"Daredevil: Born Again," Year One

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

The new "Daredevil" series on Disney+ is decent.  Despite all the chaos happening behind the scenes with showrunners being replaced and part of the season retooled, the resulting nine episodes that debuted on the service earlier this year are a perfectly acceptable continuation of the Netflix show created by Drew Goddard.  However, it's not the same by any means.  The first episode immediately breaks the old formula and sets up a changed version of Charlie Cox's Matt Murdock operating without his old support network.

The biggest problem with "Born Again" is that it decided to ditch Foggy and Karen, in favor of a new group of characters that are difficult to care about.  Murdock has a new girlfriend, therapist Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva), who is boring and easy to ignore.  He starts a new law firm with a new partner, Kirsten McDuffie (Nikki M. James), who is even more of a non-entity.  These are perfunctory attempts to show that Murdock still has some semblance of a personal life, except that nobody buys for a minute that these are people that anybody should be very invested in.  His arc this season is all about getting over the traumatic events of the premiere that have made him swear off ever becoming Daredevil again.  We know, of course, that he'll break this promise, because he still lives and practices law in crime-ridden New York City, which has a new mayor - and surprise!  It's Wilson Fisk.

Fisk has the more successful storyline this year, struggling to navigate the world of politics and avoid his own worst impulses.  His marriage to his beloved Vanessa has hit a rough patch.  There are some new flunkies around him, including a slimy up-and-comer named Daniel Blake (Michael Gandolfini).  Inevitably, however, he winds up employing all his old tactics to consolidate his power.  This includes putting together an anti-vigilante task force of loyal thugs, who target some of our favorite local heroes.  "Daredevil: Born Again" keeps its head above water because Murdock and Fisk are still both very compelling characters, and the show is pretty good about giving them both compelling things to do.  You can see some of the indecision about the show's new direction in the chaotic story structure.  Some episodes are stand-alone and feel like part of a network procedural.  Others are more tightly serialized, including episodes about a serial killer, Muse (Hunter Doohan), and Murdock representing another vigilante, Hector Ayala (Kamar de los Reyes).  

Anyone worried that airing on Disney+ would mean a watered down version of "Daredevil" should have their fears assuaged by the amount of violence in the first episode.  This is a very adult series, despite a few loose connections to the more family-friendly parts of the MCU.  I don't think it's saying too much to confirm that Jon Bernthal is still around as The Punisher.  The fights are still bloody, and some of the villains are particularly brutal.  There's a graphic killing in the finale that wouldn't be out of place in a horror movie.  Having Disney's resources ensures that the production values are excellent, though the show doesn't do anything too stylistically ambitious.  Probably the only major difference from the Netflix "Daredevil" is the introduction of documentary style "man on the street" sequences, and these never really play into the actual plot of any episodes.     

It's been long enough since the original series that I don't mind too much that Disney has made major character adjustments.  A more cynical Murdock and media savvy Mayor Fisk feel like reasonable evolutions of these characters.  The new show is very uneven, understandably, but I like that the creators ultimately decided to stick with darker, more mature storylines and a bleaker, meaner version of New York.  I also like the greater degree of experimentation that means there's room for the one-off episodes like the one with Murdock caught up in a bank heist.  I don't think that "Born Again" is as good as the best of the Netflix series, but it's good enough that I'll keep watching and hoping that the show can straighten itself out a little more for next season.  

And I find myself very glad that there will be a next season.

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