It's early days, I know. Even Buffy seemed distinctly unpromising at this stage. There's nothing wrong with Daredevil per se, it's just that it isn't catching fire yet. The characters seem well-rounded, well-written and performed, but I don't know them yet.
Perhaps I should bear in mind that this is all set-up at this point; Matt is still floundering a bit and yet to put on the red spandex, and even Wilson Fisk, the focus of this episode, is yet to become a true Kingpin. He's an intriguing character- ruthless, yet also nervous and chivalrous around Vanessa, the lady he likes, and there are intriguing hints of a hard early life in Hell's Kitchen.
The ostensible focus of the episode is on Anatoly and Vladimir, our two Russian brothers, wannabe crimelords, and their ambitions, only to be cruelly snuffed out by Fisk, who ends the episode by personally killing Anatoly with his bare hands after his date is ruined. It's a nice way of establishing how Fisk, nervous around girls and only occasionally getting his hands dirty, invisible to the Internet and ostensibly law abiding, is the true threat, not whatever thugs may currently be top of the pile. As Matt muses to Claire, if one crimelord inevitably replaces another, what's the point of him? I suppose he will come to find an answer.
We also see a tightened by of a wary anti-corruption partnership between Karen Oage and Ben Zurich but, as Zurich makes clear, they're playing for high stakes. This is more immediately so for Claire, captured and roughly treated. Daredevil may have dramatically rescued her, but it's his fault she was put in harm's way at all. Still, the experience seems to have deepened their bond.
It's a good episode, yes. But I'm still waiting for the engines to fire up.
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