Ricky Church reviews the eleventh episode of Daredevil season 2…
While it was a good episode, ‘.380’ is where Daredevil’s second season started slipping a bit for me as it began juggling a little too much.
Picking right up from ‘The Man in the Box’, The Hand assaulted the hospital to gain back the children. It was a cool and creepy scene, particularly the way the children were silhouetted in the darkness. Daredevil’s fight against the ninjas were cool, though was also a little reminiscent of Arrow’s third season with both heroes fighting a horde of faceless enemies who all looked the same. While it was easier than Arrow to tell Daredevil apart from the ninjas, some shots were still difficult to tell who was who. Aside from that, it was still a good action scene that set a creepy tone for The Hand.
After the opening scene, though, The Hand plotline was largely forgotten about for the rest of the episode. Daredevil’s attention shifted back to The Punisher and his search for the elusive Blacksmith while Claire Temple, of all people, dealt with the aftermath of the hospital assault. It was nice to see Rosario Dawson given such a prominent role in an episode again, as well as Claire’s utter refusal to sweep what happened under the rug, but it didn’t quite feel right the threat again shifted away from The Hand. Especially since it was Claire who discovered the ninjas themselves seem to be resurrected in some way, not Daredevil.
While I appreciate the fact this is to show Matt taking on too much and still battling between his personal and superhero life, I almost feel the plotline should have continued with Matt tracking down The Hand while Frank dealt with the Blacksmith investigation on his own. As I said at the top of the review, it was juggling a bit too much and is as if the writers couldn’t decide which plotline they wanted to focus on more in the second half of the season. Though it was cool to see the brief return of Madame Gao, however, I also think they could have easily gone to her for information on The Hand rather than the Blacksmith if they wanted her back.
That being said, The Punisher moments are great and continue to be the best part of any episode. We got to see a different and more personal side of Frank in two scenes. The first is when he’s with Karen at the diner, displaying some wisdom that shows there’s more than just anger and deadly skill beneath him as he talked to her about lost love and how important it is to hold onto someone you love. The diner fight was well choreographed, once again showing Frank’s skill in a fight, but it was incredibly important Karen was there. After that last several episodes where she’s been more on Frank’s side than anyone else’s, going so far as to condone his actions, she finally saw his methods firsthand. Whereas Daredevil takes the law into his hands, not only does he not kill people but his crusade is highly controlled while Punisher’s is brutal chaos, going way past the point of acceptable.
Which leads us into the second scene as Daredevil and Punisher share their first conversation together since the outstanding ‘Penny and Dime’. Matt actually told Punisher that maybe, “just this once” as he said, killing would be acceptable in the case of Blacksmith. Frank once again showed off that wisdom, replying to Daredevil that once you cross that line, one will never be enough. It was also emotional to hear Frank talk about his lack of purpose without his family, giving him some further direction into what he’d do once he’d finally find Blacksmith.
Though ‘.380’ delivered further great Punisher moments, it also shows the point where Daredevil began dealing with too much in its plot, never quite deciding whether The Hand or The Punisher should be the main focus. Because of this, the homestretch of Daredevil’s second season suffers for me.
Ricky Church
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