I have found it difficult to figure out the best way to discuss the various Netflix original series. House of Cards is a structural mess, if not bit formally interesting. Orange is the New Black is a clear high water market, but it functions more as a typical television series and doesn’t display some of the unique capabilities Netflix offers. Though it’s producers/cast and crew certainly makes it unique. Marvel’s Daredevil, the first of five original series for the digital streaming service, provides me with a good jumping off point of interesting Netflix traits and storytelling juxtaposed against Marvel Studios blockbuster releases.

I think I’ve come up with a potentially useful way to orient myself in thinking about Daredevil and Netflix series in general. Instead of thinking of Marvel’s Daredevil as a traditional television series, think of it as a trade paperback or original graphic novel. To split hairs a bit, Daredevil falls more on the OGN side of things. Whereas traditional television like Arrow, The Flash, would be more akin to trade paperback with their post release volumization. This way I can think about (and watch) Daredevil in large chunks and still look at it on an individual episodic level. This also allows for easier navigation of episodes that make small incremental movements or do not make for interesting avenues of criticism.

So that’s the plan. This long piece on Daredevil as a season of television, and other pieces centered around episode(s).

Perspective Episodes Being Covered

1. “Cut Man” – What isn’t Shown
2. “Rabbit in a Snowstorm” – An articulation of the base-superstructure
3. “Shadows on the Glass” –Is this a dagger which I see before me?
4. “Nelson v Murdoch” – Friends
5. “Stick” – Old Masters and Battling masculinity
6. “DareDevil” – I’ll come up with something
7. “World on Fire”/”Condemned”

I have made it quite clear that I am bored with Marvel Studios film product. They are entertaining and recent films like Winter Solider are among the studios best works. As films, however I find them tedious with how predictable in structure and spectacle they are. This is all a byproduct of their commercial success.

Television is the realm in which Marvel Studios has not met overwhelming success. Agents of SHIELD has improved but I’ve stopped watching it. I don’t care about any of their characters, no matter how often you say “InHuman”. Agent Carter was a good overall entry and sign that Marvel knows how to do things. However, despite a different medium both series were tonally a piece with Marvel’s blockbuster output: bright colors, quips, and a macguffin chase. These among other factors have created a more of the same feel for Marvel Studio products. They have made half hearted attempts at fusing genre (Winter Soldier is a half backed conspiracy thriller) but in the end their true genre is the blockbuster spectacle and all is brought to kneel before it.

The best thing to happen to Arrow is The Flash. It has created an in universe stylistic spectrum that informs each series while existing separately from one another. Marvel finally has this spectrum with Daredevil, something that is both stylistically and narratively apart from its contemporaries. It is Marvel doing dark and gritty. This is said without irony or snark. In this case it is literal; DareDevil is extremely dark from a lighting perspective. The grit comes from the visceral presentation of violence, and tonality of the series, framed by its crime. The first half of this series has several moments of brutal violence, that should rightly make you cringe as people are stabbed or have limbs broken with bones or other objects protruding from the skin in the after math. Showrunner Steven S. Deknight described the series as “PG-15” and that fits. There is some near nudity but the series is more concerned with the violence at hand than sexuality.

Painting its villainess Cabal of organized crime under Wilson Fisk as nothing more than carpet bagging gentrifies gives Daredevil access to social themes greater than the half hearted critiques of the surveillance state or military-entertainment complex we’ve previously seen. They fall in line with the ultra capitalist villainy found in Iron Man but with a smaller area of interest.

The series has a strong visual foundation laid by the direction of Phil Abraham (Mad Men), who directed the first two episodes. Abraham and the following directors let things breathe as characters grapple with their inner demons. Unburdened by the need to produce a densely packed 140 minutes, Daredevil with its 707 minutes lets things breathe. This leads to several episodes that go off into their own world, focusing on singular characters or small groupings and episodes that switch the conventional A/B plot threads. Daredevil has room to experiment and watch its characters in ways the films can never achieve.

This is not a $150 million blockbuster, something that is planned well in advance so that VFX houses can begin to create the CGI set pieces. Marvels uniform cinematography and editing is derived from this partly. This cannot afford to nor would it look right to have the frame with pixilated movement. This allows for the cinematography to not be over edited during action sequences, it largely is allowed to breathe. There is a sequence at the end of episode 2 "Cut Man", a pseudo one shot that is a phenomenal bit of direction, its use of the stage to create tension and limit the pov of the audience is one of the best moments in the MCU. As in television, the direction has its ups and downs after Abraham’s episodes. None of these episodes are “bad” but they also lack the sheer artistry that earlier episodes had.

The Daredevil character was a smart choice for the first Netflix series. He is a long running character with prior appearances in television (live action and animation) and the subject of a feature film (the director’s cut is solid). More importantly he is a hero that can exist in a variety of tones and genres, going back and forth as writers see fit. DareDevil can be a nighttime street level vigilante and a quippy Spider-man daytime hero. DareDevil is heavily influenced by Frank Miller’s run on the character, Man Without Fear in particular. Another influence is the art of Alex Maleev from Bendis’ tenure as writer. Matt Murdocks apartment is straight out of that run. Together they take Millers grimy crime pulp setting but drenches it in neon lights, a neon-noir (sadly not like awesome neo-noirs of the ninties). This combination is a bit of a tonal tight rope to balance on, the inherent melodrama (which often could lead to a pretentious seriousness) with some subtler one liners and site gags. Daredevil isn’t a zany wacky comedy but it isn’t humorless either. Most of which is provided by Elden Henson as Matt Murdoch’s best friend Foggy Nelosn

Daredevil is extremely light on genre typical super villains, this due to the Born Again influence. As much as modern Miller work is laughable, his mediation of original pulp heroes and modern superheroes with works like Batman: Year One and Man Without Fear is the evolution of cape comics. In both works, Miller shows that supervillians and their craziness did not magically spring up but are merely filling the void left by organized crime, that was weakened by the vigilante. Like the first season of Arrow, the series writers have used names of Daredevil/Marvel villains but stripped some of their more cartoony ‘super’ characteristics. Fisk is treated as an ambitious crime boss but not an unstoppable sumo machine. Leleand Owsley aka The Owl isn’t a cape wearing monster but Fisks money man making the casting of Shawshank Warden, Bob Gunton in the role of Owsley even better.

For the story DareDevil tells over its 13 episodes, starting in this darker, grittier, angrier place makes sense. This is about becoming the Daredevil and figuring out the difference between fascistic vigilantism and super heroics. Matt Murdock doesn’t receive the nom de plume Daredevil until the final episode. Prior he is simply the Man in Black or the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. Dave Gonzales on Thought Bubble, describes how Marvel Studio’s output as a slow build towards something weirder. We didn’t start with InHumans and alien-gods. It was a man in an iron suit and once the masses bought that they went to the next level. This holds true to the season, building towards the more mystical ninja side of DareDevil while emphasizing an immediately palatable fight with a crime syndicate run by Wilson Fisk. The series is a little vague on the exact plans Fisk and Co. have for Hells Kitchen beyond redevelopment.

There are many theories on what constitutes or makes for “quality” television. A useful tool I’ve found is Javier Grillo-Marchu’s operational theme. This is “a situational vector that cleanly delineates the potential variations of action in service of the protagonist’s consistent emotional need.” It is the dramatic fuel that is front in center in most if not all scenes driving the series forward. In Daredevil the operational theme could be seen as the conflict between true and perceived natures. Both male leads, Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk find themselves at odds with what they do and how they feel about it. Before throwing a man off a rooftop in episode two, Murdock tells his victim that he does this both as a means of cleaning up “his City” but more insidiously because he likes it. Conversely on their second date, Fisk tells Vanessa that he has “done things that I'm not proud of, Vanessa. I've hurt people and I'm going to hurt more. It's impossible to avoid for what I'm trying to do. But I take no pleasure in it, in cruelty.” These mirrored responses come in and out of conflict with one another as the season progresses and each character learns more about themselves.

Another contributing factor for me in quality television is the setting. Television is best when it is as much about the character as it is the place they inhabit and the effects it has on the characters. Look at socio-economically stratified Harlan County of Justified and the effect that has on its residents. The Hell’s Kitchen of Daredevil drives its two sons as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk to struggle over what is best for “their” city. The ability to shoot exteriors in New York City proper (and not Toronto) helps add character and a degree of authenticity to the series. Even if the depiction of a crime ridden economically downtrodden Hell’s Kitchen is dissonant to the contemporary location.

While defiantly Daredevil’s origin story, it is an interesting example in telling it. Yes, there are the events that blinded young Matt Murdock, his father, and tutelage on Stick all shown in flashbacks. But these expository events are not over emphasized since they are not relevant to the story being told. When DareDevil starts, Murdock is already a mask wearing street ninja. His training under the tutelage Stick is shown in a ‘B’ plot over halfway through the season (episode 7). The series also doesn’t spend too much time representing how Murdock “sees” the world, Episode 5 “World on Fire” being the single sequence where we see this. It’s a smart move; those effects cost too much money and take the viewer out of the world created to easily. More often his power set is represented by close focus wide angle shots, signaling out a person or object. Marvel rightly plays on audience extra textual understanding or just willingness to go along with such things.

Charlie Cox is simply well cast as Matt Murdock. Cox dosen’t steal every scene he is in or dominate it because that isn’t what his character is. He’s someone off to the sides, the kind you don’t really think about. It affords him a degree of maneuverability that makes some of the weird super hero tropes work more than they normally would. Matt Murdock is an affable friendly good person and that’s what Cox portrays.

Marvel Studios success with making their heroes stars hasn’t been the same for their villains. The majority of the time this is due to being underdeveloped within the script. Thanks to having roughly 13 hours of screen time, Wilson Fisk is in no way underserved; he even gets an episode essentially to himself with 1x08 "Shadows in the Glass". This season is just as much about the origin of DareDevil as it is the Kingpin of Crime. Vincent D'onofrio makes his presence felt in his sheer physicality playing that girth against expectation. The Fisk of this series is something of a mixture between Machiavelli and impulsive child. After a minor slight he rends the head from one of his partner’s body with a car door in a fit of rage. He plays Fisk as a pot ready to boil over at a moment’s notice. Daredevil is allowed to build the characters psychology and our understanding of him like Loki has over several appearances. Even though his plan to rebuild Hell’s Kitchen is kind of vague. The Kingpin is easily among the best villains in a Marvel property.

If the tepid response to Avengers: Age of Ultron didn’t make it clear, the game has changed. In the interceding 3 years from the last Avengers film, television has most definatly jumped far ahead in terms of cultural taste making craft, while major Hollywood studios continues to circle the wagons around their derivative globalized big tent blockbusters. If Marvel Studios as a producer of content is going to continue being among the top global producers of culture they must adapt. Daredevil isn’t among the best television has to offer but it’s more than good enough. It is a refreshingly different piece from their normal line giving me hope to find renewed interest in the House of Ideas with these Netflix Marvel Knight series.

I am Michael Mazzacane you can follow me on Twitter and at ComicWeek.org