Daredevil returns with “The Devil You Know” as Matt and everyone sees double with a certain marksman donning the red suit. Meanwhile, everyone continues to search for a way to live their best life which always seems to be somewhat self-destructive.
1. Half Season So Far
“The Devil You Know” is essentially the halfway point through the season. While it started very strong in the first two to three episodes, the following episodes meandered a bit and fell back into bad habits. “The Devil You Know” is a step in the right direction towards those strong episodes at the start of the season. Every scene in this episode revolves around questions of identity and moral culpability as Kingpin and Agent Nadeem circle Matt, Foggy, and Karen. Unlike previous episodes it features a strong overall arc that builds to that first confrontation between Marr and Dex as opposed to peaking in the middle. This isn’t to say the action sequence needs to be at the end, just that the overall structure made it for a smoother and dramatically engaging viewing experience.
“The Devil You Know” closes this midseason on a strong note and has me hopeful for the back half of season three.
2. Finally a Proper Fight
The action sequences up to this point have been really good. They all tell a exist to further the story at that specific time and, best of all, aren’t over edited attempts at Bayhem. However, I wouldn’t call them good “fight scenes.” They have been the equivalent of playing as Batman in the various Arkham games and coming across a group of anonymous henchmen and brutally inflicting “justice” upon them. Sure Matt has gotten beat up a little bit over the previous five episodes but who hasn’t had their combo messed up by attacks of screen?
Matt’s first tussle with Dex/Daredevil continues the action sequence as storytelling dynamic but extends it out a bit. The fight choreography does a good job of both showing who each combatant is and how they would approach a problem like the other. Matt always wants to close the distance and get into the clinch against Dex, while Dex wants to use space and his knack for throwing things. There is a kind of perverse comedy to seeing Dex turn everyday objects into a weapon, and it isn’t even the everyday sharp ones just anything big an throwable will do.
If there is one middling portion of the experience it is the choice of lighting. In certain shots it makes everything look great, in others it muddies everything. Matt and Dex have different enough profiles that their general shape is distinguishable but it isn’t immediately clear.
There is one thing about this fight that raises a question about the whole Kingpin uses the Daredevil identity to further destroy Matt Murdock business. Daredevil doesn’t fight like Bullseye. Sure he has thrown one of his batons at times but Dex is moving around the room throwing stuff an killing people when that isn’t how Matt would do things. He also leaves the body of the Shank Guy. Won’t somebody think of the physical evidence!?
3. Oh, this has gotta be the good life
There’s a queer subtext to the scene between Dex and Kingpin, as the prisoner who is now clearly running the prison asks his jailer to come out of the metaphorical closet and live his true and honest self. Which also fits with how the show treated Wesley in season 1. More directly it follows the pattern of how the show uses mental illness and physical ability to connote why these costumed characters are a part from the normal comic book characters like Karen and Foggy. It is a continuation of the series broad, uncritical, short hand that sets up dichotomy between two classes of character without wanting to spend the time and humanize them fuller. It was awkward.
With that recognized, Kingpin’s pitch is an effective one in seasons broader motif of identity. Of our trinity of broken men, he’s the only that approaches honest and authentic which has rewarded him. Matt is a walking disaster person actively pushing his friends away when he isn’t trying to manipulate them. He only wants to be Daredevil now, but not the heroic suited version, the proto version that was all about personal punishment with no higher ideals to support his vigilantism with. Oliver Queen tried to go back to the Hood a couple of times on Arrow it never worked out well. Dex was a tightly wound disaster waiting to happen, all Kingpin did was give it a little tug and now he’s spinning out of control.
Continued belowWith Matt now fighting a symbolic representation of himself going forward, it’ll be interesting to see how that pushes the character in balancing or disavowing his various identities.
4. Three Beginnings
Starting episodes with a character starting their day has been a recurring element this season. “The Devil You Know” takes this motif to the extreme by focusing on the start of three separate characters day (Karen, Dex, and Kingpin.) It might be a bit repetitive, but it is a useful way of showing where these characters are emotionally.
Karen is a mess, after confessing to Foggy about killing Wesley back in season 1. More importantly Matt breaks into her apartment to ask for her help in bringing down Fisk. The scene plays against type to a degree. If this reunion had happened earlier in the season, Karen would be all happy. Now she stares at him with contempt at reminds him the rent money that is due. They have a purely transactional relationship now. Matt for his part has dropped the fiction that he’s doing all this to protect her from Fisk, which is nice to hear coming out of one of these kinds shows.
Dex is a even more of a mess as he spirals off the well-manicured mental path he’d been running along. Cinematographer Christopher LaVasseur maybe over does it a bit with the spiral camera movements, but the sequence is the shortest of this trio of beginnings so it requires a bolder touch.
Wilson Fisk is doing just fine. His prison apartment gets to look just like his old one and he now has all his suits back. The various moments where episodes have focus on how Fisk starts his day have been dreamlike until the moment they are shattered. This isn’t a dream and of the trio is the one clearly doing the best.
5. Karen meets Sister Maggie
It’s a brief sequence, a bridging one overall, but the show rarely allows this kind of interaction. Characters are set in very specific groups and crowds they get to interact in, everything is fed through Matt. This sort of compartmentalization limits the scope of the show and one of the reasons why Karen getting the job at the Bulletin was so good, it gave her a reason to have more people to interact with. Now here she is getting to meet one of Matt’s other friends, and they make knowing small talk about how much of a jerk Matt is.
