But everyone knows sorrow is incurable
I made up for not watching a couple of Daredevil episodes on Saturday by, um, marathoning eight episodes and finishing the series yesterday? I didn't intend to! It just sort of happened! The, uh, devil made me do it!
Anyway, outside the cut, I will say it's very well made (the fight scenes are excellent, if a little long) but also the violence is much more brutal than typical superhero tv violence, and it doesn't shy away from showing the gore. also, I am totally shipping Matt and Claire. *hands* That is some super hot chemistry. If you're looking for a gritty, street-level superhero show, this is probably the one you want, though personally, Arrow is still closer to my heart, mostly because I've grown really invested in the main cast of characters.
I don't really have anything deep to say, so this is just me rambling about what I liked/didn't like. What I think really worked was that you saw the toll the nightly violence was taking on Matt; even during the fights, it looked way more painful and brutal than tv/movie fights usually look. It took more than once punch to knock out even nameless low-level goons, and Matt gets beat to hell and gone repeatedly, though of course he ends up winning in the end.
I can't really comment on the portrayal of his blindness (especially since he 'sees' by echolocation, i.e., the disability superpower trope), but Charlie Cox does a nice job with American accent and being adorable and also kind of a jerk sometimes. The Catholicism was pretty good, iirc, and of course Matt as both a lawyer and a Catholic would make use of the seal of the confessional, though he couldn't in good conscience ask for forgiveness because he wasn't sorry about what he was going to do.
I also liked the New York-ness of it - it might not resemble Hell's Kitchen as it is today, but it did have a very New York neighborhood vibe. And I walk by the diner where Karen meets Ben every day on my way to work! The one part that jarred me was when they showed the outside of Brasserie and then the inside of it and they acted like it was a new Italian restaurant instead of an institution. I love Brasserie. For me, it's like Tiffany to Holly Golightly - nothing bad could ever happen there!
Another nice touch was the implication that it was the Westies that were paying Jack Murdock to throw fights. They were the Irish mob that ran Hell's Kitchen in the 70s and 80s. Also, great? In the scene where Fisk is in Ben's house, the only book visible on the shelf is The Power Broker, the Robert Moses bio. Fisk is basically Robert Moses as supervillain, and it works.
Anyway. I also really liked Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich, though having him work at the Bulletin instead of the Bugle was jarring. I know this was complete before they got Spidey back, but it was a little weird. I also thought it was weird how they were all like, there are no heroes! when 1. the front page of the aftermath of the Battle of New York is framed and hung behind Ben's desk, and 2. the whole reason Hell's Kitchen is ripe for gentrification is the damage from the Chitauri.
I thought killing off Ben cut off some future interesting storylines (and mentoring for Peter!) and so did killing Owlsley, but overall, I liked that it was treating the story as having an ending, and not holding back in favor of maybe using the characters again someday.
I wasn't quite sold on Foggy early on, but he grew on me, though he still needs to wash and cut his hair. And I was much happier once the secret identity was revealed. You know I'm not a fan.
I liked that Karen got her own storyline (and I'm assuming the thing Ben found in her past was the porn? I haven't read the comics, but doesn't Karen end up a junkie doing porn at some point? So hopefully that is behind her here), though it was a little weird for me to see her styled like Donna Moss so much. I kept expecting her name to be Donna! And I'm not really on board with Matt/Karen, because he's definitely her boss (no more long lunches!), and also I like him with Claire better, possibly because she already knows he's Daredevil and that's who she was helping out. And as I said, their chemistry is sizzling. And the scene where he tortures Semyon, or when he has to patch up Vladimir, and she helps, despite having been terrorized by them. I liked her a lot. Probably the best of anyone on the show, except maybe Matt. I hope she returns in the other shows and for Defenders! ♥ROSARIO DAWSON♥
Speaking of - so Madame Gao is from K'un L'un (or however you spell it), huh? She'll be back - or someone related to her - for Iron Fist. I really hope they cast an Asian American guy as Danny Rand. I know they won't, but until it's announced, I'll keep hoping. (I have to say, the set pics from AKA Jessica Jones look good. After this, I'm even more excited for that.)
Also, I laughed and laughed at this fanart of Marvel's sad trash* babies, i.e., Matt, Clint, and Bucky, and then the genius who added the gif of Natasha below. Gotta catch 'em all! (I don't know - I could see Natasha eating this Matt alive, but maybe I'm wrong).
*I don't know if Bucky ever ends up in a dumpster in canon - though with 616!Bucky it would not surprise me in the slightest - but Matt does here and Clint has in the comics, so... yeah. [I say this because I really haven't embraced the general use of 'trash' in a fannish sense - it's fine for Hydra trash party {which I can then easily avoid} - but I don't use it and maybe at some point I'll talk about why. But here it's also literal.]
Also, who was that playing Marci? I would have sworn she was Madison Sinclair from VMars, but imdb tells me no, so I don't know, but she was more familiar than one appearance on TGW would suggest.
I guess the one thing that I found a little irritating was how it handled the idea of Matt killing bad guys. Like, this is Marvel, not DC. Marvel heroes kill people all the time! Though I guess if Daredevil = Catholic + Batman + lawyer, it makes sense, and also it's a character trait - will he step over the line? Can he live with himself afterwards? etc. - rather than a universe-wide prohibition, so I guess it's not quite as annoying. (Speaking of Batman, I know I shouldn't have expected it, but when Ben was drawing up his murder wall about Fisk, I expected him to put the man in the mask on a joker - since he was a wildcard - rather than a jack. But I guess that would have too overt.)
So yeah, if you have the time and you can stomach the violence, I recommend it. I didn't get hugely emotionally invested, but it was compelling enough for me to keep watching even though I'd only planned on watching two episodes when I sat down on the couch.
Anyway. Have a poem:
What Everyone Should Know About Grief
by Ingrid de Kok
"What everyone should know about grief"
is why I buy the magazine.
Between aerobic virtue on one page
and the thrills of Machu Picchu on another
grief finds its marketable stage.
The living tell their chronicles
of hurt and lost and dead.
In syncopated copy they rehearse
"the cost of rage," "the comfort of belief,"
in words and captioned movements of the head.
The story proffers help:
advises talking as the healing cure,
commends long walks, and therapies,
assures the grieving that they will endure,
and then it gently cautions: let go, move on.
But everyone knows sorrow is incurable:
a bruised and jagged scar
in the rift valley of the body;
shrapnel seeded in the skin;
undoused burning pyres of war.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/742975.html.
people have commented there.
Anyway, outside the cut, I will say it's very well made (the fight scenes are excellent, if a little long) but also the violence is much more brutal than typical superhero tv violence, and it doesn't shy away from showing the gore. also, I am totally shipping Matt and Claire. *hands* That is some super hot chemistry. If you're looking for a gritty, street-level superhero show, this is probably the one you want, though personally, Arrow is still closer to my heart, mostly because I've grown really invested in the main cast of characters.
I don't really have anything deep to say, so this is just me rambling about what I liked/didn't like. What I think really worked was that you saw the toll the nightly violence was taking on Matt; even during the fights, it looked way more painful and brutal than tv/movie fights usually look. It took more than once punch to knock out even nameless low-level goons, and Matt gets beat to hell and gone repeatedly, though of course he ends up winning in the end.
I can't really comment on the portrayal of his blindness (especially since he 'sees' by echolocation, i.e., the disability superpower trope), but Charlie Cox does a nice job with American accent and being adorable and also kind of a jerk sometimes. The Catholicism was pretty good, iirc, and of course Matt as both a lawyer and a Catholic would make use of the seal of the confessional, though he couldn't in good conscience ask for forgiveness because he wasn't sorry about what he was going to do.
I also liked the New York-ness of it - it might not resemble Hell's Kitchen as it is today, but it did have a very New York neighborhood vibe. And I walk by the diner where Karen meets Ben every day on my way to work! The one part that jarred me was when they showed the outside of Brasserie and then the inside of it and they acted like it was a new Italian restaurant instead of an institution. I love Brasserie. For me, it's like Tiffany to Holly Golightly - nothing bad could ever happen there!
Another nice touch was the implication that it was the Westies that were paying Jack Murdock to throw fights. They were the Irish mob that ran Hell's Kitchen in the 70s and 80s. Also, great? In the scene where Fisk is in Ben's house, the only book visible on the shelf is The Power Broker, the Robert Moses bio. Fisk is basically Robert Moses as supervillain, and it works.
Anyway. I also really liked Vondie Curtis-Hall as Ben Urich, though having him work at the Bulletin instead of the Bugle was jarring. I know this was complete before they got Spidey back, but it was a little weird. I also thought it was weird how they were all like, there are no heroes! when 1. the front page of the aftermath of the Battle of New York is framed and hung behind Ben's desk, and 2. the whole reason Hell's Kitchen is ripe for gentrification is the damage from the Chitauri.
I thought killing off Ben cut off some future interesting storylines (and mentoring for Peter!) and so did killing Owlsley, but overall, I liked that it was treating the story as having an ending, and not holding back in favor of maybe using the characters again someday.
I wasn't quite sold on Foggy early on, but he grew on me, though he still needs to wash and cut his hair. And I was much happier once the secret identity was revealed. You know I'm not a fan.
I liked that Karen got her own storyline (and I'm assuming the thing Ben found in her past was the porn? I haven't read the comics, but doesn't Karen end up a junkie doing porn at some point? So hopefully that is behind her here), though it was a little weird for me to see her styled like Donna Moss so much. I kept expecting her name to be Donna! And I'm not really on board with Matt/Karen, because he's definitely her boss (no more long lunches!), and also I like him with Claire better, possibly because she already knows he's Daredevil and that's who she was helping out. And as I said, their chemistry is sizzling. And the scene where he tortures Semyon, or when he has to patch up Vladimir, and she helps, despite having been terrorized by them. I liked her a lot. Probably the best of anyone on the show, except maybe Matt. I hope she returns in the other shows and for Defenders! ♥ROSARIO DAWSON♥
Speaking of - so Madame Gao is from K'un L'un (or however you spell it), huh? She'll be back - or someone related to her - for Iron Fist. I really hope they cast an Asian American guy as Danny Rand. I know they won't, but until it's announced, I'll keep hoping. (I have to say, the set pics from AKA Jessica Jones look good. After this, I'm even more excited for that.)
Also, I laughed and laughed at this fanart of Marvel's sad trash* babies, i.e., Matt, Clint, and Bucky, and then the genius who added the gif of Natasha below. Gotta catch 'em all! (I don't know - I could see Natasha eating this Matt alive, but maybe I'm wrong).
*I don't know if Bucky ever ends up in a dumpster in canon - though with 616!Bucky it would not surprise me in the slightest - but Matt does here and Clint has in the comics, so... yeah. [I say this because I really haven't embraced the general use of 'trash' in a fannish sense - it's fine for Hydra trash party {which I can then easily avoid} - but I don't use it and maybe at some point I'll talk about why. But here it's also literal.]
Also, who was that playing Marci? I would have sworn she was Madison Sinclair from VMars, but imdb tells me no, so I don't know, but she was more familiar than one appearance on TGW would suggest.
I guess the one thing that I found a little irritating was how it handled the idea of Matt killing bad guys. Like, this is Marvel, not DC. Marvel heroes kill people all the time! Though I guess if Daredevil = Catholic + Batman + lawyer, it makes sense, and also it's a character trait - will he step over the line? Can he live with himself afterwards? etc. - rather than a universe-wide prohibition, so I guess it's not quite as annoying. (Speaking of Batman, I know I shouldn't have expected it, but when Ben was drawing up his murder wall about Fisk, I expected him to put the man in the mask on a joker - since he was a wildcard - rather than a jack. But I guess that would have too overt.)
So yeah, if you have the time and you can stomach the violence, I recommend it. I didn't get hugely emotionally invested, but it was compelling enough for me to keep watching even though I'd only planned on watching two episodes when I sat down on the couch.
Anyway. Have a poem:
What Everyone Should Know About Grief
by Ingrid de Kok
"What everyone should know about grief"
is why I buy the magazine.
Between aerobic virtue on one page
and the thrills of Machu Picchu on another
grief finds its marketable stage.
The living tell their chronicles
of hurt and lost and dead.
In syncopated copy they rehearse
"the cost of rage," "the comfort of belief,"
in words and captioned movements of the head.
The story proffers help:
advises talking as the healing cure,
commends long walks, and therapies,
assures the grieving that they will endure,
and then it gently cautions: let go, move on.
But everyone knows sorrow is incurable:
a bruised and jagged scar
in the rift valley of the body;
shrapnel seeded in the skin;
undoused burning pyres of war.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/742975.html.
people have commented there.