The Defenders 1x05 Review: Protective Custody

​“Take Shelter”
Written by Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, Douglas Petrie, and Marco Ramirez
Directed by Uta Briesewitz
 
The Story
The Fingers of the Hand are mobilizing. Sowande with a van of heavily armed dudes. Gao with a bunch of assassins. Murakami is alone, on the roof of the Golden Dragon. He busts through. Much fighting ensues. Luke and Jessica find Elektra very irritating. Alexandra leaves in the scuffle. The guys with guns show up. Gao shoots someone who got too close to shooting Danny. The main four and Stick get back to back. Matt immediately breaks formation to try to talk to Elektra. That goes well (not). Sowande starts doing that scary heart-stopping crap on Luke. Matt might be getting through to Elektra, because she punches Murakami into a dumpster. Luke gets hit by a dumptruck and hauled off, and Matt, Jessica, Danny, and Stick escape into the sewer. Elektra is in the wind.
 
Colleen is beating up her punching bag. Everyone comes to the dojo for shelter. Nobody is happy with Matt for ditching them for Elektra. In comes Luke! He captured Sowande.
 
Elektra is sharpening her sword. Alexandra joins her. She tells Elektra about the daughter she had before she formed the Hand. She informs Elektra that she’s only useful to them if she’s doing her job. Murakami brings the news that Sowande was captured. The “South American contingent” is still on the way. Murakami is not a fan of Elektra.
 
The team has moved Sowande to what looks like the theatre where Kilgrave sicced Luke on Jessica. Sowande is still pretty cocky. He threatens all their loved ones, but they know it’s not idle. Luke goes to get Claire. He’s sorry he got her mixed up in this, but she kinda knew that would happen and she knew about Danny and the Hand first.
 
Colleen now feels that keeping the other powered people around is a liability. Weird. She and Danny follow some guys, who turn out to be Bakuto and friends. Wait, how’d he survive getting stabbed in the heart when they were all out of immortality juice? He’s been sent to collect Danny, but he wants Colleen too. She’s not interested. He slices her in the stomach, but Luke shows up and tosses him aside. Bahaha. Bakuto skedaddles and Claire, Luke, and Danny leave to take Colleen somewhere they can patch her up.
 
Matt shows up at Karen’s office. She’s alone at the Bulletin. He’s here to make sure she’s safe from the Hand. She’s pissed that he seems to be Daredeviling again even though he told her he didn’t miss it. (Wait so is she mad about the concept of Daredeviling or is she only mad that he might be lying to her again? Because the latter would be much less annoying.) She doesn’t see how it can affect her, but he thinks they might be coming after the people Matt Murdock cares about this time, so he wants her to lay low. She reluctantly packs up and leaves with him. There’s a lot of regret on both sides here. Luke finds Misty. She wants him to share his info. He just wants her to protect everyone’s loved ones.
 
Stick is still at the theatre with Sowande, who taunts him about all the Chaste he’s killed. Matt comes back. Stick wants Matt to be the leader of the group. Matt’s not interested. Jessica interrupts a lunch Trish is having to take her to protective custody with everyone else. Bad guys show up before they can get clear. Murakami attacks them, and he’s about to kill Jessica when Daredevil knocks his dagger out of the air with a billyclub. They fight him off together. Jessica is amused by Matt’s costume.
 
Claire has bandaged Colleen up. Colleen wants to be part of the action. She’s still having trouble with the fact that her whole life in the Hand was a lie. She wants something stable. Claire thinks Colleen is what’s stable here. (She’s got that right.) Malcolm and Trish are at the station too now. Karen comes in. Trish recognizes her. In comes Foggy! Karen fills him in, and they’re both sorry that Matt’s involved in Plot A again. Colleen tries to convince Misty she doesn’t need to be there. She gets her the katana back, and off she goes.
 
Gao and Bakuto have a frosty reunion, but they’re on the same side. Gao questions Bakuto’s judgment. She thinks his disciples are his weakness. Alexandra and Murakami arrive. They’re not happy with Bakuto either.
 
Matt, still in Daredevil suit, uses the billy club chain thing on Sowande. Danny thinks this is awesome. Luke is unwilling to show equal enthusiasm, but he thinks it’s pretty cool too. Jessica still does not. Questioning Sowande doesn’t yield much information. Matt taunts him about his “weapon” (Elektra) being defective. Sowande taunts Matt about letting Elektra die. Stick wants Matt to fess up to the rest of the team.
 
The Hand discusses Daredevil. They’re concerned that he’s Elektra’s weakness, and they’re losing confidence in Alexandra. They think it’s time to ditch her and the Black Sky.
 
Now everyone’s pissed at Matt for lying about his involvement with Elektra. Matt is still determined to get through to her, but nobody else cares about that because the people they love are in danger and she’s part of the threat. Sowande gets free while they’re arguing and catches Danny. Stick cuts his head off before he can leave with Danny. Bahaha.
 
Alexandra goes to visit Elektra, except she’s not in her room. She’s standing on a rooftop. The same one, I think, where she and Matt stood when they were planning to take down Nobu. She heads down into Matt’s apartment and curls up on his bed.
 
Okay, so the Hand is fairly sinister when we see all of the leaders, but they’re not going to be able to present as formidable of an opposing force if they’re doing all this in-fighting. And if they have armies, why aren’t they using them? And what the crap is so special about a Black Sky? Elektra seems on par with them as a fighter, but not an unstoppable force by any means. Her defection from their side would be much cooler if she was actually as powerful as they’ve hyped her up to be. The stuff with the good guys was better. Now that the main protagonists have all met, they scatter back to their people, round them up and bring them together for safety. I’m looking forward to more interactions between the supporting casts of the shows. It kinda seems like there’s an overall gravitation of Daredevil characters towards Jessica Jones characters and of Luke Cage characters towards Iron Fist ones, with less overlap in other directions. I hope that’s a deliberate setup for more extensive crossovers between the separate shows.
 
Things I Liked

• Stick’s blind joke
• Matt not appreciating Stick using his faith against him
• Karen/Foggy hugs!
• Oh hey, I guess K’un-Lun still exists, or else Bakuto and Gao wouldn’t be talking about how badly they want to go back. So any time the Hand taunts Danny about failing in their duty, they’re apparently just trying to get under his skin (which is rather easy to do).
• Danny’s reaction to Matt in full costume and gear. He’s being adorable again.
• Sowande’s demise, even if I think he probably would’ve been a better final villain in Luke Cage than Diamondback.
• This is the most I’ve ever liked Elektra

 
Things I Didn’t

• Not getting to actually see Luke capture Sowande, considering Sowande’s reputed ability to stop a heart
• Bakuto’s inexplicable survival. Did he have some of the secret sauce stashed away in case of emergencies or something? Or a chi healing factor?

 
The Characters
Much as I don’t ship Matt/Karen, it’s really sad to see them at odds with each other. I do want them to be friends like they were in S1 (minus all the secrets), but that’s not working so far. The primary problem seems to be secrets. Matt is still lying to Karen (or being indecisive and so it’s coming across as lying), and to make it worse, he only came to see her for Plot A reasons, which is how she found out there was even a Plot A in the first place. I think Karen and Foggy are capable of being supportive of Matt as Daredevil, but only if he can show that it’s not ruining his life like it did in S2. Why is it so frustrating for a main character to have responsible friends? Even Claire didn’t want to date Matt because of the Daredevil stuff. But he needs the Daredevil stuff, guys! Maybe what would help would be if Karen and Foggy had a reason to invest in Plot A other than their own personal safety, since it’s going to be hard to feel like they’re not in danger because of Matt whenever that happens.
 
Jessica has the least to do in this one because she has the least involvement in the Hand stuff, but holy crap, Murakami nearly got her! And her snarky commentary is always fun.
 
I’ve wondered if Luke’s inability to keep the danger surrounding him from touching Claire would be a problem for their relationship, and it looks like that might be the case, even though they’re both sorry about it. It’s not an actual wedge between them at this point, though.
 
It would really be nice to have some Danny/Colleen scenes right now. She had a similar breakdown to the one when she found out the truth about Bakuto, but he wasn’t there to hold her and tell her they’re each other’s family now this time I’m really enjoying his enthusiasm about Daredevil, though.
 
Overall Rating
5/5