Episode four, Gloves Off, is the one this season has been building toward and Dex finally gets his screen time to do more than aura farm in blue light. The episode opens with him folding his bed and flipping eggs while acting completely normal, its just another morning yoga for him, and you can already feel what is going on with a guy who is calmly planning to murder an entire task force right after breakfast, just standing there in his kitchen like he is having a normal Thursday. It is a trip to watch him go through his whole morning routine with that weirdly zen energy before he goes out to hunt people and it sets the tone for the rest of the hour because you can tell the writers are done playing around with the buildup. Dex just looking as a regular guy doing his own thing, pretending to be a scared citizen at the diner is legit, especially the way he manages to hold that killer instinct back right up until the moment he decides its show time. He is sitting there looking like a regular guy just having banana milkshake and then all of a sudden he starts using a toothpick, random silverware, glass shards and a whole live lobster to take out the Anti Vigilante Task Force one by one, Im like how the hell does he turns anything into a sharp object?, its easily the most creative and ridiculous violence we have seen this season so far. The ketchup logo moment while he casually claims to be one of the good guys feels just perfect and if you were still on the fence about whether this show had it in it to go full Bullseye, this episode answers that pretty well that the guy is not over, I always though they took him out of the screen too fast on Season 1 but ends up they were just keeping him in the bench for Season 2.
- IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18923754/
- Platform: DISNEY+
Not everythign was great during the episode because after such openiong then it starts to slow down but the cast still made it watchable when Jack decides to leave out of nowhere mostly because after escaping I think he is panicking and who wouldnt. The whole transition feels forced because we are just supposed to accept this man is suddenly gone and now the team has all this money to operate with, and the show does not really explains much of that, it just needs Jack out of the picture so it can move on, but seeing the core team interact keeps the momentum going even when the plotting is doing them no favors. Matt and Karen are out there letting Angela deliver an SD card even though she is just as wanted as they are, which makes you wonder if Matt is losing his edge or just getting desperate, because she is a teenage girl with zero training for street level work and sending her out there is the kind of call that should have at least one person in the room pushing back on it harder but this is entertaiment so I say lets just go with it. There is a decent moment where Angela asks Matt if he was actually ready when he first became Daredevil and that conversation carries a double edge because it is about the cost of putting on the mask and what it does to the people around you and Angela is basically at the edge of turning into White Tiger, but they cut it off almost as soon as it starts going somewhere interesting. That is a real shame because Matt reflecting on what wearing that identity actually took from him is exactly the kind of context that make the story more interesting, probably its just me that I really enjoy those time jumps going back and forward.
Fisk returning to his roots in the boxing gym is a strong choice because it brings back that classic agression from the first season, its just weird how sometimes feels the series makes a lot of effort to keep Fisk under control and not let him loose his cool. He is always at his best when he is trying to take control over a room with just his presence rather than through muscle but sometimes he just loose it, but he really knows when to. Meanwhile Matt is juggling too many things at once and his relationship with Karen feels strained in a way the show is not always giving much details of their inner problems but you can feel it in the scenes, how he is now the one trying to walk the line of justice while Karen is just getting farther away and more focus in vengence, its just both of them carrying the weight of everyone they have already lost and neither one really talking about it directly. The way the episode builds toward the big confrontation at Fogwell Gym actually takes some time to show the strategic side of how these characters move against each other and that is what makes the danger and risk feel like they are rising higher way before things just hit boiling point. Dex is just amazing and I would really like seen much more of him, recently there are some rummors of him making it out to an MCU movie, I can already see him doing a way better job than Hawkeye, just getting closer to his target while using ordinary objects as weapons keeps the threat feeling unpredictable in a way that a lot of villain characters are not so detail and creative, only very few ones like Thanos where everything is plan out with details in mind, and it is good to see a character who does not need a super suit to make you fell his presence in the room, he just needs a good arm and whatever happens to be sitting on the table.
After hearing Matt talk about his father and how he start to become Dare Devil, makes me think how Fogwell Gym becomes such an important place for the characer, the place tied directly to Murdock senior and the boxing world that shaped so much of who Matt became, so the whole place carries weight beyond just being a regular gym. The dark atmosphere with low yellow lights in there make things feel thick and you can tell Fisk chose this place specifically because it means something to him as much as it means something to Matt, Im sure this is all mind games he is playing because of all arenas he choose this gym??. Dex arrives and turns the whole event into a nightmare, not just for Fisk but for everyone including Matt himself and the way he moves through the crowd is like watching something that cannot be stop and was meant to be, or slowed down by regular people, which is exactly how Bullseye should feel when he is operating at full capacity, everything can be turn into a deadly weapon, they can can take out one of his teeth and kill you with it. The speed of everything makes it hard to keep track of who is still standing and then Vanessa shows up even though Fisk had specifically arranged for her to be somewhere else, which is the kind of coincidence the show throws at you that makes me laugh because how unlucky can Fisk be, its just perfect payback from the heavens, and the actors sell it so good and the scene has enough momentum that you go with it. Vanessa got to shoot Dex is a solid blow, Matt smashing him out a window is satisfying just on time at the last minute, for a second it looks like the threat is contained for the night but then a glass shard catches Vanessa in the temple and she goes down hard. That changes everything, because the one person Fisk actually protects is lying there bleeding in a boxing gym and the episode ends on Fisk looking at her, and you do not need any dialogue to know what that means for the next few episodes.
I am giving this an 8 out of 10 because Dex finally has a real story that hooks you with all the action and even the drama is getting better and its not anymroe just a guy lurking in the background waiting for someone to point him at a target. This episode was exactly what the season needed to get out of the slow early hours and it lands on a cliffhanger that actually matters to the bigger picture of where this war is heading. The balance between the street level drama and the over the top Bullseye action is handled well enough that neither side feels like it is pulling the episode in two different directions. Matt is in a corner, Fisk is about to go on a rampage because the one person he loves is down badly and Dex is still out there somewhere probably looking for a place to work on his wounds because he is hurt badly, Vanessa really got him good. The production quality holds up and seeing the show lean back into the more violent side of this world is something people online have been asking for since the Disney Plus era started softening the edges, so getting it here feels like the show remembering what it actually is.
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