Daredevil season 2

So Daredevil's new season dropped yesterday and I binged through the whole thing, finishing at around 4PM today.

I liked it, but it does have some problems.

The season follows the appearance of Frank Castle, also known as The Punisher, as he does his usual rampage of murder through the underworld an the fallout resulting from that, it is also his origin story so with any luck when the Punisher series comes out we won't need to deal with that, I like avoiding origin stories if possible. Anyway, Frank is a pretty good character, and he is played very well by John Bernthal, who brings a level of charisma to the role that the character has been lacking in previous incarnations.

There is a second plot as well, picking up from a side story and a few hints from the previous season, the ancient ninja organization The Hand are in town and up to nefarious deeds, they are opposed by Stick, Matt Murdocks blind trainer from last season, and Elektra, an assassin and sometime love interest for Daredevil in the comics.

The primary stories are pretty good, there is a great deal of carnage, an interesting and well thought out network of lies and secrets to uncover, and they get reasonably satisfying conclusions, the problem is with everything that doesn't relate to the main plot, over the course of the season there are probably two episodes worth of just boring pointless angst and love triangle, Matt Murdock keeps secrets from his friends for really no reason at all, then pretty much whines constantly about being the only one who can do things, I wrote a couple days ago about the tendency for shows to rely on characters simply not talking to each other as a means to generate a plot, and this show lives and breaths that philosophy. As to the love triangle, ehh, it's competently done I guess but I just didn't really care, especially when I could have been watching the Punisher shoot things or Daredevil fight ninjas.

The series suffered from a lack of recognizable villain too, Frank Castle is really more of an anti-hero and doesn't have any interest in Daredevil except to avoid him, and The Hand is a gang of ninjas wearing masks, they don't get to have a good rant or interesting quirks, season one of the show was carried by Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, The Kingpin of crime, and he really hasn't been given enough credit for his performance there, his appearance in season two for a couple episodes was very welcome and were probably some of the strongest episodes of the season.

Don't get me wrong, the problems, and they were there, weren't enough to turn me off entirely, I enjoyed myself for the most part and hopefully we'll see another season.

Now for minor gripes, Daredevil doesn't kill, he talks about that more than Batman, and like Batman, he's a bit of a hypocrite. He has no problem throwing a steel bar at someone's head, hitting them in the face like five times, then chucking them down a couple flights of stairs. My guess is he doesn't really think of consequences much, he's probably responsible for the death due to concussion and spinal related injuries of a dozen or so people, not to mention the ones his allies kill while helping him.

Speaking of fighting, Matt Murdock should be a dead man, he gets the shit kicked out of him basically every time he goes out and his armor doesn't seem to help at all.

Also, his enemies are astoundingly persistent, really any antagonist, there is a scene where he beats up like two dozen member of a biker gang, and while I can see why they would start the fight, you'd think when it was down to like two dudes, one of whom has a broken arm, they would just run away already. I played a lot of D and D in school and my DM would never have otherwise intelligent foes surrender or flee, they would always fight to the death and refuse any offers of surrender from the party, it's like that same DM runs all the encounters here.
There is a scene where Punisher shivs like nine guys, he's covered in blood, surrounded by bodies, and the tenth dude is totally like "I got this" and comes at him with his fists, it's ridiculous.

Mind you, this is all comic book movie standards and I don't rally complain, but somehow it is a lot more noticeable and silly in what is essentially an R rated production.

I had fun though, and don't feel like I wasted my time.