Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 10: Karen
Yeaaaah, I'm not really doing any of these in a timely fashion, am I? I just really can't really find the energy in the past few weeks to sit down and watch Daredevil. It's a great show, don't get me wrong, and everything is done well. The writing is great, the acting tends to be good, the twists are well-done... it's just that watching an episode of Daredevil is so tense and draining that instead of going to the next episode immediately, I tend to just want to take a seat and unwind. I don't know.
Anyway, this episode is... it's solid, but it also feels a bit self-indulgent. It did take me four separate watching sessions to finally get through the episode in its entirety Not that it's bad, but it's just so slow and "real", I guess. At the same time, though, Karen Page is a main character with a lot of built-up mystery that has been... well, I won't say problematic, exactly, because I've seen so many other superhero show protagonists be far more problematic, but Karen is always a character that I felt the show writers had no idea what to do up until this season.
And here's the second flashback episode of the season, I guess, focusing on Karen and... and it's all right. The episode takes just shy of 30 minutes from the episode's 50-minute runtime, and it's... I don't know. Parts of it felt really, really slow, while parts of it felt like it blazed quickly just to get at that chaotic end-point where Karen ends up getting caught in a nasty situation with her bodyfriend Todd and her brother Kevin. It really feels bizarre, honestly, that both Todd and Kevin feel so supportive and kind (Todd's drug dealing nastiness notwithstanding) to try and avert the "abusive boyfriend" trope, but then you jump straight from Kevin having an argument to Kevin... burning down Todd's home? And then to Kevin getting beaten up by Todd with a crowbar? At least Todd has the excuse of both being on drugs and having seen his house burn down. Everything else in that flashback felt like it worked other than the jump to Kevin burning down Todd's trailer house.
Anyway, I do kind of like the portrayal of Paxton Page as a complex... antagonist, I suppose. He feels a lot like a three-dimensional character. On one hand, he's verbally abusive and dismissive of Karen, and does that irresponsible dumb parent thing of splurging money on super-expensive things while they're pinching coins. On the other hand, he clearly is deeply distraught at the death of his son, and he has his moments of niceness when he makes those pancakes to celebrate Karen going to college, actively supporting her at times. Also, while he was a gigantic dick about it (being more worried about how it "reflects on us" more than anything), there is some point to him telling Karen not to do drugs. He's ultimately an asshole for what he did to Karen, especially at the end, but I kinda get it, sort of. That argument after the pancakes about their mother was also well done on both Paxton and Karen's actors' part.
Ultimately, though, we sort of knew how this was going to end. Karen shoots Todd (not to death, I think) when he's beating up Kevin, but ends up getting into an accident because you shouldn't drive when you're drunk and high, causing Kevin's death. It's a well-executed flashback sequence for sure, and a Netflix show is certainly one where you can spend 30 minutes delivering a pretty slow-paced sequence. So... yeah, there's that.
The remaining 20 minutes of the episode deals with Kingpin sending Dex to murder Karen Page, although not before we get another slow scene of Karen talking to Father Lantom in the church's basement, with some fun lines and Lantom quoting John Lennon and telling Karen to come to mass. And Daredevil, of course, goes back to save Karen in the church even if this costs him the chance to take down Kingpin (I'm legitimately not sure why we needed that hacker lady from a narrative standpoint).
We get a gloriously creepy bit of Dex in the Daredevil outfit murdering people in the church and demanding for Karen to come out, and we get a pretty badass fight between Dexdevil and Daredevil, and... well, what is there to say? Daredevil always delivers in its action sequences. Dex also incorporates a whole lot of throwing things at Daredevil in his fight movements, which is neat. The action flows well, and we get a couple of neat scenes of Karen whispering to tell Matt what to do so that she can help evacuate the people in the church.
Unfortunately, though, Karen's attempts at being a distraction ends up with Father Lantom taking a bullet (or a knife or whatever it is that Dex threw) to the chest. RIP Father Lantom, you're cool, but your death was kind of telegraphed. The fight ends up escalating and I do like that Karen manages to contribute to the fight, dropping Dex off the second floor before tending to the wounded Matt.
Overall, though, it's... it's a slower episode that I definitely don't hate, but not one that I'm particularly in love with either. Honestly not sure how I could fix this. Is it its positioning? Is it the pacing? Would it have worked better if it lasted an entire episode so I'm actually invested in Karen's flashback cast more? Would it have worked better if the fat was trimmed off and it lasted around 15-20 minutes? I don't know... it's an episode that I definitely have mixed feelings about. There's certainly a lot to like about this episode, but at the same time, it took me a long, long time to finally get through it.
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