Week 65: Penny and Dime, Kinbaku

Penny and Dime: The ending to this little four-episode arc within the season feels a little anticlimactic, but that's ok. There are really only three endings for Frank Castle (death, capture, or surrender), and none of them are going to be as exciting as him still being on the streets doing his thing, even if his thing gets a little repetitive. The Irish mobsters are not very interesting enemies despite the wake scene, possibly because Finn Cooley pulls off a boring classic move from the evil-villain textbook by rage-killing one of his own men for no good reason, and at a time when he's already lost so many soldiers! The show couldn't make Cooley interesting, but at least it tried. The fight where Matt Murdock and Castle team up to fight the Irish is fun, not least because of the way that Matt keeps blocking Castle from killing them without losing a step. I also really appreciated the understanding that Matt reaches with Brett Mahoney at the end, which feels appropriate for both characters and promising for future stories, even if it does hint at a certain off-putting corruptibility on Mahoney's part. (6/10)

Kinbaku: Matt is too serious most of the time, so it's nice to see him looser and happier in flashbacks. I wanted to get caught up in his whirlwind romance with Elektra Natchios, but I just couldn't accept it, and I suspect it's because the actors have so little chemistry. (Ditto with Matt and Karen Page, which has the added complication of him being her boss.) Just as with Castle, Elektra testing the boundaries of Matt's morality is conceptually interesting but dramatically unfulfilling, because we know that there's a line that Matt won't cross; the show driving Matt to the point of crossing that line would be better. I don't buy that present-day Matt would let himself be lured into helping Elektra when she's so obviously Very Bad News (clearly a femme fatale to us, though I suppose it's all a matter of perspective), but at least it's nice to have her big paycheck justify the continued survival of the law firm. I also enjoyed the mention of Jessica Jones and the many callbacks to Roxxon Energy, which was first depicted in Iron Man and is one of the mainstay Big Evil Corporations of the Marvel Universe (Cinematic or otherwise), but is especially fresh in mind after its prominent role in Agent Carter. (7/10)

I was a bit disappointed that the Punisher arc seemed to have such a short run. I honestly expected it to be a season-long back-and-forth between him and Matt.

That being said, it's nice to see Elektra enter the picture as someone who not only knows Matt's backstory, but also knows what he's capable of doing. It takes it a step further than Foggy just knowing that he's Daredevil, ratchets it up another notch.