DD:BA S2E1 Thoughts
My Karedevil heart is so full right now. This is what their relationship should always have been: no secrets, trusting in each other's skills; she gathers the information from her web of sources, he uses it to hammer the point home with the bad guys. He is the idealist driving forward despite the odds; she - the pragmatist holding the gun and the first aid kit. The perfect partnership. And Karen is now (finally!) learning a proper martial art, and a sensible one for her too. Wing Chun was created by a woman to fight against bigger, stronger opponents. It was always an indelible part of Matt's martial repertoire as it is truly effective at hand-to-hand range and relies, first and foremost, on the feel not the eyes, and it has a close relationship to boxing. So it makes total sense that Wing Chun was what Matt decided to teach his "MJ" (as Charlie, that tireless captain of the karedevil ship, called Karen Page).
The looks, the kisses, Matt's scruffy beard and Karen's smudged eyeliner - all perfect, all spoke of the hardship of their clandestine existence but also of the contentment to doing their real work, living their true meaning. Did I notice anything in the episode beyond them? Yeah, I'll be honest, it was hard to focus beyond the squeeing and drooling I was doing.
But a few other things that stood out, in the order of appearance:
Matt climbing out of the Hudson yet again was a very familiar reintroduction to Daredevil's modus operandi. Like, yep, a big fight ends in a near-drowning. We are so back with a SNAFU.
The exposition dialogue between Karen and Matt was, hmmm, hamfisted at best. You know it's lazy writing when the characters give each other a verbal summary of the plot of the last two episodes of last season, after apparently spending the past weeks or months surviving the consequences of the said plot! I am hoping that this was an imposition on the script from the execs, not the writers' autonomous decision. Oh, and while I am bitching about the script: Karen repeating the line of "Fisk is losing his mind" twice in 10 minutes makes her sound like a six year old who discovered a new favourite phrase. Couldn't they wrangle up an editor???
Mention of Jess already! Which, makes sense within the context that they would long be in touch and working together, and that it would be Karen who maintained that connection, but it does mean that we are going to be forever deprived of the scene of Matt reconnecting with Jessica Jones after his apparent death in Midland Circle. I mean, it would've been a popcorn-worthy reunion as Jessica yelled at and pummelled Matt for all the grief and stress he caused.
Nice tie-in into the wider MCU by using Valentina Allegra de Fontaine to explain the dodgy cover over Fisk's power overreach in his position as mayor. Although, given the current plentiful examples of power overreach in the Federal government, Fisk's authoritarian control and violent repressions of dissent don't even look particularly unrealistic.
Heather Glenn... sigh. As a member of the mental health profession, I take her actions as a personal affront, not *just* ethically and professionally (although, omg, does she give psychologists a bad name with her incompetence and clear disregard for all clinical boundaries), but because her character makes zero sense. I cannot understand how someone who deliberately went into the helping profession, and who is not a complete psychopath, ends up deliberately working for a fascist crook, falsifying psychological profiles and threatening people with torture. OK, OK, I am being naive and I deserve Karen's long quizzical ultra-hot stare. I am sure there were psychologists working for the Nazi regime in the 1940s Germany too. I just really, REALLY want to see Karen kick Heather's ass all the way across Manhattan by the end of the series. Pretty please? Is that too much to ask?
"Respectfully, fuck you" is the best insult ever, and I love Kirsten for it. Thankfully, Matt has a better taste in choosing his legal partners than his girlfriends.
Poor Cherry. I feel that we are going to be hearing about his retirement as often as we heard about Foggy's alternative life as a butcher.
Mr Charles is shaping up to be a very interesting character, but I hated that he showed up Fisk to be incompetent and out-of-his-league, especially in front of Her Majesty, Queen Vanessa, who did not miss a single beat of that dressing down and was clearly several steps ahead of her husband. I am not saying that this is OOC or even the wrong plot direction, but I miss Fisk's presence in the shadows from his Netflix days, where he loomed as an omniscient and omnipotent puppet master. Now, as the mayor in the spotlight, bound by the pretence of keeping up appearances, surrounded by a staff of self-interested and fearful flunkies, he seems more of a caricature of his former self. A jumped up mob boss. Outclassed. Out of his league. I miss being frightened by Fisk's intelligence, charisma and personal brutality rather than just by the reach of his thugs.
Ooof, that "Do you miss it?" scene. What does it tell us? For starters, Matt's body doesn't lie - as his mind took him to the idea of the vigilante trials, his anger ignited, adrenaline surged and the slow Chi Sao drill gained the speed and strength of real combat. And Karen knows this. But Matt's mind, on the other hand, still conceals; maybe just from the world, maybe from himself too. (Knowing Matt's tendency for self-deluding bullshit in the face of grief and trauma, my money is on the second). Yet, HE MAKES AN EFFORT. He admits something. It's only a little, and it's laughably far from the truth, and Karen knows this too. His emotional barriers broke them up twice before, and here they are again, and so is Karen's frustration. And loneliness. Because she knows that this forces both of them to carry their shared grief alone. And it is not fair, and it makes her angry, and, in this, they are both so recognisable to us.
(OK, OK, it must be said, whatever it was that Karen and Matt were doing was NOT actually Chi Sao... Karen was swinging from the side with no form to her, but I recon that was the idea that the writers/chorographers were going with, so... lets just call it that, OK?)
