Marvel's Daredevil, Season 3, Episode 11: Reunion
A pretty fun episode, mostly because the show finally decides to get its main characters sitting in the same room again for the first time in a long, long while. Daredevil's third season has really tried to give Foggy and Karen things to do on their own respectively, to varying degrees of success. Honest kudos to the writers for trying, and while they're not the most interesting storylines, the actors involved managed to make me at least get somewhat invested in their respective fights to take down the Kingpin.
The first one-third of the episode is a pretty well-executed cat-and-mouse game as Bullseye goes back to his guise as FBI agent Ben Poindexter, and basically orders Nadeem and the other FBI goons to crack down on the church and flush out Daredevil, citing that Daredevil and Karen Page are apparently accomplices. Sister Maggie is probably the MVP of the show, basically showing up as this confused nun that tries her best to get the FBI to go in different directions, and while none of them succeed until the dramatic bit where she blocks a bloodstain, she does manage to slow down the FBI search enough for Matt and Karen to hide within a coffin.
While all this is going on, Matt and Karen, trapped in the church's basement, take some time to actually talk shit out about the things they've been going through this season. I actually love how a lot of Matt and Karen's plans are actually foiled by them not communicating with their potential allies, which is nice! Matt talks about how he was about to take his "one shot", while Karen also confides in her own plan to take out Kingpin. Both of their plans are ill-advised, obviously, since Karen's plan also involves her getting maimed or killed by Kingpin, while Matt clearly is going to have his own morality panic if he had stayed in the hotel.
We get a "killing is wrong" speech from Karen that the previous episode's flashback is supposed to give some perspective to, but... eh, I don't really buy it as a concept, that Karen's case in particular is a textbook case for the whole "kill once and you have doomed your soul" argument. It's a valid argument, I just don't think Karen's story is a particularly good one to be an example of it. Still, the whole talk about Karen and Matt arguing about Matt putting up barriers and having this entire abandonment complex when everyone around him is willing to follow him off a cliff... that's a verbal slap that Matt Murdock has needed all season, so good on Karen for saying that. As much as I'm not the biggest fan of this show's pacing, they do some really great character work here.
Meanwhile, everyone's favourite NYPD policeman, Brett Mahoney, shows up and basically pieces together that something is fishy -- some inconsistencies about the actual relationship between Daredevil and Karen, especially from actual eye-witnesses. We also get a particularly clever bit of nice bit with the tracking dogs actually swarming around Dex. Aside from the whole symbolism of him being the "bad guy", of course Dex would smell like the blood spilled all over the church!
Dex begins to unravel, and it is actually nice to see him slowly go more and more insane, demanding to Nadeem that they will not, by any circumstance, call off the search, and that he'll order a door-to-door investigation if he has to. Meanwhile, in addition to fumbling with keys and blocking bloodstained coffins, Sister Maggie also plays faux-unaware psychologist to Agent Nadeem, asking him if he considers himself a moral man and basically calling Nadeem out on helping the bad guys.
Foggy gets a bit of a talk with his brother on whether to accept Fisk's deal, and... while I kind of get Foggy's belief in the system and desire to stick it up to the big man, the man's kind of naive, huh? Still, that's Foggy Nelson for you. The argument with his brother sort of gets put on hold as Foggy's drawn to basically set up a conspiracy bit with Sister Maggie and Brett Mahoney, showing up to 'arrest' his client, Karen Page, as she surrenders to the NYPD. The subsequent scene with Bullseye going absolutely livid and ready to pounce on his prey -- especially with the caveat that Daredevil's actually gone up the rooftop... while I don't believe Bullseye would kill everyone there, I figured that either Nadeem or Mahoney could easily be casualties of Bullseye's temper at this point.
It's an interesting bit as Nadeem finally decides to do something to stand up against Kingpin and basically steer the investigation away and pull the FBI out. Bullseye is angry, but Daredevil listens to all of this from the rooftop. Nadeem is easily my least favourite part of this season, but damn, actor Jay Ali delivers amazingly well with showing someone who is scared shitless of the almost god-like reach of Wilson Fisk, but is determined to do the right thing.
Speaking of Fisk, various scenes show that he's free, and that speech denouncing Daredevil as the real murderer and orchestrator of all the crime in New York City? That is an amazingly delivered speech from Vincent D'Onofrio. A lesser actor would probably make the speech sound more comical with a wink-wink at the audience, but D'Onofrio's delivery is just so well done that I do buy that the crowd around him is slowly cowed to silence as they lower their "Lock Fisk Up" signs. The conversation with Ms. Falb, owner of the Rabbit in a Snowstorm painting, though? That was just... it's a scene that is amazingly well-acted, and I get that it's sort of a Kingpin thing to do, but I felt like it was utterly out of place, happens almost apropos of nothing, and just felt like a cheap way to shoehorn some "Fisk has some humanity left in him" plot point.
Of course, the next scene after Fisk allows the lady to keep the painting is Fisk in a car, learning of Karen and Daredevil's escape, and he demands the jacket of the mook next to him and bashes his face in. Yeah.
The little conversation between Foggy, Karen and officer Mahoney is neat, as short as it was, of them basically telling each other about how they have a common enemy in Wilson Fisk. The conversation between the three main characters on the rooftop between Matt, Foggy and Karen? It's just amazingly done, and both the pretty great cast and the great chemistry and history between the characters really do sell that these guys are old friends with a lot of differing opinions. There's really not a whole lot for me to dissect here other than the fact that I like it, and apparently Foggy's plan is to get a super-foolproof witness to take down Kingpin. Agent Nadeem, it seems.
And Nadeem? That scene as he rushes into his house, the little fake-out with the broken vase, and the terrified shootout he has with Kingpin's forces as he tries to protect his family... pretty tense stuff. Of course, like a goddamn superhero, Daredevil swoops in to save the day, take out the attackers, and earn Nadeem's trust with a dramatic unmasking. Again, I've found Nadeem's character to be pretty unnecessary to the third season, but damn if they really do make great use of him in this episode and the previous one. Good stuff.
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