So I preempted House of Cards to watch Bosch and now it sounds like I am going to preempt Bosch to watch Daredevil.
So I’m also trying to finish season 1 before S2 drops, but man.
Episode three of the season is where I dropped this series. At the time I thought it was because I wanted to watch something else more.
Turns out that no, it’s episode three of Daredevil. Who wrote this mess? Who directed it? Who didn’t notice?
There are, within the first half hour of episode three, no fewer than nine scenes totally about 23 minutes of screen time, where characters sit at desks or tables and talk.
I realize the series needs exposition at some point, but my lord in heaven. To just have this relentless death march slog of dialogue exposition that’s all composited the exact same way, shot after shot? Couldn’t the director have said “You know what, we need something else for this. Maybe they need to be walking. Maybe driving in a car. Something.”
Tell me it picks back up. That was dreadful. Like watching a bad student film.
Episode 4 includes one of the most, err, memorable scenes in the entire show. It also includes another pretty great fight scene and some reveals of character and belief that will grow in importance and impact through the series.
There will continue to be scenes of people angrily talking in quiet tones in darkened rooms for the remainder of the series. I’ll admit I don’t entirely recall if any other single episode contains quite as much of that as the one you disliked so much, though!
I stopped the exact same place. Luckily, I picked it up again a few months later, and the rest of the show rocks!
Wow, I don’t know what to say. The first two episodes could be a movie, and they’re the two Drew Goddard worked on (directed? Wrote? Both? I can’t remember), so there was a bit of a transition between those two and the rest of the series, but I don’t remember being as put off by anything as you are in episode 3. I want to say it gets better, but I don’t remember being bothered by exposition, so maybe I’m blind to that and it’s just as bad for the rest of the series.
The only weak point in the entire run for me is the final episode; I don’t think it’s quite up to the 12 episodes before it, but if you make it that far obviously don’t give up then.
Yeah, I don’t mind exposition or dialogue at all. A lot of times I really welcome it!
I just noticed that I was struggling to get through that third episode, mostly because I kept falling asleep while watching it on my couch in the living room. And I’d say to myself, “Now this time, don’t fall asleep!” and I’d make it another four minutes and zonk back out. And so eventually I start fast forwarding through that episode, and there’s just like this stack of “Let’s sit at this table or desk and talk”, and it’s hard to miss. They’re just one after another after another.
So yeah, hoping it picks up now that I’m on to episode 4!
Trigger – it picks back up :)
The whole series becomes more interesting as the villain gets more screen time. It never becomes great – nobody is going to debate “DD or The Wire??” – but it does become good.
That’s a pretty good point–once D’onofrio starts getting serious screentime, my interest in the series skyrocketed. He’s far and away my favorite villain in the whole of the MCU–and that’s accounting for my extraordinary love for David Tennant’s turn in Jessica Jones.
I will. I liked DD way more than The Wire.
D’onofrio’s Kingpin is my favorite Marvel villain in any show or movie so far. Loki is a pretty close second place, and then there’s…everyone else way down the list.
What, did you not watch Jessica Jones? D’onofrio is still better I thought but Tennant wasn’t terribly far behind.
Oh, good point. I got used to saying Kingpin and Loki were Marvel’s only good movies and forgot to update my sound bite! Kilgrave would be a respectable #3 for me.
D’onofrio’s Kingpin was such a simpering wuss, I couldn’t imagine what Vanessa saw in him. I enjoyed the series since I grew up on Miller’s Daredevil, and it twanged my nostalgia chords, but I did find it dipped when Goddard left, and the finale was super underwhelming.
Scott. I love you. But goddamn.
Anyway, I actually ran into the same issue with rewatching S1, trigger - it can be really slow at times.
So worth it, though. Easily the best season of superhero TV to date, and I generally like pretty much all of them (except Gotham, which I watched two episodes of and bailed. I hear it gets better? Meh.)
The EW review for Season 2 is somewhat negative–rating it at C–but seemingly only covers the first half of the season, saying how episode 6 “should” serve as a catalyst for the rest of the season, but doesn’t say much else beyond that. They stated the first few episodes are fairly bland and Charlie Cox basically has nowhere to take the character, or something. The introduction of Elektra apparently improves things quite a bit.
— Alan
Yeah, the A.V. Club and HitFix reviews were similarly underwhelmed. The Punisher is supposed to be great though.
Holy shit. You guys weren’t kidding. For as clumsily paced as episode 3 is, Episode 4 picks things up nicely, but holy shit holy shit. Episodes 5-6 is about the most insanely intense show I’ve ever seen on “TV”.
So far IGN seems to like S2 a lot. No score for the first seven eps lower than 8.5 and a 9.5 as well as a full 10 score reciew for two of them.
And AV club’s review is a B+ (I only skimmed, wasn’t sure if that was for the first half of the season or whole season, based on above commentary). So it’s not really doom and gloom.
First half. Anyone who had a review up before today only had the first 7 episodes.