Favorite Characters: Matt Murdock a.k.a. Daredevil (Daredevil)

When it comes to Marvel’s TV shows, Matt is my third-favorite protagonist thus far, after Peggy and Jessica, although that’s no knock on Matt – it just speaks to how much I love the other two!  I do like Matt quite a bit, and I think he was a good lead-in choice for the darker world of the MCU’s Netflix properties (a few spoilers.)

First of all, I can’t get over how much I like Matt’s powers.  As I’ve said before, the first version of Daredevil I saw was the Ben Affleck movie, where his powers pretty much just cancel out his blindness.  Here, though, Matt’s powers make him legitimately super.  Yes, his strength and fighting prowess is from his years of good old-fashioned training (including his tutelage under Stick,) and the way he throws himself fairly heedlessly into danger is down to his assorted issues, but in no way is he just a blind vigilante who can see.  All his other senses are ridiculously heightened, allowing him to hear, smell, and otherwise sense things from superhuman distances, allowing him to track his enemies and fully anticipate any attack.  (And yet, trying to fight him by assaulting his senses doesn’t really seem to be a thing.  Is it because he now has such control that loud noises and stuff don’t bother him anymore, or does virtually no one know that’s what his powers are?  Or that he even has powers, for that matter – I suppose his ability to find bad guys seemingly out-of-nowhere might be his only “tell,” and that just adds to his air of mystery.)

In fact, part of the reason Matt originally became Daredevil is because he couldn’t stand to lie awake at night and hear the suffering in the city around him without doing anything about it.  It feeds well into his aforementioned issues, of which there are many.  He has a driving need to help others with incredibly little regard for his own well-being, and his (now-deceased) father taught him to always go down swinging.  Even as he takes extreme measures and fights his way through the lower echelons of Hell’s Kitchen, he’s conflicted about it, in part because he knows there’s a piece of him that craves the violence, the darkness there.  His Catholic upbringing also makes him doubt the work he’s doing, and he has cryptic confessions in which he tries to justify the sins he plans to commit in order to help people.

Matt has plenty of the faults common to heroes.  He has an overactive sense of guilt and tends to take everything upon himself, meaning that he’s definitely one to shy away from those who want to help him.  And yet, when he does have to admit he needs someone else’s skills, he wants it entirely on his terms, exactly when and where he needs, no questions asked, no input required.  Even though he frequently doubts himself and his mission in private, anyone who argues with his plans usually gets a “my way or the highway” reaction, and he’s not about to listen to any suggestion that he’s being too reckless or going about things the wrong way.

Because Matt is regarded as a somewhat darker hero and his strong violence lends more legitimacy to the “hero or menace?” discussion than, say, Spider-Man does, he doesn’t get as many “save the civilian” moments.  If anything, he more visibly saves people through his day job as a defense attorney.  This can make him seem more about fighting the villains than protecting the innocent, but really, it all goes back to the voices Matt could hear crying out all over the city.  Although he worries about how cathartic he finds the fighting to be, it’s for them, the people of Hell’s Kitchen, that he dirties his hands.  That can be easy to forget – I think even Matt forgets it sometimes – but it’s still there.

Relationship Spotlight: Jessica Jones & Matt Murdock (The Defenders)

The team interactions is my favorite part of The Defenders, and I think Matt and Jessica in particular are my absolute favorites.  It’s a dynamic that shouldn’t really work but totally does, and I’m down with any future Marvel Netflix show that wants to find an excuse to have these two share screentime (a few Matt-Jessica-related spoilers.)

Jessica and Matt meet first in the “real world” rather than the superhero world.  At least, at this point, it’s known who Jessica is and what she can do, so when she’s brought into the police station, they know they’re questioning an enhanced person, but Jessica first meets Matt the lawyer, not Daredevil the hero.  There’s a bit of supporting-character crossover to get the stars to align for Matt to show up on the scene as her attorney, and even though he does his job quickly and efficiently to get her out of an undesirable situation, she doesn’t want anything to do with him.  Of course, when she catches him pulling parkour moves in an alley, that’s a different story.

Both are suspicious of what the other isn’t saying, and that leads both to keep an eye (so to speak) on the other, until both wind up in the show’s first unintentional team-up against the Hand.  Due to the circumstances, Matt ends up fighting without his suit (but still trying to be incognito,) and Jessica is the first in the group to twig that he’s really the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen.  When Matt wants to pull away, nervous about protecting his secret identity, Jessica is the one who convinces him to stay.

On paper, it seems like the makings of either an odd couple or love/hate dynamic, because despite some deep similarities, they’re pretty different people.  Both are a mess, but Jessica wears hers openly and uses it to keep others at arm’s length while Matt is super-repressed, pretending he has it all together when there’s a darkness in him he can’t always control.  They seem poised to butt heads, and there’s definitely a certain combativeness to their vibe.  Jessica gets in Matt’s face when she thinks he needs to get over himself, gets to know him better by pushing his buttons, and snarks freely at him on all matters, especially his Daredevil suit.  Matt, in turn, gives nearly as good as he gets (nearly – sorry, Matt, but nobody snarks like Jessica.)

When it comes to the work, though, they make a pretty superb team.  It’s noteworthy that, in a superhero show, one of my favorite sequences is completely devoid of action:  it’s the one-two punch of Jessica and Matt investigating the architect together, both playing to their own strengths as they interview his daughter and find important answers to questions about the Hand’s plan.  They’re remarkably in sync, they get good results, and they do so without losing the fun back-and-forth between them.  They kind of just fall into it like they’ve been doing this for a while, and without a lot of fanfare, these two people with very confirmed trust issues find themselves working alongside one another.  (It’s interesting that Jessica and Luke’s past history would lend itself to making them a natural duo and, given the mutual Hand connection, the same would be true of Matt and Danny, but when the dust settles, the most prominent partnerships are definitely Matt-Jessica and Luke-Danny.)  Don’t know when we’ll get to see them together again – if it won’t be until whenever The Defenders comes back or if there will be any guest appearances in the next seasons of Daredevil and/or Jessica Jones – but I’m ready for it.

Favorite Characters: Karen Page (Daredevil)

It took me a while to appreciate Karen, and I really don’t think it should have.  I feel like I initially had a tendency with her character to take a few details about her and fill in a type, when in truth, there’s more to her than that, and as I’ve come to understand that, it’s greatly increased my enjoyment of her as a character (Karen-related spoilers.)

I don’t know why, in Daredevil’s pilot, the first impression I made of Karen was “damsel.”  It’s true that we meet her shaking and terrified, and that Nelson and Murdock saves her legally (from a crime she was framed for with evidence so damning no other defense attorneys would touch her) while Daredevil saves her physically (from a hired goon sent to her apartment to kill her,) and that she’s thin, blond, and softspoken.  However, it’s also very true that the only reason she’s framed for murder – way more than enough to throw anyone off their usual game – is because she uncovered proof of her company’s wrongdoing and the only reason she’s even at her apartment when she gets attacked is because she’s retrieving the flashdrive of evidence against the company.  If she needs saving, it’s because her enemies are so much powerful than she is but she still takes them on anyway.

For me, Karen’s most defining traits are her determined pursuit of the truth and her tireless work ethic for obtaining it.  These qualities serve her well working at Nelson and Murdock fighting on behalf of their clients to uncover the corruptions in the system that have let them down.  In season 2, she makes an intriguing shift from dogged legal assistant to investigative journalist.  It all starts with the Punisher:  first looking for information simply about who he is, then the trauma that shaped him into who he’s become, then evidence that can be used in his favor for his legal defense, and finally, proof that someone else is setting him up to answer for their crimes.  She finds enormous, hidden truths and risks her safety on countless occasions in tremendous ways, all in her quest to understand this person and what is going on around him.  In her investigation, she proves supremely competent, with a fine head for conjecture and seeing which threads are the right ones to pull on.  Foggy sees how skilled she is and asks if she’s ever considered law school herself.

I also like the interesting evolution of Karen’s moral considerations.  Despite the way Matt views her, consciously or otherwise, as a Good Girl (especially compared to Elektra,) Karen is no stranger to darkness.  She gives the first impression of being someone Hell’s Kitchen will eat for breakfast, but she knows how to make hard choices and has gotten her hands very dirty to protect her and her own.  That’s left her questioning who she is, what’s right, and what’s wrong.  While Matt wrestles with similar issues (as does the show altogether,) he actively trained and prepared for the dark path he’s gone down, whereas Karen has just sort of found herself on it and is trying to reevaluate what she’s capable of and where her lines are.  It leads to the great interactions between her and the Punisher.  On one level, she sees how he does terrible things (murdering gangsters) for what he feels is a just cause (avenging his family and preventing them from hurting anyone else,) and she wonders if her own dark actions can be justified.  On another, she sees how the man who only kills “bad people” spares her, and she wonders if she deserves it.  Neat stuff to explore here.

Some Thoughts on Blindness in Daredevil

If you’re talking about disability representation, Matt Murdock/Daredevil is a dubious name to include.  No, he can’t see, but his superpowers completely negate that fact, and really, a blind superhero’s power being “superhuman sense of hearing/smell/taste” is pretty cliché.  However, I like the ways that perceptions of Matt’s recognized disability interact with his secret pastime of superpowered vigilantism (a few spoilers.)

When you’re talking secret identities, “mild-mannered” is the typical description.  Who would ever even consider that that geek Peter Parker is really Spider-Man?  You want a secret identity to be unremarkable, above reproach.  In Matt’s case, “blind defense attorney” is definitely noteworthy – most people haven’t had much regular interaction with blind people – but it’s also very out-of-range in terms of anyone suspecting him.  Absolutely no one is going to look at this blind guy and wonder if he’s really the masked vigilante cleaning up Hell’s Kitchen at night.  It’s the perfect camouflage.

Matt’s blindness serves as more explicit cover as well.  His line of work leads to copious injuries, and while his friends notice them, they easily buy his lies about walking into doors or tripping down the stairs.  People like Foggy and Karen love Matt and don’t treat him like a “special” person, but they also find it credible that his disability would make him more susceptible to these sorts of clumsy accidents.  When they think about blindness, they probably try to imagine what it would be like if they couldn’t see.  Close their eyes and grope around for a few seconds, and it’s not much of a leap to say, “I don’t know how Matt does it!  No wonder he gets banged up now and then!”  Foggy entreats him to be more careful, and Karen worries about him when the streets are dangerous.

Additionally, Matt sometimes uses “the blind card” to manipulate people.  In season two, there’s an incident where he needs to get a certain person alone so he can steal the man’s key card without security catching him.  It’s simple for him to arrange to “accidentally” bump into the guy, spilling wine over him and forcing him to go to the restroom to clean up.  It’s a great scene because you see the exact moment the guy realizes Matt is blind and swallows his irritation with a “not his fault – he couldn’t help it” attitude.

But even though all this helps Matt a lot, I think it also feeds into his recklessness and penchant for diving headlong into danger.  I get the impression that he kind of resents people seeing him as helpless or incapable when he’s not (just as I imagine the same is also true for most non-powered blind people.)  It’s a buildup of frustration that lets itself out at night when he’s being Daredevil, where his drive to show what he can really do often lands him in major trouble because he just never knows when to quit.  It’s an interesting dynamic that reminds me of the first season of Agent Carter.  Peggy similarly uses people’s underestimation of her to her advantage, blaming secret-spy-related absences on her period or laying on the “helpless woman” act to deflect any suspicion, and just like Matt, perpetuating these stereotypes benefits her but also aggravates her and makes her determined to prove once and for all that she’s not what people think of her.  With both characters, it’s a nice exploration of how perception works in society and effects people’s lives.

Favorite Characters: Foggy Nelson (Daredevil)

Foggy!  As far as non-powered best friends in Marvel shows go, he’s way up there.  Whenever all the Netflix properties cross over in The Defenders, can we get a scene of Foggy and Trish in a bar, commiserating over how messed-up Matt and Jessica are?  I’ve already covered that side of things, so today, we’re looking at the man himself (some Foggy-related spoilers.)

I’ve loved Foggy since the pilot, when, trying to turn Matt off of a beautiful woman, says, “…And she kind of told me she thinks blind people are ‘God’s mistake’?”  He’s provides some stellar (and much-needed) comic relief with irreverent comments like the above, along with flashes of goofiness, a self-deprecatingly-false cocky routine, and fantastic reactions to insane situations.  In a lot of ways, he functions as an audience-insert character, commenting on the absurdity when the other characters get embroiled too deeply in it.

And comic relief is great, but the best comic-relief characters bring more than just that, and Foggy has plenty to offer.  As I’ve said, he’s fiercely loyal to and protective of Matt, but he also doesn’t blindly get in line and do what the superhero tells him to.  Matt has major issues, and Foggy’s not afraid of using tough love or truth bombs when his friend puts himself in danger.  His long history with Matt also helps ground our hero.  Their easy banter, irritated bickering, and hard-truths shouting matches hit all the right notes.

A lot of this is down to Foggy (and former Bash Brother Elden Hansen, who plays him) – he tends to work great with whoever the show puts him with.  He and Karen together have variously felt like Scoobies, legal comrades in arms, and friends against the world, and I love his scenes with Claire.  There’s just something about Foggy and the way he plays off of other people.

Did I mention that he’s a pretty awesome lawyer?  He goes up against some awfully big fish with very few resources and, given Matt’s penchant for leaving him in the lurch due to superhero business, often very little help.  But Foggy works it out.  He gets the jump on powerful people, he can find the smallest thread to cling to and keep a case alive, and in season 2’s big case, he pulls out some incredible lawyering practically on the fly.  As Matt lets Nelson & Murdock down time and again in a huge, high-profile, enormous-stakes case, Foggy just keeps on doing his job

I also like that he gets really nervous about all this stuff and that his confidence in his abilities can be shaky.  First, it shows that, even though he jokes around a lot, he’s very invested in his clients and wants to do right by them.  Second, it reminds you just how hard all of it is – what Foggy’s pulling off is no cakewalk.  And finally, it makes you root for him that much harder when he digs deep and pulls off an amazing save. 

In a genre where the hero’s everything tends to overshadow everyone else’s everything else, Foggy – as a friend, a professional, and a person – is pretty great in his own right.

Relationship Spotlight: Matt Murdock & Foggy Nelson (Daredevil)

Realizing that Marvel has too much for me to only talk about in periodic write-ups, here’s a new regular feature:  Marvelous Wednesdays!  The MCU has a real way with depicting relationships between a superhero and their nonpowered friend.  Jessica and Trish, Steve and Bucky in the first Captain America, Peggy and Jarvis (although, in their case, the “super” part isn’t required,) and here, Matt and Foggy.  Much love for these two, who might get the deepest examination of this type of relationship.  Some Foggy-Matt-related Daredevil spoilers, including season 2.

The early episodes of the series quickly and clearly set up Matt and Foggy’s dynamic.  They’ve been through the trenches of law school together and are now ready to take on the world as defense attorneys looking out for the little guy.  They’re quite the “little guys” themselves; even though they know their stuff and aren’t afraid to mess with the big dogs, their operation looks decidedly ramshackle, what with their tiny, bare offices, their sole employee, and their zero dollars.  Still, they’re undaunted by what they don’t have and instead focus on what they can do.  Both give each other the sort of hard time that only best friends can, but both also know how to buckle down and give it their all when it comes to helping out someone in trouble.

However, Matt and Foggy are different from the other duos mentioned above in a key way:  at the start of the series, Foggy doesn’t know that Matt puts on a mask at night and fights gangsters.  He’s completely in the dark about Matt’s superpowers, and when he accidentally discovers the truth in the middle of season one, it’s rough.  He’s of course hurt by all the secrets Matt has kept from him, he’s naturally concerned for Matt’s safety, and he worries about the drive within Matt that makes him dish out such a brutal, self-determined brand of justice.  The revelations knock him over, and it takes time for them to get to any sort of good place again.

Even as Foggy struggles to reconcile Matt’s secret life, however, he can’t stop caring.  He gives Matt raw diatribes on how much his ever-present worry for Matt is tearing him up, but he still rushes in whenever Matt is hurt, dragging his bleeding friend home and helping to patch him up.  He puts himself in incredible danger at times to make sure Matt is safe.  Part of it is simply the depth of their friendship, but I imagine that part of it is also the fact that Foggy can’t shake the impression he’s developed over the years of Matt being slightly more in need of looking after.  Not that Foggy ever really patronized Matt or treated him with kid gloves due to his disability, but it’s clear in the little things that he’s accustomed to “helping out.”  Matt holds Foggy’s arm when they walk down busy sidewalks together, and Foggy frequently serves as his informal audio describer, filling him on visual details like someone’s facial reactions.  Although Matt’s powers essentially nullify his blindness and then some, I think Foggy’s gut still thinks of Matt as that guy, the one who needs an extra hand.  (In truth, I think any friend of a superhero would display much the same level of concern, but I think this particular detail gives the show more room to explore it.)

By the end of season two, I’m not quite sure where things will go moving forward with Matt and Foggy.  Their friendship has been put through the ringer, personally and professionally, and as much as Foggy still cares, he realizes he can over take so much of Matt putting himself in danger.  I hope things work out for our favorite avocados at law, and I suspect they probably will in the end, but it might be a long time coming.

Daredevil (2015-Present)

After a shaky start with the first episodes of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Marvel has definitely gotten the hang of this TV business.  For Marvel shows, I still prefer Agent Carter, because awesomeness, but Daredevil, the first of several Marvel properties to debut on Netflix this year, is another knockout for the brand.  (It’s also worlds better than the 2003 pre-MCU movie, but it wouldn’t have taken much to manage that.)

In a universe with super serums and gods from other planets, Matt Murdock got his powers the old-fashioned way:  being exposed to nuclear waste during a childhood accident.  The incident blinded him, but it boosted his other senses to superhuman levels.  He can eavesdrop on conversations blocks away and hear a lie in someone’s changing heartbeat, he knows how recently someone fired a gun from the smell of the residue on their hands, and put together, his abilities create a pretty thorough impression of the world around him.  Fueled by his laundry list of issues, which range from Catholic guilt to an inability to block out the suffering he hears all over Hell’s Kitchen, Matt begins to head down the vigilante route.  By day, he’s an ethical lawyer in a fledgling practice, and by night, he serves beat-downs to gangsters and lowlifes.

Is it a little eye-rolling that a blind man’s power is super-heightened senses?  Of course – when are we going to get a disabled superhero whose power in no way cancels out their disability?  (I vote for pyrokinesis.  That’s always a good one.)  Still, I like the inventive ways the show uses Matt’s abilities.  It’s far more varied and interesting than the 2003 movie, which spends most of its time showing us how Matt “sees” echolocation-style.  The show also really demonstrates how Matt’s abilities do more than just put him on a level playing field with his sighted adversaries; like any superhero, able-bodied or otherwise, he’s legitimately “super.”

Additionally, Matt more than earns his moniker.  I love the way we see how reckless he is, how he barrels into hugely dangerous situations without any sort of armor or protection, and how much punishment he lets his body take before retreating.  The action is both impressive and brutal, a lot grittier than the typical Marvel fare.  Likewise, the story goes to some pretty dark places, in the plot as well as in Matt’s personal journey as a character. 

Charlie Cox, who I saw earlier this year in The Theory of Everything, does a nice job as Matt, skillfully driving home the “lone wolf with a death wish” angle.  Vincent D’Onofrio joins the proceedings as Matt’s chief antagonist, and Rosario Dawson has a decent recurring role.  The real revelation for me, though, is Elden Henson as Matt’s legal partner Foggy.  That’s right, the former Bash Brother from The Mighty Ducks is just fantastic.  Right from the pilot, when he’s not-so-subtly trying to turn Matt off of the pretty woman Foggy is after, his delivery of, “And she kinda told me she thinks blind people are ‘God’s mistake?’” makes me love him forever. 

Nitpick, though – why does no one mention the fact that Daredevil’s mask doesn’t have eyeholes?  We know why, obviously, but nobody wonders what’s up with that?

Warnings

Some fairly serious violence, dark themes, swearing, drinking and drug use, and sexual content.