Sometimes reviewing a TV show is hard. Often, when rating a season episode by episode, things can get oddly samey even if the overall quality of the thing is utter dynamite, other times the show fluctuates all over the place, sacrificing the odd episode to either shift all the relevant plot points into the right order to make the nest installment fantastic. However, what rarely occurs is that an indivdual episode varies in quality within its own run time that splits it right down the middle – but that is exactly what occurs in “Karen”, the tenth episode of Daredevil’s third season.
Part frustratingly placed flashback episode, part full-on, comic inspires extravaganza, it may be the most divisive episode of Daredevil ever made as it shamelessly delivers awesome fanboy moments after making you trawl through Karen’s backstory for over half an episode and it presents me with a hell of a conundrum – praise it for its action or damn it for its storytelling…
For the last couple of episodes, it’s been hinted (or maybe even threatened) that we were about to discover more about Karen’s life before she moved to New York and eventually found herself at the offices of Nelson & Murdock, and so, four episodes before the big climax, we get to see it, was and all.
It seems that before embarking on her college years, Karen Page worked with her brother at her father’s struggling diner in Vermont, while trying to make a bit of money on the side selling drugs at frat parties. Things have been tense in the diner ever since her mother died of cancer and even through the business has been circling the drain for a while, Paxton Page just won’t give it up. However, disaster is just around the corner when her well-meaning brother, Kevin, enrolls her in college, but this leads to a later heated argument when Karen reveals that her mother hated working at the diner and storms off to get high with her boyfriend Todd. However, in a foolish attempt to rescue his sister from a life of nose bleeds and overdose, Kevin burns down Todd’s trailer leading to a fight with tragedy written all over it.
Kevin is badly beaten with a tire iron and Todd gets shot in the arm when Karen tries to protect her, but when she attempts to drive her sibling to the hospital, her brother is killed when Karen accidently crashes the car. Karen gets lucky and the local sheriff writes her out of the report, but Paxton tearfully asks her to leave town and never return again.
So far, so tragic – but as we return to the present day to find Karen still hiding in the church basement, waiting for her opportunity to flee the lethal wrath of Wilson Fisk, Matt Murdock overhears that his operatives have found her. Forced to give up his trap to kill Fisk in his penthouse when he returned home, Murdock manages to have another face/off with the psychotic Pointdexter who is still killing in Fisk’s name while dressed as Daredevil. It’s Daredevil vs. Bullseye round 2, but can this make up for an entire flashback episode that sort of doesn’t need to be there?
OK, so let’s get the uncomfortable stiff out the way first, because I really don’t want to be labeled as one of those guys who squeals in horror when his superhero show suddenly focuses on (shock, horror) a woman. I perfectly understand that granting Karen Page flash backs is a perfectly fair thing to do, especially considering that Matt, Foggy, Fisk, Pointdexter, Maggie and Elektra have all had them, however, my issue is with the placement of it because for the life of me I have no idea why someone would want to stick forty minutes of back story into the more vital part of a TV show when it would have been better served literally anywhere else over the previous three seasons. Yes, I know hindsight makes geniuses of us all, but wouldn’t all this stuff from her early years made more sense if we’d seen it after she’d shot Wesley in season 1, or when she was bonding with Frank Castle in season 2? Why the hell would you plonk it during the final third of season 3 where momentum and focus is critical to maintaining tension?
I have some theories and some of them make sense, but using a ton of flashbacks to make us believe Karen is going to die only works for the first viewing and that’s only if she’s actually killed, but repeat watches just results on the show slamming on the brakes hard.
It’s well shot and well acted, but it ultimately goes nowhere and what’s more frustrating, this could have all been wrapped up in a ten minute dialogue scene which Deborah Ann Walden could have aced in her sleep. If you doubt it, go back a couple of episodes and watch her hold her own with Vincent D’Onofrio’s Kingpin as they lashed each other with words laced with pure vitriol and tell me again why the entire plot had to stop so we could go to the most depressing place in Vermont. It make my point clear, there is nothing about the flashbacks that are poorly shot or badly acted and it actually acts as a massive nod to the comic that Page does actually have a drug problem in the comics, but it’s placement in the season is virtually unforgivable.
However, in an act that almost screams of the showrunners thinking that they have to make it up to the viewer, the last section of the episode suddenly turns into the most Daredevil shit you’ve ever seen where the episode counteracts all the trailer trash stuff and hurls us fully into a Daredevil vs Bullseye rematch that not only takes place in a fucking church, but essentially is a loose replay of the monumental scrap between hero and enemy that occured within the pages of Kevin Smith’s Guardian Devil arc from 1999.
OK, so we may have technically seen it already in the final act of the 2003 movie, and here Daredevil isn’t dressed as Daredevil and Bullseye isn’t dressed as Bullseye, but apart from a few changes (Poindexter disappointingly doesn’t try to use two of his front teeth to take out Murdock’s eyes for a start), a lot of it is straight off the page. The fight is every bit at brutal as their previous scrap at the New York Bulletin and the church is painted with thick reds which add to the dread, but while it’s an AIDS suffering Karen who succumbs to a fatal blow in the comic, here she’s saved by Father Lantom who takes the hurled Billy club meant for her as penance for his sins. It’s here that all that flashback stuff makes thematic sense to try and con you in believing that Karen is due to bite it, and it’s entirely up to you whether you think it’s worth it.
However, I’ve always been a sucker for when the show draws directly from the source material (the Garth Ennis Punisher stuff from season 2 was simply magnificent) and when the episode ends with an almost exact replica of the final page of issue 5 (only with Karen and Matt’s positions reversed), I found myself unbelievably forgiving the episode for all of its sins.
But then, forgiveness is often something you find in a church, right?
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