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Daredevil Recap – S01E02 – “Cut Man”

By Christina Roberts

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What’s bad about Netflix shows coming up on a Friday at 3AM EST for full-season streaming? I can’t watch it until at least my lunch break.

But man, was the wait worth it. If you missed Steve’s recap of Daredevil‘s first episode, “Into The Ring,” be sure to check it out. Onto the second episode!

Not-So-Short Summary: We find Matt Murdock’s character in a dumpster, discovered by Claire Temple where she brings him to her apartment and checks him for signs of life. He’s got some nasty stab wounds. As she attempts to call 911, he wakes up and makes her stop, claiming the man who did it will kill the whole hospital just to get to him.

He passes out again and we get a flashback to his childhood where he watches his father losing a fight on TV. He sits and listens to all the sounds around him, blaring music, fighting couples, and waits for his father to get home and help stitch him up.

When he wakes up, Claire tells him all that’s wrong with him and then asks how a blind man in a mask ended up in her dumpster. Instead, he asks why she’s helping him. They exchange “the less you know about me, the better” statements and call it a night while we get another flashback to right after Matt’s accident.

And we get a firsthand look at his sensory overload after he wakes up in the hospital as a kid, blind. It gives us a bit more context to the whole “he can hear heartbeats and smell cologne through walls” part of his powers. He wakes up in the present to a collapsing lung, which Claire helps alleviate. She finally gets information out of him: Russians took a boy (from the first episode!), beat up his father while he watched, and Daredevil has a thing against human trafficking. And he walked right into a trap trying to find the boy.

He senses someone in the building going door to door and takes out the “detective” that was looking for him. He and Claire take him to the roof. She recounts all she’s seen in her job at the ER in the last few weeks and how it’s been caused by a man in a black mask, which is why she decided to help him.

In a flashback that will call forward to the eventual Daredevil suit we all know, his father unpacks his latest robe for his latest match. It’s red. His dad also bets on himself to win against Carl Creel, even though he’s been told to fall in the fifth round, to help provide for Matt in the future.

The “cop” wakes up and Daredevil wants to know where the boy is. They had planned to sell the boy after downing Daredevil. It’s a bit of dark humor when Claire suggests he go after a particular nerve just above the eye to get the guy to talk (going the whole medical route of torture), but then he follows through. I was not prepared for that and while I made a lot of groaning noises at the imagery, I couldn’t look away.

So he dangles the guy over the edge of the roof until he finally tells where the boy is. And then he tosses him over anyway. He also suggests Claire lay low and leave for a while because the “cop” will be back with reinforcements.

In a flashback, we see Jack Murdoch take down Carl Creel in their fight and hear the crowd chanting his name. It’s a moving moment, seeing Jack’s expression as he feels their praise and the sense of accomplishment, only to know it’s bound to crumble. He doesn’t make it through the night–he gets gunned down outside their apartment, and Matt finds him with cops on the scene.

Daredevil makes his way through the hallway where the boy is held, silent, watchful, until he takes on the first room of guys…and the second room of guys. I’m still enthralled with every fight scene in this show so far. I know we’re only two episodes into it at this point, but the hand-to-hand choreography is something to behold. It’s the long, unbroken shots with the camera slowly zooming in and never wavering. There’s no cutting back and forth like Agents of SHIELD, and that’s what makes it so mesmerizing.

And Daredevil saves the kid.

On the side, Foggy and Karen are bar-hopping because neither of them want to go home. Karen has good reasons–she can’t get the blood out of her carpet and has the dented drywall where her head was bashed in–and all she sees are the dark corners of the city. Foggy does his best to cheer her up, and it’s a nice piece of bonding and learning about these characters. They also try to track down Matt at his apartment, but no dice.

Badass Moment of the Episode: Daredevil dropping a fire extinguisher down a stairwell to stop that “detective.” It was the patiently waiting before dropping it that made it so perfect.

Miscellaneous Musings and Thoughts: I’m going to be clear with you: I know very little about Daredevil, and it’s mostly that I never want him in Marvel Puzzle Quest. But this show is pretty darn gripping.

The use of flashbacks every time Daredevil passes out is clever and shows a strong father/son bond between Matt and Jack. I have to wonder if they’re going to continue now that they’ve shown Jack’s lifespan. I wouldn’t be averse to seeing Matt trying to adapt to his new sensory enhancements.

Claire’s freakout on the roof about Daredevil’s powers being unbelievable was also perfect. I mean, if we were in her shoes, just your average American living in the big city, would we really believe he could smell someone’s cologne from the third floor?

And in case you were curious, yes that was Carl Creel, the Absorbing Man, that Jack fought, the same one from Agents of SHIELD… just, you know, as a teenager.

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We at Bam Smack Pow are bringing you two episode recaps per day for the next seven days to knock this out of the park within the next week. Because we, like you, love binge-watching things as soon as they air. But we do have to pace ourselves.

Be sure to be on the lookout for the rest of our recaps, all of them by either Steve or me through Monday, and then Nick will get in on the action after that.

If you weren’t sold on this being a darker version of the MCU from that first episode, I think you might be sold on it by the end of this one.

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