“We’re talking about a man who dresses in a devil costume,” says Wilson Fisk to his aide in the Mayor’s office. He sums up what we’re doing, too. All of this hubbub because some guy with a bleeding heart decides that he can save New York City, and for what? Episode 7 of Daredevil: Born Again really leans into the idea that the difference between who is doing the protecting and who is bringing the pain is nothing but a matter of perspective. At least when it comes to the conflict between Daredevil and Fisk’s police task force. In the case of Muse, though, he’s pretty much always doing bad. What sucks is that it appears to be for very little reason.
The rest of this review contains spoilers. Let’s dig in.
“Art for Art’s Sake”
A weird fan approaches Heather Glenn at one of her book signings before the recap even starts. I forgot about it. That is, until it becomes clear who the weirdo really is.
We start steamy, with Heather meeting Matthew Murdock in the shower, smooching him like there’s no tomorrow, but not before noticing a huge bruise on his back. She tells him later that he’s “tamping down his trauma” and that healing is “not a fight, it’s a process.” The couple even says, “I love you.” Things are getting serious. Just in time for shit to hit the fan.
Before it does, though, I notice just how much Born Again suffers for not leaning into the procedural mystery vibe that it has going. Even the crime scene investigation of Muse’s cool abandoned train hideout is glossed over. Marvel makes these mistakes because it can. Because it thinks people would rather see hero fights than deduction. However, this kind of thinking is at odds with all that gives Born Again its momentary flashes of greatness. The closer this show can get to noir, the better. It just refuses to. There must always be good and evil and flashy fisticuffs. That will be Daredevil’s downfall.
Now, let’s reel it in before I can get too far down the angst hole.
Vanessa and Luca meet. Luca says that things were better while she was in charge and hints that he’d like to take Kingpin out. This leads to Vanessa giving him information as to her husband’s whereabouts at the end of the show. She double-crosses him, leading Luca into a trap where Fisk’s aide Buck shoots him down. This is just another little gang subplot that doesn’t really do it for me, but it does show that Vanessa and Wilson still have enough trust to carry out a murder of one of their lieutenants together. We’ll see how that develops.
Meanwhile, we learn that Bastian Cooper, the man the police suspect of being Muse, is seeing Heather for therapy. He was the nerd at the beginning of the show who approached her at the book signing. He tells her that she’s the reason he was able to feel liberated enough to show his art to the world. Uh oh.
As this scene develops, I can’t help but notice that Heather is doing therapy with nearly all the major players – especially the villains – the show throws our way. This strikes me as being too perfectly plotted to read as anything close to a coincidence. It pulls me out of immersion and clashes with the grittiness that is Born Again’s bread and butter.
Muse proceeds to cut his therapist’s arm open and lays down a drop cloth. He manhandles Heather, showing a glimpse of how terrifying an abusive man can be. Moments like these do the most work for Daredevil. I just think they could be purer if the abusive man wasn’t wearing a stapled-together suit with bloody eyeholes. Heather screams that, “anybody who needs a mask is a coward.” She’s getting real, and setting herself and Matt up for quite the conversation later.
Speaking of Matt, he bursts through the window and fights Muse in a pretty identical scene to their last encounter. This one is in an office instead of an abandoned trainyard, but otherwise the punching and the kicking are the same. Muse has a gun and loses it in the scuffle. Heather picks it up. She shoots Muse at close range before Daredevil can finish him. The police come up the stairs and find her passed out from blood loss in a room containing her client’s corpse. Daredevil is nowhere to be found.
Fisk hears that Daredevil was behind the heroics but tells his task force to take the credit. His employee Daniel threatens BB if she reports Daredevil as the hero. Daniel is a terrible character, played by an actor who I don’t believe. He sounds like a baby. His threat isn’t scary. All he does for me is make me want to stop watching the show.
Heather wakes up in the hospital and tells Matt that she can remember Daredevil saying her name while she was fading out. Ding, ding, ding – we’ve got trauma, folks.
Trauma
This episode had many of the elements that make Daredevil: Born Again kind of interesting. We had fight scenes and folks critiquing vigilantism from all angles. We had Matt Murdock’s angst (alongside mine). We even had the fall of Muse.
Unfortunately, we also had a ton of payoffs that felt lackluster. We had plotpoints that parrot others from previous episodes. We had very little forward motion, and the forward motion that we did experience fell flat. This one is pretty bad – even down to the title.
Episode Grade: D
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