Daredevil 2x02 Review: Correlation and Causation

“Dogs to a Gunfight”
Written by Marco Ramirez and Douglas Petrie
Directed by Phil Abraham
 
The Story
Foggy finds Matt bleeding from the head and mostly unresponsive on a rooftop. He would very much like Matt to give up the Daredevil thing now, but Matt prefers to shrug off the fact that he just got shot in the head. Foggy and Karen work on getting witness protection for Grotto, the Irish survivor. Foggy has to cut through the arrogant bluster of the local D.A. Matt temporarily loses his hearing because of the gunshot wound. The Punisher goes to pick up a pack of police radios from a skuzzy pawn shop. The skuzzy proprietor offers to give him some child porn real cheap, so he (at the very least) beats the crap out of him with a baseball bat. Karen comes to see Matt. She thinks the Punisher was the inevitable result of Hell’s Kitchen letting Daredevil do his thing. Matt is rather upset by this. He goes looking for the Punisher, who is busy shooting up the Dogs of Hell in the middle of a chop shop operation. Grotto goes in for the sting operation, extremely nervous about it. But it’s actually a trap. The D.A. and her people were using him as bait to catch the Punisher. He springs their trap with the truck cab from the chop shop, but Matt interrupts him before he can take out Grotto. They fight dangerously under a hail of police bullets, then crash into the building below. It seems like Matt might win this time, but then his hearing goes out again, and by the time Foggy and the police catch up, both Daredevil and the Punisher are gone.
 
I really like the dilemmas raised by the Punisher. It may be a much more permanent way to end organized crime than what Matt does, but his methods terrorize everyone in the process. He shot up a freaking hospital to get to one man who wasn’t even an active threat. There’s got to be something significant in the fact that the first sound that Matt heard again after his hearing went out was Karen knocking on the door. It’s something about the importance of letting people in and having human connections. He can’t just be Daredevil. He also has to be Matt Murdock, lawyer and friend. That’s what keeps him stable enough to actually pull off the Daredevil stuff.
 
Things I Liked

• The “devil-worshippers” moniker for Daredevil copycats
• Matt’s hearing going in and out is really scary, and they do a great job with it
• Foggy not taking Reyes’s crap. He is an awesome lawyer.
• Oh hey, Matt got his hearing back by meditating. Yeah, I think he should go to the hospital to treat a concussion, but okay.
• HUGS
• Karen’s speech about how the city’s acceptance of Daredevil opened the door for the Punisher, and the hint about her shooting Wesley buried in the middle of it. I’d like it better if they actually dealt with her shooting Wesley, but it’s still cool. Layers! And stuff.
• “I’m not a criminal, Melvin.” “You don’t have a badge either.”
• Hee, Matt’s good with dogs
• Karen affectionately flipping Grotto off when he asks for a kiss

 
Things I Didn’t

• The Dogs of Hell dude casually hosing out the bloody truck cab

 
The Characters
Matt spent most of S1 coming to terms with the necessity of what he does, and now the Punisher’s actions and Karen’s perspective on them are throwing a huge wrench in it. What if working outside the law to stop bad guys only creates a bad guy at the other end of the spectrum? Will Matt be able to keep justifying his actions if these are really the consequences? And when is he going to accept that he isn’t indestructible? He really can’t afford to lose another of his senses. Especially hearing. He needs more recovery time than he’s allowing himself.
 
I love Foggy so much. He might be one of my favorite supporting characters ever. He takes crap from no one. Not the high-and-mighty D.A., and not his superhero best friend. But if he keeps panicking whenever Daredevil looks like he might be in trouble, Karen’s going to get even more suspicious than she already is.
 
Karen’s determination comes in a different flavor than Foggy’s. Foggy’s comes from brazen idealism, but Karren’s is just a stubborn refusal to give up. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t get extremely shaken and terrified when she’s nearly killed. I think Foggy’s brand of determination is holding her up a little bit for now.
 
Overall Rating
5/5