Daredevil Season 2 Binge Review: Great Characters Overcome Unfocused Storytelling

When Daredevil's first season hit Netflix last year, it set a new standard for television superhero shows, particularly Marvel shows. The action scenes were unlike any other show on TV (though I've heard the Cinemax show Banshee also has standard setting action scenes), and not only put all other superhero shows to shame, they put many of the movies to shame as well. What drove the show more than anything was that it had such a strong sense of the story it wanted to tell. The fight between Daredevil and Wilson Fisk, each believing that they are saving Hell's Kitchen, was compelling and well told. There were few spots where the show lagged, and the characters were able to shine because the storytelling never got in their way.

Daredevil's second season suffers from a very unfocused story, and a lot of that is the fault of the platform it appears on. Netflix (and more recently Amazon and Hulu) has built a brand on the idea of binge watching shows, and therefore many of their shows become thirteen hour movies, as opposed to network or cable shows which generally are tasked with making each episode interesting enough to keep viewers coming back week after week. Shows like The CW's iZombie or The Flash, for example, manage to combine weekly cases/villains while still working toward a season long goal. Barry's current mission to stop the villain Zoom on The Flash, or Liv's attempts to investigate Max Rager's role in the zombie outbreak on iZombie give the entire season purpose, but they don't keep those shows from producing excellent individual episodes.

Watching the second season of Daredevil, there were very few "the episode where [fill in the blank] happens" type episodes and what few their were appeared in the first four or five episodes of the season. The episode where Daredevil and the Punisher pontificate about whether or not it is morally justifiable to kill criminals, and the episode where Matt and Karen go on a date are the two that stand out. During those episodes I found a lot to like in the show, just like I did during season one. The problem is, once Elektra is introduced as a character, the show's story becomes a mess. This isn't Elektra's fault; she can actually be a fairly interesting character in her own right, and Elodie Yung does a pretty good job of portraying her.

The show never figures out how to organically fit Elektra or the plot about The Hand that she brings with her, into the existing story. It takes the show three episodes to explain why Elektra is even in Hell's Kitchen, and then the show proceeds to focus the remaining episodes on the joyless task of destroying Matt Murdock's personal life, and presenting unsuccessful "shocking" twists about who Elektra really is. It's hard to watch the latter part of the season and not feel like condensing the number of episodes would have helped bring the show a little more focus, because it's pretty clear that Netflix's "thirteen episode season" rule forced the writers to stretch out a story that they didn't quite know what to do with in the first place.

All of that being said, the show still has a lot going for it. Most of that is that these characters are interesting enough to carry the show no matter how messy the plot becomes. Karen and Foggy's side plot lines were both odd and mostly fruitless, but it gave the show an excuse to keep Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson around, who are arguably two of the show's biggest assets. I've read complaints that Daredevil himself isn't an interesting lead, but I find his moral idealism to be refreshing when so many dark superhero shows/movies are portraying their characters as caring very little for human life. His speech about every human life having a light was a particularly great moment, and his fight scenes are no less impressive than the first season. The Punisher was an interesting addition to the show, but it was smart not to make the entire season "The Punisher vs. Daredevil," because that would have been exhausting. Overall, the show has a lot to improve on, but it still has strong enough characters to justify watching it.

Other thoughts on the season:

•  Having Karen move on to journalism as a career makes sense, but breaking up Nelson & Murdock to do so seems like the wrong direction to go in. The further the characters move apart, the less natural it seems for them to interact in the future. 
• Did Marvel force the show to have Foggy move on to the law firm that Jessica Jones freelances for as a way to potentially connect the two shows for The Defenders? 
• The season ended with far too many plot lines up in the air given that the show probably won't get a third season until after The Defenders, which probably won't air until 2018. 
• Having Matt expose his identity to Karen at the end of the show made no sense. He should have done that much earlier on in the season. The timing of it also made no sense. It seems like the writers just wanted to end the show on a cliffhanger instead of actually giving the show a reason for him to tell her. 
• I could have done without Wilson Fisk showing up at all. He was a fantastic villain in the first season, but here he just seemed like a half measure. 
• So if Elektra is The Hand's chosen one, why were they totally fine trying to kill her on multiple occasions? 
• Basically nothing about The Hand was actually explained by the end of the season. Are they going to be a villain in another Netflix/Marvel show, or are they just putting all of that on hold until the probable third season of this show?