There’s a new vigilante on the loose in Hell’s Kitchen and he’s already felled Daredevil. Can a recovering Matt Murdock handle this new form of ‘punishment’? The new season continues…
(Our review of Episode 2.1 can be found here…)
As Foggy learns of the shoot-out at the hospital, he scours the nearby rooftops for any sign of Matt. After blagging his way into various buildings, he finds Murdock bloodied and unmoving, badly hurt from his encounter with the vigilante. He can’t take him to the hospital, so it’s back to Matt’s department where, patching him up, Foggy reads Matt the riot act – again. Matt talks of the need to act quickly against the mysterious man striding through Hell’s Kitchen, Foggy counters with a need for sanity, tired of covering for Matt’s nocturnal mission.
While Matt struggles to overcome his beating, Foggy flexes his own muscles in the legal arena, fighting for a client that the DA wants to use as a snitch against the Irish Mob in return for putting him in the Witness Protection Program to avoid the vigilante’s punishing agenda. But as more information is gathered about this ‘Punisher’, Karen and Foggy both wonder aloud if the mere existence of Daredevil in the area has inevitably led to the rise of other people who’ll go further in their search for justice.
The second episode in this no run makes no secret of examining the moral consequences and pragmatic problems of people who skirt the edges of the law. We begin to see that almost all the characters we know or meet have been compromised in some way for better or worse: Matt breaks the law each night in search of justice, Foggy knowingly covers for him, the ‘Punisher’ has a moral code that makes him destroy low-lifes but not without committing wholesale murder, the DA’s office will risk other’s lives and use them to get results and even Karen hints at mistakes she’s made in her past. (We also get hints of the ongoing attraction Karen has for Matt and even some suspicions she has about what he does beyond office-hours…)
There’s more hand-to-hand combat amid the duplicitous gunfire and if it isn’t of the level we saw in the second episode of the first run – which owed a debt to The Raid – then it’s still effective and well choreographed. We’re still in the opening sprawl of this second season but it’s certain that the production isn’t wasting time. It’ll be interesting to see how the pacing flows as we get further into the run – there’s still plenty of promised elements still to make an appearance – but ‘Dogs to a Gunfight’ keeps things steady if not groundbreaking and the valiant underdog banner flying well enough.
7/10
