Daredevil 2x10 Review: Futility

“The Man in the Box”
Written by John C. Kelley, Whit Anderson, and Sneha Koorse
Directed by Peter Hoar
 
The Story
Brett and the other police retrieve the emaciated people from the blood-drain-y cages Nobu had them in and take them to the hospital. Matt has Brett take them to Metro General in secret, to be cared for by Claire. Matt plans to stick around and protect them, but then he overhears that Frank escaped from prison. Reyes wants to question Matt, Foggy, and Karen about his escape. Reyes starts to tell them about the sting operation that went south, and because Karen knew enough not to be lied to, she and her assistant admitted the whole thing. They tell them about the Blacksmith and the big drug deal. Reyes didn’t clear the park because she thought it would be too suspicious. Reyes is done angling for her career, because her daughter is now in protective custody. And...then her office gets riddled with bullet holes. Foggy takes a bullet through the shoulder, and Reyes is super dead. Matt goes to visit Fisk because he knows he’s behind Frank’s escape. Fisk tells him nothing he hasn’t already guessed, and then he rather foolishly threatens to keep Vanessa indefinitely out of the country. Fisk beats him up. None of the guards so much as blink. Which does prove Fisk has taken over the prison, but not in a way that Matt can use legally. Karen and Ellison figure the corrupt M.E. is the next target, but he’s already dead when they get to his hotel room. Karen doesn’t think Frank did it. Claire tells Matt what the doctors have learned so far about Nobu’s victims. She also tells him he’s full of crap and can’t cut himself off from people. Also there’s something about some French dude trying to kill Elektra in a private airplane hangar, and her killing him instead and acquiring her signature sais from him. A bunch of ninjas attack the hospital. Also, Nobu’s victims are pretty willing, and they kill that one accountant dude and act like terrifying zombie people.
 
Fisk being the boss of the prison is about so much more than just an awesome cameo of the S1 villain. It feeds into the major questions S2 is asking about the effectiveness of vigilantism. Does it work if even in prison, Fisk still has this much power? Not to mention that Frank escaped after less than one day on the inside? Is the system so broken that merely trying to plug up the gaps in it is like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound? Is Matt’s strategy nothing but useless half-measures? And all of this is with Matt tanking everything else in his life but vigilante work. Even if he lets it consume him, his efforts still aren’t permanent or effective. What, then, is the value of it?
 
Things I Liked

• Claire’s ingenuity
• Matt’s hoodie (I like it better than his suit)
• How quickly (and logically) Matt figures out that Fisk is behind Frank’s escape
• The Braille contract being upside down at first, and Matt having to flip it over (cool little detail)
• The extreme tension in the air when Matt visits Fisk
• I can’t remember if I’ve said it before, but I really like the way Fisk is constantly flexing his fingers—a hint of his barely-contained rage
• Fisk’s terrifying speech to Matt
• As rattled as Matt was by that speech, at least he didn’t blow his cover
• Ellison taking responsibility for Karen’s safety because he failed to do so with Ben
• Claire not taking Matt’s crap about feeling too guilty about Foggy getting shot to actually go talk to him
• Is Frank ever going to have time to heal from his black eyes before he gets them again?
• Fisk has his cello music playing just the same as when he did his routine in his penthouse
• Holy crap did Fisk just realize Matt is Daredevil?

 
Things I Didn’t

• Foggy kinda pushing Karen away
• Is that the third time Karen has said “I can take care of myself!”? It was annoying enough the first time.
• How disjointed the Elektra scenes are from every single other scene in the episode

 
The Characters
I suppose Matt didn’t witness all the times Fisk flew off the handle and beat the crap out of someone who said the wrong thing around him (or, you know, killed them), so he wouldn’t have expected him to beat him up for the threats he made. And he probably also didn’t think Fisk had that much control over the prison. This, I think, is the point in Matt's arc that lines up with when Angel rode that elevator with Holland Manners, only to learn that there was no way to simply destroy W&H. Will Matt rally from that realization, or will he hit bottom first, like Angel did?
 
Dang, how many life-threatening situations has Karen survived now? Two heavy shoot-outs in a single day, on top of Frank firing at Grotto while she was with him and the multiple attempts on her life in S1. I think Karen has to be a Gryffindor. If courage wasn’t her defining trait, then she would not be able to turn around after every one of those things and defiantly keep searching for the truth.
 
I seriously hope Foggy gets a decent plotline of his own in S3. In both seasons so far, pretty much every other character has had more of a solo storyline than him. He always shares his with Matt and/or Karen.
 
Overall Rating
5/5