Daredevil S03E08 Review: Primal Scream

Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 8: Upstairs/Downstairs

Not the most engaging episode of Daredevil, honestly. It's clearly meant to be a bit of a breather episode between two episodes, but it's honestly just our characters sort of running around in circles. Mind you, I'm not saying that "Upstairs/Downstairs" is a bad episode, but it's just not particularly engaging. We've seen Dex flip out and hit his lowest point in a previous episode, and having him go through this whole sequence of meeting up with Julie and maybe striking up a (non-creepy) relationship... and then to have Kingpin quite literally order her murdered in an honestly poorly-handled fridging bit... I'm genuinely not sure what that is all about. That just seems like it's trying to buy time, is all.

The way Julie is killed off is pretty bizarrely shot, too, with us watching it distantly from Kingpin's Room of Monitors and the quick, effortless gunshot making it easy for less attentive viewers to even miss that Julie's killed off. And all that... just to get someone to impersonate Julie to send a mean text message to Dex? Huh? That honestly just retreads the same ground as the sequence of events that causes Dex to don the fake Daredevil suit, and it's done in a less interesting way to boot.

At least we do get him doing some Bullseye stuff and ricocheting bullets and throwing chandelier glass shards and shit in the brief action scene he has against Daredevil and Agent Nadeem, which is honestly the only interesting thing about this storyline that dominates the episode. As much as I complained about the Dex bit, at least the acting and the whole 'primal scream' bit is interestingly done. There's absolutely nothing interesting about the Nadeem/Daredevil team-up, and it just feels like something that has to happen instead of something that happens organically. Basically, Nadeem is on Daredevil's side, they find out and confirm that Dex is Bullseye, and Nadeem is calling it in while nursing a gunshot wound.

The Foggy/Karen discussion is also not particularly interesting, and I honestly am finding it harder and harder to get myself invested in this plot that just sort of goes around and around. At this point, the very bland storyline is only really saved by the sheer earnestness of the actors involved, as I really do buy into Foggy's charm as he challenges Blake Tower at a public function, before breaking out from the debate when he realizes what Karen is doing.

I really felt like the huge revelation that Foggy found out from his detective work should probably be more epic than "oh my god, the Kingpin is using the FBI to take down his criminal rivals!" It's an awesome thing for Fisk to do, don't get me wrong, but it's just such an utterly obvious reveal.

Not so obvious is the revelation that Sister Maggie is actually Matt Murdock's mother, which, as someone who isn't familiar with the Marvel comics, is something that actually did take me by surprise... but Sister Maggie's a character that genuinely just seems detached from everything that's going on in the show other than being Matt's personal Jiminy Cricket, so I'm not sure what this revelation really brings to the table.

Of course, the best scene in this episode and the reason why I didn't dismiss the entire episode as a dud is a scene I saved for last, where Karen confronts Fisk. Foregoing any attempt to reconcile with Ellison, or Matt, or Foggy, Karen goes straight into the wolf's den, asking for an interview with the Kingpin.

And it's so, so interesting to see the two of them just talk in Kingpin's room, with me having absolutely no idea how this is going to play out. This is easily the best material Deborah Ann-Woll has been given to work with throuhgout her four-season run in Marvel Netflix, and Vincent D'Onofrio is, as always, fantastic. The quasi-casual banter goes into Fisk threatening Karen and reminding her about Ben Urich's fate, and then Karen throws it back at Fisk and telling him that Urich isn't the only one to know about his murder of his father with a hammer. It's a fun bit as Karen takes potshots at Fisk, clearly intending to provoke him ("we just pass around stories about your mother at the office"; "is there any part of you that isn't broken")... and you can totally see Fisk trying so hard not to flip out and murder Karen.

And then, of course, Kingpin then drops the bombshell about him knowing all about Matt Murdock's secret life, and Karen's stunned silence ends up speaking volumes -- an amazingly acted and entirely realistic way to handle this. Of course, Karen suddenly becomes badass, telling Fisk that she is the badass, and tells Fisk that she was the one responsible for killing Wesley, shooting him seven times, and basically pulling off an impressively badass speech, asking if Fisk feels the same sort of dread that the families of his victims felt.

And then, of course, Kingpin stands up, ready to murder Karen... just as the FBI arrives and gets Karen out of the room, because Foggy arrived in time. Ultimately, while the conclusion of this scene is kind of a cop-out, I do absolutely love that whatever the case, Karen has provoked Wilson Fisk and that is probably going to cause