REVIEW: Daredevil: Born Again – Season 1, Episode 9, “Straight to Hell”

Television Reviews

With its first season finale, “Straight to Hell,” Daredevil: Born Again does what once seemed impossible and delivers a good episode. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect; there are problems this show will likely never get over unless it does a massive creative overhaul in its second season (which shouldn’t be impossible, considering these idiots killed Foggy Nelson and moved Karen Page across the country in the season premiere); ruined storylines will never have the weight they should because of how botched they were, new characters are so ill-defined and useless that they need to be jettisoned, and old characters have been reduced to shells of their former selves. But “Straight to Hell” gives me a slight bit of hope that maybe Born Again can at least be enjoyable in the moment and maybe… just maybe… saved from the scrap heap the Marvel wrecking ball turned it into.

Matt is rushed to the hospital after taking the bullet meant for Wilson Fisk, but his mind is not on recuperating. Fisk uses his attempted assassination as an excuse to tighten his grip on New York and unleash his anti-vigilante task force on anyone who may stand in his way. The motive for Foggy’s murder and Fisk’s focus on the Red Hook docks is revealed. A couple of familiar faces return, and thank God for that.

The opening scene of “Straight to Hell” is a flashback that shows us how Vanessa Fisk hired Bullseye to kill Foggy. It turns out it wasn’t just Matt’s best friend Vanessa wanted dead; she asked Bullseye to kill him and his client because the two of them were about to deal a significant blow to the Kingpin’s crime ring, which, at the time, she was running. In return, she and her lawyers would get Bullseye released from prison. This is all fine, and it makes sense that Foggy would have been killed because he became a problem for the Fisks, but what’s most interesting about this scene is when Vanessa explains how Fisk avoided prison at the end of Daredevil season 3, something his every subsequent appearance expected us simply to accept. It seems the rampant corruption at the FBI revealed by Agent Ray Nadeem (by the way, what a fantastic character he was; Netflix’s Daredevil was able to do what Disney/Marvel desperately want to do – introduce new, diverse characters – and make it work gangbusters) invalidated the evidence they had, and Fisk’s legal team used that to get the charges dismissed. This is not only believable, but it’s in keeping with the concerns raised in Daredevil, including by Nadeem himself, and it shows how brilliant Wilson Fisk is; he got them all caught in a situation where even their coming clean would work to his advantage. Vanessa offers that same opportunity to Bullseye in exchange for his services, which Bullseye wrestles with because he hates Wilson Fisk – another important piece of the story and Bullseye’s character that hadn’t been mentioned all season. Something feels different.

***SPOILERS***

“Straight to Hell” has a lot of this: characters acting like their old selves, important storylines and relationships being resurrected, and a desire to make this train wreck of a season actually make sense. I think this is where Dario Scardapane finally got to take over in a meaningful way, and this feels like the first episode of Daredevil: Born Again that is entirely his, not one he had to touch up or slightly repurpose so Marvel and Disney didn’t have to spend the money to refilm half a season’s worth of television. (This kind of trouble can be avoided by hiring people who understand the material in the first place.) That’s what sucks, and while I’m not the biggest fan of his previous Marvel work, he’s better than what this show has been, and unfortunately, he was stuck with a bunch of garbage and told to make it work, similar to Joss Whedon’s job with Justice League – and probably even worse. That’s why Foggy is still dead; his death was too deeply woven into these episodes, so all Scardapane could do was try to make it better with limited time and resources. I tend to think that’s why a lot of the violence looks so bad and obviously computer-generated; he didn’t have time to refilm the fights, so he had to put in blood and broken bones as best he could. “Straight to Hell,” while certainly not perfect and still hamstrung by Marvel’s idiotic early decisions, is a look at what this season could have been like and, with a little luck and maybe some divine intervention, what season 2 will be.

Right off the bat, “Straight to Hell” sends us a lifeline. Matt is rushed to the hospital after being shot, and Heather and Kirsten stay with him while he’s recuperating. When he starts coming to, Heather walks over and takes his hand, and Matt says… “Karen?” I think this may be the first time Born Again made me cheer, and the look on Heather’s face is priceless. This is the first episode that seems to understand Matt and Heather’s relationship – especially considering how deep and loving we’re supposed to think it is – was completely unearned, and Matt’s heart still belongs to Karen. He then asks Kirsten to help him look into Foggy’s last case and any connection it may have to Fisk while Heather naysays from the sidelines  – and when I say “sidelines,” I mean she’s not even in frame, like the show is saying, “That’s enough out of you,” and I love it. Soon, the women are both out the door and almost entirely out of the episode. It’s easy to see what’s going on; this is a course correction, removing useless characters nobody cares about while giving them something relevant to do (Heather’s will be revealed later) so Matt can start driving the story forward, along with his nemesis. While Matt recuperates, Wilson Fisk cuts off New York’s power, institutes martial law, and sends his task force looking for Bullseye and any masked vigilante they can find. He also reveals why he’s been so intent on refurbishing and controlling the Red Hook docks: Vanessa moved her art through these docks when she owned her gallery – illegally, of course, which is what Foggy found out and why she hired Bullseye to kill him – and now, Fisk will use them to reestablish control of the various criminal trades in New York, all under the guise of the legitimate operations of local government. Here again, we get what we want, what the rest of the season had been denying us: Fisk has effectively become the Kingpin once again, and he has an evil plan that actually makes sense. He also sends his henchman, Buck, to the hospital to kill Matt and make it look like he died from the gunshot wound, allowing him to go out a hero so long as he’s truly gone. But Buck shows up as the lights go out in New York only to find an empty bed. The city has been plunged into darkness in more ways than one, and frightened New Yorkers don’t need an incapacitated lawyer… they need the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.

Already, “Straight to Hell” is giving us what the entire season should have, but we ain’t seen nothing yet. Matt arrives at his apartment to find Frank Castle criticizing his contingency plans, specifically that he doesn’t have an electricity-free way of making coffee. They banter a bit, and then the anti-vigilante task force bursts in looking for Matt. This leads to a big, bloody, badass fight where Daredevil (Matt heard them coming, so he has just enough time to suit up) and the Punisher deal with the bad cops in their own way. This is terrific, not only because the fight is filmed and staged expertly – this is not the CG-fests most of the action scenes in Born Again have been but a grounded and gritty street fight – but because it is rooted in character and demonstrates the differences between Daredevil and the Punisher through action. Daredevil kicks the shit out of the bad cops, but he leaves them alive, whereas the Punisher blows their brains out every chance he gets. We know these characters (no thanks to Born Again), and this fight is a way of letting us catch up with them, similar to the way the earlier scene between Matt and Frank was. It also reveals which of the anti-vigilante task force killed White Tiger; it was… the black guy. I don’t remember his name, if they ever even gave it, because, like everyone who isn’t Matt Murdock or Wilson Fisk, no one in this season has been an actual character, but I guess it’s mildly surprising because we assumed it was the white guy whose name also escapes me. Regardless, we’ve got him, and again, this reveal gives Matt an honest-to-God character moment because he really, really wants to kill this guy, and Frank is egging him on because… you know… he’s the Punisher. But Matt stops himself the way he couldn’t when he had Foggy’s murderer in his hands, and this time, it’s not a twist of fate that keeps Matt from becoming a killer – Matt does it himself. It’s excellent, a great way to end a character arc that was mishandled in a million ways all season, and yet another opportunity to differentiate Daredevil from the Punisher.

When the action is done, “Straight to Hell” delivers its next surprise: Karen Page is back. Why she returns is kind of dumb – Matt was in trouble, which she somehow learned in San Francisco, or something – but it’s dumb because her leaving in the first place was dumb, which is what I mean when I say that Scardapane is limited by the idiocy of his predecessors. But this is an easy one to chalk up because it’s great to have Deborah Ann Woll back, and she immediately elevates Born Again just as Jon Bernthal did when his Frank Castle appeared from the shadows, ready to put evil in the grave. Watching Matt, Karen, and Frank interact again, especially as they’re being written by people who seem to understand them and their dynamics, is like lounging in a hot tub after a long day of coal mining. Their back-and-forth dialogue is informed by everything that happened on Daredevil, and we can feel their history in the way they look at each other. Frank helped Matt for Karen, and we don’t have to be told why because we know; Karen believes that Frank cares about her and Matt more than he’s letting on, and again, we know why; Matt and Karen reminiscing about Foggy is perfect and heartfelt, with Matt finally letting her in on some things he and Foggy shared, like the meaning of “Avocados at Law.” These two would never have quit on each other or Foggy, and while the imbeciles that crafted most of this season either didn’t get that or didn’t care, this episode does, and we’re finally done with that nonsense.

The rest of “Straight to Hell” is mostly a setup for season 2 – which is really the second half of what was originally the episode order for the first season. The Punisher finds the anti-vigilante task force and wipes out a bunch of them but is ultimately overwhelmed and taken captive. This includes a good scene where they reveal why they use his skull symbol; they idolize him and want to recruit him, not understanding who he is or why he does what he does. I believe this is the show’s attempt at removing the obnoxious politics from the storyline and making a point about the Punisher’s ethos and why it’s misunderstood (in real life, it’s misunderstood by people who don’t like the character – like modern Marvel Comics writers), and for me, it works. Fisk is now the Kingpin again, with the cloak of legitimacy and the added power of the mayor’s office, and he’s got everyone who could stop him either in his pocket, in a cage, or in the ground, that last one describing what Fisk does to the police commissioner. (Ouch!) He’s also got Heather, Matt’s girlfriend (though maybe not anymore), on his team, which gives her something to do and paints her as the bad guy, not Matt; I’ll be Disney loves that. And the only one who can stop Fisk now is Daredevil, who teams up with Karen to form a sort of rebellion against Mayor Kingpin. It’s not perfect; I still don’t like the way a lot of Fisk’s dialogue is written, and I think he’s too prone to exaggerated histrionics on this show. After being set up as such an important player, Bullseye is nowhere to be found outside of the flashback that starts the episode, which feels wrong. While I’m grateful Karen is back and can readily overlook the flaws in getting her here, she seems to have abandoned her life in San Francisco pretty easily. And Daredevil’s coalition is made up of him, Karen, Josie (whose bar will apparently be their base of operations), and a bunch of nobodies; I got all excited to see the Defenders waiting for their leader and ready to take back the streets, but nope. (Although the evidence that this may happen continues to mount.) However, a mid-credits scene assures us that Matt will have backup sooner than he thinks.

“Straight to Hell” is really good, and I’m genuinely surprised by how much I liked it. I’m also surprised to find myself looking forward to season 2. If this episode is the springboard for a righted ship, we may be in for something much better: a show that does these characters justice. It’ll never erase this mostly awful season, but it could make the dirt worth sifting through.

Let us know what you thought of “Straight to Hell” and season 1 of Daredevil: Born Again in the comments!

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