Daredevil 1x06 Review: Enemy of My Enemy

“Condemned”
Written by Joe Pokaski and Marco Ramirez
Directed by Guy Ferland
 
The Story
Matt manages to fight his way out of the cliffhanger (in which he’s surrounded by Fisk’s cops) and hauls Vladimir to an abandoned building. Over the phone, Claire talks him through cauterizing Vladimir’s bullet wound so he won’t bleed out before Matt can convince him to share useful info about Fisk. Which will take a while, because he fell for Fisk's ruse that Matt was the one who killed Anatoly. Multiple cops die, including one in Fisk’s pocket, at the hands of another of Fisk's men, in a successful attempt to pin everything on the man in the mask in the public's mind. Foggy and Karen take Mrs. Cardenas to the hospital where Claire works! Also, Foggy got hurt too. They watch reports on the explosions on the news. After Fisk contacts Matt via a cop walkie-talkie and Matt refuses to finish Vladimir off for him, Vladimir (who is mortally wounded even after Matt’s MacGyver First Aid session) tells Matt about all the crime bosses’ money guy, Leland, and helps Matt escape, even holding up his pursuers with machine gun fire.
 
I’m not really getting any kind of deeper parallelism or themes from this one. I guess, except for how the hospital side of the story stands as counterpoint to Fisk’s confidence he’s saving the city. He didn’t succeed in taking out all the Russians with his bombs, but he did hurt a whole lot of innocent people. This episode feels more like connective tissue for the season arc than an independent story of its own. Which is okay, because the arc is awesome, and it’s the episode were all the main characters are starting to cross paths, which is cool.
 
Things I Liked

• Foggy and Karen giving Mrs. Cardenas to Claire to patch up, without even really meeting her. It’s like a crossover on a single show.
• Claire being willing to tell Matt how to keep Vladimir alive, but largely because she knows cauterizing his wound will be painful enough to count as her revenge for the beating the Russians gave her.
• Claire pointing out that the idea of needing to get the bullet out is movie nonsense; as long as the bullet isn’t doing any further damage where it’s at, stopping the bleeding is a much higher priority.
• Wesley and Fisk understanding what a threat Ben Urich is to their operation
• “I’m working to save this city too, only on a scale that matters.” Wow, it’s like Matt is Angel and Fisk is what W&H tried to turn Angel into in S5.
• Matt and Fisk being equally matched in their cryptic conversation
• Vladimir’s insult to Fisk. Not sure why, but it cracked me up.

 
Things I Didn’t

• Nothing? It’s my least favorite episode so far, but just because it’s overall less interesting on a character development and theme level, not because there were irritating things in it.

 
The Characters
Have we heard Matt’s no-kill policy before, or is this the first time he’s come out and stated it? There do seem to be some slight holes in his policy. He won’t kill people, but the only reason he tried to save Vladimir’s life was for information, and he didn’t even hesitate to let Vladimir use that machine gun on the men chasing them. Wouldn’t he legally be an accessory to their murders? (I dislike Matt’s no-kill policy for pragmatic reasons that I’ll elaborate on when the hordes of ninjas attack in S2, but I won’t pass up an opportunity to poke at it in the meantime.)
 
Does Karen have enough reason to believe the man in the mask is good, or does she just want him to be because he saved her?
 
Foggy was so concerned about Mrs. Cardenas that he didn’t even noticed he was wounded too! Aww.
 
I definitely feel like Claire stopped herself from getting involved with Matt as much because she was worried what she’d become as what Matt might with too much validation.
 
Overall Rating
4/5