‘Daredevil’ season 2, episode 11 review: Frank the love guru, and Madame Gao returns
The last episode of “Daredevil” left us in a very weird place. Foggy is in the hospital with a gun shot wound, Matt has decided to cut all of his friends off and throw himself a martyr pity party, and about a hundred of the least subtle ninjas ever are making a racket climbing the hospital building to get to the 5 human blood incubators that have started to kill people.
After a fight with Daredevil, the ninja’s are able to run off with the 5 patients, so now Claire is facing serious ramifications from this incident since she brought those five patients into the hospital in secret. When they look at one of the dead ninjas, they see an autopsy scar on his torso – which is not possible since that would mean that this man has been dead. Our problem with that autopsy plot (we were a licensed funeral director at one point, so we have seen many autopsies) is that this ninja had all of his organs removed at one point and that includes his brain and then the organs are all closed up in the chest cavity – so that ninja doesn’t have a brain anymore. Claire dodges a bullet as a co-worker helps her keep her job, but she can’t let it go of the fact that everything is being swept under the rug, so she quits.
Karen is fine thanks to Frank, but she is telling the cops that she hasn’t seen him. So who is behind the shootings? Karen thinks that the Blacksmith is behind it. After shaking off her protective detail she meets with Frank and tells him everything she knows about the Blacksmith. Frank calls out Karen on her love for Matt, saying that it was obvious in court, but she tells him that Matt is the kind of man that hurts and damages people, so he’s someone she doesn’t want around. Frank rivals that by saying that the people that can hurt you are the ones close enough to do it and mean something. This was kind of a weird conversation for Frank and Karen to be having while sitting at a diner like no one’s out to kill them. Frank the love counselor…. we aren’t feeling it. What did make sense was that Frank used Karen as bait to get the people that shot at her to the diner. After a brutal fight, Frank is able to get one of the thugs to give up the location of the Blacksmith and we are unimpressed with this too. After an entire police force, DA, and all these deaths, no one can find out anything about the Blacksmith, but this one goon has the information. Frank tells Karen to call the cops and get police protection so she does.
Matt finds out that there’s a new drug rival to the Blacksmith on the scene and that they are holed up in Chinatown. Since Chinatown is a big place we thought Matt would have some trouble figuring out where this rival is, but Matt finds the exact location right away (a little too convenient for us) and finds out that Madame Gao is the rival. After speaking with her, she tells him that she knows the Blacksmith’s product comes in by ship, but doesn’t know which pier.
Daredevil and Frank show up at the pier at the same time and after fighting each other, Matt agrees with Frank that if he wants the Blacksmith dead that’s fine if they can work together, but instead Frank pushes Matt over the side of the ship just as the Blacksmith’s reinforcements show up and blow the ship up. Brett shows up after all is said and done… with Karen? She’s a civilian that is supposed to be under police protection, so they brought her to the scene of the crime?
There were a lot of problems with this episode, with the major one being lazy writing. With such a build up to the Blacksmith and how he’s evaded everyone in town, we find it very hard to buy into one street level thug of his having his location to give to the Punisher. Add to that the very weird Frank love guru chat he had with Karen, the nosiest ninjas on the planet, how easily Matt found Madame Gao and Karen being brought to the scene of a crime by Brett when she has no business being there and it leaves us with an episode really lacking the smart writing we are used to with this show. Episode grade: C-
What did you think of this episode of “Daredevil”? Leave us a comment below and tell us what you think of the season so far.