"DAREDEVIL" Season Three (2018) Commentary
"DAREDEVIL" SEASON THREE (2018) COMMENTARY
The last episode of the Marvel Netflix limited series, "THE DEFENDERS", ended with costume vigilante Matt Murdock aka Daredevil asking his compatriots - Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Danny Rand aka Iron Fist - to leave the Hand's crumbling headquarters, while he remain behind to convince his former girlfriend Elektra Natchios to leave with him. The Midland Circle building crumbled to the ground. And the limited series' last scene featured a battered Matt waking up in a room with a nun by his side. Season Three of "DAREDEVIL" conveyed Matt's further adventures following the Hand's destruction.
According to (3.01) "Resurrection", the first episode of "DAREDEVIL" Season Three; following Midland Circle's destruction, Matt had washed out of the New York City sewer system and a taxi driver found him. The driver delivered him to Father Paul Lantom, who entrusted Matt's care to a nun named Sister Maggie Grace at the Saint Agnes Orphanage, where Matt was raised. Matt spent a period wallowing in grief over Elektra's death and experiencing a crisis of faith. However, by the middle of "Resurrection", Matt had decided that he would prefer putting his life in danger as Daredevil than resume his civilian life. During this period, his two close friends Franklin "Foggy" Nelson and Karen Page, have no idea of his whereabouts and began to lose hope that he might still be alive.
The season's main narrative arc began when imprisoned crime lord Wilson Fisk discovered that his lady love Vanessa Mariana could be charged as an accessory to his crimes. This discovery led Fisk to contact the F.B.I. and volunteer his services to snitch on existing criminal gangs in the New York City area. The F.B.I. Manhattan Office assigned Fisk's case to Special Agent Ray Nadeem and Fisk revealed intelligence on an Albanian crime syndicate. When news of his cooperation with the F.B.I. spread, Fisk's fellow inmates tried to kill him. This led Nadeem to move Fisk from prison to home detention. The attack on Fisk also caught Daredevil's attention after Albanian criminals tried to attack Fisk's convoy. While investigating this case, Karen learned that Matt might still be alive, but Foggy remained skeptical. The attack on Fisk also allowed him to form a relationship with the F.B.I. Special Agent that saved him during the convoy - a sharpshooter named "Dex" Pointdexter. The Fisk/Pointdexter relationship allowed the crime lord to use the Federal agent as a tool to take control of the F.B.I. Manhattan Office.
On paper, this narrative seemed sound to me. Well, most of it. I really tried to enjoy Season Three of "DAREDEVIL". But the more I delved into the season, the more I found myself disliking it. By the time I finished Season Three, I found myself speculating that "DAREDEVIL" may have been an overrated series. Mind you, none of the Marvel Netflix shows were perfect. But I really got weary of everyone proclaiming how wonderful "DAREDEVIL" was. The more I thought about the series - and especially Season Three - the more I found it difficult to accept this view.
Of the three seasons of "DAREDEVIL", I actually enjoyed Season One. Well, most of it. But I noticed how its pacing dragged in the middle of the season. The one episode that nearly dragged Season One to a halt was the very boring (1.10) "Murdock v. Nelson". Season Two struck me as nothing more than a narrative mess. I do not believe there was any ONE major narrative for Season Two. It seemed to be split between Daredevil's conflict with fellow vigilante Frank Castle aka the Punisher and Matt's relationship with former lover Elektra Natchios and their conflict with the Hand. The season's two narratives barely connected. Only Jon Bernthal and Elodie Yung's performance made that season bearable for me. But Season Three? Nearly everyone praised it to the skies and I thought I was going to find myself watching something wonderful. Boy, was I wrong!
Before I had commenced upon Season Three of "DAREDEVIL", I assumed the first episode would reveal who had saved Matt's life following the destruction of the Midland Circle building in "THE DEFENDERS". Instead, (3.01) "Resurrection" revealed that after the building's collapse, Matt's injured body had washed into the New York City's sewer system before he was discovered by a taxi driver. Needless to say, I found this revelation very disappointing and rather hard to swallow. Worse, the episode had merely revealed what happened to Matt through dialogue. "THE DEFENDERS" had failed to visibly convey his escape from Midland Circle. Instead, the limited series' last episode merely ended with Matt waking up inside a room, with a nun by his side. I thought Season Three of "DAREDEVIL" would provide a scene featuring Matt's survival. Instead, showrunner/screenwriter Erik Oleson had merely fallen back upon the old mistake of "show and tell". He had decided to tell and not show. Which is not a good idea in visual media.
"Resurrection" also featured a long and dry portrayal of another one of Matt's "crisis of faith" that bored the hell out of me. Matt spent this episode mourning over Elektra (which did not bother me, considering she was my favorite character in the series). But it also featured another one of Matt's struggles to decide whether he wanted to resume his life as a private citizen or as a violent vigilante. By the end of the episode, he chose the latter. And because he had done so, I found myself wondering what his character arc was about throughout the rest of Season Three. Actually, his season long character arc seemed to be more about how his grief over Elektra's death and his decision to fully embrace being the Daredevil had damaged his relationships with close friends Foggy Nelson and Karen Page. And you know what? I had no problem with Matt struggling with Elektra's death. But the conflict over his two friendships? Well, this struck me as old news. Why? Because previous seasons had also explored how Matt's activities as Daredevil threatened to damage his relationships with Foggy and Karen. It felt like a repeat that threatened to get old. What am I saying? It felt old. Period.
The centerpiece of "DAREDEVIL" Season Three focused on the resurrection of gangster Wilson Fisk as a threat to New York City. I realized that Fisk is one of Marvel Comics' more iconic villains. And he proved to be a memorable villain during Season One. But I must be frank. The narrative surrounding his character simply failed to impress me. First of all, it took four episodes for Fisk to emerge as a threat again. Four episodes. That is one-third of the season. Second, this story produced some of the strangest and most implausible writing I have encountered within the Marvel Netflix series. Fisk managed to assume control of the F.B.I. Manhattan Office with the help of a psychotic F.B.I. sharpshooter named Benjamin "Dex" Pointdexter, whom he managed to corrupt by appealing to the latter's emotional issues. Fisk could not have achieved this through money, since Season Two had revealed his loss of most of his cash during his time in prison. So . . . one gangster, with the help of one rogue F.B.I. sharpshooter, managed to assume complete control of a F.B.I. field office. All because he had originally volunteered to snitch on other crime families in order to prevent his girlfriend-turned-wife Vanessa Mariana Fisk from serving time in prison. One would think the F.B.I. could have found other sharpshooters within its agency to take out Pointdexter aka Bullseye. But apparently, no one had considered this.
What made this situation even more ludicrous was the media's vague portrayal of the F.B.I. as corrupt during this season. I am not claiming that the Federal agency has always been free of corruption. But this so-called corruption in "DAREDEVIL" came about due to threats of violence against the agency's employees and their families. Yet, according to the media, this made the F.B.I. Manhattan's Field Office completely corrupt. Not compromised, but corrupt.
I also found Season Three's portrayal of the New York City Police Department equally problematic. Whereas the series tried to push the idea of the F.B.I. being completely corrupt, it portrayed the N.Y.P.D. as the moral center of law enforcement in New York City. The entire police force as a whole had protested against the F.B.I. using Wilson Fisk as an informer on other criminal gangs and organization without knowing the full details of Fisk's deal with the Federal agency. I found this position difficult to belief, let alone accept. Especially since many law enforcement agencies - at the Federal, state and local levels have used criminal informers to acquire intelligence on other criminals. Was this whole scenario set up to portray the N.Y.P.D. as "white knights" of the city? This struck me as a complete reversal of how the city's police was portrayed in Season One of "DAREDEVIL" and during the entire run of "LUKE CAGE". How did the N.Y.P.D. suddenly become imperious to corruption? When? Why?
Speaking of the N.Y.P.D., this brings me to one aspect of "DAREDEVIL" that I have always found problematic - namely the series' racism. The local police were not the only ones disturbed by Fisk's deal with the F.B.I. Matt's friend, Franklin "Foggy" Nelson also became upset when he learned about the deal. He became so upset that he decided to run in the city's District Attorney election against the current one, Blake Tower. One of Foggy's steps in his election campaign was recruit the support of the N.Y.P.D. Union. This recruitment played out in (3.04) "Blindsided", in which Foggy held a meeting with the police union. For the cops' support, he not only promised to place Fisk in the deepest prison hole, but also militarize the N.Y.P.D. even further - an act sure to have consequences for oppressed or non-privileged groups. Foggy had pandered to the cops utilizing fear mongering and the entire sequence felt like something from a Nuremberg rally. What I found even more ludicrous is that the only cops that stood up to verbally express support of Foggy were all black. Was this Oleson's way of manipulating television audiences into accepting the idea of a more militarized police force? Foggy's campaign for District Attorney came to nothing for the season ended with him dropping from the race and reforming his partnership with Matt.
But Foggy Nelson's meeting with the N.Y.P.D. Union was not the only questionable portrayal of race in "DAREDEVIL" Season Three. The latter also featured a scene in (3.03) "No Good Deed" in which Daredevil ambushed Fisk's attorney, Ben Donovan, inside the latter's car and strangled the latter (as a means of torture) in order to learn the endgame behind Fisk's decision to become a Federal informant. This scene proved to be the second time in which Matt Murdock aka Daredevil had tortured a black man in order to gain information. The first time I saw this happened was in an episode of "THE DEFENDERS" in which Matt had utilized strangulation as a means to torture the Hand's only black member. I felt just as disgusted by this scene with Donovan as I had, while watching "THE DEFENDERS".
In fact, Season Three of "DAREDEVIL" featured a good deal of unnecessary violence against other characters, especially non-whites. But one of the worst examples of this situation occurred in "Blindsided". Early in the episode, Karen Page witnessed a group of young black men catcalling some young women on the street. After the latter walked away, Karen approached the men and pulled a gun on them in some effort to scare them from any future incidents of catcalling. This was so fucking dumb . . . and pretty insulting to boot. As a woman, I dislike dealing with catcallers. But having a white woman threaten black men with a gun, whose only crime was catcalling struck me as a useless and insulting act of racism. What in the fuck was Oleson thinking?
The showrunner also subjected the series' viewers with (3.10) "Karen", a standalone episode about Karen's past with her family. The episode began with Karen hiding out at a New York City Catholic church after she had revealed to Fisk that she had killed his right-hand man, James Wesley, back in Season One two episodes ago. I thought that this episode would explain how Karen managed to become a newspaper journalist after being a secretary and a legal assistant. It never did. Instead, the improbability of Karen's new profession as a journalist remained intact, since she never went to college or studied journalism. I thought Karen's background would play some role in the season's main narrative. It never did. Eventually, I discovered the reason behind this episode in an interview that Oleson gave. He wanted to flesh out Karen's character and explore her backstory. Nothing more. Nothing less. I do not know how anyone else felt, but I thought this was a fucking waste of my time.
The only bright spot in the entire season came from Jay Ali's portrayal of F.B.I. Special Agent Ray Nadeem. Agent Nadeem proved to be the most complex, yet sympathetic character in the entire season. At least for me. Oleson and Ali could have easily allowed Nadeem to be compromised by Fisk through the offer of cash. After all, he began the series as someone struggling with debt following his sister-in-law's operation for cancer. Thankfully, the series did not take the easy way out and allowed Fisk and Pointdexter's threat of violence against his family to compromise him. My only problem with Nadeem was his final fate. I hated it.
"DAREDEVIL" has developed a reputation for its action sequences. I can think of one that nearly garnered my respect. I am referring to the sequence that featured Matt's infiltration of a local prison in order to speak with a prisoner with a connection to Fisk. Matt was forced to make his escape, while fighting off inmates and guards under Fisk's control. What began as an exciting action sequence stretched into one that nearly refused to die. It nearly went on . . . forever. I believe I eventually grew bored with it before Matt finally made his escape. And there was the final confrontation between Matt, Fisk and Dex. What can I say? It was a mess? Because I thought it was. After serving as Fisk's murder tool for several episodes, Dex learned from Daredevil in the finale (3.13) "A New Napkin" that his new best friend had been responsible for the murder of Julie Barnes, a waitress who had been his co-worker at a suicide hotline center and whom he found attractive. Dex went to the hotel where Fisk and Vanessa had their wedding in order to kill the crime boss. Matt went there to . . . stop Dex's murder attempt . . . arrest Fisk . . . kill Fisk? I have no idea. But it was one of the worst fight scenes I have ever viewed in a Marvel Cinematic Universe production.
I do not know what else to say about "DAREDEVIL" Season Three other than I disliked it. Or that it was my least favorite season within the entire Marvel Netflix franchise. No amount of good acting or good action could save this season for me. Before one believes that I had loved "DAREDEVIL" before its final season . . . I did not. Honestly? Season One was the only one I found admirable, despite its flaws. I realize that it is highly regarded by television critics and fans of the franchise. But for the likes of me, I simply cannot share this opinion. Oh well.