Brief Thoughts on Daredevil's Second Season

I think enough people have watched the second season of Daredevil by now that I can offer a couple of thoughts about it. This season was really a toss-up for me—in some ways it was better, in other ways, it was worse—especially coming on the heels of Jessica Jones which was so goddamned perfect.

The Good:

• Season Two Is A Natural Occurrence Of The Events of Season One: If you’ve watched that first season then you get more out of your investment, but I think it’s structured so you could easily come in with the second season and not be lost. You’d think this would be a no-brainer but it’s not. I’ve seen a lot of shows have a great first season, then feel like they either have to change everything for the second or that they literally have to do the exact same thing over and over.
• Fisk: I had no idea that he was going to show up at all, but his role this season was perfect. Perfect. I mean, what a great way to make sure you know Fisk’s not done while still giving Daredevil something new to focus on.
• The Punisher: I really can’t say enough good things about Bernthal’s portrayal of Frank Castle or the amazing job the writers did finally giving the character a proper screen adaptation.
• Foggy and Karen: I loved the two of them this season. Loved them. They really shined bright. Loved their character arcs. Love the possibilities going forward. I could have watched whole episodes of them without any superheroics.
• Elektra: Much like with The Punisher, it was nice to finally see Elektra done right. And even though the actress isn't Greek, at least she looked foreign and not like a girl from Kansas.

The Bad:

• The Gore: This one really bothered me a lot. For some reason, they decided to turn the gore factor in the fight scenes up to 11 this season. I don’t know if it was because Jessica Jones dealt with mature themes and violence was the easiest route for the writers of Daredevil to up the grit, but it was a mistake. It was off-putting to a lot of people. It made some really great fight choreography hard to watch. It added nothing to the show. And, honestly, if anything, for me, it took away. It’s hard to have Matt’s side when he’s trying to take the moral high ground against Frank for not “killing,” yet his treatment of thugs in the fight scene you just watched was so brutal and graphic and gory that realistically half of them would be dead before someone called an ambulance.
• The Hand/Black Sky: This was all introduced last season and not really explained. Nothing much else gets explained this season. In fact, a lot gets dropped (Matt apparently doesn’t care about the gigantic hole they made in New York City). It’s obvious this is probably going to be what occupies The Defenders when they come around, but I absolute hate when writers introduce a plotline and it’s fucking obvious they have no clue exactly what’s going on or what it means. Also, by the time they got around to it in this season, I was so invested in everything else, that I didn’t really care much.
• Elektra: Even with the reveal at the end, I think the writers killed her way too soon and really wasted tons of potential story.
• The Blacksmith Thing: Clancy Brown’s character turning out to be the man responsible for the death of Castle’s family was next level dumb. Especially since his character basically gets introduced, then never gets seen again until he’s revealed to be “The Blacksmith”. Honestly, it was like watching an episode of Law & Order when they have a special guest-star—“Oh, the guest star did it.”
• Matt Murdoch: This season he’s the least interesting and engaging character. And he’s an awful lawyer to boot.