The one thing I’ve been enjoying most out of Netflix’s Daredevil is that each episode so far has decided to pick a separate section of Matt Murdock’s life and hold it under a notciably violent microscope in order to reveal different aspects of a very complicated man. Into The Ring introduced us to Matt’s world, introducing to the man himself and his friends old and new while hinting at the villains waiting in the wings, but the second episode, The Cut Man took us into Murdock’s other life as a black-clad vigilante with more detail as he seeks to heal the streets of Hell’s Kitchen, one concussion at a time.
However, with almost all the players introduced (bar one very important exception), Rabbit In A Snowstorm elects not to focus on Matt the man or Matt the crimefighter, but instead decides to predominantly on Matt Murdock: Lawyer as we watch him take on a case that might shed some light on other issues that have popped up in his life recently. Of course, someone has to be pulling the strings and it’s time for Daredevil’s most imposing enemy to make his sizable presence known.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man walks into a bowling alley at closing time looking to use a lane and asks the rather threatening looking (obviously criminal) bowler and his bodyguards if he could join him for a frames; however, in the aftermath, the man – obviously a hitman – batters his target to death with a bowling ball when his gun jams, but instead of fleeing the scene, he patiently awaits arrest with the confidence of a man who knows he’s going to get off Scott free.
The man’s name is John Healy and despite obviously being an assassin for the shadowy crime boss that keeps everyone in line, he’s spun a tale that makes it seem like his act of brutal murder was an act of self defence. Wesley, the right hand man of said crime boss, is shopping around for new law firms in their infancy in order to scout for new talent and before you know it, Nelson & Murdock have themselves a morally complex case on their hands.
Meanwhile, diligent reporter Ben Ulrich is growing exceedingly frustrated with writing endless puff pieces for a cynical editor (not J. Jonah Jameson, sadly), he longs to be breaking actual stories like he did in his youth. However, he might finally get his chance once more when Karen Page, who is growing steadily more disillusioned with the way she’s been treated by her former job after being framed for murder, comes to him hoping to blow some whistles on Union Allied.
However, this could prove to be something of a bad move as we’re finally introduced to the mystery Kingpin who has been pulling all the strings and as we meet the man mountain known as Wilson Fisk as he admires a painting in a gallery, he’s approached by woman who discusses the eclectic piece with a man who has the power to have practically anyone killed on command.
So it’s full on legal time in Daredevil and you can now feel the show moving gradually moving on from it’s episodic breakdown of the various different aspects of Matt Murdock’s life and into a more over-arching plot arc that’ll no doubt cover the rest of the season. While the introduced plot thread of the cold blooded hitman known as John Healy initially feels a little villain of the week at first, the diminutive little psycho proves to be our (and Murdock’s) innitial way in to the criminal conspiracy that’s been hovering around the outskirts of the show from the beginning. That means that not only do our leads get to icily fraternise with Toby Leonard Moore’s James Wesley which brings them a step closer to the man truly running the show – but more on him later. The fact that we now get to see Matt snd Foggy in such close proximity with out and out villains armed with big fat checks means that we get to see the moral fibre our heroes bring to the table in sparsely decorated detention rooms. However, before we dig into the possible ramifications of Murdock using a job offer from criminals to further his investigations, it’s worth taking a moment to give props to Alex Morf’s impressively unsettling Healy whose arc only lasts for the entirety of the episode, but manages to still make an impact by how cold and alien-like the actor portrays him. He’s a gifted fighter, a remorseless killer and he’s smart enough to know exactly how to play the law to the best of his ability by making the vicious hit look more like self defence and the result is that there is a criminal fraternity that no only hires utterly insane men, but educates them to be able to manipulate the law almost as well as his lawyers and the conclusion to his story is genuinely chilling. After all, if this Kingpin is so terrifying that someone like Healy will take his own life without question in order to spare any loved ones from a similar fate, what would he do to an enemy.
Of course, the show is currently stuffed with idealistic do-gooders who think they will be the one to topple this shadowy string puller. We immediately see the differences in Matt and Foggy’s personalities when Wesley first hires them (Matt is torn while Foggy’s eyes practically turn into dollar signs), but when they realise just how connected this nutcase is, Foggy instantly realises how deep into some scary shit they are sinking while Murdock insists in taking the case to trial in order to get more information. Similarly we get introduced to long time reoccurring Daredevil supporting character Ben Ulrich who also has his sights on cracking open the criminal puzzle box that is Union Allied after his hunger for the old days of scoops and takedowns by the press that used to once mean something and endeavor to bring truth to the people. In fact, bringing in Karen Page to tell her harrowing story is something of a smart move and keeps the character from being a receptionist/love interest who only pines for the hero while occasionally playing damsel and instead makes her be nicely proactive.
However, the big news is that we finally get our first taste of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin and while we don’t get to spend that much time with him as he stares entranced at a painting crafted entirely out of different shades of white for reasons we can only imagine. Clad in a suit with his trademark bald head, Wilson Fisk may not be the physically exagerated man mountain we know from the comics even have the towering menace of Michael Clarke Duncan, but in the short time we get with this iteration, you can tell that this is one Kingpin that going to be far more complex than just a suit-wearing heavy who is only in place to give our hero a mountain to climb. On top of this, the show rug pulls us immediately by introducing Vanessa Marianna who comic fans will instantly recognise as Wilson’s future wife.
As all the pieces on Daredevil’s blood splattered chess board are seemingly assembled, it’s now down to the show makers to keep all these plates spinning and moving in the right direction, which isn’t going to be easy seeing as the show already has a gargantuan cast amassed. However, hopefully they’ll have the adequate radar vision to carry them through.
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