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| Image Courtesy www.twitter.com/Daredevil |
At the end of the previous episode, “Penny
and Dime,” it looked like Matt’s life had finally started to come
together: he had stopped the rival
vigilante, he was prepared to hang up the mask (for the most part), and he and
Karen were just starting to explore their feelings for each other. You know what that means?
It’s time for something to mess
Matt’s life up!
And that something comes in the
form of none other than Elektra Natchios, Matt’s ex-girlfriend from college.
This episode provides us the back
story of Elektra and Matt’s relationship starting from a flashback to when they
first met. Ten years earlier when Matt
and Foggy are in college, they decided to crash a faculty party. While Foggy tasted the caviar, Matt wandered
out to mingle with the crowd, eventually finding a finely-dressed woman with
bracelets that clinked together. One of
the bouncers was just about to kick him out when that woman stopped him by
saying that Matt was with her. The rest
of the episode intersperses flashbacks following up from this initial
encounter.
While sitting at the bar, Matt
and Elektra test their skills in reading each other: Elektra calls him dumb and out of his depth
trying to hit on her; Matt calls her bored and offers her something unexpected,
which intrigues her enough that she leaves with him. Later on—it’s not entirely clear if this is
that same night or another date—the two of them break into Fogwell’s Gym, where
Matt tells her some of his history with the gym, specifically that his father
was a boxer and was killed by organized crime (Roscoe Sweeney). She isn’t quite buying Matt’s blind act and
kicks out at him, but he dodges, at which point she knows he can “see.” They begin to spar, which is fun, and it
quickly leads to sex as they start kissing and undressing while still in the
boxing ring. This is the only scene in
the season which really contains sexual content, and most of it is heavily
implied; nothing is really visible beyond that I think I saw a quick shot of
Elektra’s nipple.
The next flashback cuts right to
the chase: Matt and Elektra drive to the
house of a business associate of Elektra’s father, where she breaks a window to
let them in and they start helping themselves to his food. It’s amazing just how casual the whole thing
is: they broke into a house, and here
they are calmly cutting the cheese and eating it while discussing their future
plans. However, it all ends quite
quickly when the homeowner arrives and turns out to be none other than Roscoe
Sweeney: Elektra staged this whole
evening to pressure Matt into taking revenge on the man who ordered his father’s
murder. Matt desperately wants to make
Sweeney suffer for his crimes, but he can’t bring himself to go through with it
and kill a defenseless man, even if he can accuse him of trespassing. Consequently Matt finally calls things off
with Elektra and calls the police so they can take Sweeney into custody.
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| Image Courtesy www.mcuexchange.com |
It’s amazing to see just how much
trouble Elektra could get Matt into, especially when he’s the one who initiated
the relationship and the thrill-seeking.
And there is a major connecting between Elektra’s campaign to get Matt
into trouble 10 years ago when they first met, and Elektra’s campaign to get
Matt into trouble in the present day.
In the present, Matt found Elektra
waiting for him in his living room, and his first instinct is to demand an
explanation for why she is in his apartment.
She explains that she has business with the Roxxon Oil Company because
her father did business with them but she wants to get her money back from them
now that she knows them to be in league with the Yakuza. She offers him a major retainer to help her
with the Yakuza, but Matt refuses and kicks her out. The next day Foggy is reading up on the
Punisher case in the newspaper when Karen reveals that she suspects a
cover-up: they are not telling the full
story of what happened to Castle. However,
Matt and Foggy are both concerned about her involvement with the case because
it could be dangerous. It’s at about
this moment that they learn of a major anonymous deposit made to their firm’s
account, which Matt immediately suspects to have come from Elektra. Matt immediately leaves to follow up on his
Elektra theory, though he does not tell Foggy and Karen what’s going on.
Matt immediately goes to Roxxon’s
Yakatomi building, where Elektra has her meeting, and climbs up to the roof of
an adjacent building where he can observe Elektra’s meeting with Roxxon’s
accountant from a distance. While listening
he hears a buzzing sound which signals Elektra using a device which hacks the
Roxxon servers. Later that night Matt
confronts Elektra in her penthouse, accusing her of manipulating him into
helping her, which she does not deny. In
fact, she even drives home the point by handing him the duffel holding his
Daredevil suit and telling him that he needs to suit up and help her take out
the Yakuza thugs who have tracked her down to get back the information that she
stole. I do enjoy all of the intrigue
which Elektra brings to the series, though after the intensity of the Punisher she
almost feels like a letdown.
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| Image Courtesy www.technobuffalo.com |
Speaking of the Punisher, two of
the other plots in this episode revolve around him and the fallout from the
previous episode. In the first, the D.A.
is attempting to sweep it entirely under the rug and demands all of Nelson and
Murdock’s files from the Grote case.
Foggy, however, flexes his legal muscles by refusing to hand over files
without a court order—and he is completely within his rights to do so. However, because they are refusing to bow to
Reyes’ wishes, the D.A.’s office threatens them with Reyes’ “shit list.” What does this mean? It means that they will do everything in
their power to drive clients away from Nelson and Murdock; a couple of clients
leave within an hour after Towers left their office. Foggy meets up with Marci later for a drink,
and Marci reveals that Reyes is trying to use Frank Castle to become mayor,
using his case to go after all of the vigilantes who are popping up all over
New York City. Among others, Reyes is
already starting to crack down on a certain private investigator who works for
Marci’s office: Jessica Jones. And Daredevil is probably next. It is really cool how they can interconnect
the Netflix shows with these simple namedrops:
we now know that after Landman and Zach closed down in Daredevil
season 1, Marci went to work for Hogarth’s law firm. And we also know how the events of Daredevil
season 2 are affecting Jessica Jones, without her ever saying a word or even
appearing. I do wish that they had taken
this to the next level, however, especially with Spider-Man appearing in Captain
America: Civil War just 1½ months after release. How cool would it have been if Marci tossed
out the “Spider-Man urban legend” as another of Reyes’ targets? Heck, they could have name-dropped a bunch of
other NYC-based heroes from the comics and let us try to figure out who they
were!
Meanwhile, Karen spends the
episode trying to track down legitimate information about Frank Castle, a.k.a.
the Punisher, to counter Reyes’ presumed cover-up. Her first stop is to meet with Ellison, Ben
Urich’s former boss at the Bulletin, whom she accuses of colluding in
the cover-up by intentionally leaving information out of the article; Ellison
claims that they only published the information which the D.A.’s office included
in their press brief. Karen believes
that something serious must have happened to Castle’s family to cause all of
this, and Ellison offers to let her look through the hard copies of all their
back issues to see if she finds anything about the murders. Though Karen is unable to find any
information about the Castles, Ellison does remember a story about a gang war
involving the Cartel, Dogs of Hell, and Kitchen Irish, the very three gangs
that Castle targeted. I find Karen’s arc
through the last two-thirds of this season to be quite fascinating as a
continuation of her development in season 1:
she is essentially following in Ben Urich’s shoes as an investigative
journalist, despite a lack of formal training.
Her quest for the truth at any cost is one of the things that make her
character so compelling in my opinion.
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| Image Courtesy www.mcuexchange.com |
A final thing to note in this
episode is that Matt and Karen finally go on a dinner date, which Elektra
interrupts with a phone call. This also
gives them an opportunity to reveal a little more of Karen’s back story, that
she grew up in a small town in Vermont. Interestingly
for a TV series like this, Matt and Karen do not have sex after this
first date; Matt wants to preserve the perfect evening. I like how they use Karen and Elektra in this
season, playing them and their respective demands of Matt off each other and
showing the key differences between them.
Karen really represents the good and wholesome relationship which would
actually benefit Matt, while Elektra represents the dangerous and risky
relationship which gives him more of an adrenaline rush but which ultimately
only leads Matt to a broken heart. This is
one thing which this episode did very well.
Overall I enjoyed this
episode. I wasn’t quite as excited for
Elektra as I was for the Punisher, but I was looking forward to seeing her
nonetheless. It is interesting that Matt’s
life does indeed start falling apart when Elektra returns, but it’s not just
because of her; his lies and hiding the truth from his friends really is what
starts to drive the wedge between him and Foggy.
What did you think of this
episode? What do you think of Elektra in
season 2? Are you a fan of the changes
they made to her character? Let me know
in the comments!
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