The fifth and sixth episodes of Daredevil: Born Again, are “With Interest”, directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff and written by Grainne Godfree, and “Excessive Force”, directed by David Boyd and written by Thomas Wong. I am guessing some people will be divided on Daredevil this week, with some viewers deciding the first episode is too fluffy, while the second one is the DARK GRITTY EXPLORATION OF HUMAN DEPRAVITY. Others might think the second hour is a little too dark’n’gritty.
Personally I loved both.
I actually had to go back and watch part of “With Interest” over because I was having so much fun I forgot to take notes. The episode was cute with some nice character work—I really enjoyed the larger MCU tie-in, and I liked getting to see Matt be a hero in a fairly straightforward situation.
And “Excessive Force” is everything I want this show to be. The only complaint I have is that I wish it was about a half hour longer—or that this hour was the first half of a cliffhanger. But we’ll get into that in the spoiler section below.
A Quick Recap with Spoilers!
“With Interest” — It’s St. Patrick’s Day and Matty Murdock is neither wearing green, nor honoring his ancestors with a pint: he is at a bank trying to get a loan to expand the practice. And who is helping him but Mr. Yusef Khan, the father of Kamala Khan! (Who is in California, presumably on Young Avengers-related business.)
Mr. Khan talks more about Kamala than about Matt’s loan application. He also brags about Jersey City’s very own superhero, Ms. Marvel, coming right up to the edge of being like, “And she’s my daughter, rando who just walked in off the street!”
He keeps a fucking homemade Funko Pop of his daughter’s superhero persona on his desk.
I love Mr. Khan more than I love a lot of real, non-fictional people.
But Matt says he hasn’t heard of Ms. Marvel (is that true, or is he just actually trying to keep his superheroic identity fully hidden?), and then Mr. Khan regretfully turns him down, telling him that while helping the poor is good, it doesn’t make the law firm a terribly good investment for a bank.
As Matt leaves he overhears a ridiculously over-the-top Irish gang invade the bank, turns around and goes into his “I am but a helpless polite blind man” act, and blunders into the heist.
He disrupts the heist in small ways. First by explaining how much worse the gang’s prison sentence will be if anyone dies, then by refusing to leave when they try to send him out as a peace offering, insisting that another man take his place.
Already annoyed, the leader demands his name, and when he says “Matthew Murdock” the man laughs in frustration “not just a blind solicitor but an Irishman???” He asks where Matt’s family is from, and when Matt snaps back “Hell’s Kitchen” he laughs at him again and clarifies that he meant before “The Big Swim”. Matt, fudging his history slightly, says he grew up in an orphanage. (Which, sure, but weren’t you like 11 or 12 by that point, Matt? I remember you reading Thurgood Marshall to your dad.) The bank robber calls him a Dickens character, but also focuses all his anger on him, sending the other man out like Matt wanted, and promising that Matt will be sorry he’s stayed.
But then the only way I can read this episode is that Matt puts himself in danger intentionally, a couple times, keeping a stone face as the gang members hold guns to his face and his chest.
The gang leader goes into an office to speak with the cops, while another takes Mr. Khan downstairs to open the vault. Matt divides them further, getting another robber to take him to the bathroom, where we finally get a pretty good stairwell fight. Having incapacitated one man, Matty manages to get down to the vault just before the other guy shoots Mr. Khan. And then he cracks the vault’s intricate lock system, while talking to Mr. Khan about the difficulties of raising kids in this modern world.
There’s just one problem: the vault isn’t a vault, it’s a room full of safety deposit boxes. The gang member has a key in his pocket, and after many long tense moments (and a delightful scene of Charlie Cox breaking out a Belfast accents over a walkie talkie) Mr. Khan finds the right box so they’ll have something to take back up with them.
Outside, Detective Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian, aka Zheng Yi Sao from Our Flag Means Death!!!) tries to talk the gang leader into surrendering. She keeps up a deadpan “let’s just get everyone through this alive, buddy” schtick, and he lets her think she’s in control of the situation while seemingly having some piece of info that gives him the upper hand. But of course he didn’t account for Matt.
Matt comes up, shows everyone the diamond, tosses it to the robber, and just then the cops storm the bank and toss smoke bombs into the room. Matt takes two more robbers out in the ensuing chaos—one just as he’s getting a bead on one of the officers—but the leader slips into an office, changes into a cop uniform, and walks out the front door. Matt’s obviously not going to stand for that. He once again feigns helplessness, and once the cops send him outside to a medic he does his other classic move: turning a corner, folding his stick up, and breaking into a sprint to hunt down a bad guy. Whom he brutally takes down on a side street a few blocks away. I’m pretty sure he snaps the man’s leg in half? And I get the sense that gang leader only had a occasional acquaintance with violence, because does not fight back terribly well. And then I guess Matt just… leaves him there? To be found eventually?
Meanwhile the gang’s inevitable “inside person” discovers that the diamond has been swapped with a piece of butterscotch candy.
Matt goes to the bank to check on Mr. Khan, and ends up accepting an invitation to come out to Jersey City for dinner. (A thing we’d better see next season, writers. I need this.) After Matt leaves Mr. Khan finds the diamond placed carefully amongst the bowl of candies on his desk.
“Excessive Force” — The episode sets its tone immediately by showing us another BB Report of kids talking about graffiti artists, and sharing a video of “Swordsman”, right before a sanitation worker finds the corpse of one of Muse’s victims! Another worker (one of the hostages from previous episode’s bank robbery, actually) power-washing a mural. It’s one of Muse’s—this couldn’t possibly be connected with that corpse, could it?
Meanwhile, Matt’s sitting in his bedroom praying and holding Foggy’s Mass card—a thing that surprises Heather when she comes into the room. But wait, no time for an in-depth conversation about faith, because we have to check in with the Mayor’s office, as Shiela informs Fisk he’ll volunteer at Bowery Mission until 4:00, then back to Gracie Mansion, and then there’s some sort of children’s art event, and won’t that be fun.
Fisk is twitching more with each episode.
Now we’re back with Matt and Heather—she’s trying to get Matt to open up about being a hostage in the bank robbery. He assures her that he knew he was going to be OK, and she replies with “Faith” and then drops it. I thought she might interrogate him about whether he’s suddenly praying again because he thinks his faith got him through the bank robbery—when actually it was being Daredevil that got him through the bank robbery—but then she changes tack.
Which I thought was interesting.
Heather’s next book project is a book about the psychology of vigilante-ism. Her working title is Vigilantes: Why We Revere the Mask. Ah, so they’re about to talk about Daredevil after all, just in a different context. Heather muses aloud about whether the masks protect vigilantes, or whether we like them because they “allow us to act like animals.” Matt is super happy about this conversation.
Meanwhile, back in Mayorland, one of Fisk’s old “business” associates shows up and refuses to pay the 1.8 million he owes to another crime boss. Fisk twitches even more, and raises the man’s debt to 2.8 million. Luca makes the spectacularly interesting choice to say, into Wilson Fisk’s twitching face: “You’re out of the game, old man. Stay out of it.”
So at least somebody doesn’t have to plan for retirement.
But terrible life choices abound today, apparently, because right at this same moment, Heather asks Matt to help with her interviews for her book, specifically if he could set her up with his old client, Frank Castle. Matt laughs the first genuine laugh I’ve heard out of him all series. “The Punisher. You want to interview… The Punisher. That’s, uhhh… that’s a solid idea.”
It’s nice to know Matt can still be a catty bitch when the occasion calls for it.
But then Heather follows up with: “How about Daredevil? You’ve worked with him, right?”
Oh noooo Matty’s personal life and his secret identity are crashing into each other again! It’s almost as if the life he leads is impossible, oh noooooo…
I really enjoyed this episode.
Meanwhile, the sanitation worker we saw in the first scene, Johnny Santini, has arrived at Fisk’s office with an emergency. He tells Fisk he has “bad news and worse news” about the mural Fisk wanted removed, explaining that the paint isn’t coming off after all, but gets sidetracked talking about different solvents and epoxy to his increasingly agitated Mayor. Even Sheila loses patience and snaps: “Johnny! Tell him what you told me! The worse news?”
“Oh, oh right. Yeah, it’s blood. It’s made outta human blood.”
Matt’s attempt at actually doing his day job is interrupted by Angela del Toro. She believes her Tio Hector was onto something, that he was investigating disappearances along the old Q line. Naturally these disappearances haven’t been talked about by anyone official, but the people in Angela’s neighborhood know they’ve been happening for a while, and she’s coming to Matt for help.
But Matt doesn’t understand what she wants him to do.
She laughs harshly. “The police killed my uncle. I’m not going to them.”
Matt replies “OK fair. Fair enough.” because, to his credit, has never pushed back on Angela’s assertion that it was the cops who killed Hector. But then he follows up with “But what do you want me to do about it?” And Angela laughs scornfully in the way only a furious teen can. “How about literally anything.”
OUCH.
“Mister Murdock, Attorney-at-Law. Here to help the little guy—but only on your terms.”
DIRECT HIT.
And then Angela says the most ominous thing a teen in a superhero show can ever say: “Two days before he died, my Uncle Hector told me, ‘Don’t rely on anyone to do what you can do for yourself.’”
Fisk has a meeting with the police chief, where they confirm that there are at least twelve Muse murals, made up of the blood of as many as 60 victims.
This makes Fisk roar with laughter. Not because of the victims—he doesn’t care enough about them to laugh, come on—but because he finally has an easy way to break the police department. “When the sanitation figures out there’s a serial killer before the NYPD, maybe its time to switch up protocol,” he booms, and I fear for my fictional city.
That night:
- Two girls find Muse mid-painting, and ask to take his picture. This does not go the way they hope.
- Fisk attends a gala where the elite of New York City insult him to his face and refuse to fund his Red Hook project.
- PI Cherry pours Matt a glass of whiskey and tells him there’s a serial killer on the loose, with the chaser that he should let the police handle it. (Did you think that was going to work, Cherry, or are you trying to push him back onto the streets?)
- And Fisk sees the pictures of the two girls who have been murdered, and puts his plan into motion.
The next day he builds his “Anti-Vigilante Task Force”—a collection of the most corrupt and violent cops on the force, who are going to be armed to the teeth with everything except bodycams, and will answer only to Fisk. Their Mayor gives them an introductory pep talk that ends with the chilling words: “This city is yours.”
And of course, later that very same night, Angela ventures down into the abandoned Q train tracks to look for a serial killer, since no one else was going to help her neighborhood. She doesn’t get far.
Her aunt Soledad calls Matt, and then we get the best sequence of the series so far.
The show cuts between Matt, finding Muse in his underground lair and fighting him, as Angela’s blood drains out of her a few feet away, and Fisk, in his own underground lair, tossing Adam an axe, and fighting him.
Matt damn near kills Muse. He has a wire around his neck and is, in effect, hanging him. But then he hears Angela’s heart stop, and in an inversion of the first episode, that sound drags him back from the edge. He drops Muse, runs to Angela, and does chest compressions until she comes back to consciousness. (And yeah, the opening scene prayer does play in voiceover as he does this, which is HILARIOUS—but more on that below.)
Fisk does kill Adam. And then he sits in a shaft of glowing light, with a face of relief, regret, and joy—pretty evenly intermingled—as a choir sings in the background.
MAN is it ever fun when this show commits.
But our complicated hero gets the last word:
“Daredevil?” Angela whispers as she wakes up.
“It’s OK, I’m here,” he says. “I’m here.”
Grace
How great was that moment where Matt chokes a guy out with his thighs while leaning out over a stair railing to silently catch the man’s gun before it clattered to the floor??? The fight scenes were better here than in earlier episodes—they’re not quite as intricate as they were in the Netflix days, but they have much more weight and feel more potentially deadly.
I enjoyed Detective Kim’s joke, and the bank robber’s gradual, grudging laugh at it.
I really appreciate that the writers are building detailed worlds for their characters. It’s one thing to say a character is a “Catholic lawyer” and then give him a couple of stereotypical “Catholic” things to do and a couple of thin “lawyer moments” in a courtroom that no real lawyer would get away with. It’s another to have him actually debate carceral ethics with another attorney, as he did last week, and to recite an actual prayer to a specific saint, as he does this week.
To that point, the gradual introduction of Muse’s murals pays off really well in the conversations about how many victims he’s probably killed.
Once again: the common folk of New York are fed up. The cops aren’t doing their jobs, but meanwhile, people are thrown in terrible prisons for petty crimes. (Why did the cops spend so much time arresting Leroy Bradford over Fiddle Faddle while there’s a serial killer stalking Washington Heights???) In this context, Fisk’s election makes total sense—an act of desperation by a desperate people. And now we see that his “solution”, the Anti-Vigilante Task Force”, is only going to make things worse for everyone, including the people who voted for him.
Retribution
“With Interest” is a little too light—the inside person was pretty obvious, the idea that no one there was as violent as they were pretending to be, Matt repeatedly being able to talk them down, go to the bathroom, Mr. Khan stalling for an interminable amount of time with no consequences—it needed to be a little tighter and a little scarier, I think.
And in “Excessive Force”—um, Angela really shouldn’t be able to talk after what’s happened to her, right? Saintly intervention or no, that girl needs to be in an emergency room immediately.
Finally, as my beloved colleague Sarah pointed out, “Excessive Force” felt a bit patched together during the gala scenes, as it looks like Vanessa was somewhat shoehorned in—but I suppose they had to show us Vanessa to set up Fisk going HAM on Adam in the secret underground wine cellar.
But those aren’t too many complaints, overall I thought this week was fun as hell.
Fiorello’s Desk
It’s fun watching Fisk twitch and hold his rictus smile through the whole Gala, only to see him figure out a way to create his own private army by the end of the night.
And of course by the end of the episode, gloves both literal and metaphorical have come off, so I can’t wait to see what he does next.
How’s Lent Going, Matty?
Hang on before we even get into Matt’s whole drama: Excuse me, why the hell is Mayor Fisk going to do an afternoon of service work at Dorothy Day’s old mission on the Bowery???? ?
But yeah, apart from that, the show dives into Matt’s Catholicism here, maybe more even than the Netflix era show did—or at least more specifically. The episode opens on Matt holding Foggy’s mass card and praying, a specific prayer to St. Ivo of Ivo of Kermartin, the Patron Saint of Lawyers, who lived in Brittany in the second half of the 13th Century, and was canonized by Pope Clement VI in 1347.
(And yes I had to look this up, I’m a good half-assed former religion scholar, but I’m not that good.)
So, not a prayer for the dead, or for the bereaved, which user-friend Catholicism helpfully provides its followers. He’s not praying to get Foggy out of Purgatory, or to get himself out of mourning. He’s praying to be a good lawyer, while rubbing his thumb pensively not on a rosary but on his dead friend’s face.
A lot going on here!
What I liked in the scene is that Matt is thinking back through Karen, Foggy, Hector Ayala, the bank robber holding a gun to his head and his chest—a rapid fire catalogue of images of people he’s lost (or he feels he’s let down), and then moments when he was a breath away from dying. And then we see Fisk’s face during their diner meeting, and suddenly the images shift into all the fights he’s been in, culminating in him straight up trying to murder Bullseye as Foggy’s heart stopped.
An interesting thing to be thinking of!
What I didn’t like is that these scenes are for the audience, to show us what Matt’s feeling, since obviously this isn’t how he’d remember any of these scenes. I like what they’re trying to do, but it would have been even cooler to intersperse scenes of darkness punctuated by sound, or even the “world on fire” imagery that’s closer to how Matt experiences the world.
But still, I appreciated that this episode gives us Matt doing something that is hyper-specific to being a Catholic lawyer, beyond just “troubled guilty vigilante sits in a confessional.”
And then Heather walks in, and she’s surprised to see that Matt’s “checking in” as he puts it—which is also interesting, since he’s sure hiding lots of personal stuff from the girl who sleeps over sometimes!
But this is why I thought it was hilarious that this was what played over the scene of him rescuing Angela—why is he praying to a specific lawyer saint while he’s doing chest compressions? There are at least three other guys he should talk to before The Lawyer Saint!
Quotes!
“A leprechaun might pinch you!”
—Mr. Khan warns Matt Murdock about the dangers of forgetting your green on St. Patrick’s Day.
“I prefer it to Hoboken.”
“That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard anyone say about Jersey City.”
—Matt makes Mr. Khan’s day
“Rangers, Jets, and Mets!”
—Johnny Santini, telling Matt about his fandoms, and his signed Mark Messier hockey puck.
“Exactly what kind of a lawyer are you?”
—Mr. Khan, upon seeing Matt crack the bank vault.
“A really good one.”
—Matt, just being honest.
“You pray? Still?”
—Heather, to Matt, with a reasonable enough question, given everything.
“Oh, oh right. Yeah, it’s blood. It’s made outta human blood.”
—Johnny Santini, New York City Sanitation Worker, with the greatest line delivery I’ve ever heard.
“A lotta shitbags in the world sir.”
—a member of Fisk’s new Anti-Vigilante Task Force, deploying Frank Castle’s favorite pejorative.
Closing Argument
I enjoyed both of these quite a bit for different reasons! I kind of hope that they lean into the darker tone going forward, but it’s nice to see that Matt can be light—it’s cool if he ends up being a mentor to any of the Young Avengers later—but also it’s just nice to see Matty Murdock having a human conversation with someone as warm as Kamala Khan’s Abbu.
Oh and if Matt goes to the Khan’s for dinner that damn well better be an entire hour-long episode.