Daredevil, Season 1, Episode 3: Rabbit in a Snowstorm
It’s honestly a big underwhelming episode for me compared
to the previous two episodes, though it’s no small part due to the factor of me
being the viewer instead of any real fault of the episode’s. I have never, in any
way, been interested in fiction within a courtroom setting, so the fact that
the bulk of the episode takes place in the courtroom with some subtleties (and
likely obvious facets) of trials being absolutely lost on me. So all that stuff
going on in the trial? Really kind of boring, for me. Though I still do get the
gist of what’s going on and how this relates to the big Kingpin organization…
and honestly I don’t think they needed to take up an entire episode just to
focus on, well, this topic. On the surface Murdock and Fogey being sort of
forced to work for what they know is a hired killer is an interesting concept
and Murdock’s speech about good and evil is definitely a well-scripted one, but
so much of it is just dragging on and on about paid jury members and whatnot
and honestly I just don’t really care at all.
Add to the unnecessary amount of gore and brutality in
this episode… the horrific way that Healy dies is excused in my books for the
shock value that it creates (as silly as it is for him to whack his head on a
jutting piece of sharp metal instead of using something more practical) – both for
Daredevil and the audience to showcase just how horrifying the Kingpin is meant
to be – but the brutal arm-breaking (twice!) during the initial fight between
Healy and the random bowling mafia dude he kills? Did we need that? Did we
really need to see the bone jutting out? I’m no stranger to gore, but it really
felt like it was thrown in that scene for no reason.
Daredevil rather hammilly channeling Christian Bale's Batman during the interrogation sequence is equal parts embarrassing and awesome, let's leave it at that.
We’ve got some second-stringer plots running along with
Karen trying to deal with her old bosses at Union Allies threatening to
blackmail her, as well as a new character to the MCU, Spider-Man supporting
character Ben Urich – intrepid Daily Bugle (changed here to a different Marvel
newspaper, the New York Bulletin) reporter. Ben Urich’s scenes are honestly the
most interesting ones to me in this episode mostly due to how humdrum the rest
of the scenes are. The lawyer scenes are boring and Karen’s little plotline is
just more or less the same as the ones she went through before – just her being
confronted by things way too big and Kingpin’s organization reaches everywhere…
it’s just blah. Urich’s is at least interesting, and actually changing his
newspaper from the big media behemoth that is the Daily Bugle into the smaller,
struggling New York Bulletin is a nice move.
This episode also offers us the first glimpse at the big
man, Kingpin, himself. Or, well, Wilson Fisk, as he is still calling himself. Throughout
this episode and the previous two we’ve seen hints of Kingpin actually making
his power play against the other mafia heads – we’ve got Healy taking out one
in here, and Urich talks to another one who’s leaving New York to Florida. In a
way it is interesting to see all these things going on in the background, how
Kingpin is rising up in Hell’s Kitchen as much as Daredevil himself is… but on
the other hand I’d actually rather see more of Kingpin’s organization. And while
we only saw a little bit of Kingpin admiring art (the titular rabbit in a
snowstorm… which doesn’t really make sense to the episode’s main themes but
whatever) he does look pretty awesome.
Wesley is as smooth and slimy as ever, and he is another
one that’s a delight to watch throughout the episode, providing some form of
tension when Murdock starts trailing him – though nothing really comes out of
it.
A solid episode, definitely… but a wholly underwhelming
one for me. It’s definitely not badly written and in no way can this episode be
called bad… but it sure as hell is boring and I really wished there was more
that happened in here. Not necessarily action scenes, but some actual
world-building or character-building other than established dynamics we’ve
already seen in the past two episodes.
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