Daredevil Season 1 Overview

After reviewing every single episode from the first season of Daredevil one by one, it’s time to give a look at the first season overall.

Looking at the season overall, it is important to look at how things changed over the course of 13 episodes. The first season relied heavily on suspense and buildup. Matt Murdock’s origins are spaced out through each episode. The opening shot of the series is Matt being blinded and every episode puts together a new piece of the puzzle – meeting and being trained by Stick, becoming friends with Foggy. Daredevil’s story isn’t even complete during the course of the season as he spends most of the season in a cheap ninja costume, never donning the famous red Daredevil suit until the finale.

As entertaining as a lot of the movies are, they have to tell their stories in a two-and-a-half hour time-frame. Pacing these events over 13 hour-long episodes gives us the chance to experience the full story. Matt makes mistakes, he is assaulted by hoods and other villains. Every loss is a lesson, he builds on what he learns.

Speaking of changes, I talked time and again in individual episodes of what a draw Fisk/Kingpin was. First, the series builds suspense for the character by showing little of him. Once we finally do see him, he does not disappoint. His subordinates built him up as a violent threat and they weren’t joking. He seems willing to kill anyone, even his right hand men, he can hold his own in fighting. His romance with Vanessa shows his unique honor system and every episode features a new face to the man’s personality.

Speaking of the 13 episodes, the first season is paced wonderfully. I was tempted to do a best/worst comparison, but it was hard because there were no real bad episodes or weak links. There were slower episodes and episodes lighter on action, but EVERY episode served some purpose – they established character, established part of a character’s origin or at least kept the flow of the story going. Some of these slower episodes worked because instead of cramming every episode with action, they were able to pace things out in a cinematic way – heavy action, then a slower episode to pace things out and not overwhelm the viewers.

There were a few weak links. Foggy and Karen largely seemed to just be there. Both had moments to shine. Foggy was a little more engaging with his relationship with Matt, which was explored greatly in “Nelson vs. Murdock”, but he also had a relationship with an old flame that really didn’t add up to match. Karen was an alright character, her subplot of hunting Fisk through investigating with Urich. Her intro is exciting when she is wrongly accused of murder and toward the end of the season, she actually commits a murder to save her life. In between that is little to write home about. However, those were minor nitpicks.

Overall, the first season was superb. There was a perfect balance of story, action and good character development.

Daredevil SN1 EP12 – ‘The Ones We Leave Behind’

Warning: This review does contain spoilers. The episode may be a year old, but I have an honor system.

The plot of this episode is a little all over all over the place. However, it works. The breakneck storytelling captures the frantic mood of the characters’ trying to put the pieces of everything together. Karen just killed a man, put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger, now he’s dead (No, I couldn’t resist). Karen dealing with this decision is engaging as she has to deal with the paranoia that Fisk’s men can come after her, but the startling realization that she has taken a life.

Matt is in action as the devil, trying to hunt down the Japanese gangsters. The scenes as the Devil are as exciting as ever. However, there are some great scenes as Matt. There’s a tense moment where Matt confronts Foggy, both of whom acknowledging what they and we know without saying a word. This episode also features a thrilling foot chase – with Matt chasing a blind Japanese girl through the streets. The scene is cool on its own, but seeing Matt in action out of costume feels unique.

Fisk is on the hunt for the people who poisoned Vanessa and wants to stop everyone in his way – including Urich. Fisk has some frightening moments in this episode – first he violently assaults one of his lackeys for talking out of line – and still keeping this person loyal. (We also learn the real reason Vanessa was poisoned, which is clever.) The episode ends with Fisk murdering Ben. It’s a great scene in how gruesome it is. We see how Fisk can go from zero to sixty – he’s quite calm leading up to the killing – and just murder someone in cold blood. Not a henchman, he does it himself – all because Ben was investigating his mother.

This is the penultimate episode of the first season. If this doesn’t get your blood pumping for the finale, please tell me what does.