REVIEW: Daredevil: Born Again – Season 1, Episode 7, “Art for Art’s Sake”

Television Reviews

“Art for Art’s Sake” is another tedious, unsatisfying, and just plain dumb episode of Daredevil: Born Again, one that undermines the characters we love (what few of them are left), pretends the ones it introduced and never bothered to develop are important, wraps up what was presented as a major storyline as quickly as possible, and gives us a healthy dose of girl-boss energy to counteract all the toxic masculinity that comes with a superhero trying to save people. That means it’s par for the course for this tragedy of a revival, which is just one more endurance test from a studio that has lost its way.

After being rescued from Muse, Angela tells the cops that Daredevil is back. Daredevil searches for Muse. Kirsten senses that Matt and Cherry have a secret. Fisk orders his vigilante task force to find Muse before Daredevil. Luca wants business to go back to the way it was before Fisk resurfaced. Heather wonders where Matt goes at night and where his mysterious bruises came from.

“Art for Art’s Sake” has plenty wrong with it, but one of its worst aspects is that it perfectly illustrates one of the fundamental problems with Daredevil: Born Again: this stupid show got rid of all the Daredevil characters we cared about aside from Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk (well, and Vanessa, but it ruined her so completely that she may as well be a different character). When Matt returns from saving Angela, he’s alive again, energetic, engaged, like he can finally be who he really is. This has been the theme of the series for both Matt and Fisk, and for the former, it’s finally happening. But the show has no decent outlet to explore what Matt is feeling because the only good guy who knows he’s Daredevil is Cherry, and we don’t care about him. Matt’s relationship with him happened entirely off-screen, meaning that every time they talk candidly about Daredevil, we have to be informed of their history together. None of this registers because we’ve never seen – and, therefore, felt – any of it, so their friendship means nothing to us; it’s just a fact we need to have dictated to us as if the show is reading a Trivial Pursuit answer. And when he’s with Heather, Matt has to lie because he doesn’t want her to know he’s Daredevil, so it’s an empty scene where he says things we know aren’t true instead of exploring what he’s really thinking and feeling. (It also makes Matt look like an idiot as he tries to explain away his giant, torso-sized bruises. “I went for a walk, and I fell.”) These moments are when you miss Karen and Foggy the most because you realize even more how important they are to Matt and the show. They were Matt’s sounding boards, people who cared about him and whom he cared about – and, more importantly, whom we cared about. Now, Matt is surrounded by props with pulses; the show would be better if he were alone.

***SPOILERS***

The plot of “Art for Art’s Sake” isn’t any better than the characterizations. As the title indicates, this episode is about Muse, and it’s another reminder of how botched the storyline is. Muse was shoved far into the background until last week, and there’s been almost no build to him, so he comes off more as a villain of the week than the center of a major arc. Now that he’s on the run, Born Again wants to make us care about the mystery of his identity, but the “previously on” section effectively eliminates the suspense by making it completely obvious who Muse is: that random teenager (or maybe he’s in his early 20s) who went to Heather’s book signing and made an appointment with her in the second episode. Remember that compelling character who’s had about eight seconds of screen time all season? Yep, he’s the big villain! I’d invoke Roger Ebert’s Law of the Economy of Characters – which states that if there is a character who serves no purpose to the plot, he’s the killer – but a good two-thirds of the characters on Born Again serve no purpose, so it hardly matters. At any rate, this kid whose name escapes me shows up to the appointment, quickly reveals that he’s a homicidal maniac, and ties up Heather so he can make a new work of art using her blood. He does this all in her office, which, apparently, is the only doctor’s office on Earth that doesn’t have a receptionist); there doesn’t even appear to be anyone else in the building – an office building during working hours in New York City! – to hear the screams. (We’re later told that Muse intended this to be a murder-suicide. Why? No idea; because he’s crazy, I guess.) Moreover, Fisk learns about Muse’s true identity from one of the cops, then hands it over to his vigilante task force, so the reveal doesn’t even happen before Muse’s identity is officially revealed. What a complete mess of plotting, structure, and editing.

But at least we get some good, satisfying superhero action, right? Well… not much. Daredevil does crash through the window of Heather’s office to fight Muse after realizing she’s his next target (there’s a quick moment where Daredevil throws his billy club and knocks out one of the bad cops in Muse’s lair that made me laugh; I can acknowledge when the show does something good), and they fight for a few minutes, but the scene ends when Heather frees herself from her bindings, grabs Muse’s gun, and shoots him to death. God forbid we let Daredevil defeat the guy who essentially brought him back into the superhero life; that would make Heather, who is barely a character, a damsel in distress and deprive her of a completely unearned don’t-need-no-man girl power moment. Even worse is that this comes after her telling Muse that men who wear masks are cowards; wouldn’t it have been nice for her to see Daredevil save her from certain death so she could rethink her views? But that would require treating her like an actual character rather than an instrument through which the writers can make their feminist points, so that’s out the window. Something similar happens with the Fisks, as Luca tells Vanessa that she was a better Kingpin than Wilson Fisk, and he wants her to help him kill her husband so she can take over again. Vanessa gives Luca Fisk’s location, but it’s a trap; she had informed Fisk, and he has his henchman Buck kill Luca. This one isn’t quite as bad because at least it has a point: establishing that Vanessa is still loyal to her husband despite having had an affair (for which she’s not sorry and blames Fisk). But it’s yet another instance of Fisk not being able to do anything for himself and needing help from Vanessa while they would never show her needing his help. The point is very clear – and I guess we’ll never know why Luca needed that gem in episode 5, but there I go asking for storytelling again.

The thing about bad shows and movies is that the bigger things make you notice the little things even more, things you’d probably just let go if they were the worst parts of a better whole. For example, when the Asian detective tells Fisk that Daredevil is back, Fisk refers to him as “ the vigilante of Hell’s Kitchen” instead of “the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” which is so glaring an omission I genuinely think the writers never even watched Daredevil. And after her background on Muse, he orders her off the case and says he’ll take it from there. Um… he’s the mayor, not the police commissioner, the chief, or any kind of cop. Mayors don’t seize criminal investigations from police officers. This is even dumber because they could have easily had the commissioner that Fisk is forcing to cooperate with him do this and then give the case file to Fisk, but they’re too lazy and careless to take one simple extra step. Also, once again, Kirsten orders Matt around like he’s an employee when they’re supposed to be equal partners in the firm. (“Two minutes.”) I know they’re doing this for more “You go, girl” moments, but it’s still grating, especially when the meeting is so unimportant that we don’t even see it. And the dialogue continues to be horrible, especially compared to that of Daredevil; Fisk’s rant about the vigilante task force being “the thin black line” feels like a villain monologue from a Power Rangers episode. Watching Daredevil: Born Again is even more depressing than watching something like She-Hulk or Ms. Marvel because we know what this show could be and can only watch as it deteriorates into more trash.

Let us know what you thought of “Art for Art’s Sake” in the comments!

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