Daredevil and Reacher: A Tale of Two Bros

Different approaches to the same audience

While I was on vacation last week, Disney/Marvel dropped two more episodes of Daredevil: Born Again and Prime Video aired the season 3 finale of Reacher. I’ve enjoyed both shows with their ups and downs, so here’s where things are at.

Daredevil

When the show premiered a few weeks ago, they launched 2 episodes and then went to one per week. I don’t know what prompted the double-header for this week, but I have a theory: episode 5 was in narrative terms a filler episode, while episode 6 did more to advance the overall story of the season. They wanted to boost the ratings and it probably worked.

The whole direction of this show is that Matt Murdock (Daredevil) and Wilson Fisk (Kingpin) have put their past behind them. Matt is no longer Daredevil and instead helps people as a lawyer. Fisk is no longer Kingpin and instead wants to help his city as its mayor. Matt remembers the limitations of his trade and Fisk confronts the limitations of honest work among power players. Both men regress to their alter egos throughout the season, accelerating as they go. They will absolutely face off in the end.

Episode 5: With Interest

Matt needs a business loan for his practice. While he’s at the bank (on Saint Patrick’s Day) it gets robbed by a bunch of masked Irishmen with guns, who are desperate to get into the vault. With the help of the bank manager and a little reliance on his superpowers, Matt is able to thwart the robbers.

This episode was entertaining, if a little predictable, but it got us where we were going. My main complaint is that the bank manager, Yusuf Khan, was little more than a mechanism to remind the viewers that Ms. Marvel is in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and everyone in said universe is enthralled with Ms. Marvel. Yes, Yusuf Khan is Kamala Khan’s father, and the mere mention of his daughter impresses Matt Murdock, who wants to meet her.

I swear, every time Ms. Marvel comes up, whether it’s in the MCU or in one of the cartoons my kids watch, there’s an obligatory mention of how much everyone likes her and wants to meet her. The problem is the only people who actually like Kamala Khan are the three people who crowbar her into every freaking Marvel script. She’s literally nobody’s favorite character. Squirrel Girl has a bigger following. If they wanted to mention her in a She-Hulk show or something that might make sense, but her own program was aimed at teenage girls, and Daredevil: Born Again is trying to get adult men invested in the MCU. Really dumb idea to hype up an obnoxious nothing of a teen girl character in a program that is determined to drop an F-bomb every six minutes.

(Turns out this episode was written by a woman who graduated from Harvard and most of her writing credits are from the CW’s Arrowverse. That might explain it.)

In the end, Matt shows his intellect in handling a difficult situation and saves the day as a lawyer, though not without letting Daredevil slip through the cracks. The moments where he cleverly divides and beats up the robbers is especially good.

Episode 6: Excessive Force

With the Ms. Marvel slobber out of the way, the show finds its testicles again and hurriedly introduces us to a new villain called Muse, who was only sort-of-barely-hinted-at with a throwaway line from White Tiger in episode two. Very poorly established, but okay, now we’re fighting a serial killer.

Not only does this guy end up on Daredevil’s radar, he also manages to piss off Kingpin, because he’s a graffiti artist who paints murals around town with human blood. The NY Sanitation Department figured that out before the NYPD did and politically speaking, this can make Kingpin look like a bad city manager. He takes a more proactive approach to the problem by establishing a task force of bad cops, the kind who like to turn off their body cameras and such, so they can catch Muse.

The chances that this task force will be redirected at the newly-resurfaced Daredevil are extremely high. We’re clearly heading toward that for the season climax.

It’s very obvious that the showrunner has a starting and ending point in mind, and that he’s requiring the writers to hit certain beats along the way. That’s not a bad thing, it could just be a little more evenhanded so that the reveals don’t come completely out of left field five minutes before they’re needed.

Matt finally goes full Daredevil in this episode, putting on the suit when he realizes that Muse has kidnapped the late White Tiger’s niece. They have a really cool fight down in Muse’s lair and Matt has to let him get away so he can rescue said niece. (She’s a poorly written character, highlighting again that the writers have to hurry things in a certain direction—but when they get there, the show is very entertaining.)

In short, it’s getting to where it needs to go, and when it’s focused, it’s really great. That focus slips here and there, showing the cracks, but overall it’s been worth the watch.

Oh, and whoever said the writers cut out Matt’s Catholicism were full of crap. It’s been lightly under the surface so far and in episode six it was much more up-front.

Content warning for profanity and some bloody scenes.

Reacher

With the conclusion of season 3, Reacher continues to be an enjoyable line drive for male viewers who like to watch a large man punch things or, occasionally, shoot them. All three seasons of this show have been nothing if not reliable: you’re going to get beautiful shooting locations (most of the time), a compelling cast, and good stakes. You’ll also get uneven pacing as they stretch the story from the novels across eight episodes, and they don’t always have a great spot to end for an effective cliffhanger.

Here, the stakes they’ve established have all come to their payoff point: Reacher has to thwart a setup, sneak into a tense situation, beat up a guy who’s even bigger than he is (the main appeal of this season), and save a girl from being trafficked by a pervy arms dealer. Does he do all of this? Unsurprisingly, yes. The skill from the writers and director comes from their use of tension and obstacles, as Reacher and his allies fight their way toward the final bosses.

The fight between Reacher and Paulie was very satisfying. There was even a fake-out ending that would have been fine if it was the real ending. Then Paulie reappears and you realize there are no easy ways out for Reacher in this fight, he’s going to have to really outsmart this dude. Olivier Richters, who played Paulie, might be limited in the types of roles he gets in the future due to his size (7’2” and 300lbs +), but he did great in this part, and Alan Ritchson (Reacher) played off of him very well.

For how much we seasoned male viewers talk about the great testosterone films of the 80s, we could find a lot to appreciate in season 3 of Reacher. Richters and Ritchson give us the kind of protein-fueled beatdowns that Schwarzenegger and Stallone did when we were kids.

As always, I maintain that the show and the books are both forms of Hallmark entertainment for men: Reacher is a guy who is always jacked, always cut, never works out, and eats whatever he wants. He’s always capable of handling whatever utterly bogus situation is thrown at him. He’ll punch it hard enough to solve it, and somewhere along the way he’ll hook up with a chick who’s at least a 7, and then disentangle himself from her with ease.

In this season, the girl practically did all the disentangling FOR him. He even made a joke about it later. Then he rode off on a motorcycle and all the good guys got a happy ending.

The show ended, and I was satisfied, and that was cool.

Content warning for profanity and hard violence, the fight scenes didn’t pull their punches.

Conclusion

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the culture war is dying out and things are steadily returning to a level of creative and commercial viability that we used to enjoy on the regular. There are flaws but they’re not as bad as they were five years ago. I’m having fun with these shows and that’s good.

Carry on.