REVIEW: Daredevil: Born Again – Season 1, Episode 6, “Excessive Force”

Television Reviews

If “Excessive Force” proves anything, it’s that Daredevil: Born Again is braindead, yet another Marvel endeavor that doesn’t care about crafting a compelling story, giving the characters satisfying journeys, or even having much that happens on screen make sense. Watching it is a hollow experience, with the only joy coming from the basest level of seeing someone do something cool or familiar (from a much better show) in a vacuum. And most of the time, they can’t even make it look good.

A serial killer called Muse stalks the city, using the blood of his victims to create murals, but nobody seems to know what to do about him. Fisk attempts to get the city’s wealthy power brokers to fund his vision for the Red Hook docks. Matt does almost nothing for a long time.

“Excessive Force” drives home the dichotomy between Matt and Fisk, both attempting to be something they believe they’re supposed to be while their true selves – Daredevil and the Kingpin – try to break free. This theme has been fairly consistent throughout the season (I say “fairly” because the previous episode brought it up briefly, then forgot all about it), and the opening scene works overtime to make sure we remember it. After saying a prayer while holding Foggy’s Mass card, Matt talks to his new girlfriend Heather about her planned book examining the allure of vigilantes; like any good psychiatrist who understands privilege and confidentiality, she asks Matt – a lawyer – to set her up with some of his old clients, like the Punisher or Daredevil, for an interview. Meanwhile, Fisk continues not to want to do any of the things a mayor is supposed to do despite being so committed to becoming the mayor when he’s faced with Luca, the head of the Irish mob, who doesn’t want to give $1.8 million to one of the other gangs. The connection is obvious; both men are frustrated with their current life – Matt leaving vigilantism behind, Fisk going to boring mayoral functions – but still cling to elements or representations of their desired personas. Matt still prays, and his Catholicism is being used as a stand-in for his heroism while Fisk talks to a criminal underling like the Kingpin.

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This thread runs through “Excessive Force,” with Matt being approached once again by Hector Ayala’s niece, Angela, who asks him to help her find a man her uncle was looking for when he died. Matt tells her to go to the police and that there’s nothing he can do, for which she shames and berates him. Elsewhere, Fisk attends a fundraiser and asks some prominent New York citizens for money to help him build up the Red Hook docks, but they rebuff him, telling him that they run the city and can make sure he’s voted out in four years. It’s clear what these scenes are trying to do: they’re having other characters push Matt and Fisk into becoming Daredevil and the Kingpin again, albeit through different means. However, these scenes are so stupidly conceived and executed that they lose weight because they don’t make sense. Angela’s tirade at Matt only works if Angela knows Matt is Daredevil… which she doesn’t. Otherwise, why would she want some lawyer (a blind one at that) to go looking for a serial killer? Why does she think Matt can help her? And Fisk talks to New York’s elite like he’s never met them, then allows himself to get bullied by them, not knowing how they work or what they’re capable of. Did the people writing this show watch Daredevil? It was pretty well established that Fisk was one of the wealthiest men in the city and traveled in the very circles in which these people would exist. How could he not know them or how they think? He’s supposed to be a fish out of water, but he’s in the ocean talking to his fellow guppies.

Aside from the abysmal writing in general, these character inconsistencies in “Excessive Force” are a result of the show moving way too fast. Fisk’s interactions with New York’s high society set should have been built to as he was running for mayor, with resentments building because they either don’t like him or don’t agree with what he wants to do as mayor, leading to this scene, where people he thought may be on his side stabbed him in the back. But because Born Again is in such a hurry, it comes out of nowhere and feels like something Fisk didn’t foresee, which makes him look stupid. And there has been no build for the Muse storyline, either, so Matt needs a throwaway character to put him on Muse’s tail. This could have been something Matt was investigating from the beginning, reading the paper every day and, despite his determination to leave Daredevil behind, putting clues together and slowly seeing patterns. (Imagine a scene where Matt has newspaper clippings and maps displayed on a board and comes up with something, then, frustrated at his inability to let it go, tears it down.) That would also make Muse feel like he didn’t appear out of thin air; he’s been glimpsed in the background once or twice, but there’s been no mention of his crimes till “Excessive Force” – where we learn he’s killed over sixty people! Nobody has noticed a serial killer who’s murdered sixty people? The Son of Sam killed six people in the 70s, and the entire city was terrified. This should have been a huge plotline, not a subplot that finally got Matt to put on the suit again.

But he does. “Excessive Force” sees Matt finally become Daredevil once more to save Angela from Muse after her aunt calls him. (Why would she call her dead husband’s blind lawyer to save her niece? Because everyone is stupid, there’s been no logical storytelling, and the rest of the show needs to happen somehow.) Sure enough, Daredevil finds Muse and takes him down just as he’s about to kill Angela. And, having been humiliated at that fundraiser, Wilson Fisk goes to his weird man cave, finds the guy who slept with Vanessa locked in his cage, and lets the man attack him so he can deliver a brutal beatdown. This is the cool stuff, the parts the show knows fans want, but they ring hollow because they weren’t set up well. Sure, I love watching Charlie Cox’s Daredevil fight a creepy-looking villain and rescue a little girl, and I love seeing the Kingpin throw his victim an axe to use against him and then pound him into powder. But these scenes are only good for the visceral thrill of seeing great actors embody characters we love and do awesome stuff; they’re not successful payoffs because Daredevil: Born Again took the easy way out at every turn, fast-forwarding through what could have been seasons of story to get to this and still somehow managing to make it feel slow as molasses – just like every garbage Disney+ show to which this was supposed to be the exception.

“Excessive Force” demonstrates how virtually everything Daredevil: Born Again did was a mistake. We could have seen Wilson Fisk lose his criminal edge slowly as his ambitions for political power changed him, see his wife start to lose her respect for him, see his wealthy friends abandon him one by one, see the mobs he once controlled move out from under his shadow without him noticing until it was too late, then have it all come to a head with a public humiliation that spurs him to bring back the Kingpin persona once again. We could have seen Matt embrace Nelson, Murdock, and Page as its success grew, setting aside Daredevil for the life he built with his friends where he was starting to make the difference Foggy always told him they would but they never had before, slowly get drawn back in through the Muse murders, flirt with crime-fighting here and there, pull back and forth, feel the need to do something rage in him as he read news stories about dead girls, and finally become Daredevil again when Muse kidnapped Karen as Foggy watched helplessly. Instead, we’ve got a rushed story with old characters we don’t recognize mixed with new ones we don’t care about that bounce around until a phony set of payoffs drops. What a miserable waste of a golden opportunity.

Let us know what you thought of “Excessive Force” in the comments!

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