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Daredevil: Born Again 02x05 - The Grand Design

This episode doesn't advance the story much because it wants to take time for character pieces. There are two major character pieces here, one for the Fisks and one for Matt.

It's a little hit-or-miss. Its heart is in the right place, I think, but it doesn't quite understand what it's trying to talk about.

The framing of this episode surrounds Vanessa Fisk's hospitalization after taking that shrapnel to the head last episode.

Episode 4 left Vanessa in critical condition, the question hanging uncertainly in the air as to whether she'll be saved or not. So it's only natural that we begin episode 5 by taking her to the hospital.

Her condition allows the show to delve into the drama between Wilson and Vanessa, which is mainly handled by revisiting this painting, which has played a significant role over the course of their marriage.

This painting serves as the vehicle for Vanessa's entire journey through this episode.

As I've mentioned before, I've never been particularly invested in the Fisks' marriage, and Vanessa's a hard character to read due to her knack for stone-faced stoicism. It feels like there are a million different things going on behind her eyes that she never lets anyone catch so much as a glimpse of.

But I guess we'll never know what those are, because this is the end for her.

We get to see her argue with the art gallery's curator about the artistic merits of this painting.

The curator doesn't want to display it but Vanessa disagrees. I believe the painting, in this case, serves as a metaphor for Wilson. The idea behind their disagreement here is that Vanessa has an eye for finding beauty in things that others may not.

She sees something here in this painting that the curator doesn't, just as she sees something in Wilson that most wouldn't.

But that's about as deep as the character study on Vanessa goes. The rest of it is just Wilson and Vanessa reminiscing about the day Vanessa hung this painting and met Wilson at her gallery, which we already know about.

Though we learn little about Vanessa that can be considered new, there's a lot of emotional beats here to let you feel how much they love each other. Their entire trajectory through this episode is setting up how mad Wilson will be when she dies at its end.

Pre-emptively grieving the death of Wilson's Wife through the parts of her that most pertain to him.

I need to reiterate that the journey to Vanessa's death is so fucking weird. Like. Okay.

Bullseye: You think she's dead? Daredevil: I don't know. Come on. Bullseye: If she is, it all balances. Your friend, Fisk's wife. Scales settled. And I'm ready for judgment.

So.

I think we need to talk about women in refrigerators for a moment. There's a lot of debate out there for what constitutes a "fridging", because it's really more of a critical vibe than a clearly-defined literary mechanism.

But one thing I've always considered when thinking about the concept is how much a female character's death is about her, versus the extent to which it is simply a stepping stone in a male character's story.

And for Vanessa, that's... weirdly complicated in a way that it didn't really need to be.

Vanessa got Bullseye out of prison, used him to kill Foggy, then abandoned him to incarceration. It's easy to paint a line from there to this moment, where Bullseye kills Vanessa for revenge. Especially since he's repentful for killing Foggy and wants to kill someone about it to redeem himself, targeting Vanessa makes so much sense.

Instead, episode 4 made a point to have Bullseye insist that his beef is actually with Wilson. He's not after Vanessa at all, in fact! He's trying to make amends for killign Foggy, to balance the cosmic scales by "doing one good deed", which is to kill Wilson because he's such a bad guy.

It's not about Vanessa at all, the show insists.

She's only dead now because she happened to be standing next to Wilson when Bullseye tried to kill him, and got caught in the crossfire.

Okay, but why, though? If "And then Bullseye killed Vanessa" was where you were going with this, why not just let Bullseye carry out his vendetta against Vanessa? Why are we taking the narrative impetus in Vanessa's death away from her and threading it through Wilson instead of just letting Vanessa reap what she's sown?

Why did we do this? Why bend over backwards to make it about him? What a weird choice.

...

But also, like. Why did we do this at all? Like. The show is killing off Vanessa to make Wilson mad. They specifically removed the way that her death would be about her, so now it's just about enraging Wilson.

Why, though?

The immediate and obvious consequence is that WIlson is going to be really mad. But Wilson is always really mad. All the time. In every scene. He is defined by being really mad about everything. It's his only emotion outside of the scenes he shares with Vanessa. He's a raging manbaby who screams and hits things; That is the totality of his character.

I don't know what difference a 15% increase in Wilson's day-to-day state of homicidal fury is really going to make in the show. Maybe it will motivate a 25% increase in abusing his power to crack down with his private military, beyond the abuse of power and private military crackdown he was already performing.

I really don't see what could possibly come from this that wouldn't have happened anyway. Vanessa is dead so that a constantly angry man can be angry about it for a little while until he finds something else to be angry about, I guess.

Weird choice, show.

But. Okay. That's just one of the three plots running through this episode. The really chonky bit that the show wants to talk about is Daredevil and Bullseye, and Matt's flashback to his experiences with Foggy.

In the flashback, Matt and Foggy take on a client who turns out to be an old acquaintance of Foggy's. Lionel here's gotten himself in a mess of trouble. He's looking at 10-to-12 years in prison for a laundry list of crimes.

As his representation, Matt and Foggy feel his best option is to avoid trial and instead plea bargain down to 5-6 years.

There's just one problem.

Lionel's in with Fisk's crew, and Fisk's looking to silence him. He won't survive a night in prison.

This provokes an argument between Matt and Foggy on the merits of representing a gulity man. Foggy finds a clerical error on a warrant that could be used to get Lionel off on technicality.

The warrant says 536 West 49th Street but his actual place of residence is 536 1/2 West 49th Street. If they use this, they can invalidate all evidence from his arrest as "Fruit of the Poisonous Tree", a legal term referring to evidence that cannot be submitted to court because it was obtained illegally.

I should note that I'm not a lawyer but I don't think this would actually work. The legal system is not a game of technicality Gotchas. It's very hard to go, "Ha-ha, you didn't cross a 't' so that means my client is innocent!"

Fruit of the Poisonous Tree has a fairly broad exception in its standards called "Inevitable Discovery". If the prosecution can reasonably argue that they would have obtained the evidence anyway even had the illegal search not been carried out, then it's no longer Fruit of the Poisonous Tree and can be submitted anyway.

So the obvious prosecutorial counterargument here is that if they discovered the clerical error, they'd have just reprinted the warrant with the error fixed and still searched the building anyway. They still hit the place they meant to hit and got the guy they meant to get, so what does a typo matter?

But sure. Within the logic of the show, Foggy just made a huge discovery that can crack this case wide open and secure a full acquittal of all charges. The question is... Should he?

This is a long scene but their discussion is so, so important. It's basically what Matt's portion of the episode revolves around.

Matt: Oh come on, Foggy. It's not like he deserves to walk. Foggy: I don't recall the word "deserve" coming up in law school. Matt: He's in bed with the mob, he's selling drugs, he's poisoning the neighborhood! Foggy: Yeah, but-- Matt: But what!? He was also a raging prick to you when you were kids! You want to spring the guy who calls you Foggy the Fembot? Foggy: Heh, no, I don't. But Matt, we are his attorneys. Matt: We're... associates. Foggy: Don't get technical. ... Foggy: Lionel, he had a hard life, Matt. Matt: (sarcastic) Aww, cue the violin. Foggy: His dad, he was not a good guy. And his mom, Suzanne, she drank. A lot. She died when we were in eighth grade. Cirrhosis. Liver failure. Matt: (frustrated sigh) Foggy: He never had a chance! Matt: His brother did, though. What was his name? Connor? Foggy: Connor was younger. Lionel took the brunt of it. I didn't like him-- Matt: --and you want to let him out to continue to do horrendous things to a whole bunch of new people. Foggy: I want to do the right thing. Matt: I don't know, Foggy. I don't know. You sell drugs, you're trafficking firearms, you get caught. I'm sorry. There are consequences. Foggy: His crew, whoever he was working with, they're going to kill him when he's inside. Matt: Yeah, that might be the definition of consequences. Foggy: But does the punishment fit the crime? Matt: Crimes past, present, or future? Foggy: So you think we should ignore it? Matt: Ignore what? Foggy: It's our job to represent our clients to the best of our abilities. Suppressing evidence-- Matt: Objection! "Suppressing" is questionable, one might even say inflammatory phrasing in this particular instance, Counselor. Foggy: Aren't you supposed to be the Catholic one here? Matt: Oh, come on! Alright so, fine, you want to go with guilt now? Foggy: How about mercy? There's got to be something about that in the Bible. Second chances? Redemption? All I know is, if he goes to jail, he dies. Matt: And all I know is, that might not be our problem. Foggy: Unfortunately, it is now.

And it's also where we see some of the ways the show struggles to actually agree with the high-minded ideals its hero espouses. In this case, Foggy rather than Matt.

Matt is cast in the role of the cynical antagonist. Foggy is positioned as the idealist here, arguing with Matt about whether or not they have a duty to represent their client's interest to the best of their ability.

This argument is wild. Matt is meant to be flawed here; It's setting the stage for the way he engages with the wounded Bullseye, now reliant on Daredevil to get him to safety. The burning question of the episode is why not just leave Bullseye to die?

Matt doesn't owe Bullseye anything. He hates this man. Bullseye killed his best friend. Bullseye got himself shot trying to murder Wilson. Matt would be well within his rights to let Bullseye bleed out or be taken by the AVTF. There is no good reason to help him.

Even Bullseye thinks Matt's crazy for doing this.

But the show draws a subtle parallel between Lionel and Bullseye. There's a really interesting idea here.

Unfortunately, that idea gets buried in the way Matt steamrolls over Foggy in the scene where Foggy's thematically supposed to be right. Foggy presents the idea that an attorney's foremost duty is to represent the interests of their client, whether innocent or guilty. Which. Like.

Is correct.

Foggy is correct. But the show is so copagandic that it struggles to come up with a compelling reason for why Foggy would be right.

And it's frankly wild that Matt made it this far as an attorney with a mindset like his. He just sounds like a cop throughout this argument. What did he think his job was?

The role of a defense attorney is to be the one person the accused has in their corner representing their interests even when no one else well. Everybody has a right to fair representation in court. That's how due process works, and due process is the foundation of criminal justice.

Even when the accused is guilty, even when they're convicted, it's an attorney's duty to represent their human rights. To make sure they're being treated humanely and facing a punishment that's fair.

It's not because "that's the job". It's because universal human rights are universal human rights, regardless of what you're accused of. Regardless of what you're convicted of. Every person deserves equal access to justice. Even the condemned. If you can't believe in that, then go be a cop because you don't belong in defense law.

But it all falls flat because they're talking about getting a gun smuggler off on a technicality. Cop shows love the idea that lawyers just walk around getting guilty people off on technicalities, when in real life those "technicalities" are violations of Constitutional Rights for the accused, who is legally innocent until proven guilty.

It's not so much, "Haha, the cops found my drug running business but because they misspelled my name, I get off scot free!"

It's more, "The warrant was supposed to be for a house two doors down from mine but they kicked in my door instead. Then, after arresting me even though I wasn't the guy they were looking for, all the drugs the cops were looking for miraculously appeared in my living room even though they had the wrong person and house!" Those are the kinds of "technicalities" that lead people to walking free.

But you wouldn't know that from the way cop shows talk about it, and Born Again is very much written from the copaganda mindset.

So Foggy loses the argument and instead has to resort to guilt-tripping Matt about his Catholicism. Which, given that Matt last episode threatened a priest into revealing information from a private confession between man and God, I'm not even sure he believes in that very much either.

Nonetheless, as weird as it is that Matt would believe that the wicked must be scoured from this earth as a defense attorney, this conflict exists to cast him in the wrong and contrast with his actions in the present. Foggy ultimately wins out, not only getting Lionel out of prison but also, uh....

Pilfering his and Matt's coffers that they were going to use to open their law firm, so he can give Lionel money to start over.

Which does seem a bit above and beyond the call of legal representation. But Foggy's hoping for the best. He gives Lionel the chance to get out of here before Buck comes gunning for him, hoping Lionel will be able to start a new life over somewhere else.

Again, the show understands the basic premise that "A lawyer advocates for his client's interest," but I'm not sure it really understands why. The message here seems to be about having faith in people's ability to change.

Which is a good thing to have but isn't really what defense law is about either. It's not about punishing or redeeming the guilty. It's about upholding the universal human rights that are guaranteed to everyone.

The job of an attorney isn't to see that a drug dealer gets clean and finds work and reforms his place in society. The job of an attorney is to make sure that the drug dealer has a fair chance to make his case, receives a fair sentence if convicted, and doesn't get beaten and starved by prison guards once he enters the system.

Neither punishment nor rehabilitation is the role of defense law. But the show is centering the argument of punitive justice versus restorative justice around the lawyers of a man who, and I cannot stress this enough, has not been convicted of anything. And thanks to the actions of his lawyer, never will be.

But as I said, this is the lens through which we're meant to understand Matt helping Bullseye.

Or, at least, it should be? But Matt actually proposes an alternative explanation, which is just that he feels guilty for pushing Bullseye off a roof in the series premiere. Helping Bullseye is his penance to wash clean the sin of trying to kill Bullseye.

That's what he says, anyways. But the shadow of Foggy and Lionel hangs over his actions all the same.

As it should. If the show actually understood defense law better, you could see the parallel it desperately wants to have at play here. That Daredevil is acting as Bullseye's counsel now. The one person that even a guilty person will always have in their corner.

Because everyone, even Bullseye, is deserving of their basic human rights. And who else is going to see to Bullseye's?

Bullseye in the present offers argument against Foggy's efforts to help Lionel, and it's probably the best scene in the episode.

Bullseye: We're all doing the same thing here. Acting something out. Scratching some kind of itch. But the worst part is when you think you've got it beat. You think, "Ahh... I outran it." Then you turn the corner, BAM, there it is staring you right in the face. Only it's worse this time. And you know it was always going to be there.

On the topic of rehabilitating people, Bullseye takes an interesting stance. His position is that it's ultimately fruitless because the bill always comes due in the end. The consequences for your actions are always waiting for you out there, no matter how hard you try to get away from them.

It's an incredibly cynical and hopelessly fatalistic way to look at things. But it also makes sense as the perspective of someone trying to convince Matt to save himself and leave him to die.

It's also aggravating because. Like. Yeah, that's why Vanessa's death should have been about Bullseye's revenge. And not because she was standing too close to Wilson. This is the perfect argument to make after Bullseye killed Vanessa on purpose, in the episode that is about the medical fight to keep Vanessa alive.

The shadow of his words should hang over Vanessa like the shroud of death here, but it doesn't. Because she's presented as collateral damage, rather than a murderer reaping what she's sown.

All the same, Bullseye's cynicism slams into Foggy's altruism, battling it out in Matt's heart. Resulting in a kinda goofy resolution where Bullseye wins and Matt says, "I can't save you."

But then he remembers Foggy giving Lionel the money. Suddenly, because Foggy did that, Matt turns around and says, "I must save you!"

Because he remembers Foggy saying that they should do this for "not just our future", and urging him to value mercy.

While I have my beefs with how the show handles the duty of a defense attorney, I do think it's on the right track with its proclamations of mercy. This is the closest it gets to understanding the role of the attorney as advocate for both the accused and the condemned.

He's going to have a hell of a time explaining this to Karen, however.

I think argument can be made as to whether Matt's or Vanessa's story can be considered the A-Plot but there's also a C-Plot as well.

Daniel's trying to fend off the press while Vanessa's in the hospital. I particularly like the angry response he gives a reporter, "Is she dead? What kind of sick fucking question is that?"

Vanessa is an important political figure. Whether she lives or dies is breaking news.

The way the press swarm the hospital looking for their scoop is ghoulish, but in a very real way that speaks to the nature of the press. Under capitalism, this is what the press are.

Every news corporation is a business, and breaking stories are the products they exist to sell. Getting ahead of the competition is good for business, and falling behind the competition is bad. Under those circumstances, unethical behavior is easy to justify if it pays off.

When reporters are salespeople pushing product, there's no room in the business model for human dignity.

Daniel's plot pertains to his developing bromance with Buck. Daniel thinks that BB leaked the hospital to the press. So when Buck asks him to come get hot dogs with him, there's a lot of tension around the invitation.

Daniel and Buck bonded over Daniel getting Buck to try New York hot dogs before, so it's a sweet moment. But also one thick with tension.

Because we know that Buck is Fisk's triggerman. If Fisk decides that Daniel needs to go, Buck's probably going to be the one who does the deed. And it's easy to imagine how he'd do it exactly like this.

Get hot dogs. Drive out to a secluded area. Eat the hot dogs and have a bit of casual conversation. Circle around Daniel while he's enjoying his last meal. And then put two in the back of his head.

We can easily imagine that. And so can Daniel. He's under no illusions about how dangerous this is for him.

Honestly, I think Buck was testing Daniel here. There's a moment where Buck goes into a lumber shop to get a power saw and a shovel, and he leaves Daniel to mind the car.

The supplies are, of course, to bury a body.

Just not Daniel's. It's the First Mate that they're burying.

But Buck plays things very cool. He doesn't answer Daniel's questions and gives only short, curt instructions. It's easy to imagine how Daniel might think he's being taken to his own execution, and Buck does little to avoid giving that impression.

So I think this was a test of loyalty. If Daniel had tried to run, if he had shown Buck that kind of proof of a guilty conscience, he would have been a dead man.

Their C-Plot is relatively minor compared to Vanessa's and Matt's plots. Still, it's nice to see Buck and Daniel hanging out some more.

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