After a winter break and near sleepless binge of Puroresu, Daredevil returns! “Karen” is at once an excellent episode as it gives Karen Paige and Deborah Ann Woll the screen time they deserve. At the same time it is paired with something that could be argued is a vestigial tail of dramatic storytelling. It also ups the Pietà counter to 2.
1. A Story that Should’ve Happened Earlier, in an Odd Episode Overall
“Karen” is a strange episode, one that I’m glad exists now that the series has been cancelled, but one that feels even more odd in that context. As an episode it isn’t very good, even as it tells a story that this show needed to tell. Not considering it a very good episode is more due to the macro structure of pairing it with the Church fight. Screenwriter Tamara Becher-Wilkinson does attempt to stich the two segments together thematically with Karen and Father Lantom’s chat in the basement and largely succeeds, but they feel like two distinct entities that from something of a Frankenstein’s Monster of an episode. Why couldn’t this single episode have been two? The first Karen centered flashback would’ve made a great episode by itself and you could’ve tagged the final 15 minutes on to “Revelations.” The failed promise of Netflix revolutionizing televisual storytelling in an episodic format comes through in “Karen” as a 30 minute episode is stretched to 46 – making it both the shortest episode of the season and series – so that it can fulfill a standard form for a hour long drama.
Macro gripes aside, “Karen” tells a story this series needed to tell. This show is called Daredevil Matt Murdock and his vigilante alter ego are the sun that everything else in the story world rotates. Matt, and to an extant Wilson Fisk, maybe the centerpieces of everything but they are generally focused on at the expense of the shows other regulars: Foggy and Karen. The focus on Matt shrunk the storytelling of the series as a whole and turned these two characters into hollow, dramatically ineffective, supporting characters that seemed to operate as nothing more than pillars to prop Matt up with. Karen got it the worst in season 1, at least Foggy was shown to have a skill and reason to exist outside of the show. That hint of raison d’etre was not found in the Karen Paige of season 1, she was the love interest to be pined after from afar and that was pretty much it. Things got exponentially better in season 2 when they gave her the reporter job, suddenly she had a reason to exist outside of Matt! One of the best things Erik Oleson did with this season is make it a more functional TV show by giving the other regulars their own things to do.
Why couldn’t we have had this story told in season 1? It didn’t need to be an individual episode but her backstory is the stuff running c-plots are made of. As they were getting to know Karen, so was the audience, and the show would’ve given her a reason to exist at the start instead of the end. Those lack of c-plots are one of the reasons Marvel-Netflix shows feel like such a slog as everything is over exposed and strung out.
2. Daredevil vs Bullseye: Round 2
I like that there seems to be a cinematic tradition of having Daredevil and Bullseye fight it out in a church. Despite the overall praise for action sequences in this season, this fight felt a bit lacking when compared to the Mark Steven Johnson Daredevil film. I have a soft spot for the director’s cut of that film, it is an integral element of developing what Dru Jeffries termed comic book film style. That said the two set pieces, while their settings are similar, are functionally at opposite ends. The film’s choreography was inspired by wuxia, which is not what the Netflix series aspires towards in the slightest.
In the context of the series, this is how you do a second big fight sequence and keep things open for the trilogy bout. The church fight is the exact opposite of the office fight spatially with unobstructed views and lack of ironic sharp instruments. Furthering the contrast is the visuals, the office fight is back lit with a dark blue, in the church it is red. Their new arena plays into the choreography as Matt does his darndest to keep to the inside and pummel his opponent to the body, stopping Bullseye from making space to throw things. Awesome fight choreography can make an action sequence enjoyable, but like good prowrestling, using that choreography to enhance or tell its story is what makes a sequence great.
Continued belowGiving Bullseye a slasher-esque disappearing act was a nice touch as well.
3. Red vs Blue
As awkward as the structure of this episode is director Alex Garcia Lopez, cinematographer Christopher LaVasseur, and production designers, do a really good job of laying into the harshly segmented nature and giving the episodes two halves (from a time perspective more like 2/3 : 1/3) contrasting visual palettes. Karen’s past is this nice soft, almost baby, blue color. It gives everything a hint of almost nostalgia, almost due to the events depicted. Meanwhile her present is dominated by fierce reds. Lighting and color design hasn’t always been Marvel Netflix strong suit. The first couple of episodes of Daredevil season one did a good leaning into the Alex Maleev neo-noir aesthetic. For as poor as Defenders is, the use of lighting and playing each characters elemental color off one another was a nice visual touch. The use of this visual tool here gave the episode a much needed dose of styyyle and way of mediating the discordant aspects of the episode.
4. RIP Father Lantom
It’s been interesting with the rise of Game of Thrones how the reaction and assumed new willingness to kill of characters has changed. Even though the only reason why those deaths are effective in the first place is their use as a deconstructive element in a narrative that is in some ways deconstructive. It has spurred new dialog on the nature of killing characters, and why certain marginalized characters seem to get the axe at a higher rate. That dialog is why the death of Julie rings hollower than it already did.
The death of Father Lantom isn’t like Julie’s, it is an earned dramatic moment and one that made sense if the show were to continue. At the top of the list of why these two similar events are different is the fact that Lantom was an overall effective character. Earlier I mentioned how poor of character Karen Page was in season 1, in execution she was a blander version of what Lantom, except, she was also a regular. Lantom was a stock supporting character, the Spiritual Father. These qualities when mixed with sound dramatic writing and a nice turn by Peter McRobbie, gave the character a spark and life to him. This allowed his death to have an impact. Lantom was also given agency in his death, he choose to take the bullet, as opposed to being shot in the back of the head over a computer screen. With the arrival of Joanne Whalley as Sister Maggie aka Matt’s Mom, he also had a bit of a functional double that offered up untapped dramatic potential. So if there were a fourth season, there could still be a spiritual adviser for Matt to play off of.
5. A Cool Use of Daredevil’s Powerset
As an adaptation the lack of or attempt to consistently show a shadow world or fiery impressionist representation of Matt’s echolocation sight could be a missed opportunity. Using Father Lantom’s final whispers and Karen’s instructions to Matt during the fight with Bullseye was a nice way of representing his powerset in a way that didn’t mean showing him beat up people good.
