Daredevil Born Again s2 e1: The Team Empire Take

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0:35Chris Hewitt:In the MCU criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The devil of Hell's Kitchen, who beats up the bad guys, and the mayor of New York, who is a bad guy, huh? These are their stories. Bang, bang. Well, I've been watching a lot of Law & Order recently. Anyway, hello, pod. I'm Chris Hewitt. Welcome. We're back. Hey. We are back, back, back, back. It is a brand new season of Daredevil Born Again, aka Law & Order MCU. And here we are, joined by two colleagues of such lethal cunning in the pod booth. Helen O 'Hara is here. Hello. And James Dyer is here.

1:21Chris Hewitt:I am. And we are going to be talking about episode one of the second season of Born Again, written by Dario Escarno-Panay and directed by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson. I guess the best way to do it is to jump in. Okay. Jump straight in. General reactions to episode one, please. Helen. Hi. So remember last season when my big complaint was that that didn't feel like a season finale, that just felt like an episode? Yes. This one doesn't feel like the start of a season. This just feels like a follow-on from the last episode. And you know why? Because that's what they were. And I do feel like after a six-month break or whatever, no longer, it might be helpful to have had a bit more of a recap than we got.

2:08Chris Hewitt:It was a 17-minute recap. I mean, it didn't feel very comprehensive. And I just, I really, like, there's so many characters. There's so many things going on. I'd totally forgotten about the serial killer dying in the psychiatrist's office. Genuinely. How could you possibly forget about that? And Dr. Heather Glenn, the most Scottish character in the history of film and television. I just, I like, I don't think I cared about her last season. And I still don't. I think I might care about her more this season. I've only seen episode one. Okay. But I think I might care about her more because she's been through something.

2:47Chris Hewitt:She's not just a character who's there to bump uglies with Matt Murdock. Yeah, I mean, she is now having visions of said serial killer. Hello. Not vision. Okay. She's having... It's a different show. Yeah, delusions, if you like, of said serial killer, which is, I guess, an interesting thing. But I just felt like there was a lot that they assumed I remembered, and I frankly didn't. You personally, yeah. I personally did not. What was here was good fight scenes, obviously, as we'd expect from this show, I think. Some excitement with the sinking of the ship.

3:24Chris Hewitt:Helen's not conveying, I can tell. Did you like the last season? I can't remember. I was a little bit mixed. I love these characters. You know I'm very invested in both Matt Murdock and Daredevil and also in Kingpin and his relationship with Vanessa. Love them. I just feel like there's so much else going on. There's so many wheels turning and so many characters I'm expected to be invested in without necessarily being given always a good reason to invest in all of them. I think as much as the show requires me to do. Like every character in Fisk's office seems to be potentially leading to little story arcs or tragedies of their own.

4:09And you have to keep track of all those. And we've got more people coming in all the time. We have to keep track of the poor guys from the ship who are now on the run. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on. It's a lot going on, yeah. So that's my big, I guess, hesitation, is sometimes I just miss the lightness. I think we do miss Foggy Nelson quite a bit.

4:33Chris Hewitt:Well, Bullseye didn't. Yeah. Oh, too soon. It's literally too soon. I don't think it is too soon. I think he got what was coming to him. Wow. He was literally trying to put away bad guys. This season he's replaced by Seymour. Oh, my God. It took a second, and the three other old people listening to this, I'm sure will enjoy that. I want an episode now where Matt Murdock is chased by the kingpin, and they're both in a runaway bathtub. that would be amazing Last of Summer Wine Helen right wait James made a British terrestrial TV reference but also a sitcom as well I know because when Foggy left Last of Summer Wine she's not listening but when Foggy left Last of Summer Wine he was replaced for a few series not seasons a few series by another character called Seymour who was shit so suddenly Seymour if you will came in suddenly Seymour and then he was eaten by a giant plant.

5:33Chris Hewitt:And then I think Foggy came back and then there was a four. Seymour didn't leave. Oh, there were quite, there were so many cast changes in that show. Like far more than I remembered actually. I think of Vanessa as the Nora Batty of the Daredevil series. She would never, she would never have stockings that drew. No, she would never ladder in her stockings. No, that's fair. Absolutely not. That's just not a thing that would happen. Although Kingpin when he looks at her and he looks at Vanessa he does do that compo face. He wouldn't mind, would he? But anyway, anyway Jimbo are you a little bit more predisposed towards this show it is about a bald power hungry psychopath that is true it strikes quite close to home it's like looking at a mirror only not I did watch and enjoy the first season of this I found it quite ponderous and also I think the joins were tricky because you had the tonal irregularities because you had the kind of carcass of what the show was originally when the original show Yeah, when it was episodic and it was basically a procedural series.

6:34It was Law & Order MCU. Indeed, yeah. And then you had the kind of serialized beast that they turned it into. And as Helen said, the reason it didn't have a finale is because it didn't have a finale. And this is literally just a... This is what you would consider like a mid-season break, isn't it? This is not a second season. This is the continuation of that first season. And therefore, it starts very much in media res. You're like, oh, fuck, what the hell happened? And so it is quite jarring. I however have been enjoying this season a lot more than the first one because I think a lot of the sort of the last vestiges of what it used to be were kind of front loaded.

7:08So I think it's kind of hit its stride a little bit for me. There are a few inconsistencies for me. I really enjoy the Frank Castle-ness of the first season. I mean I love that character. I love the Punisher. And I love the way Jon Bernthal plays it. But he was so present at the end of the first season. And then the first episode of season two, he's nowhere. And it just feels like that. That feels like a very strange gear shift to go from maximum Punisher to absent Punisher. Especially when they're talking about the anti-vigilante task force

7:38Chris Hewitt:and you have the ultimate vigilante. And they're all wearing the Punisher skull on their armor. It is a bit jarring because the first season was so built around the police, the ice. Sorry, not ICE. ABTF. The Anti-Vigilante Task Force. I knew I got the wrong initials. I don't know where ICE came from, but they idolized him and they were made in his image and then he was so repulsed by that and then he takes it out on them and then at the end of the last season, doesn't he get captured by them but then he's about to get free again. And I know he's got his own spinoff, which was just confirmed this week, The Punisher, One Last Kill, which is somewhat misleading as he's also going to show up in Spider-Man, Brand New Day, this July, but his absence in this does not make the heart grow fonder.

8:28No, it doesn't. I missed him an awful lot. One thing I did find about watching this is that it's quite like the, shall we say, the allegory to contemporary situations across the pond are not exactly fucking subtle. And the point is they're actually very, very pointed, because the AVTF who are essentially the criminal politicians personal paramilitary force knocking down tours basically arresting people putting them in detention facilities riding roughshod over the rules and regulations being told specifically the rules don't apply to you you don't have to worry about due process I mean there were hints of it like the first season wasn't hugely subtle but it feels a much more pointed and overt in the second series but also it's more distressing because so much has happened since then and it's all so much more extreme.

9:21Actually watching this made me quite uncomfortable. Like I was like, oh my God, it made me quite depressed. It is. Yeah, I think it is depressing, but I think that's, you know, I don't, this was actually filmed obviously before it became as bad as things have been. And that's the wild thing. Which is crazy. I do think that there is a, that the show almost underestimates resistance. Actually, if anything, you know, you've got Fisk filming these videos essentially ads saying, hey, everyone loves this, everybody's happy with this. But I think from what we've seen in the last few months, if you did try to put in a curfew on New York of all places, so that these guys would be able to run roughshod over people's rights, I think there would be a lot more resistance than this show shows us.

10:06I think, you know, what we've seen is it wouldn't be a small handful of cops and Matt Murdock, it would be crowds of people in the streets fighting for their rights. And so there is, in some ways, the show is more gloomy than real life, which I guess is some kind of comfort? Question mark? Yeah. I mean, not to obviously make our spoiler specials political, which is not what we're trying to do, but this is part of the fabric of what this show is, and it is the commentary of what this show is trying to convey. So I think we have to touch on this stuff.

10:36Chris Hewitt:Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, because we haven't interviewed Dario. I keep saying Scardipane, but it might be Scardipane. I've actually never heard his name said out loud, so it may be Dario I don't know but I haven't interviewed him yet for this podcast but I have read other things where he said that yes that well you know it's not entirely 100 % intentional it's just coincidence it's just you know bad timing but also for the third season of this show that they're going to pull that back a lot and that if that is the case that's that's I was going to say disappointing I think we need things like this if you can call this show art and fuck it, I'm doing it, to say something, to take a stand these days, especially in this world where so many corporations are owned by people who may have vested interests.

11:26Chris Hewitt:I do not want to get political that much, but sometimes the material demands it. And it would be disappointing if punches were pulled going forward. It depends why, I guess. Yeah. It depends why they are. If higher-ups are nervous. Yeah, if higher-ups are nervous, that's worrying. But if it's just them going, wow, we are now depressed by our own show. This is too much. And it also feels like we've become didactic because we didn't expect reality to reflect our art in this way, then that's totally a valid reason to try and move it to a different level of the show. But beyond political commentary, there's something about this that just works dramatically because it's the lack of accountability, the lack of adherence to the rules-based order, the fact that essentially the criminal is now in charge of the law and the old rules and the old laws don't apply.

12:13And everything we thought we understood about the social compact doesn't exist anymore. And there's a part of you that just almost atavistically rebels, like recoils from that idea that the rules-based order has broken down to this extent. And so it almost has a post-apocalyptic vibe because it's no longer the world that we recognize. And I think that's a really interesting place to then have to put Daredevil in and have him kind of then wrestle with the morality of how to deal with this situation. Especially as a lawyer. So his professional life has been about applying for justice and trying to get justice for those who otherwise might not be able to get justice because they were too poor or whatever else.

12:51He's always been about those pro bono cases and everything else. And then in his nightlife, that has also been about a kind of justice. It has been about doing what the law cannot and taking it further than the law can. So it does make, you're right, it makes a huge amount of sense for this character to be put in this particular flavor of lawless situation. But it does also, yes, reflect what, you know, Gen Xers, millennials have been going through for the last sort of five years. And what, God bless them, Gen Z, have never known, you know, a stable order increasingly in their adult lives. And I think there are really, really fascinating things to be discussed there.

13:33But I do think I can understand why the filmmakers or the showrunners might begin to feel like we are just, it feels less like we're saying stuff and more like we're just poking at specific people. And that is less powerful a lot of the time and less effective a lot of the time. So again, that's where I think you have to work on your art. And this is not a criticism because they didn't know life was going to go the way it has gone since they shot this.

14:00Chris Hewitt:Yeah, also you just can't keep going out in circles, right? I mean, it would be disappointing, I think, if we got to season three of the show and it was still the anti-vigilante task force and Matt still going up against him. He's still in hiding. Things have to change. The status quo has to be challenged. I think it will be challenged. I think this episode doesn't particularly advance the story. I will say, you know, I have not seen. Wilson say. Beyond this, thank you. I haven't seen beyond this episode, but I would not be surprised. I haven't seen any trailers for this either. I've kind of, I've stayed away from stuff like that.

14:34Chris Hewitt:But, you know, there's a very famous Daredevil arc where Matt gets outed to the world. And it wouldn't surprise me if that's what happens at some point in this season. That, you know, Matt Murdock is revealed as Daredevil. And how are things, and then how does that change things for him going forward? I mean, enough people know he's Daredevil at the moment already, right? There are more characters in the show who know that he's Daredevil than there are who don't. But I don't know. I like the possibility of us going back to a, you know, legal case of the week a little bit. I think they've jettisoned that.

15:09Chris Hewitt:I think that was the idea of the original showrunners. And I did quite like that one or two episodes where you got to see him in court. That's what made She-Hulk fun as well. Yeah, and I'm not saying that there can't be a bit of an arc overall as well and you can get into some big ideas and some big sort of continuing stories. but also to have a little bit of courtroom action would actually be pretty cool because it's something that Matt Murdock can do that not all you know Frank Castle can't and other you know street level Marvel characters can't do apart from She-Hulk so it just would it would just seem fun to me it just I feel like conspiracy we've had that in Falcon and the Winter Soldier we've had that in Secret Wars you know whatever it was called Secret Invasion I forgot that show existed I have tried hard so here we are.

15:56But you know, we've had this in kind of a lot of those kind of other Marvel projects. Legal Thriller is something that they could have done. Anyway.

16:05Chris Hewitt:And they might still be able to do it. They might still. The genie might still go back in the bottle, you know. He might do, that wasn't me, it was a life model decoy. I don't know, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's where they're going with this. Can I make a slight criticism of his powers in this episode? Of course. I feel like he's getting more to the point of having a spidey sense than having super hearing. I feel like a lot of the time he seems to be, you know, focusing in on signs which are not in themselves particularly suspicious and that just tell him that somebody's about to attack him or whatever else.

16:39And I just, I feel like this, yeah, it's a fine line because he does have a superpower, but equally it's just hearing guys and he's hearing everything all the time and he has to filter some of it out. And I'm not clear why he's not filtering out some of these out. I will say, though, I very much enjoyed the super hearing aspect ratio changes. Oh, I love that.

16:59Chris Hewitt:It fills the screen when he's listening, and then when he zooms on it, it really narrows down. Yeah, that was great. Fantastic stuff. Loved that. But what is your main quibble with that, Ben? I'm just saying, there are some moments where very innocent sounds seem to alert him that something is going wrong. And I am suspicious that they are essentially treating it like a spidey sense. And it doesn't entirely seem to make sense to me. I understand about heart rates and stuff, but not everything. There's also a great moment where Karen just gives him a look, and he goes, well, I have to believe that.

17:34He's talking about believing in justice, basically, and he has apparently heard her look. He can hear a side eye. Yeah, despite there being basically no sound in the room that would, you know.

17:46Chris Hewitt:I liked how MSJ did it in the Daredevil movie, where we got to see he was basically like a bat. he was sending out echolocation. And he could almost see people's faces because of the various sounds that were being bounced off their faces. So just to be clear on Daredevil's skill set, is that the only power he has? Is he in any way stronger, faster, more agile? He's not stronger. No. It's not just advanced hearing either. All of his other senses are enhanced to compensate, including taste and touch. which is fucking useless I will lick you and know your inner secrets you can see why Karen wants to come back to me oh god come on now but yeah he's you know yeah so he obviously doesn't have sight but he has what are the other five senses four senses are there five senses or four senses oh god he can see dead people that's a success walking around like regular people so he's got touch taste smell smell and sound.

18:50Chris Hewitt:Yes. Hearing. Hearing. Hearing. Thank you. Sound. Sound. He has sound. God. Oh, boy. We fail science. That's impossible. But yeah, that's what he's got. Yeah. And then he was trained, as he says in the first episode, by a near psychotic sensei, Stick. Yeah. Who has trained him to fight. With a stick. Yes. To fight the hand and his various fingers. oh boy yeah what do you think of the action scenes in this? there aren't that many but they were pretty at the end like again it's like that that serious weird because we like Cherry and when Cherry gets attacked by the task force at the end they're basically torturing and beating the shit out of him and Daredevil comes in I thought it was interesting that A, I like the action because it's quite visceral it's quite messy like it's not it doesn't feel clinical or false it feels quite real but Daredevil gets his ass handed to him quite a lot yeah he does he takes a pace he's rubbish yeah he's a bit shit yeah he really does where's Luke Cage when you need him or indeed Jessica Jones indeed who we know is in this season because she's been heavily trumpeted Kristen Ritter coming back but I thought she was going to be in this this episode to be honest I would have thought so too but I guess not yeah I like the action season I did want to say one thing which is I was having a chat with Amon Warman of this parish and he was very excited about Daredevil's you know, fancy new black uniform and I'm like, he's got a fancy new black uniform?

20:27Chris Hewitt:Yeah. And I literally, because they lit so much of that boat action scene in red and or very low light, I totally hadn't noticed that it was a new uniform. He's kind of painted it black and it's got, but he's left the two D's on the front. That's the bit that he hasn't. Double D's, is it? He's a double D chest. I wouldn't have thought so. He looks flatter than that. Really? Okay. But yeah, it's cool. I quite like his new little stealth paint job. No disrespect. It's a very nice suit. I'm just saying, if you want to showcase his cool new black suit, maybe don't use red light. I'm just saying, I saw it from the off.

21:06I was like,

21:07Chris Hewitt:that looks cool. And he's got the comics accurate DD logo as well. So yeah. I was good. I'm very much an original red suit fanboy, but yeah, I like when he mixes it up a little bit. That's good. He's got to move around, right? He's got to be a bit more stealthy, because he and Karen are in hiding. They're in hiding. They are. Yeah. I'll be honest with you. I didn't rewatch the final episode of the previous season. I remember Debra Ann Wall coming back into it. I don't remember them re-establishing the relationship. Yeah. But that's clearly something that happened. He was like, Dr. Heather Glenn can get to fuck.

21:54Chris Hewitt:I'm gonna knock boots with Karen Page. Okay, Karen. But he loves her. Yeah, he does. He does. And Foggy's hilarious death came between them. Oh, you monster. What? came between them and now they're back together again. They belong together. I have to say, I was convinced that she was going to get a bullet through the brain through this entire episode. I'm like that with pretty much anyone who gets close to Matt Murdock. I think that they're going to get killed at some point. At the end, I thought, oh, the cherry's dead. Yeah, but he's, well, he's got a heart attack. Heart attack. Heart attack is serious.

22:36Very serious.

22:37Chris Hewitt:Yeah, very, like a serious heart attack. Yeah. In fact. Yeah. Well, fingers crossed for him. We shall see. Yeah. We shall see. But yeah, that action scene at the end was really, really good. And it's one of the reasons why I thought that they were going to maybe go down the Matt Murdock being unfailed as Daredevil route in this season because Matt Murdock gets unfailed as Daredevil in that scene. He does. Just for the AVTF agents to get iced almost instantly by a mysterious benefactor. could it possibly be? Someone with real good aim. He bullseyeed those guys. It was Luke Littler, the world darts champion.

23:19Chris Hewitt:No, of course it wasn't. But that was a really good sequence. I enjoyed that. Yeah, that was pretty cool because I was very worried when, yes, they took his mask off. I'm like, how are they going to get him out of this one? And of course the answer was kill them all. Yes. So, well done him. But Matt wouldn't kill them all. No, of course. Not him. Because he'd have to do three Hail Marys. Yeah. Frank, on the other hand. I think you'd get more than that. Yeah. Frank would. Yeah. Oh, I miss Frank. So do I. Miss Frank. Yeah. Possibly for different reasons. Anyway, what about swordsmen? Why do they care so much about swordsmen?

23:47Speaking of swordsmen, sorry, Harold. Wow. Oh, my God.