Idiot Boxing, MCU on Netflix: Daredevil, season 3 (2018); The Punisher, season 2 (2019)

In season 3, we see Matt ditch the red suit for a while and go
back to the original, "blind, black-clad ninja" getup. It's
still one of the coolest alternative superhero costumes.

Daredevil, season 3 (2019)

Another Netflix MCU series that has some clear strengths, but suffers from the same flaws that every Netflix MCU show has shown, to varying degrees.

Last we saw Matt Murdock, he was miraculously found alive in a mysterious location, following his apparent death at the end of The Defenders series. There, he had fought against and with his lady-love, psychotic ninja assassin Elektra Natchios, until they were seemingly buried under tons of rubble.

But Murdock was dragged free. He was taken to his neighborhood Catholic church and nursed back to health, but he has now lost his purpose in life, both as a criminal defense lawyer and as a vigilante neighborhood protector. Not only that, but his supernaturally-heightened senses seem to be horribly dulled. As he works his way through his lack of powers and personal focus, Wilson "The Kingpin" Fisk uses nefarious machinations and intimidation to secure his release from prison. He then launches an all-out assault on the reputations of the people who put him in prison in the first place - Matt Murdock, Karen Paige, and Foggy Nelson. One of Fisk's key chess pieces is Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, a homicidal FBI special forces operative with supernatural hand-eye coordination. His skills make him lethal with any sort of projectile weapon or firearm. The psychologically fragile Poindexter is cunningly recruited by Fisk to masquerade as Daredevil, sullying the name of Murdock's alter ego as he slaughters anyone whom Fisk sees as a threat.

The broad strokes of this season were pretty good, and the connection between Fisk and Poindexter was an interesting one. Probably the most entertaining aspect of the season was how Poindexter was handled in the action scenes. His character, known as "Bullseye" in the source comic books, was always a fascinating counter-point villain to Daredevil. Although not possessed of classic "super powers," his heightened abilities to aim and kill with any object made for interesting parallels with Murdock's abilities. And the writers of this season put together a feasible backstory for Poindexter, making him compelling and terrifying in appropriate balance.

The other solid story component was the tale of compromised FBI agent Ray Nadeem, whose internal struggle as to how to cross the tightrope along which he walks gives the overall narrative a decent grounding at times. Although this story element isn't as consistently compelling as it probably could have been, it was an original enough addition to the Daredevil TV mythology to feel somewhat fresh.

Unfortunately, I found most of the other elements of the season to be rather mediocre. The most obvious is the still-tepid handling of Daredevil's primary nemesis, The Kingpin. The writers have, from the first season of the show back in 2015, seemed hell-bent on digging deep into the psyche of Wilson Fisk. This has led them to offer several flashbacks into his childhood, and give us many slow, ponderous scenes between him and his love, Vanessa. The problem is that the "romance" between Fisk and Vanessa never once feels fully formed or developed. I've always had the sense that the writers spend too much time subtly hinting at some deeper connection between the two, without adequately explaining it. All we have really gotten is that Vanessa likes a strong, powerful man, and Fisk loves her for not judging him. But the way their scenes are labored and drawn out, you would think that they were the MacBeths. But never does the writing get anywhere near the depth or subtlety that it seems to hint at. There is very much a "hint and suggest endlessly, but don't show or tell" coyness about it, but I never felt as if the substance was there to back it up.

Don't let the red suit fool you here. Under the Daredevil suit
is Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter, a psychotic killer whose hyper
OCD grants him freakish hand-eye coordination, which in
turn makes any simple object lethal in his hands.

I also found the story arcs involving Foggy and Karen rather forgettable. In fact, there's an entire episode dedicated to Karen's backstory thrust right in towards the end of the season (episode 10 out of 13). Sure, it helps us get into some of Karen's motivation, but it really gut-punched a lot of the momentum that the story had been building to that point. And the takeaway was something that could probably have been done in half the time.

And these last points illustrate yet again one of the greatest flaws of the entire Netflix MCU - the writers have still not figured out how to write a full 13 episodes of compelling, focused story. Between all of its shows, going back to 2015, there have now been eleven different seasons, with nine of them being comprised of 13 episodes (only Iron Fist's second season and the lone season of The Defenders were shorter). And not one of them has felt like it merited that many episodes. The closest any seasons have gotten were the first seasons of both Daredevil and Jessica Jones, but even those felt a tad bloated. What took them 13 episodes probably could have been done in 11 or even as few as nine or ten. Other seasons and other shows were even more notably thin, with some seasons having only 6 or 7 episodes of quality material stretched over far too many chapters. Season three of Daredevil continues this unfortunate trend, feeling as if at least two or three episodes could  have been trimmed away, leaving a tighter, more focused season.

All that said, I mostly enjoyed it. There was a satisfying amount of action, which was often well done. The show even swung for the fences on the now-established "long shot" that each season has done. In this season, we are given an amazingly long, continuous shot that begins with Matt going into the prison where Fisk had been held, then seeing things gradually devolve into an all-out brawl in which Murdock has to fight his way out. It's an impressive sequence, and one of many that keep the tension in the show at appropriate levels.

As I write this, the fate of Daredevil and all the Netflix MCU shows is known - they have all been officially cancelled. However, I doubt that this will be the last we see of some of its better entries, which includes "The Man Without Fear." My hope is that if it gets picked up elsewhere, that network sees fit to make the necessary changes to elevate this and the other MCU shows to greater heights - something which has often seemed tantalizingly possible yet has never been fully realized.


The Punisher, season 2 (2019)

I found this season to be quite solid, if not as consistent as the first season.

Frank "The Punisher" Castle gets back to the bloody work of
avenging those whom he sees as needing it. That, and of
scratching the itch of his own unquenchable bloodlust.

Although it wasn't official, the second season of The Punisher was all but a dead man walking before it even aired. Prior to its January release, three of its Netflix MCU brethren series, including the popular Daredevil, had officially been cancelled. Still, I was excited for this season, as I found the first season to be among the very best of the Netflix MCU seasons, only behind the first seasons of Daredevil and Jessica Jones. At the end of that season, Frank "The Punisher" Castle had exacted his revenge on those responsible for the brutal murders of his wife and two children, leaving only his former friend-turned-enemy Billy Russo alive. Russo was left with a destroyed criminal network and a face ravaged by broken glass. Castle himself was given a clean slate by the U.S. government and set free under the promise that he never surface under his own name again.

Fast forward several months, and Frank, going by the alias Pete Castiglioni, is drifting through the country, minding his own business. But when he steps in to help a young woman, Amy, in distress in a bar in rural Michigan, he gets sucked into a violent struggle between some powerful forces. Frank;s attempt to keep Amy out of harm's way soon takes him back to New York City, where his ultimate nemesis and former best friend Billy Russo escapes the hospital where he has been recovering from severe facial trauma and amnesia. As Billy returns to his violent ways, he and Frank begin another bloody dance towards each other, as other outside forces hone in on all of them.

While I understand some viewers' and critics' issues with season 2, I thought that it did far more correctly than it did incorrectly.

The Punisher character was introduced back in the mid-1970s, in the comic "The Amazing Spider-Man." Right from his creation, Frank Castle was one of the darkest, most troubling characters in the Marvel Universe. In the mold of "Dirty" Harry Callahan, he was essentially a murderer who had some semblance of a code, executing people who most of us would agree were as close to pure evil as a person could be. This still never changes the facts that such characters are, still, murderers who only seem capable of dealing with violent people in even more violent ways. Handling such a character can be tricky, as trying to make them more palatable to a broader audience takes away exactly what makes them compelling. Conversely, some writers can swing too far the other way, making the characters ultra-violent and the stories B-grade, grindhouse fare. This is how we end up with adaptations like Punisher: War Zone.

One of the many, many thugs who comes at Castle, only to
end up on the losing end. And with the preternaturally skilled
killer, that only ends one way.

As with the first season, the show-runners for the Netflix version have done excellent work looking at Frank Castle as a very believable, and very disturbing person. The second season digs deeper into the fact that Frank is, and has always been, a violent killing machine. Just as his arch-nemesis and former friend Billy Russo has been, and just as newcomer John Pilgrim seemingly has always been. These three characters are soaked in blood, which they all seem to realize is their natural place. The season does a solid, if slightly incomplete, job of juxtaposing the three men as the narrative progresses, illustrating that Frank is only slightly less terrifying than the other two. It is rather compelling to note how each man's bloodthirsty nature is often subsumed by other aspects of their character. With Pilgrim, it is his religion. With Russo, it is his narcissism and materialism. And with Frank, it is his code and notion that he is protecting or avenging innocent people.

A show about such dark and violent people must, of course, offer grisly action, and The Punisher delivers again. I found many of the sequences very well done, having the grit, ferocity, and intensity that one would hope for. While there aren't quite as many creatively-choreographed scenarios as the first season, there are still more than a few clever set-ups, fist fights, and shootouts. The season finale actually features a few of the best of the entire season, which is what one would hope for.

This season was not without its weaknesses, though. The initial setup is, inexplicably, completely random. Even with dozens of reasons that dangerous people might be looking for Frank Castle, it's sheer chance that puts him in contact with Amy, kicking off the entire season story. And there is the inevitable lull in the middle episodes, where the pace languishes for about 4 episodes. On an aesthetic front, the makeup job which turns the previously-handsome Bill Russo into "Jigsaw" is laughably lame. In the comics, the character is horrifically scarred, but in this TV show, it looks like something you could do with a $25 Halloween makeup kit. And the twisted romance between Russo and his psychiatrist Floriana Lima always feels awkwardly contrived. While it was nice of the writers not to lean on strong characters from the past, I was hoping to see Micro for much of the season, to no avail.

Fortunately, the weaknesses mostly emerge in the middle of the season, and the show comes to a strong finish in its final four or five episodes. Marvel was smart to allow show-runner Steve Lightfoot plenty of freedom to make Frank Castle as dark and disturbing as he should be. In many ways, the character is a dark reflection of the violent impulses that course through the veins of American culture and society, and it's worth considering his troubling appeal not unlike the way we should do with the many "Dirty" Harry Callahan characters which have been popular over the years.