Daredevil – S01E01

Daredevil has been redeemed. Into the Ring is one of those rare pilot episodes that not only plunges our hero into the action before the credits roll, but also establishes the tone and characters without sacrificing pace. Netflix and Marvel have really outdone themselves with this collaboration setting Daredevil apart from the cheese ball antics of Agents of Shield while keeping continuity with the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). The action takes place in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, which apparently took the brunt of the alien invasion depicted in Avengers and has since been taken over by shady characters taking advantage of the poverty.

Before I go any further I should say that I have not read any of the Daredevil comics or seen the previous Ben Affleck movie, but as that movie is pre-MCU, I am perfectly okay taking everybody else’s word that it is stinky. I did see ¾’s of Elektra on TV one night… awful, awful.

Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox) is an up and coming lawyer, blinded as a boy by chemicals while saving an elderly man from a traffic accident and after crime overtakes the streets of his home he decides to done a black mask and kick crime in the ass. The extent of his powers of perception are left ambiguous, but it is clear he has extraordinary senses from the get go as he dispatches a crew of thugs trying sending women off in a shipping container, and later determining truth through heartbeats. Setting Murdoch apart from the gods and iron men that battled in his backyard is his lack of superior strength or healing abilities and he is just as damaged from a punch in the face or a fall from a building as his enemies. It is clear from the beginning he has some training, he was raised by a boxer but it seems to go beyond that.

Matt Murdoch and Foggy Nelson (Charlie Cox and Elden Henson) show their lawyer-up powers.

Murdoch opens his own law practice with partner and friend Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson, whom some may remember from The Mighty Ducks franchise). Henson and Cox are great together, taking turns as moral compass and trading punch lines. There is a real sense of familiarity with the two, which helps to sell the friendship. Their first case involves an “open and shut” murder,  which of course leads to a tangled web of lies and corruption after all, this is a comic book world.

Vincent D’Onofrio plays Wilson Fisk, and having seen beyond the pilot I personally  hope he gets an Emmy nod for his performance as Fisk, but for this episode of Daredevil he is a voice on the phone. JamesWesley (Toby Leonard) plays his right hand appears and manages to arrange jail cell murders, blackmail fathers with live video feeds of their daughters in parks, and there is a larger sense to his schemes when he meets with business heads, both local and from distant places.

There is a dark edge to this pilot that the MCU has been lacking thus far.

Into the Ring sets the stage for a tense and dark series and while it is an origin story it doesn’t suffer from the usual origin story model where the hero spends an hour getting powered up and finding an excuse to fight. We meet Daredevil after he decides to break bones. The opening credits tease a more traditional Daredevil suit but for now he is just a man in a black mask (with extraordinary senses and training), yet to master his abilities. It also separates itself from the polished PG MCU – with a TV-MA rating – the combat is bloody, and sometimes the women wear no clothes. Yet at the same time it would seem perfectly natural for Daredevil or Matt Murdoch to show up on the street in an upcoming Avengers sequel. The production feels as topnotch as a Marvel blockbuster, yet the fighting has that in-your-face realism reminiscent of the Jason Bourne franchise.

This isn’t your Saturday morning superhero story. This is about the lives that Thor, Iron Man and their like destroy wherever they have their epic intergalactic struggles. This is the first in a series of four shows that will lead up to a Defenders crossover miniseries, with street-crime Marvel characters Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Jessica Jones getting their own series. I have reservations about this multiple series setup (only if a second season of Daredevil is years away because of it), but Daredevil shows nothing but promise. If the Hulk shows up in the Defenders though, consider all of my reservations mute!

Daredevil lives up to its promise much more than Agents of Shield (both in the pilot and beyond) partly due to Agent of Shields longer run with plenty of obligatory filler episodes. Daredevil is a show about consequences and it doesn’t shy away from blood and grit in a city damaged by war and run by the mob, standing above the rest of comic book TV to date.