…it’s a big episode for actor Elden Henson, whose had previously been the weak link in a very strong ensemble. With the bad jokes on mute, his Foggy loses the comic-relief baggage and emerges as the kind of basically happy, basically decent, basically successful young guy you simply don’t see on prestige dramas that often. When he questions Matt for going outside the law, or attacks him for lying to him for years, or cries because he’s been so badly betrayed by someone he trusted, it feels all the more real because it comes from a character who’s not accustomed to these kinds of personal traumas. This is, quite convincingly, the worst thing that’s ever happened to him.

I reviewed the tenth episode of Daredevil, and extensively quoted “What About Your Friends” by TLC, for Decider.

True to its title, “Speak of the Devil” is an episode that cuts right to the heart of the questions of morality it’s toyed with since the start of the season. And the moment Matt Murdock decides to answer those questions with “Fuck it, I’m killing the Kingpin,” he gets slashed and beaten to within an inch of his life. If you think that’s a coincidence, I’ve got a story about an elderly tenant getting stabbed to death by a random junkie I’d like to sell you.

I reviewed the ninth episode of Daredevil for Decider.

“I didn’t do it for her,” he admits of the killing. “I did it for me.” He’s not proud of this, and he sports his dead dad’s cufflinks as a sort of penance. “That’s why I still wear these. To remind myself that I myself that I’m not cruel for the sake of cruelty.” He’s building up steam. “That I’m not my father! That I’m not a monster!” Then he pauses. “Am I?” You can hear it in his voice: He has no idea.

Listen, maybe there are some of you out there that aren’t plagued with the sinking suspicion that you’re every bit as big a piece of shit as you fear you may be in your worst moments. If so, hey, bully for you. Me, I found myself feeling sympathy for the devil. That’s right, the Kingpin made me choke up. Who’d have thought?

I reviewed Daredevil Episode 8 for Decider. This show is somethin’, man.

…But the biggest and funniest riff [“Stick”] played off the Daredevil comics involves the title character himself. Played by the wonderful Scott Glenn — who between this and his similarly weird role on HBO’s The Leftovers appears not so much to have aged with time but dried out like beef jerky — Stick was the martial-arts mentor who transformed Matt Murdock from a blind kid with uncontrollably sensitive senses into the black-clad badass we know and love today. As such, he’s given to a lot of portentous pronouncements: “You’ll need skills for the war,” “Surrounding yourself with soft stuff isn’t life, it’s death,” “They’re gonna suffer and you’re gonna die,” etc. In other words, he’s not a man, he’s a Frank Miller comic in human form.

Miller was just a kid trying to make his way as a comics artist in the Taxi Driver-esque mean streets of Carter-era New York City (he was mugged twice) when he parlayed a shot at the low-selling Daredevil comic into superstardom. It was he who gave the series its neo-noir makeover, incorporating techniques gleaned from American comics pioneers like Will Eisner as well as manga, Japan’s homegrown comics scene which at the time had very little readership in the West. His interest in ninjas, which he made a core component of Daredevil’s backstory, more or less singlehandedly shoved the concept into the American pop-culture mainstream: The ninja-heavy G.I. Joe characters and comics that Marvel developed owe him a great deal, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were conceived as a straight-up Daredevil parody. (Ever wonder why the Turtles’ sensei was called “Splinter”? If you’ve met “Stick,” you know the answer.)

As time went on, Miller gave Batman an even more successful grim and gritty makeover in his seminal work The Dark Knight Returns, to which the Tim Burton and Chris Nolan movie franchises owe a massive debt. He also created series of his very own, like the hardboiled crime comic Sin City and the homoerotic historical fantasia 300, both of which became hit films. Meanwhile, Miller himself became more and more like a grizzled old hardass from one of his own comics, wearing a fedora and reminiscing favorably about the good old days when America’s heroes were of the two-fisted, square-jawed variety. So when wrinkly, stubbly old Stick compares Matt Murdock to the Spartans, “the baddest of the badasses,” it’s a 300 reference that winks as much at Miller himself as the comic in question. This helps keep his zen tough-guy routine on the show just this side of knowing self-parody, instead of the unwitting kind.

I reviewed episode 7 of Daredevil, and wrote a lot about Frank “The Tank” Miller, for Decider.

Daredevil spends much of the hour trapped in a vacant building with Vladimir, the vicious Russian mob boss who until recently had been his number one target — and who, indeed, he’d beaten the living shit out of not even an hour before. Daredevil dragged him to safety and saved his life for several reasons. First, the crooked cops who are trying to kill him on Wilson Fisk’s orders are after DD as well. Second, the vigilante needs the gangster to live long enough to cough up details about his mysterious puppetmaster. Third — and this is the key part — that tough-guy line he laid down about how it’s not okay to kill but it’s perfectly fine to let people die? It’s bullshit.

The thing is, it’s not just bullshit in Matt Murdock’s book, whatever bluster he throws at Vladimir to bluff him into talking. It’s bullshit all the time, in every superheroic circumstance. Yet that didn’t stop Christopher Nolan from making it the climactic moral argument of Batman Begins, the initial entry in his genre-redefining Dark Knight trilogy of Bat-blockbusters. Remember? Batman and Ra’s al Ghul are trapped in a subway plummeting to the ground, and the Dark Knight kinda wisecracks “I won’t kill you…but I don’t have to save you.” Yeah you do, you cape-wearing murderer! It’s not okay for anyone to let a person who’s completely in their power die to punish them for perceived transgressions, let alone if that person is dressing up in costume to serve as an ethical exemplar for their community. Daredevil is no one’s idea of an ideal hero — he has way too much fun taking a road flare to Vladimir’s wounds for that — but he senses, correctly, that selectively blowing off his responsibility to save lives is, ahem, not so different than taking them directly. (Stick that in your Batsignal and light it, Bruce.) This novel, moral answer to the whole corny “what really separates a hero from a villain” question made it worth asking in the first place. I wouldn’t be surprised if it helps Daredevil supplant the Dark Knight as the street-level super-ethicist of choice.

I reviewed the sixth episode of Daredevil, and complained about Batman Begins, for Decider.

As Fisk, Vincent D’Onofrio leans into his ogreish physique in a way he probably hasn’t since Private Pyle went Section Eight in Full Metal Jacket. But by introducing him to us via his night out with art-gallery owner Vanessa (played by the sort of preposterously sexy Ayelet Zurer), the show uses his bulk to make him look soft, even awkward. It’s the same endearing alchemy James Gandolfini employed as Tony Soprano, whose size made him simultaneously convincing as a big lug from the suburbs and a terrifying rageaholic.

Which is a side of Fisk we certainly get to see.

I reviewed Episode 4 of Daredevil, aka My Dinner with Kingpin, for Decider.

Let me see if I have this straight. The heroes of Daredevil so far are two criminal defense attorneys (one of whom has a disability), a corporate whistleblower, a Latina health care worker, and a crusading African-American newspaper reporter who can’t afford medical coverage. The villain is a faceless conglomerate that’s exploiting economic instability to earn lucrative contracts and threatening leaks with criminal prosecution (and worse). Is this Marvel’s Daredevil, or Howard Zinn’s?

I kid, but only slightly. So far, Daredevil is an antidote to years of superhero movies about billionaires and black-ops supersoldiers saving us from ourselves. It’s a street-level show not just in the subgenre sense—“street-level superheroes” steer clear of intergalactic/extradimensional menaces in favor of the villains next door—but because these people look like us, live like us, and (with the exception of the occasional Russian mafia assassin) have the same enemies as us.

Daredevil is the People’s Superhero.

I reviewed episode three of Daredevil, which is really quite good, for Decider.

Only two episodes in and it’s already official: Daredevil has the best fight scenes in the history of live-action superheroes. Honestly, it’s not even close, which is both a compliment to the show and an insult to its genre. After all, fights are to superhero stories what singing is to opera: the part where all the characters’ emotional energy takes physical form and, ideally, knocks your socks off. Yet some 15 years into the modern superhero-movie era, we’re still saddled with either weightless CGI-enhanced acrobatics or blurry quick-cut Christopher Nolan Batman bullshit. So when that final five-and-a-half-minute spectacular of a slobberknocker finally ended, all I could think was this: It’s about time.

I reviewed episode two of Daredevil for Decider. God that fight is fantastic.

The hero behind Marvel’s first Netflix Original wasn’t always so super.

When Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Steve Ditko birthed the Marvel Universe in a Beatles-level burst of creativity back in the ‘60s, Daredevil—blind lawyer by day, vigilante with radar senses by night—was the runt of the litter. Co-created by Lee and artist Bill Everett (with a key design assist from Kirby) as a riff on “justice is blind,” DD came across like a store-brand Spider-Man, without ever hitting the more famous NYC superhero’s heights.

But in the long run, staying out of the spotlight made the character a star. Taking advantage of Daredevil’s low profile, off-kilter creators from future superstar Frank Miller in the ‘80s to Brian Michael Bendis & Alex Maleev in the ‘00s used him to put their own stamp on superheroes—and sparked creative renaissances in the process.Which leads to the big question facing Daredevil’s Netflix incarnation. Is this just another superhero show, or will it follow in the footsteps of the comics that put DD on the map, allowing developer Drew Goddard (Cloverfield) and showrunner Steven S. DeKnight (Spartacus) to put forth a genuine creative vision (no pun intended) of their own? Let the battle begin!

I’m covering Daredevil for Decider! I’ll be posting a review of one episode per day until I’m done with the first season. Here’s my review of the pilot, which was quite good.