Powered by a visceral display of bone-crunching violence, including spurting blood, ferociously bruising blows, and broken limbs, “Marvel’s Daredevil” season two is, without question, a physically punishing experience. “Daredevil” pulls no punches and ups the ante of brutality, further earning the title of a kind of rougher, “Marvel after dark” TV show. Unfortunately, the “adult”-themed content mostly ends there; the Hell’s Kitchen-set show may be smaller-scale than its blockbuster superhero counterparts, but that doesn’t make it any more soulful or human.
However, the sound of cracking bones and torn ligaments aren’t the only on-screen violence you’ll see and hear while watching the sophomore season. That timbre is also echoed in the show’s writers room, where beating you over the head with clunky dialogue and heavy-handed diatribes on guilt, morality, motives, and good vs. evil, is just as common as Daredevil’s billy club bonking one of the show’s many nameless goons into unconsciousness.
Part of the issue is rooted in the appearance of fellow Netflix series “Jessica Jones” during the show’s hiatus. When “Daredevil” premiered last year, it felt like a step-up for Marvel’s TV ventures— their ABC series “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D” and “Agent Carter” lacked compelling villains and secondary characters, and its broad writing belonged quite comfortably in the shiny environs of broadcast TV. “Daredevil” ventured into much darker corners of the Marvel universe, boasting sex and sometimes-brutal violence that befit its home on Netflix. While lacking true depth, “Daredevil” season one at least flirted with the ideas of vigilantism, sacrifice, and conflicted villains full of angst.
But the far-improved “Jessica Jones” let us know how much better Marvel Studios could do when let off the leash. Led by Melissa Rosenberg, “Jessica Jones” brought a previously unseen psychological depth to TV’s MCU and even one-upped “Daredevil” on the villain front with David Tennant’s terrifying Kilgrave. It also gave us a more nuanced, fully realized hero in Jessica (Krysten Ritter). Her eponymous show raised the bar for the connected Netflix MCU, but this season of “Daredevil” stumbles in its attempts to say something meaningful about what it means to be a hero.
The faults aren’t just found in comparison to its sister show. After the departure of season one showrunner Steven S. DeKnight (he’ll next be directing “Pacific Rim: Maelstrom“), writers Doug Petrie and Marco Ramirez stepped up to lead the show. Their combined experience of working on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Sons of Anarchy” should have bolstered the comic-book origins and its gritty tendencies, with some of the dark comedy of ‘Buffy’ lightening the mood. Instead, it dwells in the gutter superficially, with bloody violence and primal emotions, but its characterizations are often shallow and banal. “Daredevil” wears its aesthetic shroud of dark and gritty like a badge that it flaunts at all times, but it often fails to add any poignant emotional, moral, or psychological underpinnings.
We hear repeatedly that guilt (particularly of the Catholic kind) is a driver for Matt Murdock’s Daredevil (Charlie Cox), but the series never dives beyond this one-dimensional note already established in season one. And there’s great opportunity here for moral complexity given the introduction of an even more merciless anti-hero. The show’s most engaging set-up teases the dangerously thin line between heroism and vigilantism through a vengeful ex-soldier called Punisher, aka Frank Castle (a terrific Jon Bernthal). But once more, beyond a few tête-à-tête conversations with Frank and Daredevil where the anti-hero tries to convince the hero he’s “one bad day away” from the wrong side of valor, the show fails to leverage this dynamic in any profound or powerful manner.
The show’s first season concluded with Daredevil catching and turning its central villain, Wilson Fisk (a truly fantastic Vincent D’Onofrio), over to the police, which leaves a vacancy for the big bad in season two. Enter Punisher, who begins this season by taking out members of various local gangs — the Mexican cartel, Kitchen Irish, and bikers Dogs of Hell — whom he deems deserving of death for their crimes. He dominates much of the first half of the season, with the show wasting no time introducing him to the audience or pitting him against Daredevil in a one-on-one fight. The character’s merciless, R-rated handiwork is witnessed early in the first episode “Bang,” but he’s only seen in silhouette or from behind for most of the running time. Bernthal is easily the highlight of the season and arguably a far more compelling character than both Matt Murdock or Daredevil. The actor brings a physicality to the toughness the role requires, and he plays his more vulnerable moments with equal ease. He elevates the writing, but there’s only so much that he can do with clunky, even corny material.
In the fourth episode, “Penny and Dime,” a monologue that should be an emotional showcase for the actor goes on for an interminable six minutes. In the best of situations, Netflix’s lack of restrictions on episode times (vs. network TV) can allow writers time to let their dialogue breathe rather than be bound strictly by the time between commercials. Unfortunately, this scene, as well as others in the series, are in desperate need of an edit or a director that understands how to shape potentially moving material.