1. The Big Moment
Well, readers, we finally made it to episode 4 “Blindsided” aka the Hallway fight episode. It is a pretty good sequence. After watching it though, and taking in considerations my feelings on the previous episode, “No Good Deed,” it left me with a feeling that this is still the kind of episode that reverts to the Netflix mean of storytelling. Instead of being an episode that is linked by time, it is an episode that has That Big Thing™ occur but lacks the support structure to make it a good all around episode.
Functionally there are elements that make it a piece of episodic storytelling: Matt goes to jail and gets out, Foggy thinks about running and does, Karen calls her source and meets. These threads are setup and payed off in this episode and some even point towards future plot points, but it lacks the kind of thematic unity to bind it together and make “Blindsided” stand out as a whole instead of for the 10 minutes in the middle of this 54 minutes and 20 seconds long episode.
Obviously you want some sort of Big Thing or climax in your episode. That is how you create a dramatic arc to things. With the proper support structure it can push that big moment over the top, see the reaction to the 6 minute shot from “Who Goes There” in True Detective season 1. Even when you didn’t know the particulars of that sequence was coming, everything was building towards it. The Hallway Fight and larger prison riot sequence happens pretty much dead smack in the middle of the episode. It’s a great sequence, and then the episode goes on for another twenty minutes and it all feels deflated.
To a degree there is some sort of binding motif in this episode, there is this idea of our core trio not giving into fear of the previous episodes and getting to work on fighting Wilson Fisk. Matt tries to get an in with the Albanians. Foggy finds himself running for District Attorney. Karen continues to tug at Wilson’s financial strings. These threads form the core of the episode and payoffs in this episode. How “Blindsided” is structured, by putting the prison riot in the middle, undercuts the cumulative push these threads create making for an episode that peaked early and stayed on too long.
2. Daredevil in Hell
Having Christopher LaVasseur act as the cinematographer for the whole season is to the shows benefit, and it pays off handsomely in the prison riot sequence. There is a consistency to how the action has been treated that gives it a flow you don’t have in prior seasons or in other shows. The sequence, which features the requisite hallway fight, expands on some of the core concepts of how LaVasseur, the stunt team, showrunner, and directors, have been using with the action up to this point.
LaVasseur shoots the action in a handheld style, I’m not sure if that is the specific type of camera they used, but the way in which the camera follows the action and the little bumps and wobbles along the way evoke the handheld feel without turning it into The Bourne Supremacy. Those bumps, wobbles, and the way it chases after Matt Murdock give it a naturalistic aesthetic. Which is the opposite from how most male action is done, action exists to emphasize heroism and through mise en scene establish masculinity (see Stella Bruzzi Men’s Cinema: Masculinity and Mise-en-Scene in Hollywood). LaVasseur’s camera instead highlights the struggle and vulnerability of Matt Murdock. It turns the fight and prison riot overall into an arduous journey through Hell with flickering red lights and rhythmic elements from a whirling alarm and monotone announcer stating “Code 33. Code 33. Lock down is now in effect.” The long takes that sandwich the sequence help build this feeling of weight and length in the viewer, even though it’s only 10 minutes overall.
As Matt finally gets in the taxi, it feels like we’ve been on an epic journey. The episode should’ve ended with Matt being driven off, it was the emotional and physical climax of the episode for the viewer in an episode that otherwise didn’t have that sort of arc.
Continued below3. Being a (Super)hero
“Blindsided” has a few little moments that help flesh out the cost and process of being a superhero in these kinds of shows.
At the start of the episode, Matt finally goes home and we see the steps he takes to put on the “Matt” costume. Director Alex Garcia Lopez holds the moment before he starts to let that tug of Matt Murdock hang just for a second, before Matt does what always does with his emotions: bury them down and not deal with them. With his forsaking of that identity, it places an emphasis on expressing his lack of one (outside of Daredevil) through his costuming: generic sweats. These are replaced so that he can become Matt Murdock, the blind lawyer, by putting on a nice suit and use that whole lawyering skill he picked up over the years. Often these sequences are emphasized with putting on the theatric super costume and becoming something else, here it’s Matt assuming a civilian identity that becomes the mask.
Later on in the episode Agent Ray has a chat with his boss while waiting for an elevator. He needs parental advice on how to treat his son, who is understandably freaked out over what’s happened in recent days. She tells him to treat his son like he would an informant and carefully manage the truth of their reality. By comparing how her father lied to her about the dangers involved in his trucking job with how she was more honest with her daughter. Now these characters aren’t masked heroes, though their roles are fodder for many a procedural, but how they manage their families relationships with what they do is at the heart of much of the drama involved in these kinds of shows.
Selective truth telling, or white lying, whatever it is you want to call it, is how these shows tend to work with the masked hero. They have to lie to everyone for “protection” reasons, those lies continue to build and build until something breaks. When the mask is eventually taken off, it doesn’t heal things (as seen by Karen and Foggy’s reactions to Matt).
These moments don’t justify Matt’s continual being a poor friend, but it is worth noting how the show is trying to lay the ground work for some kind of justification or maybe a redemption for the character down the road.
4. What About Foggy? Or the continued adventures of the Supporting Cast
With Matt’s reveal at the end of the last episode, it was going to be interesting to see how the rest of the supporting cast took the news. Foggy reacted how he generally does with these sorts of things and freaks out a little. Karen is rightfully pissed at Matt … again. With Matt touching their lives again I was afraid there may be some regression for these characters, that doesn’t appear to be the case. Foggy is now running for district attorney and doing something. Karen continues to print inches on Fisk. Neither of them are listening to Daredevil nee Matt.
Karen actually shows she has a bit of the Devil in her by punking a couple of cat calling a-holes before meeting her source. Compare and contrast how the elements of televisual storytelling are marshalled to treat Karen in that sequence (like it’s out of a Dirty Harry story) with how Matt has been.
Hopefully there is some sort of reconciliation of this trio, good television is powered through strong relationships as much as it is good plots, but continuing to let them react to things on their own is the right call. By giving them agency to react, instead of bowing to St. Matthew, they feel more human and the show is able to attack things from multiple angles at once.
5. Who Eats a Hamburger with a Spork?
Wilson Fisk, that’s who. The comment is meant as a joke and emphasize his strangeness compared to everyone else (he might be the most emotionally healthy of our trio of broken dudes.) Which I don’t really like since Vincent D’onofrio’s performance and the treatment of the character overall codes the Fisk to be read as neuroatypical while the series overall holds the character at arm’s length. But it opens up some space to consider Wilson Fisk.
So he setup his own shanking. The staring at the cameras in time with Dex’s gaze is meant to be creepy and plays that way. But how did he get on the computer to spy on Matt in prison? The show is playing the character as the master of tri level chess and it doesn’t feel that compelling, it’s macguffery. What is, surprisingly, compelling is his slow co-opting of Dex. Wilson Fisk knows who he is at his core and is trying to get Dex to realize those things about himself. Those aren’t good things, but Dex wasn’t good in the first place either.
