ with each other, while Daredevil goes into convulsions due to a pleural effusion and whatnot.

All this is cut back and forth with a rather generic yet still-touching flashback story of Matt’s father, Jack Murdock, dealing with trying to follow fixed boxing matches to get money for his poor son… but the Big One, pitting him against Carl Creel (also known as the Absorbing Man, making a full appearance in Agents of SHIELD’s second season). It’s some Pulp Fiction-esque shit as Jack ends up, naturally, winning the fight and pissing off the bad men running things and gets gunned down… all to get a shit-ton of money for Matt Murdock. It’s a bit generic, honestly, as touching as the story was, though I did think that it was executed well and worked well with the narrative.

What really distracted, however, were the constant cutaways to Foggy and Karen just running around being drunk. We did get the nice, meaningful scene of Karen confessing that she’s traumatized from the whole episode 1 thing, and I did laugh at the “WE ARE FILLED WITH MIGHTY EEL STRENGTH” thing but other than that it feels like relatively unimportant padding and they really could’ve gotten something more interesting for the two of them to do.

Claire is pretty interesting, as this outsider who sees two sides of Daredevil the vigilante – on one hand she’s seen all the people that Daredevil has helped presumably prior to season one. On the other hand Daredevil is an obstinate bastard trying to ignore the wounds on his face, and goes around dropping fire extinguishers on people’s skulls and actually following on with the threat of dropping the corrupt policeman off the roof. Granted it’s into a dumpster and he apparently lived, but this isn’t Batman who uses the fear of being dropped off a roof and ultimately stops from dealing potentially life-threatening injuries.

It’s a really wild contrast to the first episode’s “lawyer story with superheroes thrown in” vibe, switching gears rapidly to explore Daredevil’s, well, more devil-like tendencies. The interrogation with Claire actually advocating Daredevil to stab him in the trigeminal nerve was chilling, and the aforementioned casual endangerment of life adds to how much darker Daredevil is. It is a bit gratuitous, especially the eye-stabbing scene, but again it creates another stark contrast with the rest of the MCU. The fact that Daredevil doesn’t really give a fuck when it’s, y’know, child-kidnapping and human-trafficking shitstains… also do like the little nod to the ending of last episode because the kid Daredevil is trying to rescue is the catalyst for this whole episode taking place.

Claire’s costume – basically nothing more than a white hoodie and an additional ghost-esque piece of cloth with creepy eyeholes to cover her face – looks awesome and creates a stark contrast to Daredevil. It’s white compared to black, obviously, but it also actually looks creepy and sinister and actually looks like a costume instead of Daredevil’s piss-poor fashion choice. I mean, I know the dude’s blind but come on, when even the show itself makes fun of the “costume”…

Also, that last fight scene in the corridor? It did go on for a bit too long and Daredevil did look freakishly tired all throughout, but it was a fucking awesome scene and it made sitting through this mostly talk-heavy episode totally worth it. He just keeps falling down even while he does these impressive feats of jumping around and dropkicking and spin kicks and whatnot, but like the message in the flashback, he always gets up and it’s a nice, subtle way to tie in the two sections – something that Arrow could stand to learn.

It’s definitely a slower episode and one that’s more geared towards displaying how much darker this show is going to be, and sets the tone of the superhero sections of the Daredevil TV show. I still find it weird because Daredevil really looked pathetic in the first half of the episode, being beaten off-screen by a bunch of thugs, though I guess still persevering in spite of his injuries counts as badassery? I dunno, it just kinda seemed like an odd choice to show the main hero be so pathetic early on in the series, and I do realize that invincible main characters are boring, but on the other hand you don’t just tear down the badass cred of your main character in the second episode.

Though, again, that final fight scene was beautifully shot and re-establishes Daredevil’s badass status so yeah, all is forgiven. Overall I still think this episode is a bit of a weird beast, but I still kinda liked it.