Daredevil: Season 2, Episode Two Review

Head hunt.

We’re in it now. Daredevil vs. Punisher. I can get into full spoilers with these Season 2 reviews (unlike my advance premiere review), so let’s cut deep.

Now, I’m blasting through these reviews rather quickly, so the intent is to make them a bit shorter than usual. A little more focused on the bigger, notable elements from an episode. We’ll see if that holds.

In “Dogs to a Gunfight”, Punisher came into the light a little bit more. Not fully, but we actually got to see Jon Bernthal more clearly from the front and hear him say more lines than just “Bang.” No huge reveals about his identity, but the fact that there was more light on him now meant that the final fight at the end was a bit more engaging. Less mysterious and more hard-hitting. Excellent fight, and really awesome final endgame involving smarmy D.A. Reyes using Grotto as Punisher bait. Which caused Foggy become a hypocrite in front of Karen when he ran out into the fray because Daredevil showed up. It’s only a matter of time before Karen stumbles onto the truth. The show’s been good about making her smart and resourceful.

Speaking of Karen, I mentioned briefly in my premiere review that she’s more drawn to Matt this season. More hands-on. Flirty. And I think that Foggy’s default “drinking problem” excuse for Matt’s bruises and absenteeism is working to sort of make him more attractive to her as he now appears more damaged and wounded. And since Matt literally had to remain indoors because he lost his hearing (a very scary scenario!) after getting seriously concussed by Punisher’s headshot in the premiere, he came off more “rock bottom” than usual. Because it took him away from a very crucial client case.

Given the way the episode ended, and all the promotional pictures featuring Daredevil chained up, it would appear that were headed into Garth Ennis/Punisher territory. The famous “Choice” storyline from the comics. And it should be noted that in that particular arc, Punisher got the drop on Daredevil using sonics. As a trap. Here though, since Punisher was unaware of Matt’s abilities, they made the vulnerability come more naturally. From that recent head trauma. So because Matt’s brain got rattled so hard, Punisher was able to gain the upper hand here.

“Dogs to a Gunfight” was a nice, isolated cat-and-mouse episode. Punisher stayed a few steps ahead of the cops while Matt managed to track Punisher down using the scent of the dog he’d rescued from the Irish mob. And we even got a Punisher solo scene, in a pawn shop, spotlighting the man’s inability to let scumbags slide. Note to all horrible criminals. Don’t automatically assume that your shadowy customers are into underage rape. It won’t always go in your favor.

I wanted to take a second at the end here to bring up Foggy and how much I enjoy him as a character. More than just occasional comic relief, Foggy’s become really vital to this show. And the courage he musters in times of crisis is admirable. In the premiere, he walked into that Dogs of Hell lair to get some intel and, yes, while his mouth allows him to talk his way out of bad situations, there’s more to it than that. He’s just very smart. And very loyal.

Watching him scramble from rooftop to rooftop (using frantic, light door-buzzer cons) to find Matt at the top of the episode was very telling. And him standing up to Reyes like that, defending Grotto’s rights, was a completely crowd-pleasing moment. I mean, the fight at the end of this one was super-exciting, but I’d say there’ve been several Foggy moments this season, just within these first two episodes, that I enjoyed just as much.