"C'mon C'mon" and "The Lost Daughter"

A pair of movies about parenting today.  Minor spoilers ahead.

"C'mon C'mon" is the latest from Mike Mills, a gentle, warm-hearted film about the relationships between parents and kids.  Johnny (Joaquin Phoenix) is a radio journalist who is traveling the country interviewing children and teenagers about their thoughts on the future.  His nephew, nine-year-old Jesse (Woody Norman), is a handful due to his oddball personality and difficult family situation.  Johnny is supposed to be looking after Jesse for a few days, but a few days turns into more than a few.  Then Johnny has to travel to New York, so he takes Jesse along with him.  

"C'mon C'mon" is a film of intimate conversations and poignant observations, shot in beautifully composed black and white.  So much of the film is just watching Jesse exist in the frame, his irrepressible energy constantly disrupting Johnny's life and the world around him.  Johnny doesn't handle the sudden responsibility of childcare well, though he tries the best he can.  We get to listen in on several of his phone conversations with his sister, Jesse's mother Viv (Gabby Hoffman), who is trying to help Jesse's troubled father Paul (Scoot McNairy) through a mental health crisis.  The two talk about Jesse, and eventually about the past events that lead to Johnny and Viv falling out for a year.  

It's wonderful and life-affirming to watch Johnny eventually learn all the little rituals of parenthood, to reconnect with Viv, and to watch his interviews with a variety of kids across the United States.  The kids are mostly worried, but ultimately hopeful about the state of the world, and Mills quietly makes the case that the rest of us can be too.  Joaquin Phoenix's performance is very natural and very open, letting him show his age and his softer side.  Woody Norman as Jesse is just about as aggravating as he should be, and comes across as a very genuine kid.  Their onscreen relationship is rewarding to watch, but I think what I appreciated the most about "C'mon C'mon" is the comforting mood it evokes.  Times are tough, but there's a lot of love to go around.  It's a pleasure to simply watch the characters care about each other, and try to help - even if they make some mistakes in the process.     

"The Lost Daughter" is a very different animal, a psychological drama about a woman on holiday in Greece, who finds herself contronting old questions about her life and choices.  It's largely a study of its central character, Leda, played by Olivia Colman in the present day and Jesse Buckley in flashbacks.  Directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, the narrative seems to be low stakes on the surface, but becomes utterly engrossing.  Like "C'mon C'mon," the film is about the difficulties of parenthood, but it's outlook is far less rosy.  Leda's quiet vacation is disrupted by the arrival of a boisterous, overbearing Italian-American family.  One young woman, Nina (Dakota Johnson), has a three-year-old daughter who briefly goes missing.  Nina seems overwhelmed by motherhood, which prompts Leda to look back on her own difficulties raising two young daughters while trying to advance her academic career. 

    

What I appreciate so much about "The Lost Daughter" is that it never tries to explain, or even really delineate its themes and issues.  A major source of tension is Leda's impulsive act of stealing a doll, and the audience is left in suspense as to what she's planning to do with it, what prompted her to do such a thing, and whether it might signal more troubling issues.  None of these questions are really answered directly, but Olivia Colman's performance does so much of the work of getting us into Leda's head, helping to show the emotional and psychological forces that drive her.  Through Leda, Gyllenhall looks at the darker side of motherhood that is rarely discussed - the exhaustion, the frustration, the impossible expectations, and the guilt that comes with trying to maintain any kind of independent life.  My read on Leda  - and it's very open to interpretation - is that she considers herself a bad mother, and she's fascinated by Nina because she exhibits the same kinds of feelings.  

"The Lost Daughter" is Maggie Gyllenhall's directorial debut, and she has absolutely no trouble with the tone or the material.  She's especially good at capturing tension - all those subtle little ways that seemingly casual situations can escalate or deescalate, and how certain innocuous behavior can come across as alarming or threatening.  It's a very small production, but it's nice to see Colman and Johnson really getting to sink their teeth into some challenging roles. 

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"Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up"

Let's take a look at Aaron Sorkin and Adam McKay's latest films.

"I Love Lucy" is undeniably one of the most influential television series in history, and its characters are iconic.  The show has faded from prominence considerably over the last twenty years, but I think most people still know Lucy and Ricky Ricardo on sight.  So the casting of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz initially struck me as very peculiar.  In the odd frame, Kidman might be able to pass for Ball, but Bardem doesn't remotely resemble or sound like Arnaz.  

As the film went on, however, I appreciated the casting for helping to delineate between the onscreen Ricardos and the real people operating behind the scenes.  It's clear what drew Sorkin to the material - this is a showbiz story about the making of a classic series, and a profile of one of the most powerful couples in entertainment of their era.  Lucy and Desi are contentious and brilliant and very different from their onscreen personas.  Lucy is a demanding perfectionist, desperate to hold on to her hard-won success.  Desi is a shrewd businessman with some considerable vices.  The film focuses on one eventful week during the height of "I Love Lucy's" success, where Lucy and Desi's marriage is in trouble, the show is in trouble, and everyone is on edge - including co-stars Vivian Vance (Nina Arianda) and William Frawley (J.K. Simmons), producer Jess Oppenheimer (Tony Hale), and writers Madelyn Pugh (Alia Shawkat) and Bob Carroll (Jake Lacy).

The Hollywood tell-all structure and Sorkin's insistence on packing way too much of Lucy and Desi's relationship troubles into the film make "Being the Ricardos" difficult to enjoy.  While I appreciate Sorkin's recreations of the "I Love Lucy" production process, and his habitual fabrication of events doesn't ring too false this time around, the unrelenting cynicism of the piece and the downbeat, sober ending were hard to take.   The film is saved by its performances, and I'm ultimately happy that Sorkin went with more seasoned actors who could bring some real drama to the screen.  The MVP here is Nina Arianda as Vivian Vance, who is fed up with always being portrayed as a frump, and is easily the most human and sympathetic figure in the film.  And it takes a while to percolate, but I do think that this version of Lucille Ball is one of Sorkin's better female characters.  I appreciate how intelligent and uncompromising she's allowed to be, in stark contrast to the similar Tammy Faye Bakker from "The Eyes of Tammy Faye" earlier this year. 

Now on to "Don't Look Up," which is Adam McKay's earnest attempt to make something akin to a modern day "Dr. Strangelove" about the threat of climate change.  Initially I thought that the film was playing it too broad, following characters who were very larger-than-life, and events that were increasingly absurd, leading up to a doomsday scenario.  But then I thought about Peter Sellers hamming it up in "Dr. Strangelove," and "fighting in the war room," and I managed to get on the same wavelength with "Don't Look Up."  I don't think it's entirely successful in its satire, but I did enjoy it very much, if only for the opportunity to see actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep embrace their full comedic potential.

So, the world is in peril due to a comet heading toward Earth, identified by a PhD candidate, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her professor Dr. Mindy (DiCaprio).  They alert everyone they can, including the President, Jean Orlean (Meryl Streep).  Alas, they're given the brushoff by her son and Chief of Staff, Jason (Jonah Hill), so they try the media next - namely talk show hosts Brie (Cate Blanchette) and Jack (Tyler Perry).  The public doesn't take it seriously, and the situation escalates.  The ensemble cast includes a Mark Rylance as an evil tech billionaire, Timothee Chalamet as a young miscreant with a heart of gold, Melanie Lynskey as Mindy's wife, Rob Morgan as the government's head of planetary defense, Ariana Grande as a pop star, and Ron Perlman as a designated hero.     

McKay manages to thread the needle, keeping the film from being neither too silly nor too angry.  The poignant moments are poignant, and the comedy is pretty funny.  I think the best decision was having Streep play the Trump analogue, with Jonah Hill stealing every scene as her annoying toady, and then to use them both pretty sparingly.  I deeply disliked McKay's last film "Veep," and I think that he avoided the worst of that film's snarky, self-satisfied, disdainfulness here by focusing more on the good, hopeful, decent people who are trying to do the responsible thing against all odds.  It's terribly sweet, somehow, to see DiCaprio and Lawrence playing a couple of ordinary dopes who nobody will listen to.  

"Don't Look Up" is very predictable and very on-the-nose in its allegory, to the point where it feels like its creators were holding back at certain points.  It's a good movie, and should be lauded for its ambition and its daring, but it's never in danger of being a great one.  I wasn't looking forward to its release because I thought the subject matter would be darker and more emotionally upsetting, but this is almost too gentle in its approach - and too easy to ignore.    

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Legacyquels Are Getting Old

Spoilers ahead for "The Matrix Revolutions," "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "The Mandalorian," and "Spider-man: No Way Home."

I watched "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" recently, and I was struck by how it fits so perfectly into a pattern that other films from older franchises have fallen into lately.  I like the term "legacyquel" that Matt Singer used to describe "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which reboots a franchise while soaking in the nostalgia for that franchise, via numerous callbacks, cameos, and references.  2021 was full of these, including "The Matrix Revolutions," "Ghostbusters: Afterlife," "Space Jam 2," "Halloween Kills," "Coming 2 America," "Candyman," and "Spider-man: No Way Home."  2022 already gave us another "Scream," and "Texas Chainsaw Massacre," and coming up is "Top Gun: Maverick."

I'm still sorting out my feelings about "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" - it's not a bad movie, but it's also not a good one.  The first hour with McKenna Grace and Finn Wolfhard digging up their deceased grandpa Egon's old ghostbusting equipment and having themselves a new adventure is fun.  It's an Amblin film more than anything else, up until it decides to replay the third act of the original "Ghostbusters," capped off with an awkward reunion of the original cast.  The fact that Harold Ramis was dead couldn't save him from having to participate, via CGI doppelganger.  Watching a very tired-looking Bill Murray snark at Gozer the Gozerian, all I could think was that this was at least twenty years too late for the "Ghostbusters 3" that the fans wanted.  Audiences seemed receptive to the film anyway, but I couldn't get past that shameless tearjerker finale that overshadowed everything else.

The list of films and series that have elicited similar responses from me keeps getting longer.  I thought that Luke Skywalker's appearance at the end of the last season of "The Mandalorian" bothered me so much because the effects technology wasn't good enough to get across Uncanny Valley, but the truth is really that his presence was a huge distraction and deus ex machina that disrupted the rest of that show.  The "Star Wars" franchise has been a terrible repeat offender here, especially J.J. Abrams' contributions, which just stacked callbacks upon callbacks while neglecting its major characters and storylines.  "Bill & Ted Face the Music" had some good ideas, but watching Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter trade surfer bro shtick in their fifties often felt more depressing than funny.  Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton finally reunited for "Terminator: Dark Fate," and got to be properly badass for about two scenes apiece before it sunk in that neither of them were in the physical shape to be in this kind of movie anymore.  

Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but watching these older actors return to the genre franchises of my childhood has rarely paid off as well as the filmmakers think it will, because so many of the projects are just so badly conceived.  They claim to want to give the fans what they want, but usually give the fans what they wanted when they were kids - and often far, far too late.  At this point I don't feel any excitement for another "Indiana Jones" film because the last time Harrison Ford put on the fedora, he was already pretty creaky, and Spielberg was clearly out of ideas.  The few I have liked, including "Blade Runner 2049" and "Creed," have taken pains to keep their older actors in more age-appropriate roles and lean on thematic connections instead of recreating elements of the original films.  An interesting recent case has been "The Matrix Resurrections," which was self-aware about its status as a legacyquel to the extent that this became a part of the plot.  I think it did better than most, doubling down on the romantic relationship between the leads, and deemphasizing the bullet ballet that the original "Matrix" was known for.  Neo never even fires a gun in any of the action scenes.                 

A new variation, as embodied by "Spider-man: No Way Home" is the legacyquel crossover.  Those franchises that have seen multiple reboots can now pull their cameos and callbacks from multiple versions of any given set of characters, resulting in three different Spider-men teaming up to face foes from all of their respective universes and timelines.  It's still technically a legacyquel, because Tom Holland's Peter Parker finally experiences the level of tragedy that has largely driven the other versions of the character.  However, the emphasis is definitely on the crossover, and the fun of having Holland, Tobey Maguire, and Andrew Garfield getting to interact and play off of each other for an hour of screentime.  Maguire, fortunately, isn't too old to get back in the suit, and it helps that Disney and Sony were able to corral so many supporting players to take part.  A lot of its success was also due to good timing and unusual circumstances that will be hard to duplicate.

Legacyquels tend to make money, so we'll be seeing plenty of them for the foreseeable future. Filmmakers' attentions have been shifting to newer material, and "The Matrix Resurrections" and "No Way Home" seem to be signaling that we'll be seeing more variations on the concept.  I've remarked before that legacyquels aren't new - I've found a few from as early as the '80s - but I hope to see fewer of them going forward.  We're currently being deluged with so much nostalgia that I'm starting to become averse to any familiar property making a reappearance.  Some are a good time, but mostly they've just been reminding me, over and over, of the merciless passage of time and how none of us are getting any younger.    

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"Spider-Man No Way Home" (With Spoilers)

All the spoilers ahead.  I mean it.

I suspect that the making of this movie is more interesting than the actual film.  The most impressive part of "Spider-Man: No Way Home" is the deal-making that must have taken place to get  Willem Dafoe, Alfred Molina, Jamie Foxx, Thomas Hayden Church, Rhys Ifans, and J.K. Simmons to reprise their roles, not to mention Andrew Garfield and the elusive Tobey Maguire, who gave up acting and hasn't been seen onscreen since 2014.    

Thanks to the inescapable rumor mill - which is only getting more aggressive - I was pretty confident that Garfield and Maguire would be making some kind of appearance in the film, but it was a great treat to see them spend the whole last act of the film together with Tom Holland's Peter Parker, interacting, quipping, and finally bonding with each other.  I finally watched the Andrew Garfield "Spider-man" films last year, and I'm so glad I did, because "No Way Home" really only works the way that it should if you have the past history with all of these films.  Without the nostalgia, the sudden introduction of two previously unknown versions of Peter Parker, along with all of those villains, probably comes off as much more abrupt and clunky.  

The MCU is really milking the multiverse concept, and I'm sure they're far from done.  However, "No Way Home" feels like the best possible execution of this kind of crossover event, because the Sony reboots came in such a short amount of time, and the franchise was so huge in the popular consciousness that they're still mostly remembered fondly.  This also gave director Jon Watts, and writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers a chance to tie up some of the loose ends left over from the Maguire and Garfield-led "Spider-man" films.  It's oddly reassuring to know that both of the previous Spideys are alive and well in their own universes.  Garfield really is a very good Spider-man, and Maguire may be less enthusiastic, but he delivers when it counts.  

And it feels miraculous that in a movie with so much comic book madness going on, the emotional journey of Tom Holland's Peter Parker remains so clearly defined throughout.  The other Spider-men coming to support him in his hour of greatest need wouldn't work so well if the stakes weren't as high as they are here.  Peter Parker thinks his life is ruined until he does something immature and stupid, and has to face much bigger, much worse consequences.  It's the kind of morality play, featuring tragic ironies and hard choices, that Watts and company have mostly sidestepped so far, and I'm glad that they finally decided to commit to it here - even if redeeming all the villains is so very, very Disney.  Peter Parker is uncoupling a bit from the MCU and going back to square one, and it feels right.  

And while I like that Peter has been de-powered, forced to grow up, and given a suitably sad Spidey ending this time out, what I really appreciate about featuring the whole multiverse concept is that now we can treat the MCU "Spider-man" canon as fully its own thing.  There doesn't have to be a Gwen in this universe, and "With great power comes great responsibility" works fine coming from Aunt May.  And after six film appearances from the Tom Holland Spider-man, he's finally crossed off all the boxes of the usual Spider-man origin story, and feels properly like a full-fledged Spider-man instead of a younger version.  Frequently, "No Way Home" feels like "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse," but not quite as good because the storytelling relies so much on the previous films.  

Where Spider-man goes from here depends mostly on what Tom Holland wants to do, but it's clear that there's plenty of material left for future adventures.  More Venom seems to be an inevitability, which I am not looking forward to.  I also worry that the success of "No Way Home" is going to spark imitators, but few studios have the IP or the deep pockets to pull something like this off - can you imagine a multi-Batman crossover with the current state of Warner Brothers? - so this will likely stay a high water mark for superhero crossovers for a while.  

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"Spider-Man No Way Home" (Without Spoilers)

"Without spoilers" here means that I'm not going to reveal anything that we haven't seen in the trailer footage.  There have been so many leaks and theories and conjecture around this movie, I really don't know how anyone with any interest in seeing this movie has managed to come through the spoiler storm unscathed.  Still, I'll do my best.  Also it's difficult to talk about "Spider-Man: No Way Home" without talking about the events of the previous movie, "Far From Home," so there will be some spoilers for that one.  In fact, you should probably watch "Far From Home" before seeing "No Way Home."  Annnnnd, maybe, all the other "Spider-man" films since 2002. 

Here we go.  

"No Way Home" is probably the most indulgent piece of superhero media made yet, designed to appeal to those devoted fans of Spider-man who have stuck with him through thick and thin over the past two decades.  The big gimmick of this film is not that the Tom Holland Spider-man's secret identity, Peter Parker, has been revealed to the whole world, but that he and Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) attempt to cast a spell to fix this, inadvertently bringing Spider-man villains from other universes to their own.  Those other universes, of course, are the previous Sony Spider-man films that predate the MCU Spider-man.  This means the return of Doctor Octopus (Alfred Molina), the Green Goblin (William Dafoe), and Electro (Jamie Foxx) to our screens, and they've never looked better.

So this movie is packed to the gills with Spider-man references and Easter eggs, and will work best for Spider-man's biggest fans - the ones who have been waiting to see Spider-man fight his most famous franchise foes again.  By the end of the film, it also becomes clear that "No Way Home" functions as a soft reboot of sorts, bringing Peter Parker back to his roots, and re-emphasizing some of the major themes from the older parts of the Spider-man mythos.  This entire trilogy that began with "Homecoming" feels like it's been one, extended origin story.  On the one hand, this means Tom Holland will be gainfully employed for a long time to come (if he wants), and on the other hand the degree to which the MCU is dragging out simple narratives is getting wildly out of hand.        

To be fair, a lot happens in "No Way Home."  Unlike "Far From Home," or the Spider-man appearances in the "Avengers" films, we finally see some meaningful progression in Peter Parker's character arc and changes to the status quo that are not going to be handwaved away easily.  The fact that this is coupled with so much spectacle and so much fanservice is the film's biggest accomplishment.  As spectacle, "No Way Home" is not as impressive as some of the MCU films that we've seen lately.  However, like the "Avengers" films, it benefits from drawing from the material of the previous installments, paying off the storylines for many different characters, and hopefully leaving fans with a sense of closure before we move on to the next phase of Spider-media.  This is a MCU movie, after all, and raises as many questions as it answers.

Holland is as solid a performer as ever, but he's got a lot of competition for the spotlight this time out.  Dafoe and Molina are clearly having a ball being villains again, and chew scenery with everything they've got.  I think this is also the best we've seen of Zendaya, Jacob Batalon, and Marisa Tomei in this series, who get plenty to do.  Doctor Strange is exactly the right amount of annoyed authority figure, and doesn't overstay his welcome.  The only character who feels underused is J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons), who got a big reveal at the end of "Far From Home."  His role turns out to be very minor, and functions more like an in-joke than anything else.  

I'm curious as to how viewers with less experience with the older "Spider-man" films are going to react to this one.  I suspect it'll land well, because "No Way Home" does have more to offer than spectacle and nostalgia, which I found a more pleasant surprise than anything else.  And we'll talk about the anything else (and there's a lot) next time.  

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I'm Slightly Addicted to "Lip Sync Battle"

I fell into a Youtube rabbit hole recently, watching clips of the performances from Spike/The Paramount Network's "Lip Sync Battle." On the surface level it looks like all the other celebrity-led reality competitions of recent years. LL Cool J and Chrissy Teigan host, and two celebrities face off in every episode, performing lip syncs of two different songs apiece before a winner is declared. Regular episodes are only half an hour, so nobody wears out their welcome, and the show has become known for its high production values. Elaborate costumes, sets, props, and a troupe of background dancers really help the performances pop.

However, what originally caught my attention was that the participants are more high profile actors and musicians than the usual participants on something like "Dancing with the Stars" or "The Masked Singer." "Lip Sync Battle" started out as a segment of "The Tonight Show," and was spun off as its own show, with John Krasinski and Stephen Merchant credited as creators. The performances are a mix of earnest homages and exaggerated parodies. However, everyone clearly has a blast playing at being larger-than-life music stars for a day, or in the case of the professional musicians who participate, playing very different musicians. There's a tremendously appealing vibe of wish-fulfillment in many of the appearances. Race and gender lines are crossed constantly, with so many drag performances that the show is often compared to "RuPaul's Drag Race."

So, I can see the appeal of the show for a performer. "Lip Sync Battle" is an opportunity for them to let loose and play with other personas. It's so much fun to see John Legend doing "Can't Touch This" in M.C. Hammer pants, or Neil Patrick Harris as "Moonwalker" era Michael Jackson performing "Smooth Criminal." I appreciate the really unexpected subversions, like Kathy Bates absolutely killing Bruno Mars's "That's What I Like," or Jenna Dewan doing her husband's "Magic Mike" routine right in his delighted face. Many of the performances go for laughs or irony, like Josh Gad dressing up like Donald Trump for "I Touch Myself," but there are a handful that are truly touching. Zoe Saldana stepping into Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez's shoes, alongside the other members of TLC, is magical. So is Laverne Cox borrowing some of Beyonce's glamour for "Lose My Breath."

In many ways, "Lip Sync Battle" embodies all the usual reality schtick. The hosts are pretty bland, with Chrissy Teigan often being used as a prop. Later seasons have gotten too spectacle heavy, and I miss the early days when it was mostly a bare stage, chintzy costumes, and the lip-syncers had to rely more heavily on their own impersonation skills. However, when you get a group of talented people together to do something they really enjoy, even if it's something very silly, it's terribly entertaining. And once in a while, you get lucky and something transcendent happens, like Tom Holland as Rihanna, or Anne Hathaway on Miley Cyrus's giant wrecking ball. And I can't help being a little envious of being able to do something that daring, and wild, and fearless. I can't help enjoying the vicarious thrill.

Now, if I were on "Lip Sync Battle," what would I want to perform? Well, I always did wonder what it would be like to wear David Byrne's giant suit...

 

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The First Five of "Daredevil"

Minor spoilers for "Hawkeye" and "Spider Man: No Way Home" ahead.

The latest MCU series, "Daredevil," has popped up on Netflix, probably because this series is much more violent and adult than the projects that have premiered on Disney+.  This is clearly an experiment for Marvel, as the show has none of the big budget resources of the other MCU shows, and even uses different branding and logos.  Created by Drew Goddard, it takes a much more gritty, grounded approach to a superhero property, built around the character of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), the blind lawyer who was introduced in "Spider Man: No Way Home."

Murdock, who was blinded as a child and gained superpowers, is devoted to making a difference in crime-riddled Hell's Kitchen.  By day, he and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), are do-gooder lawyers trying to keep their tiny practice afloat, with the help of new Girl Friday receptionist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll).  By night, Matt is a masked vigilante, just starting out, who uses his super hearing and fighting skills to stop local gangsters and other criminals. Crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), originally a Spider-man villain, and recently seen in "Hawkeye," is being set up as the main villain.  The "Daredevil" version is much more brutal, but also a more well-rounded character with many shades of gray.  The two episodes he's appeared in so far show him romancing a lovely woman named Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer).  Matt is also helped out by a nurse named Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who fishes him out of a dumpster in the second episode, and patches him up regularly. 

Everything about "Daredevil" feels much more grown-up than any of the other MCU projects so far, because it exists in a much grimmer universe where everything seems to be stacked against the good guys.  I like how it's so stripped down, feeling very much like a typical network crime procedural rather than a superhero show in a more heightened reality.  There are no fancy costumes, few special effects, and even the showy fight scenes are impressive for their realism rather than any fancy choreography.  This version of Matt Murdock doesn't have super strength and gets beat up a lot.   Initially, I was worried about the higher episode count - this is a thirteen episode season - but "Daredevil" is making good use of its length, setting up its characters and multiple interesting subplots.  This isn't a show where there's any assumption that you already know the characters, and it's good to just spend time with Foggy and Karen, who are revealed to be real people instead of just comic relief.  The usual MCU habit of dropping references and easter eggs everywhere has been mercifully curbed. 

    

"Daredevil" highlights how formulaic the MCU has gotten, and it makes me wonder what some of its other  recent entries would have looked like if various creators had let themselves take their own concepts more seriously.  Would "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" have been better with a higher episode count, fewer guest stars, and fewer ridiculous action scenes?  Would I have liked "Loki" more if it had cut down the amount of snarky quips and crazy characters, and just committed to being a character study of a morally complicated villain?  Clearly the "Daredevil" approach wouldn't work for every corner of the MCU, but it's almost shocking how well developed characters like Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk are, after relatively little screen time, compared to someone like Doctor Strange, who doesn't even seem to have completed his initial origin story arc yet.   

If you remember the 2003 "Daredevil" movie with Ben Affleck, the show is so different as to be almost unrecognizable.  Instead, Goddard and company are clearly drawing more from the Frank Miller "Daredevil" comics and various recent "Batman" adaptations showing Bruce Wayne in the early days, before the Rogues' Gallery and the wonderful toys.  The impulse to go back to basics has yielded great results here, and I hope we'll see it reflected in more Marvel media to come.

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