Daredevil S1
First 15 minutes is pretty good! Pacy.
Really odd moment in ep 1 where a woman takes her shirt off in front of Matt, and there's a clear shot of her entire breast in bright lighting, but because of tv ratings or whatever they have to CG the nipple out so she looks like a Barbie doll. What a weird decision.
I'm enjoying DD so far. Still relatively pacy 3 eps in, and they have more of an episodic structure than the D+ shows. Though I remember getting to around ep 6 and giving up because I was so bored, so it may be that the next 3 just spin wheels.
The fights seem to be well-choreographed and performed, but the direction/editing of them is infuriatingly choppy. I did enjoy the Oldboy-style corridor fight in 2, though. I remember at the time I was a bit sick of those and I wasn't very impressed by it, but it was solid even if a lot of it happened offscreen.
I'm at around the point I gave up when it was first released, ep 6, and it's not as slow as I remember (probably my expectations for tv were still at regular levels rather than Disney levels), but I can see why I was frustrated - there's a large group of villains who do nothing but bicker amongst themselves, Kingpin has spent most of his time going on boring dates, Foggy and Karen are fixing people's plumbing. The Russian safehouses getting blown up has given it a bit of a shot in the arm, but we'll see how long that lasts.
One thing that's annoying is how they're handling his powers. First off, they haven't said anything about the stuff in the barrels that made him go blind having anything to do with it (which I'm pretty sure is the deal) so it just seems like they're saying any blind person could do this stuff. Then they do the same thing that the Affleck movie did which is to make his other senses so all-encompassing that he's pretty much only colour-blind, which makes it feel like a gimmick and also throws off the powerset balance - his blindness should be a hindrance that is balanced out by his amazing hearing etc. In this episode he comes into an abandoned warehouse and is able to tell that there's a toolbox twenty feet away with some flares in it! He's basically Superman at this point! But at the same time, they get lazy with it sometimes, like how if it helps the plot he just doesn't notice three cop-cars approaching with their sirens on, or a criminal tricks him into leaning closer so he can attack him, by talking quietly! Matt, you can hear someone click a detonator button from a hundred feet away through brick walls, you don't need to lean in to hear a guy speaking softly from three feet away!
Okay, finished DD S1. So, first off, the fight between DD and Kingpin was terrible. What a letdown. Overall, the show had some cool moments but it was packed with stuff that didn't go anywhere except as set-up for future stuff, the writing was mostly prosaic or cliche, and the action was... okay, but didn't really make up for it. I suspect some of it was budget as well, but in that case, cut your episode count and castlist in half - it would make the show better and give you some more money for fights. We really didn't need Gao, Foggy, Karen, Ben, Stick etc etc. Should have been DD making his way up the crime ladder and Kingpin in his prime. I have no idea why this Kingpin is thought so well of, actually - D'Onofrio's pretty good and the childhood flashback was cool, but he spends the entire season either absent, moping about his girlfriend, or apologising to his partners, and then he gets defeated! He doesn't feel like a threat at all. And I think he maybe is around even less in the next two seasons? Dunno.
Jessica Jones S1
JJ S1 is so strikingly better than DD. The dialogue is better and the acting, though it may only be because of that better dialogue, is better too. The fighting is a lot simpler, but it's also a lot cleaner and easier to follow so it's more impactful. The villain also takes a while to show up but he's already scary as hell by the end of the first episode. And the way they handle secondary characters is so much better - rather than a sense of obligation to give them all their own grinding subplots, they're used lightly, only as reflections on Jessica's character, until it makes sense to bring them forward. Hell, it's better than what the MCU movies managed with Hawkeye.
Finished JJ S1. Okay, it's not perfect - it does drag a little around episode 9/10 (could maybe have done with boiling down to 11 episodes rather than 13), there's what seems to be a silly coincidence in Nuke's involvement (though they ended up giving a feasible reason for what seemed like the coincidence of Luke being the husband of the woman Jessica killed, so perhaps if he ever comes back, which iirc he hasn't so far, they can say something like he was stalking Jessica anyway for IPH reasons and that's why Kilgrave happened to pick him to go kill Trish, but it's still a bit ropey), and Kilgrave gets tricked a bit too easily in the end (it reminded me of Death Note in that way - what they should have done was highlight the fact that Jessica needs to be within inches of him to kill him so he can't activate any failsafes, not have her suggest 'I love you' as a safe-word that she would never otherwise say to Trish, then have Kilgrave order her to kill Trish as a test and have her say to Trish 'I love you' then slam her in the chest, the trick being that Trish will realise Jessica never says that to her so it must be a safe-word, and thereby know to take the hit and play dead). BUT it's still really really good, and it's a shame that none of the other shows, afaik, got to this height again. I'm hoping that some of the ones I didn't watch actually got close though, and that the ones I gave up on are better on repeat viewing!
Daredevil S2
First ep pretty good. Pacy, good action, and the Punisher's already shown up, been established as a threat and has had a fight with DD. Dialogue's still pretty crummy - they're going for hard-boiled, but it's all over-worked and the actors stumble over it a lot.
Watched the first 4 episodes, they were pretty good! They wrapped up the Punisher (for now) and then teased another new character, who I guess will also get a little 4 episode run. I think that's a pretty smart way of doing things; it's at least a solid compromise between proper episodic structure and just having the thing feel like a 13 hour movie. And the Punisher stuff was good - some well-staged brutal action, a strong performance, and they used him as a concept to interrogate the ethics of the protagonist (superhero 101 but it works!). Karen and Foggy are still basically pointless (she finds out about the Punisher when we're already getting that from the main storyline, and he goes to talk to Claire and maybe convinces her to help DD again but that isn't actually needed at this point and let's be honest she would have anyway), and it's hard to tell whether they're good actors stumbling over shitty dialogue or bad actors unable to elevate shitty dialogue.
One thing that really annoys me about DD is the way that every time Foggy or Matt is doing well in a legal conversation, it cuts away to Karen with a proud smile plastered across her face or hiding a laugh with her hand like she's a sorority sister, as if the audience would otherwise not be able to follow who's winning. Other shows do this, but it is so in your face here.
On episode 10 now, and actually they didn't wrap up the Punisher for a bit and move on, but they have got better at structuring stuff nevertheless. It's still moving along at a fair clip, they're dropping lots of cool Hand stuff, and Kingpin is getting more fun stuff to do with his rise through the prison ranks. Shame the first season was basically sacrificed to get to this stuff. It's still not up there with JJ S1, never mind something like Supernatural or Person Of Interest, but it's solid.
Okay, it kind of fell apart in the last three episodes. Kingpin fizzled out, the ninjas got boring, Karen and Foggy are just rattling around (Matt's done with them, so she can suddenly be, oh I dunno, a journalist who continues to get kidnapped about twice an episode, and he can suddenly be, uh, a partner at a prestigious law firm and their expert in superhero cases or whatever), and both the Punisher conspiracy and the Hand mysticism were over-complicated and dull and don't even have the benefit of getting wrapped up because everything's just setting other stuff up. It's wild to think how much a show like Lost or Game Of Thrones or whatever got done in 26 episodes, how much you cared about the huge ensemble cast and got on the edge of your seat over every plot strand, and this show hasn't even really got me caring about its three leads. I care more about the armourer Milton or scuzzy weapons dealer Turk or even booty call lawyer Marci than Karen or Foggy.
Luke Cage S1
Wow, that is such a strong opening episode. Adult, atmospheric, and such a strong handle on the tone. Much like with JJ, watching this straight after DD it's striking how immediately superior it is.
Everything up to and including episode 4 - the origin flashback ep - has been great. Episode 5 was a bit slow. Cottonmouth's thugs taking stuff off people, Luke going round and getting it back off them. I think maybe 'the first half is great' was a little generous on my part, but maybe 6/7 will be good again...
Episode 6 was better! The whole Scarfe thing worked really well, gave it some energy and structure. The villains are still stuck in a rut; perhaps Cottonmouth getting arrested will shake things up but iirc they get more boring if anything. I love Alfre Woodard but she isn't getting much to do here.
Episode 7 is where the big change happens - Cottonmouth is killed. I can see how they might have thought this would be a big wtf game-changer moment, but unfortunately the only things the villains have done so far is stand around saying:
Cottonmouth: I'm angry my stuff is going wrong!
Mariah: I'm angry your stuff is going wrong!
Shades: Diamondback is angry your stuff is going wrong!
So Cottonmouth dying and Diamondback coming in doesn't really have an effect on anything. Cottonmouth was blackmailing Luke with the possibility of getting him put back in jail, but Luke had already decided to ignore that. Plus it felt really rushed - all in the same episode we learn Mariah was raped by her uncle as a kid, Cottonmouth says some shitty victim-blaming stuff, then Mariah kills him. So now Diamondback has arrived and has shot Luke with the alien bullet Judas that they've been going on about for like 3 episodes now, and it really feels like they only had Cottonmouth in there as a placeholder to give Luke something to fight against before they brought the real villain in.
Well, at least Luke can now get injured, so there are some stakes going on.
Watched 8 and 9 and wow this really slows down to a crawl. Plus they've given up on episodic structure now, it just trundles on from one to the next.
Jesus Christ, Luke Cage has thoroughly fallen apart. Also, they have now twice had characters talk about what an awesome person Mike Tyson is. Oof.
They just did another rushed flashback exposition thing (after the one about Mariah) about how Luke and Diamondback are brothers and why DB resents Luke, and it was so rushed I couldn't even follow it.
Finished Luke Cage. I genuinely don't understand how the series fell that far. With stuff like Daredevil, I can at least imagine what the writers room is going for, but at so many points in this I was shaking my head thinking 'why have they done this?' Anyway, it finally fizzled out with Luke Cage defeating a man in a supersuit who can absorb all his punches, by... waiting until he was out of breath and then punching him. Big Climax! Then twenty more minutes of irritating plot contrivances and it's done. I'm almost looking forward to Iron Fist and its stupid-ass zombie kung-fu.
Iron Fist S1
On ep 3 of Iron Fist. Very slow, it hasn't really moved on since the first episode. Also, Danny is pretty unlikeable (whiny, temper-tantrums) and he never says the obvious most helpful thing. Like, when he confronts Ward in a restaurant in front of Joy, instead of saying "you sent a guy to destroy my hospital records and he would have killed the clerk if I hadn't got there", he goes on about how Ward was like his brother. What? He physically and mentally abused you through your childhood and he's tried to kill you like three times since you got back. I suppose it makes sense that Danny would still be acting like the 10 year old he was when his plane crashed, but it clashes with all his Buddhist meditation stuff and his warrior monk thing and also it's just really irritating.
Also, seems that Madame Gao is part of the Hand now? I thought they were Japanese and tied in with the Yakuza and Nobu, and Madame Gao was a crime-lord adjacent to all that.
Another thing about Danny: he's fucking useless in a fight. He needs to get hit a few times before he can build up energy, and then one super-punch wears him out.
Finished episode 9. This one actually felt like it had a good amount of story progression in it. If they'd got here by episode 4, this would have been pretty enjoyable (by MCU standards, anyway - it doesn't stand up to, say, Legion or a mediocre episode of the X Files). The fights aren't too bad, they just feel a bit floaty and patched over with editing (a combination of Danny's flowing fight style and not enough prep time to get it looking good, I'd guess), and all the acting's pretty good. Danny's nigh-intolerable but at least it seems somewhat intentional - his big character flaw is lack of control. And the dialogue isn't bad either, it's just... functional.
It's just a damn shame that some higher-up didn't come in at the writing stage of these shows and say 'right, you've got the same amount of time and budget but you've got to tell this story in half the episodes'.
Finished! It picked up a little bit towards the end but was mostly drudgery. The climactic fight was just the usual melee combat in an office building, and the baddy was an old guy with a gun (who's immortal unless you kill him then chop his head off or incinerate him or whatever in the next few hours so he can't come back). The Hand aren't particularly interesting either - these shows putting all their villain chips on Madame Gao is so far a pretty bad decision as, outside of the occasional Yoda/Pycelle moment where she drops the cane act and shows hidden physical strength, she's pretty dull.
Defenders
First episode was almost exclusively 'what have they been up to' exposition. Interesting to consider how much Avengers got done in the same amount of time, while here they've essentially wasted 50 minutes.
Episode 2 was also slow as fuck, but at least they got the lead characters to meet at the end of it (two hours into this team-up show!) and had a fight between two of them (the very basics of what you'd expect from Luke Cage vs Iron Fist, but it was fine and the super slow-mo shot of Luke getting slugged in the face was cool).
Episode 3 finally had some momentum, and an awesome team-up fight at the end of it (it wasn't executed perfectly but it was well-choreographed and really hit those 'oooh another hero just arrived and joined in!' moments). If this had been the first episode, it would have been incredible.
Finished episode 6. There are a decent amount of fights, decently done, in this but it's still so damn slow. And the choice to reveal the leaders of the Hand and then have them be squabbling crime bosses no different in practice to the ones in Daredevil S1 is so unimaginative. Plus this whole black sky thing doesn't seem to make any sense. What's special about it? What was with all the blood transfusions and infected kids? Can there be multiple black skies or not? It's all very messy and unsatisfying. Plus, they've had 5 hours of runtime and still pretty much nothing of import has happened.
The ending of this where the entire New-York-destroying plan turns out to be that they dug a very deep elevator shaft to dig up some dragon bones is painfully underwhelming. I'd misremembered it, in that the show doesn't promise a live dragon; it's just that when it gets down there and goes 'OMG it's a dragon skeleton, look!' the immediate viewer reaction is 'why not a live one though?' And the entire Defenders plan is 'go down there, have a bit of a fight in a cave, take Danny back up, then blow up the building'. Also, the fights are terrible in the finale, and the dialogue is worse than usual.
When a show like Sense8 manages at short notice to satisfyingly wrap up its series in two hours, dealing with EIGHT protagonists and all their sidekicks and sub-plots as well as a complicated main story with a bunch of villains and allies, it's embarrassing how poor a job was done here.
The Punisher S1
Started it! First ep is solid. Nothing unpredictable, but pacy with good nasty action. I like that they're carrying over the idea of how messed up Frank is, that this isn't normal or healthy - he spends 8 hours a day on a building site hammering down walls then everyone goes home and he stays there doing it for another few hours until his hands bleed. Niggles so far - he had Mandalorian-level luck/plot armour in getting fired at from ten feet away and both shots missing him while he just stands there waiting, and Shohreh Aghdashloo is in this with her stupid Jerry Stiller line delivery. Also, I guess the Clancy Brown conspiracy stuff from DD S2 is going to come back but it was so muddled I can't remember even after a few weeks what the deal was. Hopefully Frank will sum it up in a couple of sentences when the time is right.
Second ep was better! Like, Reacher level good. Forgot to compare it to the other Defender shows but so far this is probably second best, after JJ S1. Maybe LC S1 first 4 eps nudge it for being a little more interesting...
Oh, and they cleared all the conspiracy stuff up plus moved it on a bit, which was really smart. Basically, in Afghanistan, Frank was in a squad that was doing some dark off-books CIA-tied shit. One of the squad (presumably) leaked an incriminating tape to an NSA analyst, the squad thought it was Frank and created the whole NY gang warfare drug deal shootout thing at the public park just so Frank would get killed during it and it would be assumed that he was just a random civilian casualty. (It's a bit clunky that they knew he'd be there at this exact time and managed to get this shootout to happen just at the right time in such a way that would definitely get him shot, and also I don't know if they're going to explain why the squad assumed Frank was the leak - perhaps he was the least dirty of everyone on the squad - but at least everything's been recapped and streamlined.)
So now I guess he's going to want to Punish this new higher level set of people who were involved in his family's death.
Ep3 was really good too! Cop plotline is the only bit dragging - Madani's not needed by the story yet but I guess they felt the need to bring her in on ep 1 so she's just dragging her heels, not learning anything we don't already know etc. Plus this is the Aghdashloo plotline, as she plays the mum. Incidentally, is it just me, or do female cops in genre shows like this have 'relationship with supportive law-adjacent parent' subplots a lot more than their male counterparts? Ana Lucia in Lost, Beckett in Castle, JLo in Out Of Sight. Only male ones I can immediately think of are Sense8 (but that show actively plays with gender roles, plus it's kind of combative rather than supportive) and apparently Peacemaker (though I gather that relationship is combative).
Speculation: Madani had to get over her trust issues to work with her new partner; he is therefore going to turn out to be dirty.
Just watched ep 4. Still good! Action is awesome, people are acting in psychologically believable ways, and Madani is finally into the main story. Also, Turk! Love how Claire is the obvious Nick Fury style connective tissue for all the shows, but they've also got this slave-trading weapons-selling scumbag as their low-key overlap character. And Tony Plana, aka Manny Calavera, shows up! The PTSD soldier kid story feels a little loose at the moment, like he's connected to the story via Frank's ex-squadmates but that's about it, otherwise it feels like they're just slowly building up a secondary villain to bring out around episode 6.
Speculation: Russo was the one who leaked the tape to Micro. I can't think of a reason for Agent Orange or Clancy Brown to have done it, so assuming Frank didn't then it's pretty much got to be Russo (or one-leg guy but I don't think he was in that unit?) unless it's one of the barely characterised guys like the Bible guy. Annoyingly, I just googled to check Russo's name and found out something about where his character is going.
Ep 5 still good, so this is officially the second best season of all the Defenders shows! Even though it's got boring old Karen Page in it.
Re. previous speculation: turns out it was Bible guy! I hadn't realised it was a secret tape. That makes it weirder that they would think it was Frank that leaked it seeing as he's in it. Did they think that it was Frank plus one other person but they didn't know who the other person was? Or did they not know who was who under the balaclavas? It kind of makes sense that they'd guess at Frank seeing as he was a vocal opponent of a lot of stuff plus maybe there was some spite on Agent Orange's part after he lost his sight in one eye thanks to Frank's super-punch, but kind of weird that they didn't go after anyone else. Also, why does Agent Orange need Madani's list of who was in the room when that dude got shot? Surely he knew who was in there with him? Hopefully they'll explain all that at some point.
More cool casting: I forgot to mention Chappelle from 24, and now we've got Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio! Less showy Cameron-alum casting than Weaver...
Speculation: Agent Orange has Stein wired, not Madani's office - him overhearing Gunner's name is misdirection on the writers' part.
Ep 6 - more plot confusion! Who called the cops about Gunner's body? Was it Micro, trying to give him a proper burial? Seems out of character for a guy who panics and gives Frank shit at the merest hint of shedding any more light on themselves? Or was it Agent Orange? I guess he had to pick up his team's bodies, so why did he not only leave Gunner's but also call the police? Is it to try to shake the tree, give the police leads in case that brings Frank out into the open?
Anyway, this ep was fine but a little slower. I forgot these shows have 13 episodes, I keep getting stuck in D+ mode and expecting 7-9. Bearing that in mind, the pacing has been pretty impressive so far, hope it doesn't stall now...
Watched ep 9, and it definitely picked steam right back up again after the slight lull of 6. I was wrong about Stein, but I was right about Lewis! If I'd known it was 13 eps in total, I would have got the episode where he came into play correct, too! So yeah it is a bit loose how he was just building up in his own subplot pretty much unconnected to the main story until it was ready for him to come in and provide a threat, but at least it bolstered the themes of the season (war is shit, basically) and had a bigger impact on the story than just giving Frank someone to fight for a bit - it causes Micro to go to Madani.
The action really is very well-executed (lol) on this show. Just in this episode, there's a great shot where Frank throws a rock at a cop, hitting him in the head, runs up to the cop car and slides over the bonnet, slams the other cop with the car door then gets in and peels off. It's all done in one shot with Bernthal doing it all. It's not a big showy Oldboy-style oner, and in fact I almost didn't notice, but it's pretty impressive.
Episode 10 was amaaazing! Even Karen Page got to be awesome! It's just a shame that the writers have decided she has to be righteously indignant about something in every scene throughout the entire franchise, whether it makes sense or not. It's irritating, and it doesn't help with the 'kid playing at being a lawyer/journalist/whatever' feel. Tiny quibble: it feels very off that Russo would miss that head shot - when stuff like that happens, I wish directors would go out of their way to show that the target noticed the shooter just in time to move a couple of inches, or even just turns around at the right moment out of sheer luck. Just something to alleviate that plot armour.
Finished. Wow, that was great! Can't believe how good that was. I think I'd say it was better than Reacher, and it's very nearly as good as Jessica Jones S1 but that show nudges it thanks to Kilgrave. I'm a bit gutted that it's likely all downhill from here!
Jessica Jones S2
Watched the first three episodes . I'd forgotten how damn slow this season is. In three episodes all we've got is IGH made other supers, and we pretty much could have inferred that anyway. Also the dialogue is fucking terrible, every conversation reads like it's between two chatbots where nothing follows on from the previous line. Also, they've got a British guy with the most New Yawk dialogue ever and it sounds ridiculous.
Weirdly, they're now allowing characters to say "Captain America" and wave action figures of him around. Has some legal restriction changed, or was all the euphemism up till now just a terrible creative decision?
I also realised that now these are (presumably) officially canon, Jeri Hogarth was the first gay MCU character, beating that anonymous guy in Endgame by 4 years. (If Agents Of SHIELD ever becomes canon, they've got this beat by a couple of months with Joey Gutierrez.)
Finished JJ S2 - a pretty good idea on paper to go with Jessica's origin, but they did it in a reeeeally slow and boring way. This was like three episodes of content stretched out to 13, and it suffers for not having a Kilgrave. Really sad to see the best series go to pot so soon and so suddenly.
Luke Case S2
Have got about halfway through, and it basically has the same problem. All the villains are boring as hell, and it's really slow. There are a fair few periphery characters I'm really enjoying and it was frustrating to not spend more time with them - Misty, Colleen, Commanche, Scarfe, Piranha - but spend sooo much time with Shades (exacerbated by the fact that he says every single sentence the same way), Mariah (I still don't believe their romantic relationship, it feels so arbitrary) and - fnarr - Bush Master (who feels like pretty lazy writing - another villain who has motivations to do with family history and lots of Stoakes-related whining, plus he has powers because... magic.. Also, I liked the social commentary in the first season, but here they wedge it in like a He-Man epilogue. Every now and then you get a completely superfluous scene which may as well have 'SOCIAL COMMENTARY' flashing across the screen in big letters.
Also, a couple of characters across these two seasons who started acting like jerks without much motivation - Trish and Luke. All this empty space in the shows and they couldn't believably build-up to their darker moments? It's not as bad as the GoT finale but it reminded me of it.
Ep 10: Turk turned into a legitimate pot vendor just in time to give Luke a tip on a grow house! It's funny how this guy started out as a sex slave trader and now he's basically Huggy Bear and I cheer whenever he shows up. Retooled 'chill Danny' is a lot easier to handle, and it's cool seeing him team up with Luke again. The action isn't amazing, but there were some cool combo moves in there, like the patty-cake. Mariah finally did something proper nasty where I felt like she was a scary villain - I think the only other time she and Shades have been this effective was with Candace. They're also still doing this 'Luke needs to handle his anger' thing but they occasionally remember to tell us while never showing us how or why it's true. Its like it got written on the writers room whiteboard as a story beat to hit but they never actually worked it up past that.
Luke Cage S2 was dreadful. I'd say it fizzled out at the end, but the whole thing was barely a fizzle. Bushmaster just gives up and goes home, Shades loses his nerve and rats out Mariah so she goes to prison and then promptly gets poisoned. Just no tension or excitement at all, it's bewildering! And then they've given up on the 'Luke is angry' thing and instead have swivelled to 'Luke is Michael Corleone' except again they don't actually show us how this is the case. He told the remaining crime bosses that if they stay out of Harlem he'll leave them alone. And then he inherits a club and plans to enforce the unwritten laws of crime as a diplomatic figure. So what? Why is this an issue or really any different to what he's been doing the entire time? Just awful writing.
Iron Fist S2
I'd heard this was quite fun, but then I'd heard Luke Cage S2 was good, so...
Ep 1: some solid fights, and lots of boring 'catch up' storytelling. Danny continues to be a lot less irritating, but he's still pretty drab.
Finished. About the best thing I can say about it is that it was only 10 episodes long. Just lots of meandering story, unconvincing heel turns, muddy motivations and intentions, underdeveloped characters. Some fairly good fights but they were still all a bit too choppy. Dialogue was just about fine, acting was solid. If they'd boiled all these two seasons down into 10 episodes it might have been pretty dope.
Daredevil S3
Two minutes in: fucking WHAT. Matt survived being trapped miles underground in an explosion and having tons of rock fall on him, by... getting knocked into some water that carried him up to a pipe at ground level and spat him out on a riverside? There had better be some mystical explanation coming up.
Well, despite that, some legitimately good writing in this ep! Okay, so Matt surviving is silly, and his sudden recovery is silly, but he's still only half-recovered and kind of suicidal as well. All the stuff with the nun is good. And the set-up for Ray is really sharp - a great catch-22 to put a character in to build motivation and audience empathy. And then dovetailing two plotlines into a tantalising cliffhanger! It's not classic tv or anything, but it's good. I doubt it'll keep it up for very long, of course...
DD S3 is surprisingly good! The action is terrific - the fight where he's stuck in a carpark with no weapons surrounded by a bunch of armed agents and he has to stealth-fight his way out was a really fun 'how the hell is he going to get out of this?' set-up, and the prison sequence was fantastic, really smart to move away from Oldboy a little and into something more like Children Of Men's oners. The pacing is a bit odd. It's not exactly dragging its heels, stuff keeps happening, but the lack of episodic structure makes it feel slower than it is. Karen and Foggy are still a drain on the show, though.
Holy shit, DD S3E6 was amazing. The whole newspaper office sequence was incredible, plus this is what I want to see Kingpin doing, and Bullseye is also great. Is getting rid of the Hand just what this show needed? Even if this crashes and burns now, I am so glad I decided to catch up with the seasons I missed. Punisher plus this were well worth it. It's just a shame so much of the rest of it has been so crap. I bet you could get a pretty good fan edit out of it all, though - it'd be a huge undertaking but it'd be pretty neat for MCU viewers who want to stay on top of all canon stuff but don't want to watch 150 hours of wildly varying quality, to be able to get the best version of it.
DD S3E8 - still very good, but parent/family member back from the dead/surprise return again?! I bet they were planning on doing this with Iron Fist's mum too...
Finished Daredevil. That was really good all the way through! It maybe dipped a tiny bit around episode 10, but whatever. They even got good stuff for Karen and Foggy to do! The threeway fight between Kingpin, Matt and Dexdevil was amaaazing. A shame that The Punisher S2 (reportedly) and Jessica Jones S3 (iirc) aren't great, but I'm glad that I've finished with a good taste in my mouth for Daredevil in case those characters get properly used again.
The Punisher S2
I enjoyed E1! Felt quite Reacher-y (Punisher comics came first and they're both drawing on similar sources, obvs). Only weak spot was the '24 hours earlier' cold open, so lazy and quite clumsily done. Would have been much better to start with the torture guy scene, then off the girl track through the bar and come to a stop on a reveal of Frank enjoying the band. Or, y'know, it's a streaming show, you don't have to do a cold open at all if you don't want.
Ha, they did the same escape through a motel wall gag as Reacher!
I really enjoyed the first three. It's a different speed to the first season but it's still done well.
S2E4 - it has slowed down now they've got to New York. Even though Russo is now back out in the wild, he's directionless and Frank isn't pursuing him so that feels like wheel-spinning. Yet Frank hasn't really done anything about whiny teen (can't remember what she said her real name was, and don't want to google in case some big reveal is spoiled for me. Hatty? Molly?), they're holding off on her backstory, and ex-Nazi Christian Preacher guy is off the radar, so this has felt like an episode of nothing. Hoping this was just a brief pause and everything starts ramping up again now...
