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Speaker 4: Game over, Hello.
Speaker 6: And welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics, my friends.
Speaker 6: Some of the first episodes we did on this podcast
Speaker 6: were on the TV show Daredevil and then the rest
Speaker 6: of the Netflix MCU shows. So many of those shows
Speaker 6: brought up interesting questions and led to great discussions, and
Speaker 6: so we have been fairly excited and anticipatory. We've been
Speaker 6: fairly excited as we anticipated the release of Daredevil Born Again.
Speaker 6: We've gone through various ups and downs in terms of
Speaker 6: how excited or not excited, or how much we trust
Speaker 6: or don't trust what was happening.
Speaker 4: But here we are.
Speaker 6: Daredevil Born Again is out and Colic Book expert extraordinaire,
Speaker 6: along with good friend of the podcast and pretty strong
Speaker 6: Daredevil fan Jessica Plumber is here to talk about it. So, Jessica,
Speaker 6: as someone who has loved Daredevil on the page, love
Speaker 6: Charlie Cox and Netflix Daredevil, was this everything you were
Speaker 6: hoping for from a Daredevil returning to empty you?
Speaker 3: No? No, it was not. Yeah, this was about as
Speaker 3: bad as it could be for me personally. I don't
Speaker 3: think it was an unwatchable TV show, but for for.
Speaker 4: Me it was Yeah.
Speaker 6: I will say, fans of this podcast, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of times where I'm like, look, I want to watch
Speaker 6: this thing. I want to talk about this thing. So
Speaker 6: I'm going to find a way to like make it
Speaker 6: ethical so we can discuss it. You know, chess playing
Speaker 6: is normally not the most superhero thing, but Ueen's gambit
Speaker 6: was great.
Speaker 4: We wanted to talk about it. We made it't happen.
Speaker 6: But every now and then we have something on the
Speaker 6: opposite side where it is not something I'm personally enjoying watching,
Speaker 6: but I'm willing to suffer through it for you the listener.
Speaker 4: And so we're going to start with actually this question
Speaker 4: of Jessica.
Speaker 6: When was the first moment when party you wanted to
Speaker 6: reach for the remote control and hit stop and you
Speaker 6: remembered that, No, you write about these things, you podcast
Speaker 6: about these things.
Speaker 4: You had to finish it.
Speaker 3: I I feel like maybe you know, in your heart
Speaker 3: of hearts, yeah, it was when Foggy died. I mean
Speaker 3: it was when they shot it up. I strongly suspected
Speaker 3: they were going to kill him based on bad vibes
Speaker 3: and the trailer only showed him in one scene and
Speaker 3: it was then the rest of it was like and
Speaker 3: then something terrible happens and Matt's thinking about revenge, and
Speaker 3: I was like, well, it's not going to be Karen
Speaker 3: because they know they can't get away with fridging a
Speaker 3: female character, and I'm glad they didn't, so I suspected
Speaker 3: and U then like, I mean, they did build the
Speaker 3: dread in that scene very clearly, but I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I know where this is going. And yeah, if if
Speaker 3: we hadn't already scheduled this episode, I would have stopped
Speaker 3: watching at that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: For me, it was the minute Foggy's body hit the
Speaker 6: pavement where it just seemed like he was dead.
Speaker 4: Then of course they gave us the false.
Speaker 6: Hope of showing him and like they were maybe he
Speaker 6: was going to live, but they know he actually dies. Yeah,
Speaker 6: And I literally paused at that moment and was like, Okay,
Speaker 6: can I just do a podcast about the first thirty seconds,
Speaker 6: five minutes, however long it was.
Speaker 3: Can we just talk about Foggy's beard because he looked
Speaker 3: so good.
Speaker 4: Beard was so good.
Speaker 6: I'm a hardcore Foggy and Marcy shipper. So it was
Speaker 6: very sad to see him hitting on someone else, but
Speaker 6: fair enough. But then I was like, no, I girded
Speaker 6: my loins and prepared myself, and I was like, Foggy
Speaker 6: is dead. Matt is experiencing this, but I'm gonna experience
Speaker 6: it with him.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna keep watch.
Speaker 6: I mean, fifteen seconds later, I hit stop again because Matt,
Speaker 6: the man who doesn't kill.
Speaker 4: People, killed someone.
Speaker 6: They lived, but he took an action that was fully
Speaker 6: intended to cause the death of another person, which legally
Speaker 6: attempted murder as a thing, but morally, you try to
Speaker 6: kill someone you've killed something like.
Speaker 3: I was pretty shocked. I thought, I thought, for real,
Speaker 3: bulls I was dead in that moment. And I will
Speaker 3: say in the comics because that's what I'm here for
Speaker 3: to say. Well, in the comics, every five minutes, Matt
Speaker 3: absolutely has dropped Bullseye off of a great height. He
Speaker 3: did eventually kill him, but he has like attempted to
Speaker 3: murder him several times. And in the comics Bulls I
Speaker 3: killed both Karen and Electra so similar level of beef.
Speaker 3: So I was I was shocked. But if it was
Speaker 3: going to be anybody, it would be bulls Eye.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It was just
Speaker 4: but even then, it was.
Speaker 3: Like, why did they even bring back Wilson? Bethel is
Speaker 3: at the actor replace but like for what? For this?
Speaker 3: I thought there was gonna be a whole plot line
Speaker 3: with him, Like why did they bring Like it just
Speaker 3: feels like a waste of the whole cast.
Speaker 6: But we can so I have two kind of related theories,
Speaker 6: and I promise we'll talk about some of the other
Speaker 6: parts of it. But I think, honestly, there's a lot
Speaker 6: of ethical questions and are raised about how you make
Speaker 6: things and what it means to remake something that's beloved,
Speaker 6: and what your obligations are and things like that.
Speaker 4: I feel like.
Speaker 6: This feels to me like someone is intentionally trying to
Speaker 6: be the Zack Snyder of the MCU, you know, in
Speaker 6: that Zack Snyder is a has a take on a
Speaker 6: lot of the superheroes in the DC universe that a
Speaker 6: lot of people love. And I want to fully respect
Speaker 6: that and say that I'm not I'm not coming at
Speaker 6: it from a place of good or bad. But Schneyder
Speaker 6: very intentionally, I think, started out from a place of
Speaker 6: there are people who are deeply invested in Superman and
Speaker 6: Batman and what those characters mean. I want to tell them,
Speaker 6: fuck you, I don't care about your interpretations. I'm gonna
Speaker 6: give you my interpretations. And that's what this felt like,
Speaker 6: like I only know a little bit about the history
Speaker 6: of this, but it felt like, you know, they originally
Speaker 6: wanted to make their own thing. There's a lot of
Speaker 6: fan output from people saying, hey, we really loved the
Speaker 6: original Netflix, can you please make it in tone of that,
Speaker 6: And this was a filmmaker saying, Hey, I'm gonna give you,
Speaker 6: guys lots of hope. I'm gonna show you Foggy in
Speaker 6: the trailer. I'm gonna show you Karen and the trailer.
Speaker 6: I'm gonna give you all that hope just so I
Speaker 6: can say, fuck you, how dare you be?
Speaker 4: How dare we want that?
Speaker 6: And go to hell that I'm making this for other people,
Speaker 6: like I am projecting like hell, I'm sure it's not that,
Speaker 6: you know, actually mad, But it felt like there was
Speaker 6: an intentional effort to say, we want to tell you
Speaker 6: that this is not gonna be the Netflix MCU.
Speaker 4: Everything we love with the Netflix MCU is gone. Stop
Speaker 4: that this is a new.
Speaker 3: Thing, right, like symbolically killing the Netflix MCU in the
Speaker 3: form of Foggy Nelson. I think for me, it's one
Speaker 3: of those don't attribute to malice what can be attributed
Speaker 3: to incompetence things and not incompetence. In competence is too
Speaker 3: strong a word. So I mentioned the Rolling Stone review
Speaker 3: of Daredevil, which I highly recommend checking out. It's very interesting.
Speaker 3: The reviewer is more The reviewer, first of all, has
Speaker 3: seen all nine episodes. We have only watched the first two,
Speaker 3: and the reviewer is more generous to the show than
Speaker 3: I personally feel. But one thing that they pointed, or
Speaker 3: one comparison that they made, was comparing the way that
Speaker 3: MCU stuff is made today to the Marvel method, which
Speaker 3: is a way of making comics. Where the traditional way
Speaker 3: of making comics is the writer writes a script and
Speaker 3: then the artist draws it. But the Marvel method came
Speaker 3: It was not invented by Stanley, but it became called
Speaker 3: the Marvel method because he used it so much. He
Speaker 3: was writing every comic at Marvel in the sixties and
Speaker 3: he was running the company, and he couldn't write all
Speaker 3: those scripts. So he would come up with an idea
Speaker 3: and then the artists would draw the whole comic, which
Speaker 3: means the artist is doing the lion's share of the
Speaker 3: writing too. And then stan would go in and he
Speaker 3: would write the dialogue, and sometimes his dialogue would completely
Speaker 3: change what the comic was about and what the artist
Speaker 3: had envisioned. And you can see, like we have some
Speaker 3: like Jack Kirby comics where he had written one thing
Speaker 3: and Stanley had put in something entirely different, often more sexist,
Speaker 3: which is interesting. And this person, the Rolling Stone reviewer,
Speaker 3: basically made the point that a lot of this Marvel
Speaker 3: stuff is made by they have like a brief. They're like, Okay,
Speaker 3: you're going to do a Daredevil show, and then they
Speaker 3: make them. The writers write something and they go away forever,
Speaker 3: and the director's film it, and then they also go
Speaker 3: away forever and fig and his team like chop it
Speaker 3: up into whatever they've decided it's going to be. And
Speaker 3: with this show, they had filmed a lot. They had
Speaker 3: from what I've read, they had hired new writers, new showrunners,
Speaker 3: and they were supposed to be going in a different
Speaker 3: direction that was like lighter in tone and an easier
Speaker 3: jumping on point for new viewers and more Disney Plus
Speaker 3: and less Netflix.
Speaker 4: And more than kind of daredevil we saw on.
Speaker 3: She Hulk, Yes, and then fig I guess didn't like it,
Speaker 3: and the decision was made to and maybe it was
Speaker 3: partially the fan base saying, no, we like the old show,
Speaker 3: and so the decision was made to scrap the plan
Speaker 3: so far, reuse some of the footage, bring back a
Speaker 3: lot of the old cast. That was when they brought
Speaker 3: back Elden Henson. That was when they brought back Debora
Speaker 3: an Wall. That was when they brought back Isletzer if
Speaker 3: I'm pronouncing that right, as Vanessa. They had recast her
Speaker 3: and filmed a couple new episodes and chopped up the rest.
Speaker 3: And so in that article there's a quote from the
Speaker 3: new showrunner saying that one, I think eight and nine
Speaker 3: were the only episodes that were made totally by them,
Speaker 3: which means that they are trying to base Matt's arc
Speaker 3: around the death of his best friend, even though most
Speaker 3: of the episodes were initially filmed with that not being
Speaker 3: a true thing that had happened. And so it's like
Speaker 3: making a TV show out of found footage, Like I just, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's not gonna work.
Speaker 6: That at least helps me feel like it's a little
Speaker 6: less malicious, although I do feel like, you know, you
Speaker 6: can start it out with Hoggy's funeral, you can start
Speaker 6: it out by telling us that Karen is no longer
Speaker 6: going to be there, bringing the two of those characters
Speaker 6: on screen and giving us what was the one thing
Speaker 6: on the Netflix Emcu hadn't given us, and of the
Speaker 6: three of them together, but then breaking them apart again,
Speaker 6: especially because what they then do is recreate. Like in
Speaker 6: the past the show has been either he's with his
Speaker 6: two friends doing the legal work, or he's off by
Speaker 6: himself being a vigilante. Now he's back with a legal partner,
Speaker 6: with an investigator. It's just two new people who aren't
Speaker 6: Foggy and anyway, So that was the part I think
Speaker 6: that felt kind of like unnecessarily cruel about.
Speaker 3: It, even like the way that they're handling Kirsten. She
Speaker 3: is absolutely serving as the Foggy, not just as Matt's
Speaker 3: legal partner, but she's like the comic relief. She's like
Speaker 3: the funny, sassy friend who's like, you need to have
Speaker 3: a healthy, normal life. Like that's Foggy's role. And I
Speaker 3: love Kirsten McDuffie in the comics. She's a wonderful character.
Speaker 3: I think the show, the show version of her is
Speaker 3: not nearly as interesting so far. It's not the actress's fault.
Speaker 3: She's doing what she can.
Speaker 4: But like.
Speaker 3: I mean, Foggy Nelson is my favorite Marvel character. I
Speaker 3: don't mean my favorite character on Daredevil or my favorite
Speaker 3: character in the MCU. I mean my favorite Marvel character
Speaker 3: like Spider Man. Who yeah, and just replacing him with
Speaker 3: here's a different character serving the exact same purpose but
Speaker 3: not doing it as well because she's just not being
Speaker 3: as well written. Again, no shade to the actress, No
Speaker 3: shade to the character, it's shade to the.
Speaker 4: Show, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, And then like you get rid of the Karen
Speaker 6: character as the investigator. By the way, there's another one
Speaker 6: hanging around, Jessica Jones and great. I will say that,
Speaker 6: like they replaced Karen and Foggy with two people of color,
Speaker 6: which is helping a thing of the show that was
Speaker 6: notably not.
Speaker 4: So great in the past.
Speaker 6: But there was more of the show beyond those first
Speaker 6: five minutes, I promise people, and we did watch them.
Speaker 6: But I want to talk about just the one other
Speaker 6: huge thing that happens because it may sound like what
Speaker 6: we're talking about is just like we're bitter fans who
Speaker 6: I want to get our favorite toy to play with.
Speaker 6: For me, that's not what this is about. This was
Speaker 6: about fundamentally changing the tenor and tone of these characters
Speaker 6: and doing so in ways that felt like it wasn't
Speaker 6: respectful to what the original story was. And that's Matt
Speaker 6: killing someone, or at least distinctly attempting to kill Dex
Speaker 6: because one of the major themes of those first three
Speaker 6: those first three seasons, and also of that sort of thing.
Speaker 6: One of the major themes of the Netflix version of
Speaker 6: the Marvel comics of the MCU is that Matt won't
Speaker 6: kill people, and that he a couple of times is
Speaker 6: tempted and it comes very close to killing people. But
Speaker 6: for him, that is a line that he will not cross,
Speaker 6: and he's doing all any in his power to not
Speaker 6: cross it. And that's the heart of his discussion with Punisher.
Speaker 6: When Punisher says, when when you lock them up, they
Speaker 6: might get out, but when I put them down, they
Speaker 6: stay down. You know, that's what Matt is arguing against,
Speaker 6: and part of him fears that Punisher is right. And
Speaker 6: so if you had given me a full season of
Speaker 6: reminding the audience that that's a huge part of who
Speaker 6: mat is. And then at the end of this season,
Speaker 6: Foggy dies and in a moment of just utter anguish
Speaker 6: and brokenness, yes he kills decks or at least attempts to.
Speaker 6: I could have seen it, like, I'm okay with characters
Speaker 6: changing a fundamental part of themselves when it is earned,
Speaker 6: but here, especially because there's no Catholic priest he's going
Speaker 6: to like, yes, father Landon's dead, but there are other
Speaker 6: Catholic police.
Speaker 3: I mean, his mom nun, you.
Speaker 4: Can go to his nun. He you can become Jewish.
Speaker 4: I don't care, Like, I mean.
Speaker 3: He'd have to work at that. It would take him
Speaker 3: a while.
Speaker 6: But a rabbi would you say to a rabbi, I've
Speaker 6: got faith based afical questions like hold the conditions right
Speaker 6: and everyone can send incredibly anti sematic and the son
Speaker 6: of a Jewish family, please understand that anyway, Like yeah,
Speaker 6: it just talk to me about how you felt when
Speaker 6: you saw that moment of Daredevil pushing decks off the roof.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think you're exactly right that it didn't
Speaker 3: feel earned, and I have to wonder, like what the
Speaker 3: viewing experiences for someone who either did not watch the
Speaker 3: original show or didn't rewatch season three and finish it
Speaker 3: like on Monday like we both did, and had it
Speaker 3: very fresh in their minds. And that's a question I
Speaker 3: have throughout because the level of information that they seem
Speaker 3: to expect viewers to have and the level of question
Speaker 3: seems really inconsistent. We can talk about that later, but
Speaker 3: in like a larger way. But if I'm new to
Speaker 3: the show, or if I'm a casual viewer, like I
Speaker 3: am not a casual viewer. I rewatch season one so
Speaker 3: much back in twenty fifteen that when I rewatched it
Speaker 3: to prepare for the new show, I realized I had
Speaker 3: memorized large chunks of the dialogue. I'm not a casual viewer.
Speaker 3: But if I were a casual viewer, if I had
Speaker 3: never seen the show before, I'd be like, who's this
Speaker 3: guy who just shot Foggy? I don't know who that is? Like,
Speaker 3: they don't ever explain who he is. He's just a
Speaker 3: guy who shows up. It's they show a close up
Speaker 3: of his glove with a bullseye on it, and that's
Speaker 3: like even his face is not shown. At no point
Speaker 3: did they explain his history with Matt. In fact, at
Speaker 3: no point did they explain, for even viewers like us
Speaker 3: who are very familiar with the show, why he killed Foggy, Like,
Speaker 3: how does he know that Matt cares? Because I don't
Speaker 3: think he knows Math's secret. I did, I can't remember,
Speaker 3: And I literally just watched season three a few days ago,
Speaker 3: and I can't remember.
Speaker 4: He does, but he does. We wouldn't know that. We're
Speaker 4: watching this for certain, right.
Speaker 3: And even with Foggy, we get a few minutes of
Speaker 3: dialogue for Foggy, most of which he's having with a
Speaker 3: completely different character, while Matt and Karen are discussing if
Speaker 3: they should go off and have sex, which is also
Speaker 3: like whoa, whoa, it's been seven years, are you guys?
Speaker 3: What's going on there? Oh? Karen's written off so we'll
Speaker 3: never find out, Like that was just another side swipe
Speaker 3: of bad writing. But I care about Foggy because I
Speaker 3: am a diehard Daredevil fan. But if I'm a new viewer,
Speaker 3: if I'm a lapsed viewer, I guess use the catholic
Speaker 3: adjacent term. Why would I care? Why would I care
Speaker 3: that Foggy died? Why would I care about who this
Speaker 3: guy is who killed him? And honestly, why would I
Speaker 3: care if Matt killed him? Because I can't remember if
Speaker 3: Matt kills people. I remember the show had a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, bones breaking through skin and you know
Speaker 3: eyes being ouched out and stuff, So it seems like
Speaker 3: it just it's completely completely unearned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and.
Speaker 6: Anna h who's a fan of the podcast, who have
Speaker 6: been talking to a lot both yesterday while I was
Speaker 6: watching it and today we're talking about it, point out
Speaker 6: there's a couple of things that I want to quote,
Speaker 6: but we'll start with this.
Speaker 4: One thing she said was like, hello, he.
Speaker 6: Also experienced Electra dying, and she was the steadfast companion.
Speaker 6: She wasn't the steadfast companion or the moral anchor the
Speaker 6: way Foggy was, but she was the one person who
Speaker 6: wander stood a side of him that no one no
Speaker 6: one else did. She also had a completely unique place
Speaker 6: in his life. And he didn't consider killing anyone over that.
Speaker 6: He doesn't struggle about whether to kill over personal impact.
Speaker 6: And I think that's actually a really good point that
Speaker 6: the only times he considers killing is when what he's
Speaker 6: concerned about is that if he just arrests them and
Speaker 6: then they get a chance to get back out and
Speaker 6: do more harm that he is now responsible for that harm,
Speaker 6: which is exactly what happens. He gets Fisk arrested, Fist
Speaker 6: breaks out, Fist causes more harm. He is fundamentally about
Speaker 6: a harm reduction. He is never about revenge in that
Speaker 6: same kind of a way. Yeah, And to me that's
Speaker 6: so important and as well as this electro idea Elector
Speaker 6: died in his arms, not once, but twice due to
Speaker 6: the Wonders of dragon Bone Resurrection that is kind of
Speaker 6: central for the Defenders like that show, but like twice,
Speaker 6: she died in his arms and he never killed anyone.
Speaker 3: I mean, he you could argue that he killed himself,
Speaker 3: but that's not the same thing, although still a sin
Speaker 3: according to Catholicism. Right, yeah, again, I think it's like again,
Speaker 3: as somebody who has read all the Daredevil comics has
Speaker 3: seen that try to kill Bullseye several times, actually kill
Speaker 3: him once, which didn't go well because then it allowed
Speaker 3: him to become possessed by the Beast, which is the
Speaker 3: demon the Hand worships, and then he like took over
Speaker 3: all of Hell's kitchen and made everybody call him Lord Daredevil,
Speaker 3: and it was actually very funny, I mean terrible storyline,
Speaker 3: but very funny, but object lesson don't kill people, even
Speaker 3: really bad people. But as somebody who has seen that
Speaker 3: happen in the comics, and also as somebody who is
Speaker 3: Foggy Nelson trash like I would kill for Foggy, I
Speaker 3: would not actually do that again. I do not want
Speaker 3: to become Lord Daredevil. Killing people is wrong. But like
Speaker 3: if they had sold us on it, I do believe
Speaker 3: that Foggy is important enough to Matt when both characters
Speaker 3: being written well for him to cross that line. But
Speaker 3: I don't believe it on the strength of thirty seconds
Speaker 3: of dialogue between them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because Foggy always was the angel on.
Speaker 6: His shoulder exactly Foggy Karen that Karen, Karen doesn't want
Speaker 6: it for him, but she and some of this starts
Speaker 6: to go down a very different road, and like, you know,
Speaker 6: she kills a couple of people, and.
Speaker 3: Karen'll be like, no, Matt, don't kill him, it's wrong.
Speaker 3: I've got it.
Speaker 7: And then she let me call my other boyfriend punisher Y,
Speaker 7: which I was also like, what about her and Frank
Speaker 7: if she's now sleeping with Mattie.
Speaker 4: I don't know, and Marcie Justice for Marcie.
Speaker 3: Justice, what at least have her at the funeral?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Oh wait, no, they didn't show a funeral. They showed
Speaker 3: the courtroom scene. Have her at the courtroom scene, she's
Speaker 3: a lawyer.
Speaker 6: They didn't show the funeral, so they didn't give us
Speaker 6: any of that closure that we.
Speaker 3: Could have had because there was the one year jump.
Speaker 6: Here's the other thing that Anna pointed out that I
Speaker 6: thought was really interesting, which is that if your goal
Speaker 6: is to say that the situation is now fundamentally different
Speaker 6: than it was during the Netflix MCU, and that a
Speaker 6: lot of things have changed, and that we don't know
Speaker 6: how all these people's relationships interact anymore, and you want
Speaker 6: to fully integrate them back into the MCU, you have
Speaker 6: the blip, Like the blip is the great just like
Speaker 6: at the sketch of any of these shows, if you
Speaker 6: just say, like, okay, you know, Matt disappeared, but the
Speaker 6: other two didn't you know? And and Foggy moved to
Speaker 6: Boston and Karen moved to California, and now we have
Speaker 6: an explanation for why they're not in his life, and
Speaker 6: we can go forward with our lives and.
Speaker 3: Matt would be just flipped, like right when he was
Speaker 3: supposed to deliver a closing argument or something, and Foggy
Speaker 3: would be like, damn.
Speaker 4: It, Yeah that would make sense. That makes sense.
Speaker 3: Well, okay. Also, like if they are trying to say
Speaker 3: that everything's different now and I want to talk about
Speaker 3: Fisk more, but don't show me Matt versus Fisk for
Speaker 3: the third time, like it's Groundhog Day over here. Yeah,
Speaker 3: in what way is everything different? You just got rid
Speaker 3: of the supporting cast that people like, Right, one more
Speaker 3: thing that I and then I'll stop talking about Foggy briefly,
Speaker 3: but one more point that I want to make, like
Speaker 3: to your point about like this could just sound like
Speaker 3: bitter fans who are mad that a character we like
Speaker 3: is gone, But I think it speaks to a fundamental
Speaker 3: lack of understanding about what made the show work. Like
Speaker 3: I said to a friend of mine, it felt like
Speaker 3: they fed all the scripts of the first three seasons
Speaker 3: into Chack GPT and how it spit out the themes,
Speaker 3: and then they wrote something around that, because it feels
Speaker 3: very repetitive around a lot of the concepts that the
Speaker 3: show was preoccupied, especially like the conversations between that and Fisk,
Speaker 3: but without saying anything new and without really having any
Speaker 3: structure grounding it and so and while also missing what
Speaker 3: was necessary about the elements that were already in the show,
Speaker 3: like Foggy added something really important to the show. He
Speaker 3: was comic relief, which the show desperately needed because Daredevil's
Speaker 3: very dark show. And he was also so sensible and grounding.
Speaker 3: He had this really steadying energy that again was extremely vital.
Speaker 3: And like I remember a New York Comic Con, this
Speaker 3: was between seasons one and two, so season two was
Speaker 3: pretty close to coming out. They had the whole Daredevil
Speaker 3: cast there and the actor including John Burnhal, though nobody
Speaker 3: had seen him as the Punisher yet because season two
Speaker 3: hadn't started. The actor who got the most applause was
Speaker 3: not Charlie and was not Vincent. It was Eldon. People
Speaker 3: lost their minds. People loved Foggy Nelson, and there was
Speaker 3: a reason for that because he contributed something really important
Speaker 3: to the show, and a huge part of that is
Speaker 3: Elden's performance. He's wonderful in the role and he is very,
Speaker 3: very different from the comics version. But there's also a
Speaker 3: reason the comics version has been around since nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: four and taking him out like that really betrays a
Speaker 3: load of understanding of the world that they're working in.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Well, and that's why I talked about how this felt
Speaker 6: to me. And maybe this wasn't their minds, or maybe
Speaker 6: it wasn't, but it certainly got the effect of being
Speaker 6: the Zack Snyder a fication of this part of the
Speaker 6: MCU because you know, Schnyder decides Superman and Batman both
Speaker 6: need to kill people. Uh, Superman obviously kills Zodh And
Speaker 6: also just the whole tone of Superman is much darker
Speaker 6: and much grittier, and she doesn't have the hope that
Speaker 6: like I know you and so many others have talked
Speaker 6: about being so essential. And Batman also, like Superman, almost
Speaker 6: never kills people, but has killed people in the comics.
Speaker 6: He literally kills Lec Luther in the Oval Office. At
Speaker 6: one point, Batman even more like declares that he will
Speaker 6: not kill people, and in the Zack Snyder verse, he's
Speaker 6: basically marking people for death when he sent it them
Speaker 6: to prison.
Speaker 4: It just it feels but that's cooler.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's and it's like, if you want that, that's great.
Speaker 6: But then usually character and like, I know this will
Speaker 6: sound kind of weird to people like I. You can
Speaker 6: take any character you want and make them any gender,
Speaker 6: any race, any sexual orientation, make them a you know,
Speaker 6: fury little creature from Alpha Sentry for all I care.
Speaker 6: But what I care about is the heart of the
Speaker 6: character and what the character is about.
Speaker 4: And like, yes, you can modernize that and things like that,
Speaker 4: but it just.
Speaker 6: I don't, Like, I don't if if you wanted to
Speaker 6: tell a story about you could you could have just
Speaker 6: made this an entirely new story, you know. And I
Speaker 6: think that's why the killing someone it got to me
Speaker 6: so much, because obviously superherotics. Like, there's two major questions
Speaker 6: that we've come back to again and again and again.
Speaker 6: One of which is like the limits of violence and
Speaker 6: like to what extent is non lethal violence of possibility?
Speaker 6: And like when when is taking the launch your own
Speaker 6: hands too much? And then the other part of it
Speaker 6: is the vigilanteism of it all, which you know you've
Speaker 6: been on to discuss a number of times. We just
Speaker 6: did a member bone bonus member episode about that, and surprise, surprise,
Speaker 6: it comes up is a question in this show.
Speaker 4: So let's keep moving forward. We'll get to the vigilanteism of.
Speaker 3: It all in a bit of this episode.
Speaker 6: The fact that the words uh that that we heard
Speaker 6: Charlie Cox say his mystical amulet, which also was my
Speaker 6: favorite line.
Speaker 3: I loved that it maybe so he pained.
Speaker 6: My soul because this has so far been like one
Speaker 6: of the most grounded, non superhero, non super powery mystical
Speaker 6: mumbo jumbo nonsense coming.
Speaker 3: But guy's got a mystical ambulet. There's nothing Matt can
Speaker 3: do about that.
Speaker 6: Well, fair enough, fair enough, he can sue him. But
Speaker 6: let's talk about the Wilson Fisk of it all. I
Speaker 6: know that I'm a little bit more of a Wilson
Speaker 6: Fisk lover than you are, but we both have a
Speaker 6: healthy respect for this character. As you sent me a
Speaker 6: text message. He did not cook an omelet throughout this
Speaker 6: entire episode, but.
Speaker 3: He ate some eggs.
Speaker 4: He ate eggs, but we didn't watch cook one.
Speaker 3: No, we didn't watch him cook one, which I.
Speaker 4: Think it was a specific challenge you'd put forward.
Speaker 3: He cooked at least five in the old show, which
Speaker 3: is one and two thirds of an omelet per season,
Speaker 3: and I just think that's too many omelets.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
Speaker 6: Someone who doesn't like omelets like it. Just I got
Speaker 6: the point you sent me. Also the honest trailers for
Speaker 6: Daredevil that shows just how many white surfaces that look
Speaker 6: like a white stucco wall from an earlier New York
Speaker 6: City apartment he looks at, And the answer is many.
Speaker 6: But I want to start with one of the things
Speaker 6: I think that really came out for me and I
Speaker 6: rewatch of the show. I mean, you may not fully agree,
Speaker 6: and that's fine, but is that like Matt is the
Speaker 6: better person. They're very similar that come from very similar backgrounds.
Speaker 6: They diverge in very important ways in one of them,
Speaker 6: but they both are wrestling with this question of like,
Speaker 6: to what extent do I have the right to take
Speaker 6: violence into my own hands to do what I think
Speaker 6: is right for people who have not asked me to
Speaker 6: do what is right for them.
Speaker 3: I say Fisk is wrestling with that question. I think he's, well, yes,
Speaker 3: that's decision.
Speaker 6: Fisk has come to a decision and is willing to
Speaker 6: has a very strong ends justify the means about it.
Speaker 6: Matt doesn't. And that's why Matt is the hero and
Speaker 6: Fisk isn't. But one of the things that they set
Speaker 6: up is that while a lot of people are probably
Speaker 6: not going to be terribly sad to have Charlie Cox
Speaker 6: in their bed, even for only one night, that Matt
Speaker 6: is not the world's best boyfriend. Oh, he's kind of
Speaker 6: terrible to most of the women in his life. And Fisk,
Speaker 6: on the other hand, we only see him show romantic
Speaker 6: interest in one woman through the entire thing. He's kind
Speaker 6: of adorable about it. He is so hopelessly in love
Speaker 6: with her, with the character Vanessa throughout all three seasons.
Speaker 6: And so I found the idea of him and Vanessa
Speaker 6: going to therapy because their relationship doesn't work anymore.
Speaker 4: And again it just.
Speaker 6: Felt like you're, like, yes, showing more relationships in therapy
Speaker 6: really important. Showing that the kind of conflicts that any
Speaker 6: two romantic partners can have when there's professional conflicts as
Speaker 6: well as romantic conflicts and abandonment issues, like, oh, that
Speaker 6: is great to show in a relationship. But let me
Speaker 6: have the Wilson Fisk who the only thing he does
Speaker 6: right in his world is that he worships the ground
Speaker 6: this woman walks on and treats her like spun gold.
Speaker 6: I don't know you felt like, I'm no longer watching
Speaker 6: Wilson Fisk. If you're giving me another character, just give
Speaker 6: me another character. What did you think about that plot
Speaker 6: line and specific seeing them in the therapy together.
Speaker 3: I mean I did laugh out loud when I realized
Speaker 3: what was happening, because it was like, Okay, I guess
Speaker 3: this is what's happening. But it felt very much like
Speaker 3: another instance of not understanding what people liked about the show,
Speaker 3: because like, everything you've said is right. I am. I'm
Speaker 3: not a big Fisk fan because I typically just don't
Speaker 3: care about or four villains, But his most likable and
Speaker 3: redemptive and interesting quality is his the purity of his
Speaker 3: love for Vanessa, which I mean remains like that absolutely
Speaker 3: like it also is very much like it's so far
Speaker 3: we've only seen two episodes and only no, I guess
Speaker 3: they both touched on it. They're both pretty much blaming
Speaker 3: her for all the problems.
Speaker 6: Which yeah, don't know what he did abandon her for
Speaker 6: a long period of time, which obviously is like in
Speaker 6: part because he got shot in the eye by Echo
Speaker 6: and like he went to Oklahoma during the Echo show
Speaker 6: and they kind of name dropped out a little bit.
Speaker 4: But barely again, let's stick a.
Speaker 3: Pin in that, because I do want to talk, like
Speaker 3: I said, about what we're supposed to know and not
Speaker 3: know and what's reasonable to expect your audience to know,
Speaker 3: because I didn't watch Echo and I was like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: but it's like they could pull it out, but right
Speaker 3: now it feels like it's going in a pretty sexist
Speaker 3: direction of like, he's so loyal and he loves her
Speaker 3: so much, and she's a big old slut who's left
Speaker 3: with this random guy, which I don't like at all,
Speaker 3: especially if it's like it's very much timed with like her.
Speaker 3: I mean, you said the last time we spoke, you
Speaker 3: really wanted to see her step into her own as
Speaker 3: more of a crime boss, which absolutely happens, but it's
Speaker 3: at the cost of her being she's never a good person,
Speaker 3: but it's at the cost of like her being a
Speaker 3: loyal partner, it seems like, and there's this dichotomy again.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say this is what they're doing
Speaker 3: without seeing the whole show, which I'm not going to do,
Speaker 3: but it does seem like it could be hinting at
Speaker 3: like you can either be a loyal wife or you
Speaker 3: can be a competent business woman, but you can't be both, which, oh,
Speaker 3: what decade are we in?
Speaker 4: I mean, what year was Wonder Woman Too made in?
Speaker 4: Because we're in that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, ladies, people can't have it all.
Speaker 4: Nope, nope.
Speaker 6: And also, please don't like reincarnate your ex lover into
Speaker 6: someone else's body and then have sex with that body
Speaker 6: anyway that we're not talking.
Speaker 4: About one who.
Speaker 3: I was like, wow, I miss something in episode two
Speaker 3: Wonder Woman, got it. Don't don't do that, it's creepy, and.
Speaker 4: Don't waste s Petro Pasco. He's so beautiful.
Speaker 6: But anyway, moving along, I think he makes really good points.
Speaker 6: Although it's not it's funny. I had a very different
Speaker 6: interpretation that was going on there. I thought it was
Speaker 6: fisk Is threatened that she seemed to do so well
Speaker 6: in his absence and not need him, and she feels
Speaker 6: like she just doesn't have this affection for him anymore,
Speaker 6: in part because he's now kind of coming.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: Part of what we saw is that she's totally in control,
Speaker 6: she's running this meeting, but then he comes in and
Speaker 6: like everything stops, and you know, I think that is like,
Speaker 6: that's a story we've seen before where it's a lot
Speaker 6: about the man like has gone away for a while,
Speaker 6: comes back, the woman is really running things well and
Speaker 6: the guy doesn't like that, so I'll be c well, well,
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna watch it either, but fans tell me
Speaker 6: what happens, because I thought, yeah, well, and.
Speaker 3: Also it's not even consistent because he comes back and
Speaker 3: he's like, I'm gonna run for mayor, and so we
Speaker 3: can't do crimes anymore. We have everything has to be
Speaker 3: totally above board, and she seems pissed about that because
Speaker 3: she was good at crimes and she was having fun
Speaker 3: doing crimes. And I guess fair enough. I don't know
Speaker 3: whose side to be on there. But then he immediately
Speaker 3: just starts doing crimes again. He's like threatening the police
Speaker 3: commissioner by stalking his kid.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, what are you?
Speaker 3: That was the previous episode, like come.
Speaker 6: On, which, Okay, let's I want to get back to
Speaker 6: Fisk in a minute, but let's talk about the cops
Speaker 6: of it all for one second, because once we started
Speaker 6: with is some deep, deep sympathy for our loyal boys
Speaker 6: in blue, which, as someone who was a teenager under
Speaker 6: Giuliani's New York and with the deepest of respect, Jessica,
Speaker 6: I have a sense that I had perhaps a little
Speaker 6: more of an adventurous childhood than you did when it
Speaker 6: came to being chased by and occasionally not having good
Speaker 6: interactions with the New York City Police Department. Especially, have
Speaker 6: a half of my black friends who are treated very badly.
Speaker 6: I am fairly anti cop, but especially anti NYPD, and
Speaker 6: I wouldn't like between Karen, Foggy and Matt. Wouldn't at
Speaker 6: least one of them be pretty acab by now, I
Speaker 6: mean you would think.
Speaker 3: But again, rewatching the original show at Like I said
Speaker 3: to a friend while I was watching, like, I contain
Speaker 3: multitudes part of me. Most of me hates copaganda, but
Speaker 3: part of me loves Brett Mahoney, who is not around anymore.
Speaker 3: So the show is definitely and the show has also
Speaker 3: always been well. It doesn't really have a consistent Even
Speaker 3: the original show wasn't consistent about this because in season
Speaker 3: one the cops are like deeply corrupt, everybody except Brat
Speaker 3: is corrupt, and then in season three the cops are
Speaker 3: totally good and fine and it's the FBI that's corrupt.
Speaker 3: But Fisk, I guess just didn't bother to buy off
Speaker 3: any cops, which feels weird to me.
Speaker 4: There's a discount on the FBI.
Speaker 3: I mean, clearly he's got some buy one, get one
Speaker 3: free deals going on there with the way some of
Speaker 3: that corruption is going. But yeah, with this it's length again.
Speaker 3: It's like that they're not even reading what they wrote.
Speaker 3: Because on the one hand, we're supposed to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: this commissioner, he's a pinnacle of uh nobility and justice.
Speaker 3: But that's in the same episode where White Tiger catches
Speaker 3: two beating some guy up for reasons we still don't know,
Speaker 3: but which are clearly sketchy, and then they try to
Speaker 3: kill him, and it's like the right hand does not
Speaker 3: know what the left hand is doing. And we're just
Speaker 3: supposed to accept the overall goodness of cops as a concept,
Speaker 3: but also have the cool seediness of corrupt cops, as
Speaker 3: if that's not a systemic issue.
Speaker 6: There was one line in season one that just that
Speaker 6: episode one that just threw me because it was so
Speaker 6: blatantly pro cop in a way that like, you know,
Speaker 6: I don't expect Marvel to be like, you know, pushing
Speaker 6: the bounds too hard like Black Panther.
Speaker 4: I think did one of.
Speaker 6: The most extreme jobs of that and drew a lot
Speaker 6: of angry attention, as did Falcon Winter Soldier, and I
Speaker 6: thought they were great for doing it, but I know
Speaker 6: that was.
Speaker 4: The outer edge.
Speaker 6: But there's a line where the cops are talking about
Speaker 6: heroes and one of them says in a real like
Speaker 6: awe shocks you know, poor you. I understand why you're
Speaker 6: jealous of those heroes. He says, like, you know, we
Speaker 6: do that stuff for criminals, we just get sued. Yeah,
Speaker 6: I just like, are Netflix writers, are you asking me
Speaker 6: to feel sorry for the boys in blue who don't
Speaker 6: get to beat up criminals anymore because these you know,
Speaker 6: pesky little police mortality lawsuits?
Speaker 4: Like really, that's what we're saying in this show.
Speaker 3: Well, and also and this this incorporates the copaganda, but
Speaker 3: also like the larger problems with Fisk and the whole
Speaker 3: like ripped from the headlines approach of this version of
Speaker 3: the show, which is the storyline that they're telling with
Speaker 3: Fisk becoming mayor now that has happened in the comics.
Speaker 3: They're drawing on the Charles Sewell run primarily from like
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, which yep, timing, but they are very very
Speaker 3: obviously steering in to.
Speaker 4: Current politics, or at least it's.
Speaker 3: A Trump allegory, and like in general, like I was
Speaker 3: very very upset when they killed Foggy. The thing that
Speaker 3: made me go, I can't watch any more of this
Speaker 3: show beyond what I have already promised to watch was
Speaker 3: that because I don't want to watch a convicted felon
Speaker 3: billionaire get elected to high office by the dumbest people
Speaker 3: in the country or in the city. I guess I
Speaker 3: don't want to watch corruption scandals involving uh, a deeply
Speaker 3: corrupt NYC mayor. I'm living that, and it's like a
Speaker 3: walking anxiety disorder. Like I'm not saying that superhero TV
Speaker 3: shows can't tackle serious things. That's the entire point of
Speaker 3: your podcast. But I this is just like it's like
Speaker 3: if I broke my leg and then everything I watch
Speaker 3: was about breaking your leg, Like I just I cannot
Speaker 3: And if they're gonna do it, which I don't think
Speaker 3: that they should, because it is too big, it is
Speaker 3: too serious, and it's too recent, like there's no it's ongoing,
Speaker 3: you can't comment on it. There's breaking news every ten seconds.
Speaker 3: You wrote this months ago. But if they are going,
Speaker 3: which I do give them a little bit of pass.
Speaker 3: They couldn't have known how some of this stuff would go.
Speaker 3: But if you're going to do that, you have to
Speaker 3: be smarter about it. You have to understand what's really happening.
Speaker 3: You have to have a coherent political stance. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that really struck me was, over and
Speaker 3: over and over again, especially in the like bb Uric segments,
Speaker 3: they keep talking about how crime is up, crime is
Speaker 3: on the rise, There's so much crime. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: all the crime, all the crime. Vigilantes can't stop it.
Speaker 3: Everybody's getting murdered all the time. Just today I saw
Speaker 3: a stat that major crimes in New York City are
Speaker 3: down fifteen percent overall crime. Violent crime has been trending
Speaker 3: down in New York and across the country for a
Speaker 3: long time. Claiming that crime is up and that Venezuelan
Speaker 3: gangs are eating your dogs or whatever are right wing
Speaker 3: lies and right wing propaganda. And you can't like lambaste
Speaker 3: these right wing figures of Eric Adams is not a democrat.
Speaker 3: You cannot lambast these figures by using their own propaganda
Speaker 3: as your world building as like a thing that is
Speaker 3: just accepted as fact, because then your position is completely incoherent.
Speaker 6: One of the things that they show, which I was
Speaker 6: both like, this is eerily like predictive, and that this
Speaker 6: is probably written long before or Trump started doing these things,
Speaker 6: although he's certainly was talking about them, is that one
Speaker 6: of the things that a lot of right wing stuff
Speaker 6: is like, let's get rid of the bureaucracy and just
Speaker 6: get things done.
Speaker 4: A scene where there's a scene where there's a like
Speaker 4: a big pothole and.
Speaker 6: Like it was one like it was one Hunters and
Speaker 6: Trump well and and you know, and so he just says,
Speaker 6: screw the bureaucracy, We're just gonna fix it now. And
Speaker 6: I don't think it is intentional Trump propaganda, because I
Speaker 6: do think that's gonna come back to haunt him, Like
Speaker 6: I am almost positive, yes, yes, maybe I'm getting the
Speaker 6: right so much credit that there's going to be some
Speaker 6: version of it. Turns out that they there's a child
Speaker 6: in that hole. There's a water Maine that's gonna break
Speaker 6: like whatever it is. You know, there's a plane that's
Speaker 6: gonna crash because I fired some FAA people. Oh wait,
Speaker 6: I'm sorry, I'm mixing up the two things.
Speaker 4: You know, but still it was just like, yeah, that
Speaker 4: is exactly what Trump does.
Speaker 6: But first of all, as and granted you're living it
Speaker 6: more and so you can maybe.
Speaker 3: Lee Trump says he's gonna do. I have yet to
Speaker 3: see a problem that man has fixed.
Speaker 6: Also true, Also true, he fixed the fact that I'm
Speaker 6: lonely sometimes because a lot of people are moving to
Speaker 6: my blue state of Minnesota because.
Speaker 4: Not safe in their own homes.
Speaker 6: But I will say, as a New Yorker, like, yes,
Speaker 6: Eric Adams is bad, but like we reject like Trump
Speaker 6: had to take his name Trump off his buildings in
Speaker 6: New York City.
Speaker 4: I'm kind of offended on behalf of New York.
Speaker 6: So I'm kind of a little offended on behalf of
Speaker 6: New York City voters the idea that we would elect
Speaker 6: this guy. And what is also one of the shortest
Speaker 6: election campaigns ever known, because somehow the entire election campaign
Speaker 6: happens between Foggy being sorry, between Matt being set up
Speaker 6: on a blind date and Matt actually going on a
Speaker 6: real date with that person. So that's a very either
Speaker 6: man is very slow to text someone back, or it's
Speaker 6: a very fast election campaign.
Speaker 4: He still either way.
Speaker 3: Up on Karen. Yeah, it. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 3: really telling, and I guess maybe they felt it wasn't
Speaker 3: necessary to say it, but they don't say what party
Speaker 3: this yeah is running for, even if he was an independent.
Speaker 3: I mean, he has the American flag pin, which is
Speaker 3: you know, indicative of the right. But I think, I mean,
Speaker 3: you could you could. You could read it as one
Speaker 3: of two things. You could read it as it's so
Speaker 3: obvious because the metaphor they're drawing is so clear that
Speaker 3: they don't need to say it out loud. Or you
Speaker 3: could read it as it's just kind of a toothless
Speaker 3: political commentary that just grabs things at random but doesn't
Speaker 3: really have anything to say. And to be fair, I
Speaker 3: do think a proper assessment of that would require watching
Speaker 3: the whole season, But as noted, we're not going to
Speaker 3: do that. So somebody let us know how that works.
Speaker 6: Out exactly exactly, And so let's you talk about the
Speaker 6: Matt and Fisk of it all, because they have this
Speaker 6: meeting in a diner, which and again here's where I
Speaker 6: don't under I don't know how much of the Netflix
Speaker 6: MCU is or is not.
Speaker 4: Canon, because.
Speaker 6: They act like they're kind of like, you know, buddy rivals,
Speaker 6: Like they clearly want to take each other down, but
Speaker 6: they're sort of like, you know, I'll admit I do
Speaker 6: kind of enjoy our sparring matches like this, and me's like, yes,
Speaker 6: I guess I do too, and they're just kind of
Speaker 6: gently warning each other, Like what in the world was
Speaker 6: happening in that scene?
Speaker 3: It makes no sense. And again it's like one of
Speaker 3: those things where I don't know what I'm supposed to
Speaker 3: know from the old shows and the Fisk's other appearances,
Speaker 3: and like because the one thing that because I didn't
Speaker 3: watch Hawkeye and I didn't watch Echo, So okay, the
Speaker 3: show expects you to remember pretty not obscure characters, but
Speaker 3: like you're supposed to remember who ben Yurick is and
Speaker 3: what happened to him. When Fisk is like I knew him,
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, you strangled him with your bare hands.
Speaker 3: But at no point does anybody say, like I can't
Speaker 3: believe he's running for mayor Matt you sent him to
Speaker 3: jail twice, or any kind of grounding, like I can't
Speaker 3: believe he got out on that technicality, or he served
Speaker 3: his twenty seven consecutive life sentences so fast, or anything.
Speaker 3: I'm like, why is he out? Why isn't that okay
Speaker 3: with him being out?
Speaker 4: Like what?
Speaker 3: And again, maybe that was explaining shows that I didn't watch,
Speaker 3: but it's completely unrealistic at this point for the when
Speaker 3: you have ten years of just the television movies aside
Speaker 3: for them to expect every viewer to just know that.
Speaker 3: And yeah, like the vibes between them were so weird,
Speaker 3: Like I I don't buy that either. Like the last
Speaker 3: time they saw each other, they were beating each other
Speaker 3: to a pulp and they only resolved the situation by
Speaker 3: threatening the people that the other loved the most, right,
Speaker 3: Like Matt was like, if you don't stay away from
Speaker 3: Karen and Foggy, I will send Vanessa to jail. And
Speaker 3: Fisk was like, I will not murder your two closest
Speaker 3: friends if you leave my wife out of jail. And
Speaker 3: they're both just like Matt was.
Speaker 6: And to be clear, too clear that moment is still
Speaker 6: canonical because at one point one of Bullseye, the guy
Speaker 6: who had been working for Fisk in the original show
Speaker 6: and who kills Foggy Matt. One of Matt's first thoughts
Speaker 6: is that Fisk sent him, Yes, and and Fisk says, no,
Speaker 6: I am still honoring I didn't break our deal, so clearly,
Speaker 6: like we're supposed to think that stuff happened at the
Speaker 6: end of season.
Speaker 3: Three, but at the same time, Matt it was like again,
Speaker 3: it goes back to the whole idea of like what
Speaker 3: makes Matt willing to kill someone? And no, Fifs did
Speaker 3: not send Decks to kill Foggy in that moment, but
Speaker 3: he did prime Dex to become a serial killer, and
Speaker 3: he is the reason that Dex knows why Foggy is important,
Speaker 3: so he bears some culp mobility about that. And I
Speaker 3: don't know why Matt would be like I would love
Speaker 3: to go to this diner and sit in the same
Speaker 3: booth where I sat with Electra before she died and
Speaker 3: shoot the shit with you Willie, Like.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, it doesn't line up at all.
Speaker 6: It doesn't seem to make sense it And you're right, like,
Speaker 6: Echoes a show that I particularly love, and I do
Speaker 6: think I was too strongly recommend you watch it Hawkeye though,
Speaker 6: like it is kind of fun, but it's not a
Speaker 6: strong recommendation from me by any means. And it's just
Speaker 6: there's so much happening, and yeah, I mean I remember
Speaker 6: thinking even within the Netflix MCU, it was starting to
Speaker 6: kind of collapse under its own weight with so many
Speaker 6: things to keep track of. And I love these extended universes,
Speaker 6: but especially now with the blips and all the alternative
Speaker 6: you know, timelines and stuff, and now all this stuff
Speaker 6: because like clearly a lot of the Netflix MCU stuff
Speaker 6: is being carried over. One of the things that happened
Speaker 6: in season one of the Netflix Daredevil is Kingkin ran
Speaker 6: from Ayer, Like we've literally seen this happen already, and
Speaker 6: he decided he kind of pulled out early or no,
Speaker 6: he he. He kind of announced himself as a power
Speaker 6: player in the city and wanting to sort of like
Speaker 6: be a thing, and he was being talked about as
Speaker 6: a candidate for May Yes, but then ben Eric exposed him.
Speaker 3: Well, and I actually have a very minor this is
Speaker 3: such a deep cut quiver. But the character of Cherry,
Speaker 3: who is a retired cop who is now Matt's investigator
Speaker 3: at his law firm, perfectly fine character copaganda aside, he
Speaker 3: himself is fine, but the name Cherry was bothering me,
Speaker 3: and I was like, there is a character in the
Speaker 3: comics named Cherry, Like is he a reference to something. No,
Speaker 3: there is a very obscure character named Cherry with an
Speaker 3: H on the end, like spelled like the fruit with
Speaker 3: an H on the end, who is a mayoral candidate
Speaker 3: that Fisk is trying to push through, who is totally corrupt,
Speaker 3: totally loyal to Fisk, and Matt manages to thwart him,
Speaker 3: and Fisk decides he doesn't know like as Matt, he
Speaker 3: doesn't know Matt a scareedevil. He decides to get revenged
Speaker 3: by having Electric kill Foggy, which she can't bring herself
Speaker 3: to do, and then Bullseye kills her. So like Cherry
Speaker 3: himself is not an important character, but he's part of
Speaker 3: an important storyline that people are going to remember, and
Speaker 3: they used him in season one. He is absolutely a
Speaker 3: corrupt politician that Fisk is funding. In season one, we
Speaker 3: see him get arrested in that month to the end,
Speaker 3: and I'm like, just pick a different name. Why did
Speaker 3: you keep this guy the same name. It's a very
Speaker 3: minor that is me niitpicking. But there's so many other
Speaker 3: fruits you could name a man after.
Speaker 6: Keep making Blueberry does need to be raspberry Detective Blueberry.
Speaker 3: The show would have been a lot better, I've done that.
Speaker 6: So we then kind of switch gears pretty hard out
Speaker 6: of the copaganda into as you said, cops are corrupt
Speaker 6: and terrible with this story of what seems like just
Speaker 6: a regular old guy coming across two people beating up
Speaker 6: someone else, and the regular guy tries to interfere, tries
Speaker 6: to protect these people. One of them pulls out a
Speaker 6: badge and says back off. He's like, no, you're still
Speaker 6: beating up this person. They start trying to not They
Speaker 6: pull the no you're right, notice the opposite. They start
Speaker 6: trying to just kill him for interfering. Once the witness
Speaker 6: gets it. Once the guy gets away, one of them
Speaker 6: leaps at him, and he kind of like you know,
Speaker 6: brushes him aside and but.
Speaker 4: Doesn't like do much.
Speaker 6: He just kind of alters the trajectory a bit, and
Speaker 6: the guy flies into the tracks and the most silent
Speaker 6: train that has ever run of the New York City
Speaker 6: subway tracks.
Speaker 4: Because the boy is like, you had no idea the
Speaker 4: train was about to.
Speaker 3: Come fast, like, that's not how it works.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they I mean maybe it was express train, but
Speaker 6: still they slowed down somewhat pulling into the station. None
Speaker 6: of it made any sense. Plus they're not all lethal.
Speaker 6: I know this because I was hit by a New
Speaker 6: York City subway train. That's how I lost my leg.
Speaker 6: But that's all of the story entirely. So I was
Speaker 6: just like, oh, that that hits a particular thing off
Speaker 6: mine that I know it was gonna come up from
Speaker 6: this show.
Speaker 4: But yeah, it just it.
Speaker 6: And I saw where they were going, like they were
Speaker 6: opening up this interesting can of worms. But it felt
Speaker 6: to me like they kind of did a switch through
Speaker 6: because at first the story was about like innocent bystanders
Speaker 6: getting involved and when the cops don't they clear their cops.
Speaker 4: Are you supposed to know? And that kind of a thing.
Speaker 6: But there it becomes actually, this guy's white tiger, so
Speaker 6: actually he does go out seeking fights like this, And
Speaker 6: I sort of felt like, if you wanted the show
Speaker 6: to be about vigilanteism and superheroes, well we did have
Speaker 6: Civil War, so you could just go watch that instead.
Speaker 6: But if we're gonna do kind of Civil War point
Speaker 6: two and get into more of the questions of civil
Speaker 6: war that I keep wanting him to begin in the
Speaker 6: Civil War, why start with him not being white tiger?
Speaker 4: Like what what you to me?
Speaker 6: It felt like they were very confused about what they
Speaker 6: were trying to do with that storyline. What did you
Speaker 6: think about how it all played out?
Speaker 3: I mean, I do wonder if they're trying to uh
Speaker 3: draw on the comics specifically with that. So for sorry,
Speaker 3: this is this is just what I do. So White Tiger.
Speaker 3: White Tiger is actually a really important character. He is
Speaker 3: uh the first Puerto Rican superhero in mainstream comics. He
Speaker 3: is own the second Latino superhero in mainstream comics, and
Speaker 3: the first one was El Gaucho, who was introduced in
Speaker 3: Batman comics in nineteen fifty four, so you can guess
Speaker 3: how well that was handled. But Hector Ayala White Tiger
Speaker 3: was created co created by George Perez, who was one
Speaker 3: of the greatest artists of all time and was himself
Speaker 3: Puerto Rican, so like there was a lot more sensitivity
Speaker 3: and cultural authenticity brought to the character. So he was
Speaker 3: introduced in the seventies mystical amulet and all, but they
Speaker 3: didn't really do like, they never used him. He didn't
Speaker 3: have his own comic ever. They really didn't do much
Speaker 3: with him, and he was a very obscure character. And like,
Speaker 3: I don't mean to dismiss him as a character because
Speaker 3: if you, you know, dig into him, you'll find a
Speaker 3: lot of Latino readers saying that like he was really
Speaker 3: important to them, but he was still quite obscure. And
Speaker 3: then in the early two thousands, he was in a
Speaker 3: Daredevil storyline where he gets it's very similar. He is
Speaker 3: intervening in a situation where cops are involved. He does
Speaker 3: not even accidentally kill a cop. The cop is shot
Speaker 3: by somebody else, but he I think it's a cop,
Speaker 3: But he gets arrested. Matt is defending him, and spoiler
Speaker 3: for this twenty five year old comic, not the show,
Speaker 3: I don't know what is going to happen, But in
Speaker 3: the comic, the trial is going against him, and he
Speaker 3: freaks out and runs out of the courthouse and is
Speaker 3: shot to death by cops trying to escape. And that's
Speaker 3: the end of the first Latina or the first breaking
Speaker 3: character superhero in comics, first Latino superhero in Marvel. Not great, great.
Speaker 3: I'm a little concerned. I'm hoping the show is smart
Speaker 3: enough to subvert that the way that they subverted a
Speaker 3: lot of the bad stuff that happens to Karen in
Speaker 3: the comics. Yeah, I will also say there have been
Speaker 3: several other White Tigers after that. They're all Litino litina like,
Speaker 3: they're all great tests. So the legacy continues. But I
Speaker 3: guess it sort of didn't surprise me because I was
Speaker 3: coming from that background. Yeah, what did kind of surprise me?
Speaker 3: I guess I had expected him to be, like to
Speaker 3: see a narrative where he puts on the mask because
Speaker 3: he's inspired by Daredevil or because Daredevil is not doing
Speaker 3: because Matt is retired, and it is entirely possible that
Speaker 3: that is. I can't remember if he like stepped into
Speaker 3: the gap. I think when Matt.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he doesn't know that Matt Murdoch is Daredevil. But
Speaker 6: at one point when Matt is talking him about it,
Speaker 6: because Matt is very outraged that he would be a vigilante,
Speaker 6: which is so hypocritical, hypocritical, but maybe he's tanneling Foggy
Speaker 6: because he basically saying to this guy, would Foggy would
Speaker 6: say to him.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think being a hypocrite is very in
Speaker 3: character for Matt. Honestly, that band does it all the time.
Speaker 6: But what what White Tiger says to him is well,
Speaker 6: with Dared Volgne, someone needed to step up, so Yeah,
Speaker 6: there definitely is that gap idea to it. And first
Speaker 6: of all, I love hearing more about his story, and
Speaker 6: White Tiger being in this story especially feels very significant
Speaker 6: because for those who aren't from New York people may
Speaker 6: know this or may not know this. New York City
Speaker 6: has a huge Puerto Rican population and it is very
Speaker 6: much kind of a part of the fabric of the city.
Speaker 4: A lot of people, the.
Speaker 6: Puerto Ricans who who moved to New York City, I
Speaker 6: call him immigrants. Is not really accurate because the are
Speaker 6: American citizens even before they move, but they've certainly like moved,
Speaker 6: you know, immigrated within the country, but often in front
Speaker 6: of themselves. Is New yor Ricans, like combining the words
Speaker 6: of New York and Puerto Rico, and it's just a
Speaker 6: huge part of the city. And so putting him in
Speaker 6: the show that is so focused on New York City
Speaker 6: feels really right. But yeah, I think part of what
Speaker 6: threw me and part of what like, I think there
Speaker 6: are stories to tell that are related to the conflict
Speaker 6: from Civil War but are not quite the same. But
Speaker 6: at one point in the mayoral discussion, Fisk says, like,
Speaker 6: we don't need all these vigilantes running around with the
Speaker 6: and he mentions like a Spider Boy or something like that,
Speaker 6: you know, and and he mentions Daredevil. He clearly mentioned
Speaker 6: Spider Man, which we're going to talk about the weird
Speaker 6: sort of Spider Man powers that Daredevil has in the
Speaker 6: bonus section. But yeah, it just it felt like they
Speaker 6: weren't sure if they wanted to make this about vigilanteism
Speaker 6: versus about superpowers. And I think they're going more towards vigilantism,
Speaker 6: which I think is actually, in some ways the more
Speaker 6: interesting question. That Civil War didn't get into as much
Speaker 6: as they wanted to. But yeah, like, did you see
Speaker 6: that connection at all? Does it feel like a totally
Speaker 6: separate thing? How do you result to think about this too?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, not to open up the Civil War
Speaker 3: can of worms, but yeah, registering people as superpowers is
Speaker 3: just a bigotry. Registering vigilantes is, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 3: eradicating the idea of vigilantism because if you're registered anyway, Yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it. Well again, it's it's one of those
Speaker 3: things that I don't think the show has thought through
Speaker 3: very much. Because Fisk is taking a stand against vigilantes
Speaker 3: and vigilantism, and the Spider Man reference feels very weird
Speaker 3: because it feels like he I know, Matt and Peter
Speaker 3: have interacted in the movie, but it just feels like
Speaker 3: he's in a different part of the MCU And I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: he doesn't even go here, Like you don't know about him,
Speaker 3: even though obviously they do. But Fisk is complaining about
Speaker 3: vigilantes because one of them sent him to jail twice
Speaker 3: and one of them shot him in the face, Like
Speaker 3: we're supposed to take his arguments as being inherently wrong
Speaker 3: because we know his selfish reasons for saying them. He
Speaker 3: wants to get rid of vigilantes because vigilantes stop him
Speaker 3: from doing crimes, and because our hero is a vigilante,
Speaker 3: and we know what side we're supposed to be on.
Speaker 3: But I feel like that very simplistic take on things
Speaker 3: is not something we would have seen in the original
Speaker 3: Netflix show, because it was very concerned with the ethics
Speaker 3: of vigilantism and when a situation is bad enough that
Speaker 3: vigilantism is actually required. And like, again going back to
Speaker 3: the Foggy thing, like he was a really important character
Speaker 3: because he made an argument around that, like he represented
Speaker 3: one side of that argument, which like, Kirsten may be
Speaker 3: the new Foggy, but all she talks about is Matt's
Speaker 3: love life, So like she's not given we don't know
Speaker 3: her legal or ethical opinions because she's not as well
Speaker 3: rounded of a character, I mean, to be fair. After
Speaker 3: two episodes, give her time. Yeah, And so by Fisk
Speaker 3: saying we have to eradicate vigilantes vigilantes are bad, then
Speaker 3: it's like, well, okay, then vigilantes must be good. But oh,
Speaker 3: these poor cops, they're so sad, but also cops are bad,
Speaker 3: like why.
Speaker 4: Do we need But also the one person standing up
Speaker 4: to Fisk is is the.
Speaker 3: Copssion, like why do we need vigilantes? And they also
Speaker 3: keep saying, oh, there's so much crime, but they don't
Speaker 3: show any street crime, like yeah, all the crime that's
Speaker 3: committed is by the mayor and some cops Like mm hmm.
Speaker 3: It's just not a coherent argument.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think that's me.
Speaker 6: Maybe the best way to describe the show is it
Speaker 6: just isn't coherent, you know, and it I want to
Speaker 6: quote one more thing from an h she's kind of
Speaker 6: going back to where we started. She wrote that episode
Speaker 6: one felt literally hostile. Genuinely, just pulling from the old
Speaker 6: show only to use it as the paradigm that is
Speaker 6: shifting for the news story feels terribly unnecessary. And on
Speaker 6: top of that, they did it badly, one of the
Speaker 6: worst executions of a TV show I've seen. Setting aside
Speaker 6: my feelings about the way they treated the previous series,
Speaker 6: it was also really unfair setup.
Speaker 4: For the new series. And yeah, it just feels like
Speaker 4: they had so many.
Speaker 6: What you were just saying about the idea that it
Speaker 6: felt like they were being pulled in eight different directions
Speaker 6: and changed things makes a lot of sense, and it
Speaker 6: allows me to make you think this is less malicious
Speaker 6: than as you said, it's probably more incompetence. And it's
Speaker 6: unfortunate that it's becoming very on brand right now because
Speaker 6: I have not seen the new Captain America movie for
Speaker 6: a number of reasons, but I know that one of
Speaker 6: the things that happened in it is that originally it
Speaker 6: was made with a Israeli character, a character who is
Speaker 6: directly tied to the Massad as a major character. That
Speaker 6: because of all the political stuff that's been happening in
Speaker 6: Gaza the last couple of years that they decided to
Speaker 6: cut that character way back for understandable.
Speaker 4: Reasons, but they wound up still like.
Speaker 6: Leaving the character in enough that a lot of folks,
Speaker 6: I think rightly are not wanting to see Israeli propaganda,
Speaker 6: but also by cutting out so much of her, making
Speaker 6: the plot feel fairly incoherent, you know, because it was
Speaker 6: just the whole thing was a mess and like for
Speaker 6: different reasons, but it feels like kind of the same
Speaker 6: thing is happening here, and I just I think they
Speaker 6: need to at some point decide to like, let just
Speaker 6: give a creator some parameters, but then let the creator
Speaker 6: like take the whole thing from beginning to end, because
Speaker 6: this is just not working.
Speaker 3: There's a difference between a collaborative creation to process and
Speaker 3: creating by committee. And yeah, like movies and television, Like
Speaker 3: I don't, I do not believe in the auteur theory.
Speaker 3: I think everything is collaborative, should be collaborative, but there's
Speaker 3: a difference between having a few people with a vision
Speaker 3: and just generating a bunch of footage for executives to
Speaker 3: cut up in the most profitable way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's right true. I think it's right true. Well,
Speaker 4: on this cheery note.
Speaker 6: We will talk about a more fun part of the
Speaker 6: show in just a minute form the member section. Of course,
Speaker 6: you can have a member for only five dollars a
Speaker 6: month fifty five dollars a year. But not only do
Speaker 6: you get margareat content. Jessica is a creator of content
Speaker 6: in so many places. Jessica, where can they find your stuff?
Speaker 3: So? I read a lot about comics on book riot
Speaker 3: dot com. In a couple of weeks there will actually
Speaker 3: be an article on this site where I recommend comic
Speaker 3: that you can read if you're watching the new Daredevil show,
Speaker 3: or if perhaps you have decided to not continue watching
Speaker 3: the New Daredubil show and you would like to read
Speaker 3: comics that are better. It can also serve that purpose. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so that's the best place to find me. I also
Speaker 3: have a short story in the Arthurian Retellings anthology Swordstone Table,
Speaker 3: available wherever books are sold.
Speaker 6: Yeah, please go check those things out. We will have
Speaker 6: a link in the show notes to how to get
Speaker 6: copies of that book through local bookstore network. That is fantastic.
Speaker 6: Check out the articles. There's great stuff. As I've told
Speaker 6: you before, one of my favorites is you documenting the
Speaker 6: various costumes over the years of Scroll Girl character who
Speaker 6: I knows nothing about, but I'm I'm really excited to
Speaker 6: see on screen, specifically because of you.
Speaker 3: She's the best.
Speaker 4: You definitely check out.
Speaker 6: We'll have more on all of this, and we'll have
Speaker 6: more on Matt and his weird new powers in this
Speaker 6: show in just a few moments.
Speaker 4: For the members everybody else, thank you so much. May
Speaker 4: the fourth doing what on