Week 107: Fish in the Jailhouse, The Defenders

Fish in the Jailhouse: How did the cops move Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Matt Murdock to the precinct without waking them? Come on. If they're that far gone due to head injuries, they should be in a hospital. I've long been annoyed at the Hollywood action-genre trope of someone waking up just fine after being knocked unconscious by a blow to the head, and the MCU must have served it up dozens of times by now (I kind of wish I'd counted), so I've had to make peace with it, but this is just too implausible.

Seeing Jessica ask for a drink in the precinct, and then steal and chug a beer on the subway, in the middle of an emergency that could cost a lot of people their lives, does not play as funny. It just plays as the sad belittling of an alcoholic. "Likes booze" is not her personality.

Claire Temple asked, "How the hell did we get here, with them? I did everything I could to avoid people with abilities." Really, Claire? You mean, except for dating one and sending him love letters in prison, and going to China to burn down a drug factory with another one, and stealing drugs and medical supplies to treat their injuries a bunch of times, and contemplating starting your own business healing superheroes because you were doing it so often that you might as well get paid for it?

I really wanted to enjoy the simultaneous fight scenes in the parking garage and the cave, but I just couldn't. The blocking and editing made it very hard to follow what was happening, and who was where in physical space, and what each combatant's strategy was. Consider the big airport battle in Captain America: Civil War, which was the MCU's biggest and most complicated fight up to this point: It had far more combatants, but it focused on the individual battles one at a time, and it prioritized the distinct personalities over the stunts, so you never had trouble following what was happening or why. This TV series doesn't have the money to really do it right like that, so they rush it with under-prepared stunt performers in low light to obscure their faces, and then make the most of it in the editing room. It's a shame.

I love that the whole story actually turns on Danny Rand being an idiot, and that Elektra Natchios is counting on it in her master plan. All that she has to do is goad him into using his Iron Fist power, which takes her what, one minute? Danny really is just so incredibly dumb that it's about time that the villains started using it to their advantage. Then, the sequence ends with that nice zoom-out to reveal the dragon bones. They look a little out of proportion to me, but who cares? It's a sweet shot. (6/10)

The Defenders: I have a ton to say about this finale and about the series, so "sorry not sorry" about the length of this.

No matter what else this episode does right, there's one mile-deep-hole-in-the-ground-sized problem with it: I do not buy that the heroes would blow up Midland Circle, nor do I believe that it's narratively necessary to blow it up, which makes all of the tension in the episode feel rather pointless and arbitrary.

Let's start with the heroes: Matt appreciates the stakes here, but he would not be willing to kill the Hand or his beloved Elektra; if there's one constant about Matt, it's his unwillingness to take life ever. Luke knows how hard the criminal justice system will come down on them for setting off those bombs; they'd all be facing life sentences for multiple homicide and domestic terrorism, and as an ex-con who just got out, I cannot believe that he'd be talked into this so easily. Jessica is barely willing to be there at all, she narrowly avoided prison the last time she took a life, and I'll put additional objections about her behind a spoiler warning below, so I cannot see her being willing to kill the Hand or to risk prison. Colleen Wing would absolutely be on board with killing the Hand and destroying their headquarters for good measure, but not until Danny was rescued. And Claire, well, she's been written inconsistently across these shows, so maybe this is reckless, thrill-seeking, wishes-she-was-a-superhero-too Claire, but most of the time Claire is the sensible one telling the heroes not to do things like this, so I can't really buy it from her either. The debate between them in the lobby is theoretically interesting, as it's one of the few times that this show has slowed down long enough to debate morality or been about something (more on that in a moment), but I just cannot buy that these characters would take these positions under these circumstances. And that undermines the whole hour.

And is it necessary to blow up the building, anyway? I'm glad that the show wants to finish entertaining us by going out with a literal bang, but I just don't see the point. The Defenders already fought the surviving trio of Hand members in the parking garage and forced them into retreat; surely using Matt's powers, the Defenders could find them in the building and force them into submission and bring them to justice without committing domestic terrorism. According to the scenes of Misty Knight and her captain, the police have already been tracking this "super secret" organization and have some sense of how dangerous they are, so it's not like they'd have an easy time evading justice. And the Defenders already know that their supply of "The Substance" (ugh, that term is as awkward as "The Incident") is depleted. There are lots of other ways that Elektra and Matt's fates in the collapse could have been accomplished without bombs, like a simple cave-in due to the fight or something. Speaking of destroying the building, I'm no expert on demolitions, but that did not look like anywhere near enough C-4 to do the job, even by strategically targeting the supporting pillars; buildings that tall are made of sturdy stuff. Plus, we see multiple additional explosions on higher floors that it didn't seem like Colleen and Claire would have had the opportunity to set (or to time correctly without remote detonation), but now I just feel like I'm nitpicking.

This is less important, but I'm annoyed that the show has allowed Jessica to be more and more superfluous towards the end, culminating in this episode which struggles to give her dialogue just to keep her involved. She should be the sarcastic voice of levity here, since Luke is so quiet and Danny & Matt are so serious, and the big final fight desperately needs some humor. (Even just a simple "I am so done with ninjas" would help.) Her holding the elevator for Danny and Luke is a neat scene, but it's so quickly forgotten that the elevator apparently vanishes, never landing on the impaled Murakami. Realistically, Jessica ceased to matter in this series once she solved the architect's case, and Luke's continued presence was only scarcely more justified. I wish that a second season could have happened that made them essential for a change, while Danny and Matt, the two that I consider less compelling, were mostly along for the ride. (Speaking of Jessica and Luke, when she bids him farewell in the bar with "maybe we'll grab coffee sometime," I wonder if Mike Colter was tempted to ad-lib, "Your show or mine?")

I enjoyed the final battle in the underground cave, under-lit and choppily edited as it was. Madame Gao has used her powers before but finally we get to see them in full flourish, and apparently she's the Dragonborn from Skyrim. There's an outstanding shot as the camera circles the room during the battle, allowing for multiple Texas switches as the actors and their stunt performers trade places, and it must have taken quite a while to figure out the choreography for that. Playing a quarter-century-old classic by the Wu-Tang Clan is an odd choice until you remember that Ghostface Killah and Method Man appeared in Luke Cage and RZA directed an episode of Iron Fist.

The fight upstairs against Bakuto was similarly hard to follow visually (tell me honestly, could you make out what happened when Bakuto struck Misty without running it back?), but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's neat to see the supporting casts working together, and I kind of wanted the vigilante-wannabe Trish Walker there too. It doesn't even bother me that Bakuto tried yet again to recruit Colleen (how one-note IS this villain?), because I'll never get tired of Colleen seeing right through his smarmy overconfidence. Plus, there's a nice echo to the scene where Gao tries yet again to manipulate Danny with her "mind tricks" (what he calls her just astutely observing the truth); his dumbassery almost got the Hand more of their precious Substance, so I think it's earned here that he acts more chastened and less hot-headed.

Speaking of smarmy overconfidence, I loathe the final scene where Matt stays behind to "save" Elektra and they fight-argue in the cave, because it's right up there with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its frustrating portrayal of creepy, sexist, controlling, white-knighting behavior by men as heroic. Elektra is not some maiden in need of rescuing, nor does she even love Matt. She is a murderer, she tells him that she likes murdering people, and she tries to murder his friends by severing the elevator cable, but he won't accept it because he's just so certain that what she really wants is him and what will "fix" her is being with him. How many asshole men act this way towards women and don't understand that it's abusive? Freud asked what women want, and one answer is not to be treated like Matt treats Elektra: They want to be heard, they want "no" to be accepted as an answer, and they want to be treated as people instead of being infantilized or objectified. Jessica Jones thoroughly deconstructed this kind of man with its depiction of Kilgrave, so it's a shame that the MCU backslid so far here, although it's not the first time that the MCU treated Elektra as a thing and not a person. This is a big problem and it really turns me off to Matt as a character.

Other assorted thoughts about the finale:

• Murakami never lived up to the promise of his introduction, did he? As the last member of the Hand to appear on screen, the show gave him a great first scene, ritualistically carving up a bear after carefully hunting it. He seemed like a deadly and precise assassin. Then he just became another generic villain after that. Too bad that the show didn't give him a good ending here, striking one of the heroes in a cool way or saying something poetic in his final moments.

• I'm aware that Matt telling Danny to "protect my city" is a reference to a comic-book story arc from the 2000s in which Matt Murdock was believed to be dead for a while and Danny Rand suited up as Daredevil in his place. But I still had to laugh at that line, because, well, let's just say that if you were considering hiring Danny for a position protecting a city, you should probably call K'un-Lun for a reference first.

• How in the New York-style fuck did the Defenders not get arrested the moment that the building came down? They should have had at least fifty cops on them immediately, and likely federal agents as well. I know that the captain wanted the "secret organization" taken out, but the idea that they could freely walk into and out of the precinct after that, without even a police report being filed after explosions leveled a skyscraper, might be the most improbable ending that the MCU has ever asked us to accept.

• I was surprised that Gao would return to die with Murakami at the end. Across four seasons of television, she has consistently been depicted as pragmatic and scheming. When she sneaked away during the fight, I thought for sure that she was going to use a hidden tunnel to escape or something. Still, it's nice to get apparent confirmation of her death. The Hand have long outlasted their welcome in the MCU and finally we can move on to other stories.

• Did Colleen or Claire grab Misty's severed arm so that surgeons could attempt to save it? I'd expect freelance nurse Claire to think of that, given that the sharp blade would have produced a clean cut. Speaking of Misty, why is she still a cop at the end? She should have been fired for being an accomplice to domestic terrorism (I cannot italicize that enough), and if the award visible on the table in her hospital room means that she's now considered too much of a hero to fire without bad publicity, then she could be pushed out on semi-permanent medical leave over her injury. The captain, Strieber, was a blowhard but he was also right about nearly everything he said.

• I wonder if the show contemplated a funeral scene for Matt Murdock. It would have been expensive but a better use of money than that explosion. It could have brought together all of the various casts in one place, given Father Lantom an opportunity to speak about heroism and thus explore an actual theme for once, and wrung more emotion out of Matt's apparent death before the revelation at the very end. Plus they might have even found room for a Frank Castle cameo, watching from down the street in disguise or something, since his absence from this series despite being about to feature in his own show felt a little odd. (If you wanted a character willing to blow up Midland Circle…)

• Does the resurrected "Black Sky" have super strength or not? We saw Elektra punch Matt through a wall in episode 3, and in episode 6 she knocked out Luke with a kick (pretty hard to do!) and then carried Danny after jumping down three stories onto a car, so I assumed that she had enhanced strength as a result of what the Hand did to her. But in this episode, she didn't seem to hit any harder than a normal human with strength training, unless I missed it due to the poor lighting and editing.

I had a lot to complain about in this finale, but I didn't hate it. It was still fun to see the Defenders team up in battle one last time, and satisfying to see the Hand suffer their overdue fate, and I appreciate how hard the show worked to feel like a Big Event despite the constraints of its budget. It was even graceful when setting up future stories, something that the MCU often handles clumsily. So if it sounded like I thought the episode sucked, and I wished that it ruled, I have to say that it was the very definition of ok. (5/10)

And now, the big question weighing on my mind about The Defenders: That was it?

These five shows were all announced as a set way back in 2013. Much like Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, and Captain America each got 1-2 movies before teaming up as the Avengers, the idea was that these four heroes would each star in their own series before teaming up in a massive crossover event. (The Punisher was a spin-off from Daredevil that was beyond the scope of this plan, hence Frank not being invited to this party.) And it gradually became clear that not all four of the preceding shows were worthy of existing; Iron Fist in particular struggled to get a grip on its themes and to make us care about its characters. If some of these shows only really existed in order to fill out the Defenders' roster of heroes, and it took four years and 65 hours of television to get us to this series, I can't help but ask, was it worthwhile? And I have to conclude that no, it wasn't.

This is a fun series with some really good moments in it, such as Jessica following Matt after realizing he's following her, the humor in the Royal Dragon restaurant dinner, and the several elaborate oners when the heroes all battle together in the same shot. But the Hand remain tedious antagonists despite us finally learning their inner workings, there's very little thematic meaning or purpose to this story despite the potential in putting these four heroes together—it's too preoccupied with whether they'll work together when it should ask why, and I don't mean "why" according to the plot but according to what it thinks about them as people and the principles at stake—and weirdest of all, it feels too short and too small and too simple. That feels like a strange thing to say about a series that was clearly very expensive to produce and stuffed with many characters (15 people in the primary cast!) and accomplished a lot in its short runtime. And it feels even stranger considering that it finally breaks the streak of these Netflix shows having more episodes than plot to fill them all; if this is what one of them feels like without the time-wasting filler, then maybe they should all have fewer episodes.

But I can't stop thinking about something new that I read this time while re-watching: The episode count wasn't limited to 8 because of the high production cost or that being the right number of hours for this story, like I had long believed. It was limited to 8 because production had to start on seasons 2 of Jessica Jones and Luke Cage and the actors couldn't stick around any longer to film this. I know TV production is a messy business and sometimes that undermines the creative decisions, but man, doesn't that just feel so… arbitrary? They spent how many years planning this, only for it to get cut short for that? And thus I reiterate my question: That was it?

season rating: 6/10 (It was ok.)
best of season: "Worst Behavior"
worst of season: "Ashes, Ashes"

What did you think? Was this "Major TV Event" mini-series worth all of the long build-up, and were you satisfied with it? Do you wish it had gotten a second season after finding its footing in the first?