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Five Thoughts on Daredevil’s “No Good Deed”

By | November 4th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

No good deed goes unpunished they say. With how Matt is punishing himself, he must really think he did a LOT of good.

1. Old Habits

“No Good Deed” is a direct continuation of “Please.” Together they form a duology due to their adjacent position on the timeline, but lack the structure of a two part story that would make continuous viewing a satisfying experience. That lack of satisfaction is predominantly derived from this episode. “Deed” lacks the payoff a two parter normally entails or the episodic chops to stand alone. As an episode it recalls the structure of prior Netflix originals where episodes were connected by close proximity in time but nothing more. The viewer is left in a haze of what just happened as the plot nebulously trudged forward.

These old Netflix Original qualities had me considering this as an episode without some kind of unifying motif, as previous episodes this season have. It does, everything is shown through the prism of aftermath. The rest of the cast reacts to the news that Kingpin is in his new prison and the convoy was attacked. That is not a strong enough construct, it created plenty of excellent scenes or sequences, but Sonay Hoffman’s script lacks the connective tissue that comes from good storytelling. “No Good Deed” is an assemblage of pleasant sequences and moments, that never come together to make for something more.

2. The Devil on His Shoulder

As episodically unwieldly this episode maybe, it has some excellent scenes that push the story forward, not just the plot. Daredevil, likely in part due to chewing through a showrunner a season, hasn’t been the most visually consistent or intelligent show. These three seasons have been in a continuity with lighting and other visual signifiers, but compared to what Melissa Rosenberg in Jessica Jones or Cheo Hodari Coker in Luke Cage, lack their contemporaries consistency in letting the visuals tell the story. Daredevil has been more an exercise in shallow style, but that appears to be changing with Erik Oleson at the helm. In these three episodes, Oleson appears to be leaning into the televisual medium harder and using simple imagery and staging inform and enhance the writing in ways previous seasons of Daredevil have not. Past episodes had simple, effective, audio and visual cues that represent Matt’s alternative sight to the audience. They didn’t make the shadow world from Mark Steven Johnson’s Daredevil or the impressionist image of fire found in season 1, but they got the point across. This sort of simple but effective visual storytelling comes through again as “Deed” continues to explore the depths of how lost Matthew Murdock is.

His sense of self loathing is magnified into a surrealist sequence that imagines Kingpin as a literal Devil on his shoulder, while Murdock stalks the gilded hallways of Wilson Fisk’s new prison. Season long cinematographer Christopher LaVasseur, keeps the focus in the foreground on Matt, blurring and magnifying Vincent D’onofrio immense girth as he paces in and out of frame taunting and urging Matt to give into his baser tendencies to let the Devil out. It is the perfect image to tell audiences how much Matthew Murdock is psychologically flagellating himself for his perceived failures, much like how Bruce Wayne’s trio of dreams did in Batman v Superman.

The phantasmic presence of Kingpin helps to give the sequence a dreamlike quality as Matt haunts these hallways in nice long shots. These, relatively, long takes awake the viewer to the lack of cuts and also highlight how aimless and ill-defined the whole endeavor is. Really, Matt’s going to just bust into an FBI protected penthouse murder like 20 people and kill Fisk?

At the heart of Murdock’s psychological torment reveals is a dark truth: he wanted death when he stayed in Midland Circle. Catholic Matthew Murdock wanted to commit suicide. Now, this is one part reframing/retcon that isn’t entirely supported by or present in The Defenders. However, Defenders was poorly written in the first place and with reports that few people watched it, there is plenty of room for this recontextualization of Murdock’s emotional state. It does feel apiece with the shows overall view of love as a madness inducing emotional state that only death seems preferable to leaving it.

Continued below

This storytelling choice also allows Charlie Cox and Vincent D’onofrio to interact without really doing it. They have good chemistry, and considering Matt is sequestered away only interacting meaningfully with Sister Maggie and Father Lantom, it gives him and the show another character to play off of.

While the phantom Fisks role is to torment Matthew, it also shows how well he knows the man. The comment about “Prison” changing him is actually true and a bit of a pun. Considering in the previous episode Fisk referred to his love for Vanessa as the ultimate prison, it has indeed changed him.

3. Matthew Murdock is an A-Hole

That isn’t an entirely original or surprising thought to have given these first three episodes. Scenes have leaned into his narcissism, demanding God’s presence as a child and taking Kingpin’s quasi-release as some sort of divine punishment for his suicidal tendency. He is also rather prickly with people. The new insight of Matthew imagining himself with a Wilson Fisk sized monkey back, helps explain these actions even if they are not good justification for such behavior.

But what really takes the cake is his interaction with Foggy, his best friend. Really, you’re going to fake your death for months randomly appear in front of your friend steal his wallet and swear him to secrecy? Not even Oliver Queen on was that mean.

4. Benjamin “Dex” Poindexter is bananas

This season is anchored by a trio of mentally unhealthy men, while everyone else is forced to watch or is pushed around by their wrath. Dex’s mental state is a good mirror to Matt, who for all his troubles, did eventually open up to people about his feelings in healthy ways. If he did not, maybe he’d be acting more like Dex.

With how Netflix releases shows and their overall production schedule it isn’t their fault, but the image of Dex stalking Julie with a sniper scope takes on extra layers of creepy given recent events in the United States. On first watch it played as homage to Psycho and Halloween, an indictment of the audience scopophilia and the need for patriarchal control. The second viewing showed how not far off those features were with their critique.

5. Karen’s Awkward Home Cooked Meal

With no Matt for her and Foggy to emotionally care for, we’re getting to see more of them living their lives. This isn’t as extended a sequence as meeting the Nelson’s in the previous episode and still manages a good bit awkward character drama. As with everything it eventually circles around to the Kingpin’s convoy. Hoffman’s script lacks the connective tissue to tie it all together but the scenes placement after the credits as a sort of reset is well done.


//TAGS | Daredevil

Michael Mazzacane

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