Daredevil: Born Again Episode 7
"Art for Art's Sake"
Writers: Jill Blankenship
Directors: David Boyd
Cast: Charlie Cox, Vincent D'Onofrio, Margarita Levieva, Zabryna Guevara, Nikki M. James, Genneya Walton, Arty Froushan, Clark Johnson, Michael Gandolfini, Kamar de los Reyes, Ayelet Zurer
I remember exactly when Daredevil became more than just a superhero TV show: Season 1, Episode 11. I was eleven episodes into my binge and then — bam — Karen Page shot and killed Wilson Fisk's righthand man, Wesley. Yeah, it wasn't a Matt Murdock moment. It was when our female lead, kidnapped and damsel-ed, turned Wesley's split-second distraction into a fatal mistake. We knew how this scene was supposed to go, how it would have played out in any other show. Daredevil saves Karen, or Karen spends an episode or two tied to a chair until she's saved by either Daredevil or herself. In no world does Karen Page grab the gun and, through her teeth, say, "Do you think this is the first time I've shot someone?" and then put seven bullets into his chest. But — in a character defining moment — she did, completely upending where we thought the show was heading, injecting an immediate sense of danger into the series — and setting up another, even more intense one-on-one between Karen and Fisk in Season 3. But that's a moment worth a whole other post.
Daredevil: Born Again has yet to give us its version of that moment — a moment that says, to quote Coco Montrese, "I'm not joking, bitch." In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Episode 7, "Art for Art's Sake," is the primo example of the kind of basic Daredevil series that the Netflix iteration of this show played against. There are no surprises, no tension, no payoff, no excitement (beyond just the thrill of seeing Charlie Cox in the suit again, which, admittedly is still thrilling).
A lot of this can be chalked up to the fix-it-in-post nature of this season, a problem that has been present since the jarring (to me, at least) shift in tone between Episodes 1 and 2. But "Art for Art's Sake" features some of the most egregious attempts at edit bay sleight of hand so far, with major chunks of several scenes bluntly redirected by ADR.
There's Heather (Margarita Levieva) saying the names "Foggy" and "Karen" off-camera, trying to tie Matt's ad hoc emotional journey of the original version of this show (one without Karen and Foggy) to the events we saw in the season/series premiere. Then there's Fisk's scene with his new Wesley, Buck, where the camera stays on Arty Froushan's blank expression while Vincent D'Onofrio monologues from what clearly sounds like a recording booth. And then there's Heather pleading with Muse (Hunter Doohan) for her life, which includes a moment where the mouth doesn't match the words. I don't know — I feel bad picking on moments like these, because clearly everyone involved is trying to make the most of a frantic retooling. And up until this episode, those moments haven't been this distracting.
And frankly, I love Daredevil — and Daredevil: The TV Show — too much to let these things go.
It doesn't help that the story they're distracting from has none of the tension that it thinks it does. After a handful of scenes spread out across the first six episodes, this one really tries to sell us on Matt and Heather's relationship. It helps that Charlie Cox has immediate chemistry with every human being, but who is Heather? There's a glimpse of a character, with her focus on the psyche of masked vigilantes, but we don't know the why. And how does that play into her couple's therapy with the Fisks? It could; imagine if Heather was actually pushing Wilson or Vanessa to admit to living double lives — even though that would put her life at risk ... because they're crime lords. But wouldn't it give Heather more oomph as a character?
Anyway — Heather is also providing therapy to Muse, a plot point that was hinted at weeks ago and then dropped until this week. I think back to Fisk's slow burn manipulation of Dex into Bullseye in Season 3 of the previous show. What if Heather and Muse had spent the past few weeks developing a dynamic — any dynamic? No need to hide the fact that he's Muse from the audience; that's obvious. But watching Heather pick up on it week after week, her doing her own investigating, her also working with the Fisks — there's a whole other show's worth of material there! Whatever, Heather learns he's Muse just as he's about to turn her into a work of art, draining her blood and throwing a canvas over the floor.
Daredevil, after discovering a bunch of illustrations of Heather in Muse's lair, crashes into Heather's office and beats the shit out of Muse; not even his bizarrely emphasized taekwondo skills can match Daredevil. And ultimately Heather shoots and kills Muse. And Fisk uses his influence to pin the win on his Anti Vigilante Task Force.
To give this show a compliment, because I'm fully aware that I'm being harsh here: I do love seeing Charlie Cox in that suit kicking ass. It works. I want more of it. DD launching his grappling hook through Muse's collarbone, pulling him to the floor? Great execution. The show does fights well (it just doesn't do them enough).
We also get some maneuvering between Vanessa and Wilson as Luca, the show's avatar of NYC's disgruntled underworld, tries to make a move against the Fisks and is ultimately assassinated. After a bit of a fake out, it looks like Vanessa and Wilson worked together on the Luca hit.
It now occurs to me — it's wild that this show has one antagonist who is a former art dealer, and another one who uses victims to create works of art ... and the show did ... nothing with that. At all. I dunno, just a potentially interesting connection there that could have fleshed out Muse and Vanessa!
All the Fisk stuff still drags, mainly because I don't think Vincent D'Onofrio's heart is in this material. And I know everyone thought his take on Fisk was a little bizarre at first, but D'Onofrio's take was absolutely correct and he, through sheer force of will, made us all devout followers of his Kingpin. But his performance in Born Again so far, it feels like an imitation of his Kingpin more than his Kingpin.
And lastly there's Matt's scene at Murdock & McDuffie where Cherry gets onto Matt for putting on the Daredevil suit, and Kirsten's only scene is about how no one will tell her anything. It might as well have been Nikki M. James talking to the original showrunners, begging for anything of substance to do.
Knowing that Episodes 2-7 are the original six conceived of by the creators of USA's Covert Affairs, I am left wondering what they thought this show was — and specifically what intentions they had with Cherry, Heather, and especially Kirsten. I could throw BB Urich in there too, but I forgot her (like the show).
This is what I find so frustrating with Born Again: There is so much that should be working, but it feels like the original showrunners' intentions outpace their execution. The Matt/Cherry/Kirsten dynamic should be heavy on friction. I mean, it's ex-cop and lapsed vigilante, and then pro bono vs. big time lawyer. Instead, we get nothing from those scenes. Muse is one of the rare 21st century Marvel creations that could absolutely be in the supervillain pantheon, but he's hardly in the show and we only get insight into who he is via info dumps — and then he's killed.
Honestly, the vibe of Daredevil: Born Again feels very much like if Netflix's Daredevil scripts were handed over to a team that made legal procedurals on basic cable. And that is actually what this show is. It's fine at best, and I'm just left rolling my eyes at all the wasted potential.
The final two episodes of Daredevil: Born Again Season 1, however, come from new showrunner Dario Scardapane and directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead. These are the brains behind the Born Again premiere, the episode that gave us that Daredevil vs. Bullseye fight, a trippy reimagining of Daredevil's extrasensory perception, that gut-wrenching scene between Karen and Matt, and that diner confrontation between Murdock and Fisk. It was an episode that had style and substance, two things the season has mostly lacked. I'm hoping the new creative team can carry this season across the finish line and actually make me look forward to Season 2. Like the perpetually depressed Matt Murdock, I could really use a win.
