The benefits of transporting your superhero over to the small screen may sometimes limit some of those bigger, budget-busting moments, but one clear advance it has over its big screen cousins is that it has the breathing space to really dig under the skin of its villains to work out what makes then tick. While the main thread of the MCU frequently has an issue fleshing out some of their antagonists beyond some cool casting (Red Skull, Malekith the Accursed, Ronan the Accuser), the Netflix show – which now feel connected to the larger universe by the thinnest of threads – managed to impressively avoid this with the superlative introduction and use of Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin. Benefiting greatly from the layered role the time permitted, the character rose to be a genuine and nuanced threat who was as every bit as flawed and human as the heroes, and now it’s time for us to give the same treatment to Wilson Bethel’s Benjamin Pointdexter, who as some point will go on to become the cold blooded assassin known as Bullseye.
The last time we saw Matthew Murdock, he had narrowly avoided a trap set by the Kingpin after infiltrating a prison to get information only to find himself in another one after the driver of the cab he had passed out in suddenly drove his vehicle off a nearby dock. However, once the cab is dredged from the river, Matt’s body is nowhere to be seen and we catch up with him later as the exhausted and battered hero returns home to change.
However, never one to rest on his laurels, Wilson Fisk follows up the lack of a body with something of an inspired move and has he continues to play informant with Agent Nadeem, he throws in Murdock’s name for good measure, announcing that the lawyer is actually his fixer and is responsible for committing countless crimes under the command of Wilson himself. Convinced they’ve gotten themselves another, juicy collar, the feds tear apart Matt’s already dishevelled apartment and brace both Karen Page and DA hopeful Foggy Nelson on their previous close relationships, however, while the FBI are convinced that Murdock’s their man, they manage to find no evidence that he’s Daredevil.
With his foes once again in disarray, that gives Fisk all the space he needs to once again do some plotting and he figures that if he can’t convince New York that he isn’t a villain, he’ll just simply invent a new one to tale the public heat off him and this is where Benjamin Pointdexter comes in. We already know that the FBI agent is one letter short of an acronym, but after getting hold of his personal files, Fisk delves deep into his past to find out what really makes Dex tick – and better yet, how to exploit him.
After the action assault the previous episode piled onto us, it’s no real surprise that The Perfect Game eases off the accelerator somewhat to give the show some elbow room to finally give us a chance to peek behind the eyes of Wilson Bethel’s icy Dex. Remember that episode from season 1 when we went back and saw Wilson Fisk’s messed up childhood, well, it’s essentially that but with more baseballs… Adding to what we already know about Pointdexter (amoral, stalker, a lethal aim), it turns out that the troubled orphan has a real issue from understanding the concepts of right and wrong and is prone to violent acts of jealousy if thing don’t go his way. His coach prevents him from pitching a perfect game while playing baseball, so he beans him with one in frustration, killing him stone dead, his psychiatrist tells him she can’t be her doctor anymore as she’s dying of cancer, so his first instinct is to murder her and so on. As origin stories go, it’s not unlike Fisk’s own, which will no doubt give him the edge he needs to really pull Dex’s strings, but it’s the way it’s shot that proves to be the most intriguing.
When I saw that the filmmakers were not intending to do a straight flashback and instead were going to have all the most important moments of Pointdexter’s life appear in Fisk’s penthouse like some sort of play, I worried it was just going to look cheap in order to save Netflix the cost of hiring out a baseball park to shoot in, however, as the episode went on, the sight of Fisk literally wandering through Dex’s past as he hoovers up details to use proved to be quite the potent image. We’re not seeing these memories from Dex’s point of view because Dex isn’t thinking them, Fisk is as he attempts to build a picture from a truly disturbed individual and the fact that we see that we’re always in Fisk’s apartment while he does this makes it a far more of a violation, almost as if the Kingpin is stealing these facts and storing them up like some sort of insidious trauma vampire.
Of course, Dex is no angel – especially considering where he’ll most likely end up – but while Fisk’s plundering of his files brings up other worrying behaviours (his stint in a suicide prevention hotline goes about as well as you’d expect), we see that he’s still up to those antisocial tricks to this very day, especially when his stalking of a former colleague goes uncomfortably bad. I have to say, while this screen incarnation of Bullseye seems to envoke a little more empathy than others (in the comics he’s about as deserving of some understanding as a bag of lint), the foreshadowing works really well with the death-by-baseball thing coming right out from the comics and a familiar bullseye symbol on Dex’s cap hinting at his brutal future.
Of course, while the focus may be on Bethal’s reptilian fed, what’s probably the most accomplished thing about the installment is that it never not feels like D’Onofrio’s episode as the direction literally has him lurking on the peripheral of Benjamin’s memories as he plots and schemes with yet another life. In fact, when it comes to seeing how the character operates with his manipulations, The Perfect Game probably gives us a live action Kingpin that’s the closest to being comic accurate that’s he’s ever been without sticking him in a white suit.
In fact, all this villainous brouhaha is so good, it proves to be the second episode in a row that accidently buries a major character moment when Karen finally confesses to Foggy that she murdered Wesley way back in season 1. In fact, Deborah Ann Woll’s Page seems to be getting the worst of it as the show keeps steamrolling over her big moments by sticking them in vastly superior episodes that don’t actually focus mainly on her. It’s no one’s fault, but it is unfortunate; although it’s also worth noting that Agent Nadeem is finally getting to interact with the rest of the cast as he unwittingly acts likes Fisk’s attack dog to shake up Foggy and Karen – of course, this is just another example of Fisk’s mind games which proves a rather disturbing fact: It’s the Kingpin’s world – we all just live in it…
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