Daredevil on Netflix

[Briar King]

Please tell me other Marvel fans are bingeing on this show! Hell I never even liked DD in the 80's-00's when I was into collecting comics. I was fearful we were in store for another bomb like Aflecks movie brought to the character so I went in ep 1 holding my breath. Boy am I shocked!! This show rocks! I'm already on episode 6 and it only started streaming today. Please go watch this show now.

[spencer12347]

I love this show so much! I just finished episode 5 and i can't believe how good this has already gotten. It has exceeded all my expectations and i can't wait till i reach the point where he puts on the red suit. 

[Briar King]

Finished the season about 45 minutes ago. This show just had me hooked the whole time. I think ep 2 was the best of the 13. Those last 5 mins were just fist pump worthy. I'm so happy I didn't let my dislike of DD growing up and the garbage the Affleck movie was keep me from hitting play on ep 1. I'm curious if diehard DD fans enjoyed this reboot? They had nice nods though very few of it being set in the Marvel universe. Nothing concrete on connecting it to Avengers but they easily could do so if S2 is made and they add some time in story wise.

[TwiLyghtSansSparkles]

Still in the middle of the first episode, and I'm already hooked! This show is awesome. 

[Briar King]

Still in the middle of the first episode, and I'm already hooked! This show is awesome.

That feeling will be 100fold more in Ep 2.

[Cracknut]

Best TV show in a genre hands down. Only other comic-book based show that comes anywhere close is Gotham.

As a fan of both Boardwalk Empire and True Blood I was very happy about main cast. They didn't disappoint me and I'm expecting great things from them in the future but Vincent D'Onofrio just stole the show. Kingpin has turned into one of my favorite villains

 

I was a little bit disappointed with red costume. Nothing big but it didn't feel like an upgrade after 12 episodes of sickest superhero outfit I've ever seen. Obviously it also affected stuntman's movement as action scenes while wearing it weren't as good as in first costume. Also headpiece... But as I said nothing big, just hoping they will take this in consideration and do something about it in future.
 

 

They had nice nods though very few of it being set in the Marvel universe. Nothing concrete on connecting it to Avengers but they easily could do so if S2 is made and they add some time in story wise.

 

It is set in MCU and takes place after Battle of New York. It is referenced a lot actually. Characters mention it, you can see it on newspapers, etc.

They will be doing TV shows for Jessica Jones, Luke Cage and Iron Fist and finally Defenders so there will be much more MCU going in here. Looks like Marvel decided it's time for DC to take a backseat on TV as well Haven't been this excited about TV shows in long time, just hoping they will keep doing individual shows for these characters and won't cancel them after Defenders starts happening. Season 2 for DD or we riot!! :D

[Argent]

Huh. I liked it, but nowhere near as much as I thought I would. I found it good, but not amazing. Here are some assorted musings:

• Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock) did, for the most part, an amazing job portraying a blind person. The way he would stare, often slightly off where he is supposed to be looking, is what sold me on it. For most of the season he walked too confidently, I thought, but he got the innerving stare perfectly, and that's what mattered to me. 
• This being said, I wasn't sold on how they portrayed his... Daredevil senses. I didn't get a feeling that he is a blind man with super-heightened senses. I felt like he was a regular, seeing, man with good fighting skills. I mean, there wasn't much uniqueness in his fighting style, nothing to make me go "Oh, he couldn't have done that if he relied mostly on sight!" Yeah, they had a few scenes where this came into play, but I thought it should've been a much bigger deal.
• And speaking of things that disappointed me, Fisk's love life. I did not want or need the dating life of a crime lord in my superhero show. I can see why they did it, but it wasn't done in a way that was interesting to me.
• Still speaking of things that disappointed me, I didn't like about half of the flashbacks. Maybe more. They were kind of... just meh.
• You know which flashback wasn't meh though? Matt & Foggy in college. I will watch an entire show about Matt and Foggy in college, just having the best chemistry ever, always, forever. Those scenes may have made episode 11 my favorite. 
• Second best thing - Stick. Maybe a little cliched, maybe a little too convenient (I imagine he is a part of the comics?), but I liked him. 
• Another good thing the show did, Matt getting his posterior handed to him frequently and repeatedly. Good! He is no Thor, or the Hulk, or the Black Widow - he is a city kid who knows kung fu martial arts. Superheroes don't start off at a place where they crack names and take skulls. They get there by being on the receiving end of all that for a while.
• Karen Page? Loved her. All of her. 
• Foggy Nelson? Not so much. He wasn't outright annoying, and he didn't quite end up with Karen (which the stereotype would've required), but he didn't quite win me. I don't know why.
• Claire I-am-the-only-person-with-common-sense Temple? Her middle name says it all.
• Oh, and going back to Matt's supernatural senses. That part where he smelled a guy's cologne from three floors away? This scene bothers the life out of me. I don't think it's physically possible to do that, no matter how good of an olfactory sense you have. The reason you can smell things is because molecules from the thing you are smelling get detected by receptors in your nose (so when you smell poop, it's because there are poop molecules in your nose. You are welcome.) So, with the cologne guy being three floors away, with presumably little inter-floor air circulation, and walls, and all those things between his cologne cloud and Matt's nose... I don't think it's possible for those molecules to even get there. I was looking into the math required to check this but got distracted...

So that's it. I would probably give it a 7.5/10, maybe 8.

[Wolven]

Oh I loved this series so much.  I wasn't even a fan of Daredevil the character before this show, but I am now.

[Delightful]

So I'm at about episode 5 currently. It's pretty dark and gory for me so I'm not sure if I'll be rewatching but I'm totally hooked (a lot like I am Not A Serial Killer was for me in the beginning also).

 

From a creator's perspective I really like how they structure the episdoes such as

Episode....3? spoiler

I think it's episode 3 where the russians take...Clare, is it? and there's that moment of 'it's ok, you're safe now', and then three seconds later Fisk is decapitating someone with a car door. 

And then the juxtapositions between Murdock as the vigilante, and Foggy and the nearly-murdered-secretary (gosh im doing badly on names).

Brilliantly done but ouch on my feels. It's almost too effective for me.

 

The main issue bugging me is from episode 2

How on earth did Murdock go from cool collected swanky lawyer, to vigilante beating people up outside, back and forth multiple times during a court case,  no one wondered where he was (even if it was in breaks), and he also didnt get himself covered in blood, injure his face, or anything else that would give him away? It was an awesome episode so I'm happy to look past that a little, but my suspension of belief is pushed a little thin here

 

As someone who doesn't know anyone blind so I dont know how realistic this is: I love how they show what Murdock is hearing. I never would have expected something like that to work visually, but for me it totally does.

 

And the Murdock/Fisk foil going on is brilliant also (again a lot like IANASK, actually, but not in a cliche'd kidna way)

ep 5 spoiler

with Fisks "I don't do this because I enjoy it"/Murdock's "I also do this because I enjoy it" on the rooftop. 

Plus "I can't let myself fall in love with someone who's so close to what he hates"
"You're right you shouldn't"

I'm not sure why, but that moment and the "it's ok youre safe" moment didn't feel cliched to me at all.

Edited May 10, 2015 by Delightful

[Left]

I watched the first episode. Didn't like the acting. The action was good, but there's better and worse. Over all I got a good impression, but I'm not going to keep watching as I don't like the levels of dark.

[Briar King]

That's your call definitely but you ll be missing out on something that becomes a true treat and I never even liked DD growing up. Kingpin is worth waiting to see alone if you don't like the acting of Ep 1. He brings a lvl of awesome to the show just by himself.

[Cracknut]

This isn't dark, relatively speaking. Little bits of crime and violence that can be found in any action oriented film or show. I've seen sitcoms with much, much more darkness in them.

[Windrunner]

I watched the whole thing over the course of a week and really enjoyed it. I liked the duality that Matt had going for him as a public defender by day and a vigilante by night. The exploration of the consequences of the Battle of New York was also interesting for me, and something I haven't seen explored before. I also really liked just about every part of Fisk. He arguably made the show for me. I thought he was brilliantly characterized and that his backstory was fascinating. His date scenes with Vanessa were great, definitely gave him a lot of character that villains don't always get.

 

 

This isn't dark, relatively speaking. Little bits of crime and violence that can be found in any action oriented film or show. I've seen sitcoms with much, much more darkness in them.

 

I wouldn't say that I had a week stomach but there were some scenes of violence that really seemed quite brutal to me.

 

Daredevil full season Spoilers

The bowling alley scene comes to mind. Smashing one man's head in and twisting another's badly broken arm was pretty grotesque. I also thought when Anatoli's head got smashed in by the car door was pretty violent. Especially for something set in the MCU. There's not been a whole lot of up close and personal brutal injuries in the films, which I do think made this seem darker by comparison.

 

I am interested in what sort of sitcoms you've seen that are darker than this though. It's not every TV show that has a young boy smash his father's head in with a hammer.

 

[Argent]

The exploration of the consequences of the Battle of New York was also interesting for me, and something I haven't seen explored before.

 

Definitely.

[Cracknut]

I watched the whole thing over the course of a week and really enjoyed it. I liked the duality that Matt had going for him as a public defender by day and a vigilante by night. The exploration of the consequences of the Battle of New York was also interesting for me, and something I haven't seen explored before. I also really liked just about every part of Fisk. He arguably made the show for me. I thought he was brilliantly characterized and that his backstory was fascinating. His date scenes with Vanessa were great, definitely gave him a lot of character that villains don't always get.

 

 

 

I wouldn't say that I had a week stomach but there were some scenes of violence that really seemed quite brutal to me.

 

Daredevil full season Spoilers

The bowling alley scene comes to mind. Smashing one man's head in and twisting another's badly broken arm was pretty grotesque. I also thought when Anatoli's head got smashed in by the car door was pretty violent. Especially for something set in the MCU. There's not been a whole lot of up close and personal brutal injuries in the films, which I do think made this seem darker by comparison.

 

I am interested in what sort of sitcoms you've seen that are darker than this though. It's not every TV show that has a young boy smash his father's head in with a hammer.

Well, for me what makes show dark isn't about how much gore is shown. What makes show dark is story of it.

It doesn't makes much difference for me if it's just said that kid killed his father with a hammer or they show it. For an example, crime scene's in True Detective make me more sick than anything shown in Daredevil even though they never show the "process". Mentalist, pretty much a sitcom detective, has had much more disturbing moments that in my opinion are darker than anything shown in DD so far. Of course, Dexter and Hannibal are up there as well. And Daredevil got nothing on Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones, when we're talking dark.

Even if I were to go with up-close-violence=dark there would still be much "darker" shows like Walking Dead, Spartacus, Boardwalk Empire, Banshee and Sons of Anarchy.

 

A lot of these shows have much more up close violence as well as "my kind" of darkness at the same time. And these are shows I have seen(except Hannibal), so there most likely are more.

Have to mention AHS as well which is downright disgusting.

Edit: Oh and I forgot Vikings. Just remember Ragnar executing what's-his-name dude.

 

Just to name a few examples I believe are darker then a mobsters head getting crushed(no spoilers but caution is advised):

Pregnant woman heating whatever-drug-needs-heating over an oven in a dirty house.

Daughter being burned in front of his fathers eyes.

Guy calling a serial killer pathetic on TV, coming home to find his wife and daughter butchered and a smiley face painted on the wall... with their blood.

And we never see that woman actually take drugs, we never see that girls melting flesh and we never even see bodies of that guys wife and daughter.

Edited May 11, 2015 by Cracknut

[little wilson]

I wouldn't define any of those shows as sitcoms. A sitcom (by definition, a "situational comedy") is more like Friends, New Girl, and Arrested Development. Those types of shows aren't dark. The TV world would classify shows like The Mentalist, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc, as dramas, and dramas often delve into dark places. Daredevil is a drama.

 

In terms of darkness, I don't think comparing Daredevil to other TV dramas is the right way to go about things anyway, since there are viewers who don't make a habit of watching dramas like Breaking Bad or Dexter. But most viewers who are watching Daredevil have probably seen Agents of SHIELD and watched at least a few Marvel movies. They're familiar with the MCU. That's what should be used as a basis for dark comparison, and Daredevil is significantly darker than anything out in the MCU right now.

 

To be honest, I was shocked at how dark it was. That's probably because I'd watched it after marathoning Agents of SHIELD, and even at it's most violent (which is weak violence), SHIELD makes sure to throw in comedy right and left and change scenes so that way it's not focused on anything dark for too long. Daredevil doesn't do that. It goes from torturing someone for information to beating a person to death and doesn't bat an eye. I wish I'd known that was the case before watching it. Not that it would've stopped me, but I would've at least been mentally prepared.

 

*Spoilers are mixed in from here on out, so if you haven't watched the show and don't wish to be spoiled, stop reading.

 

Just to make something clear, I'm fine with violence. Blood and gore doesn't usually affect me, unless it adds sound to that--the cracking of the bones and other bloody, violent sounds. Real sounds. Most shows/movies don't do that--at least not on a consistent basis. Daredevil did, and I have a feeling it focused on the audio aspect of the violent scenes because Matt is blind, and if that's true, it was a brilliant move on the part of everyone involved with that decision. But it was also very disturbing. I couldn't stay in the room during the scene with Fisk and Anatoli. I bolted the second Fisk started in on him because I knew it would get worse. I knew Fisk was going to kill him, and it would be brutal. Yet even though I couldn't see what was going on, I could sure still hear it, and that was almost worse.

 

This isn't to say that I disliked the show. On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot was fantastic and the character development of all the characters was just as fantastic. Even that scene where Fisk kills Anatoli added a ton of character development for Fisk, and it wouldn't have been able to do that nearly as well if the violence had been toned down there. It didn't matter how sympathetic he seemed a little later as I learned more about him, I couldn't feel any sympathy at all for him. "I don't like violence for violence's sake" (that's not an exact quote, but he said something very similar to that), and all I'm thinking is "You decapitated a man with a car door because he humiliated you. In front of a woman who you'd gone on one half-date with! How is that not liking violence for violence's sake?!" It was fantastic that the worst scene in terms of violence came from the first time we saw Fisk in action. The entire show was similarly brilliant, and despite my shock at the violence, the show needed that grit.

 

I'll definitely watch the second season when it comes out, and I'm definitely recommending the show to people who like the MCU, but I'm doing so with a clear "This show is very violent" warning.

[Bort]

I binge watched the first season last week, and I was really impressed. It took me a while to warm up to Matt and Foggy, but by the end of the season, I thought they were great.

 

I love the darker aspect of the show, and how it's a superhero show, but not exactly because the superhero is just a regular guy who happens to have super senses due to being blind.

 

As for Wilson Fisk, he makes an excellent bad guy, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the relationship between him and Vanessa plays out in future seasons.

[Cracknut]

I wouldn't define any of those shows as sitcoms. A sitcom (by definition, a "situational comedy") is more like Friends, New Girl, and Arrested Development. Those types of shows aren't dark. The TV world would classify shows like The Mentalist, Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, etc, as dramas, and dramas often delve into dark places. Daredevil is a drama.

 

In terms of darkness, I don't think comparing Daredevil to other TV dramas is the right way to go about things anyway, since there are viewers who don't make a habit of watching dramas like Breaking Bad or Dexter. But most viewers who are watching Daredevil have probably seen Agents of SHIELD and watched at least a few Marvel movies. They're familiar with the MCU. That's what should be used as a basis for dark comparison, and Daredevil is significantly darker than anything out in the MCU right now.

 

To be honest, I was shocked at how dark it was. That's probably because I'd watched it after marathoning Agents of SHIELD, and even at it's most violent (which is weak violence), SHIELD makes sure to throw in comedy right and left and change scenes so that way it's not focused on anything dark for too long. Daredevil doesn't do that. It goes from torturing someone for information to beating a person to death and doesn't bat an eye. I wish I'd known that was the case before watching it. Not that it would've stopped me, but I would've at least been mentally prepared.

 

I would still describe Mentalist as a sitcom. Yes there are 3-4 episodes of drama in a season, but then there are 20 episodes of situational comedy as well. I didn't mean others as sitcoms though. 

 

DD can't be compared to anything except MCU or other comic based shows when nobody watching it watches anything that can be actually compared to DD. I mean, it has much more in common with some of the shows I listed than any of comic book based shows right now. Agent's of Shield has nothing to do with it except that they "share" same world. Some people are watching it because MCU, some are comic book fans and others just don't care about those things and are still watching. Compared to Agents of Shield it's most violent thing that has ever happened. Compared to everything else on TV it has average violence.

 

*Spoilers are mixed in from here on out, so if you haven't watched the show and don't wish to be spoiled, stop reading.

Just to make something clear, I'm fine with violence. Blood and gore doesn't usually affect me, unless it adds sound to that--the cracking of the bones and other bloody, violent sounds. Real sounds. Most shows/movies don't do that--at least not on a consistent basis. Daredevil did, and I have a feeling it focused on the audio aspect of the violent scenes because Matt is blind, and if that's true, it was a brilliant move on the part of everyone involved with that decision. But it was also very disturbing. I couldn't stay in the room during the scene with Fisk and Anatoli. I bolted the second Fisk started in on him because I knew it would get worse. I knew Fisk was going to kill him, and it would be brutal. Yet even though I couldn't see what was going on, I could sure still hear it, and that was almost worse.

 

This isn't to say that I disliked the show. On the contrary, I thoroughly enjoyed it. The plot was fantastic and the character development of all the characters was just as fantastic. Even that scene where Fisk kills Anatoli added a ton of character development for Fisk, and it wouldn't have been able to do that nearly as well if the violence had been toned down there. It didn't matter how sympathetic he seemed a little later as I learned more about him, I couldn't feel any sympathy at all for him. "I don't like violence for violence's sake" (that's not an exact quote, but he said something very similar to that), and all I'm thinking is "You decapitated a man with a car door because he humiliated you. In front of a woman who you'd gone on one half-date with! How is that not liking violence for violence's sake?!" It was fantastic that the worst scene in terms of violence came from the first time we saw Fisk in action. The entire show was similarly brilliant, and despite my shock at the violence, the show needed that grit.

I'll definitely watch the second season when it comes out, and I'm definitely recommending the show to people who like the MCU, but I'm doing so with a clear "This show is very violent" warning.

I kinda understand Fisks actions there. I was irritated by Anatolis actions. He was the smarter, more in control of himself, balanced brother and then he acted like an idiot. Even if it didn't involve Vanessa. He walked in there assuming whatever business he had with Wilson was more important than whatever Wilson was doing at that time. He "deserved" death because he acted disrespectfully, not because he humiliated him. IMHO Fisk wasn't really humiliated, he was inconvenienced by it. I've known kids who have done as much on the streets because they were humiliated. It's pretty normal in darker parts of society. But killing someone because he just mistakenly inconvenienced you while trying to please you(Again, idiot Anatoli), that's what makes Fisk more terrifying than others.

Edited May 13, 2015 by Cracknut