Spoilers Daredevil: Born Again (Spoilers)

[Thomas Shey]

I think diverging “common values” are an increasing problem for companies trying to create media for international audiences.

Although valuable jewels always have a dodgy provenance is a trope that goes all the way back to 1868. That's a lot of trope to try and ignore the weight of.

Honestly, a single valuable lapidary stone in a safe deposit box--not a piece of jewelry, just the stone--is odd one way or another.

Edit: Just noticed it was apparently a diamond; I thought not for some reason, but it doesn't really change my point.

 

[Thomas Shey]

yeah the Irish Mobster has ordered his guys to steal the diamond because its worth $1.8M- its not explained how he knows its there.

Yeah the Echo mind whammy thing is weird. With Fisk running for mayor it initially looks like he has changed post-Echo and wants to do better. Of course Matt doesn't believe it, Vanessa is tolerating it and the various gangs are muttering. I think this thread has already revealed that his change doesnt look genuine

I don't think its that odd; its easy to read it as he was resistant to her attempt and psychological healing (which he very clearly was), but it still had at least some degree of transient impact.

 

[Thomas Shey]

It's like, did they edit the episode to remove him actually executing a hostage or something? Which might have given this the sort of appropriate "avenging angel" moral weight?

Given we know parts of the show were reshot, and reportedly part of it was that the product they got was even darker than they wanted, this doesn't seem improbable.

 

[Stalker0]

I think this thread has already revealed that his change doesnt look genuine

You could argue that Fisk is approaching the Mayor position in a genuine desire to do better, to really help the city. He isn't doing it for money or power (you could argue he had more when he was in full Kingpin status). Its just that he is infuriated by the slow pace of politics, and its so much more easy and expedient to fall back to old ways that can get things done so quick....but of course come with their own costs.

 

[Stalker0]

They definitely are, but the big moral weirdness in this episode is that the badguy isn't very bad, possibly just because the writers screwed up and made him merely make a lot of threats and never even attempt to carry them out, yet gets horrific scarring and life-changing injuries (you don't ever fully recover from a leg injury like that - also slightly problematic that it's pretty similar to the kind of injuries that NI sectarian militias inflict on civilians who have angered them and I feel like a writer who understands NI as well as this one purports to should probably have known that) because Daredevil assaults him for essentially no reason whatsoever! He wasn't carrying the jewel, Daredevil knows that! He wasn't committing any kind of violent or public-endangering crime. He was merely getting away - something DD has let criminals do on other occasions, including ones who have actually done stuff!

Like, if he still had the gem, I could see a very basic if questionable logic to stopping him to get it back - but he didn't! If he was going to go kill someone or something, absolutely, beat the heck out of him. But "he's getting away!!!" isn't moral justification to scar and cripple a man. You're not a cop, Daredevil! Don't act like the worst kind of one!

Adding to the weirdness literally nothing in the show suggests he was handed in to the cops even.

I frame this as.... DD has been bottling up all of his anger and hurt for a long while now, and when he finally lets some of it out by putting a mask back on....it explodes. He is not in full control, that is the struggle Matt is dealing with and why he gave up the mask in the first place.

Matt and Fisk are similar in that both don't know how to deal with their anger outside of violence. Matt tries religion but its never a perfect solution for him. So the question that boils beneath the surface, when Matt puts on the mask is he really doing it for justice...or because its the only way he gets to deal with all of that anger.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I frame this as.... DD has been bottling up all of his anger and hurt for a long while now, and when he finally lets some of it out by putting a mask back on....it explodes. He is not in full control, that is the struggle Matt is dealing with and why he gave up the mask in the first place.

Matt and Fisk are similar in that both don't know how to deal with their anger outside of violence. Matt tries religion but its never a perfect solution for him. So the question that boils beneath the surface, when Matt puts on the mask is he really doing it for justice...or because its the only way he gets to deal with all of that anger.

That would make complete sense but the show completely fails to frame it like that! So it remains hard-work headcanon! (Not saying there's anything wrong with headcanon! Just that the writers probably didn't intend it).

You'd want some scenes of him either like getting visibly worked up beforehand, or really freaking out afterwards, and maybe showing how badly mauled the guy was, and making it a bit obvious that something deeply messed-up had happened, rather than just cutting abruptly as the fight ends. And then worse, the next scene we see him in, he isn't messed up at all, he's have a cheeky cheery fun conversation with Kamala's dad and cheekily returning the diamond in a fun comedy way! It's practically 1960s Batman levels of silly. After he just horrifically scarred a man (barely and only accidentally avoiding blinding him in one eye) and broke his leg in probably multiple places (which could also have easily severed an artery!)!

That's a huge tonal mismatch that indicates they didn't want us to think of the fight as the "beast inside" coming out, but rather that it was a "justified takedown of a criminal" or something. It's that weird empathy-less writing you sometimes see from Hollywood, where badguys are solely props, no matter how developed their character, but that's a also a mismatch for the Catholic guilt and general vibes of DD (especially with the explicit Kingpin comparisons).

What's even weirder is they had an opportunity to course-correct next episode, when they have Matt looking troubled, praying about justice and flashing back. They could have had him like, wince as he remembered what he did to that guy. But instead it's just "I failed to save Foggy", and the only bank robbery stuff he flashes back to is being threatened by shotgun guy (red mask) and fighting him, not mauling this dude.

 

[Thomas Shey]

You could argue that Fisk is approaching the Mayor position in a genuine desire to do better, to really help the city. He isn't doing it for money or power (you could argue he had more when he was in full Kingpin status). Its just that he is infuriated by the slow pace of politics, and its so much more easy and expedient to fall back to old ways that can get things done so quick....but of course come with their own costs.

Yeah, he wants things better, and thinks the mayor position is how to do that--but he's used to the approaches you can take as a gang boss, and they just aren't the same.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That would make complete sense but the show completely fails to frame it like that! So it remains hard-work headcanon! (Not saying there's anything wrong with headcanon! Just that the writers probably didn't intend it).

I dunno, man, the parallelism in the final scenes with Fisk and Matt seem to show that pretty well.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I dunno, man, the parallelism in the final scenes with Fisk and Matt seem to show that pretty well.

I'm talking about episode 5 specifically.

Fisk does not appear in episode 5 at all. Episode 6 is where they explicitly parallel Matt and Fisk fighting, but in that episode, Matt inflicts considerably less horrific injuries on his opponent, and whilst he does attempt to hang him, he's doing so to a huge serial killer (indeed he would be the worst serial killer in US history if he had 60 confirmed murders) who is in process of murdering a child (and indeed definitely will murder said child if Matt fails to win the fight, given he is irrationally attempting to even during the fight!). Whereas the guy he absolutely mauled was a bank robber who didn't actually do anything except point guns at people, make ultimately idle threats, and then leave with a candy! The only thing Matt is preventing there is this badguy reporting back to his boss and/or fleeing the country back to NI (and even then he presumably just delays those things). He doesn't even seem to hand him in to the cops!

 

[Thomas Shey]

I'm talking about episode 5 specifically.

Okay, I was viewing it in the view-to-date. My feeling with 5 is what we mentioned earlier; its part of a rework of an earlier version of that episode, and the rework didn't stick the landing.

My own feeling is the thrust of the following episode shows where they're trying to go; that both Fisk and Matt are driven in part by there rage and tendency to violence, but Fisk's completely dominates him when it gets in play, whereas Matt is capable of remembering that even though it drives him its for a purpose, its not the purpose.