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Hey, hey, Apes, Hey, you see that snickers over there? No one's looking you should just take it.
No, don't listen to him, my son, that would be stealing, and stealing is.
A sin, sinschman, it's a faking snick, as may you deserve to have it.
Sinning really satisfies.
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Game over, Hello.
And welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics, my friends. Some of the first episodes we did on this podcast were on the TV show Daredevil and then the rest of the Netflix MCU shows. So many of those shows brought up interesting questions and led to great discussions, and so we have been fairly excited and anticipatory. We've been fairly excited as we anticipated the release of Daredevil Born Again.
We've gone through various ups and downs in terms of how excited or not excited, or how much we trust or don't trust what was happening.
But here we are.
Daredevil Born Again is out and Colic Book expert extraordinaire, along with good friend of the podcast and pretty strong Daredevil fan Jessica Plumber is here to talk about it. So, Jessica, as someone who has loved Daredevil on the page, love Charlie Cox and Netflix Daredevil, was this everything you were hoping for from a Daredevil returning to empty you?
No? No, it was not. Yeah, this was about as bad as it could be for me personally. I don't think it was an unwatchable TV show, but for for.
Me it was Yeah.
I will say, fans of this podcast, there's a lot of times where I'm like, look, I want to watch this thing. I want to talk about this thing. So I'm going to find a way to like make it ethical so we can discuss it. You know, chess playing is normally not the most superhero thing, but Ueen's gambit was great.
We wanted to talk about it. We made it't happen.
But every now and then we have something on the opposite side where it is not something I'm personally enjoying watching, but I'm willing to suffer through it for you the listener.
And so we're going to start with actually this question of Jessica.
When was the first moment when party you wanted to reach for the remote control and hit stop and you remembered that, No, you write about these things, you podcast about these things.
You had to finish it.
I I feel like maybe you know, in your heart of hearts, yeah, it was when Foggy died. I mean
it was when they shot it up. I strongly suspected they were going to kill him based on bad vibes and the trailer only showed him in one scene and it was then the rest of it was like and then something terrible happens and Matt's thinking about revenge, and I was like, well, it's not going to be Karen because they know they can't get away with fridging a female character, and I'm glad they didn't, so I suspected and U then like, I mean, they did build the
dread in that scene very clearly, but I was like, oh, I know where this is going. And yeah, if if we hadn't already scheduled this episode, I would have stopped watching at that point.
Yeah.
For me, it was the minute Foggy's body hit the pavement where it just seemed like he was dead.
Then of course they gave us the false.
Hope of showing him and like they were maybe he was going to live, but they know he actually dies. Yeah, And I literally paused at that moment and was like, Okay, can I just do a podcast about the first thirty seconds, five minutes, however long it was.
Can we just talk about Foggy's beard because he looked so good.
Beard was so good.
I'm a hardcore Foggy and Marcy shipper. So it was very sad to see him hitting on someone else, but fair enough. But then I was like, no, I girded my loins and prepared myself, and I was like, Foggy is dead. Matt is experiencing this, but I'm gonna experience it with him.
I'm gonna keep watch.
I mean, fifteen seconds later, I hit stop again because Matt, the man who doesn't kill.
People, killed someone.
They lived, but he took an action that was fully intended to cause the death of another person, which legally attempted murder as a thing, but morally, you try to kill someone you've killed something like.
I was pretty shocked. I thought, I thought, for real, bulls I was dead in that moment. And I will say in the comics because that's what I'm here for to say. Well, in the comics, every five minutes, Matt absolutely has dropped Bullseye off of a great height. He did eventually kill him, but he has like attempted to murder him several times. And in the comics Bulls I killed both Karen and Electra so similar level of beef.
So I was I was shocked. But if it was going to be anybody, it would be bulls Eye.
Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. It was just but even then, it was.
Like, why did they even bring back Wilson? Bethel is at the actor replace but like for what? For this? I thought there was gonna be a whole plot line with him, Like why did they bring Like it just feels like a waste of the whole cast.
But we can so I have two kind of related theories, and I promise we'll talk about some of the other parts of it. But I think, honestly, there's a lot of ethical questions and are raised about how you make things and what it means to remake something that's beloved, and what your obligations are and things like that.
I feel like.
This feels to me like someone is intentionally trying to be the Zack Snyder of the MCU, you know, in that Zack Snyder is a has a take on a lot of the superheroes in the DC universe that a lot of people love. And I want to fully respect that and say that I'm not I'm not coming at it from a place of good or bad. But Schneyder very intentionally, I think, started out from a place of there are people who are deeply invested in Superman and Batman and what those characters mean. I want to tell them,
fuck you, I don't care about your interpretations. I'm gonna give you my interpretations. And that's what this felt like, like I only know a little bit about the history of this, but it felt like, you know, they originally wanted to make their own thing. There's a lot of fan output from people saying, hey, we really loved the original Netflix, can you please make it in tone of that, And this was a filmmaker saying, Hey, I'm gonna give you, guys lots of hope. I'm gonna show you Foggy in
the trailer. I'm gonna show you Karen and the trailer. I'm gonna give you all that hope just so I can say, fuck you, how dare you be?
How dare we want that?
And go to hell that I'm making this for other people, like I am projecting like hell, I'm sure it's not that, you know, actually mad, But it felt like there was an intentional effort to say, we want to tell you that this is not gonna be the Netflix MCU.
Everything we love with the Netflix MCU is gone. Stop that this is a new.
Thing, right, like symbolically killing the Netflix MCU in the form of Foggy Nelson. I think for me, it's one of those don't attribute to malice what can be attributed to incompetence things and not incompetence. In competence is too strong a word. So I mentioned the Rolling Stone review of Daredevil, which I highly recommend checking out. It's very interesting. The reviewer is more The reviewer, first of all, has
seen all nine episodes. We have only watched the first two, and the reviewer is more generous to the show than I personally feel. But one thing that they pointed, or one comparison that they made, was comparing the way that MCU stuff is made today to the Marvel method, which is a way of making comics. Where the traditional way of making comics is the writer writes a script and then the artist draws it. But the Marvel method came It was not invented by Stanley, but it became called
the Marvel method because he used it so much. He was writing every comic at Marvel in the sixties and he was running the company, and he couldn't write all those scripts. So he would come up with an idea and then the artists would draw the whole comic, which means the artist is doing the lion's share of the writing too. And then stan would go in and he would write the dialogue, and sometimes his dialogue would completely change what the comic was about and what the artist
had envisioned. And you can see, like we have some like Jack Kirby comics where he had written one thing and Stanley had put in something entirely different, often more sexist, which is interesting. And this person, the Rolling Stone reviewer, basically made the point that a lot of this Marvel stuff is made by they have like a brief. They're like, Okay, you're going to do a Daredevil show, and then they
make them. The writers write something and they go away forever, and the director's film it, and then they also go away forever and fig and his team like chop it up into whatever they've decided it's going to be. And
with this show, they had filmed a lot. They had from what I've read, they had hired new writers, new showrunners, and they were supposed to be going in a different direction that was like lighter in tone and an easier jumping on point for new viewers and more Disney Plus and less Netflix.
And more than kind of daredevil we saw on.
She Hulk, Yes, and then fig I guess didn't like it, and the decision was made to and maybe it was partially the fan base saying, no, we like the old show, and so the decision was made to scrap the plan so far, reuse some of the footage, bring back a lot of the old cast. That was when they brought back Elden Henson. That was when they brought back Debora an Wall. That was when they brought back Isletzer if
I'm pronouncing that right, as Vanessa. They had recast her and filmed a couple new episodes and chopped up the rest. And so in that article there's a quote from the new showrunner saying that one, I think eight and nine were the only episodes that were made totally by them, which means that they are trying to base Matt's arc around the death of his best friend, even though most of the episodes were initially filmed with that not being
a true thing that had happened. And so it's like making a TV show out of found footage, Like I just, yeah, it's not gonna work.
That at least helps me feel like it's a little less malicious, although I do feel like, you know, you can start it out with Hoggy's funeral, you can start it out by telling us that Karen is no longer going to be there, bringing the two of those characters on screen and giving us what was the one thing on the Netflix Emcu hadn't given us, and of the three of them together, but then breaking them apart again,
especially because what they then do is recreate. Like in the past the show has been either he's with his two friends doing the legal work, or he's off by himself being a vigilante. Now he's back with a legal partner, with an investigator. It's just two new people who aren't Foggy and anyway, So that was the part I think that felt kind of like unnecessarily cruel about.
It, even like the way that they're handling Kirsten. She is absolutely serving as the Foggy, not just as Matt's legal partner, but she's like the comic relief. She's like the funny, sassy friend who's like, you need to have a healthy, normal life. Like that's Foggy's role. And I love Kirsten McDuffie in the comics. She's a wonderful character. I think the show, the show version of her is not nearly as interesting so far. It's not the actress's fault. She's doing what she can.
But like.
I mean, Foggy Nelson is my favorite Marvel character. I don't mean my favorite character on Daredevil or my favorite character in the MCU. I mean my favorite Marvel character like Spider Man. Who yeah, and just replacing him with here's a different character serving the exact same purpose but not doing it as well because she's just not being as well written. Again, no shade to the actress, No shade to the character, it's shade to the.
Show, right.
Yeah, And then like you get rid of the Karen character as the investigator. By the way, there's another one hanging around, Jessica Jones and great. I will say that, like they replaced Karen and Foggy with two people of color, which is helping a thing of the show that was notably not.
So great in the past.
But there was more of the show beyond those first five minutes, I promise people, and we did watch them. But I want to talk about just the one other huge thing that happens because it may sound like what we're talking about is just like we're bitter fans who I want to get our favorite toy to play with. For me, that's not what this is about. This was about fundamentally changing the tenor and tone of these characters and doing so in ways that felt like it wasn't
respectful to what the original story was. And that's Matt killing someone, or at least distinctly attempting to kill Dex because one of the major themes of those first three those first three seasons, and also of that sort of thing. One of the major themes of the Netflix version of the Marvel comics of the MCU is that Matt won't kill people, and that he a couple of times is
tempted and it comes very close to killing people. But for him, that is a line that he will not cross, and he's doing all any in his power to not cross it. And that's the heart of his discussion with Punisher. When Punisher says, when when you lock them up, they might get out, but when I put them down, they stay down. You know, that's what Matt is arguing against,
and part of him fears that Punisher is right. And so if you had given me a full season of reminding the audience that that's a huge part of who mat is. And then at the end of this season, Foggy dies and in a moment of just utter anguish and brokenness, yes he kills decks or at least attempts to.
I could have seen it, like, I'm okay with characters changing a fundamental part of themselves when it is earned, but here, especially because there's no Catholic priest he's going to like, yes, father Landon's dead, but there are other Catholic police.
I mean, his mom nun, you.
Can go to his nun. He you can become Jewish. I don't care, Like, I mean.
He'd have to work at that. It would take him a while.
But a rabbi would you say to a rabbi, I've got faith based afical questions like hold the conditions right and everyone can send incredibly anti sematic and the son of a Jewish family, please understand that anyway, Like yeah, it just talk to me about how you felt when you saw that moment of Daredevil pushing decks off the roof.
I mean, I think you're exactly right that it didn't feel earned, and I have to wonder, like what the viewing experiences for someone who either did not watch the original show or didn't rewatch season three and finish it like on Monday like we both did, and had it very fresh in their minds. And that's a question I have throughout because the level of information that they seem to expect viewers to have and the level of question seems really inconsistent. We can talk about that later, but
in like a larger way. But if I'm new to the show, or if I'm a casual viewer, like I am not a casual viewer. I rewatch season one so much back in twenty fifteen that when I rewatched it to prepare for the new show, I realized I had memorized large chunks of the dialogue. I'm not a casual viewer. But if I were a casual viewer, if I had never seen the show before, I'd be like, who's this guy who just shot Foggy? I don't know who that is? Like, they don't ever explain who he is. He's just a
guy who shows up. It's they show a close up of his glove with a bullseye on it, and that's like even his face is not shown. At no point did they explain his history with Matt. In fact, at no point did they explain, for even viewers like us who are very familiar with the show, why he killed Foggy, Like, how does he know that Matt cares? Because I don't think he knows Math's secret. I did, I can't remember, And I literally just watched season three a few days ago, and I can't remember.
He does, but he does. We wouldn't know that. We're watching this for certain, right.
And even with Foggy, we get a few minutes of dialogue for Foggy, most of which he's having with a completely different character, while Matt and Karen are discussing if they should go off and have sex, which is also like whoa, whoa, it's been seven years, are you guys? What's going on there? Oh? Karen's written off so we'll never find out, Like that was just another side swipe of bad writing. But I care about Foggy because I
am a diehard Daredevil fan. But if I'm a new viewer, if I'm a lapsed viewer, I guess use the catholic adjacent term. Why would I care? Why would I care that Foggy died? Why would I care about who this guy is who killed him? And honestly, why would I care if Matt killed him? Because I can't remember if Matt kills people. I remember the show had a lot of you know, bones breaking through skin and you know eyes being ouched out and stuff, So it seems like it just it's completely completely unearned.
Yeah, and.
Anna h who's a fan of the podcast, who have been talking to a lot both yesterday while I was watching it and today we're talking about it, point out there's a couple of things that I want to quote, but we'll start with this.
One thing she said was like, hello, he.
Also experienced Electra dying, and she was the steadfast companion. She wasn't the steadfast companion or the moral anchor the way Foggy was, but she was the one person who wander stood a side of him that no one no one else did. She also had a completely unique place in his life. And he didn't consider killing anyone over that. He doesn't struggle about whether to kill over personal impact.
And I think that's actually a really good point that the only times he considers killing is when what he's concerned about is that if he just arrests them and then they get a chance to get back out and do more harm that he is now responsible for that harm, which is exactly what happens. He gets Fisk arrested, Fist breaks out, Fist causes more harm. He is fundamentally about a harm reduction. He is never about revenge in that
same kind of a way. Yeah, And to me that's so important and as well as this electro idea Elector died in his arms, not once, but twice due to the Wonders of dragon Bone Resurrection that is kind of central for the Defenders like that show, but like twice, she died in his arms and he never killed anyone.
I mean, he you could argue that he killed himself, but that's not the same thing, although still a sin
according to Catholicism. Right, yeah, again, I think it's like again, as somebody who has read all the Daredevil comics has seen that try to kill Bullseye several times, actually kill him once, which didn't go well because then it allowed him to become possessed by the Beast, which is the demon the Hand worships, and then he like took over all of Hell's kitchen and made everybody call him Lord Daredevil, and it was actually very funny, I mean terrible storyline,
but very funny, but object lesson don't kill people, even really bad people. But as somebody who has seen that happen in the comics, and also as somebody who is Foggy Nelson trash like I would kill for Foggy, I would not actually do that again. I do not want to become Lord Daredevil. Killing people is wrong. But like if they had sold us on it, I do believe that Foggy is important enough to Matt when both characters
being written well for him to cross that line. But I don't believe it on the strength of thirty seconds of dialogue between them.
Yeah, because Foggy always was the angel on.
His shoulder exactly Foggy Karen that Karen, Karen doesn't want it for him, but she and some of this starts to go down a very different road, and like, you know, she kills a couple of people, and.
Karen'll be like, no, Matt, don't kill him, it's wrong. I've got it.
And then she let me call my other boyfriend punisher Y, which I was also like, what about her and Frank if she's now sleeping with Mattie.
I don't know, and Marcie Justice for Marcie.
Justice, what at least have her at the funeral?
Right?
Oh wait, no, they didn't show a funeral. They showed the courtroom scene. Have her at the courtroom scene, she's a lawyer.
They didn't show the funeral, so they didn't give us any of that closure that we.
Could have had because there was the one year jump.
Here's the other thing that Anna pointed out that I thought was really interesting, which is that if your goal is to say that the situation is now fundamentally different than it was during the Netflix MCU, and that a lot of things have changed, and that we don't know how all these people's relationships interact anymore, and you want to fully integrate them back into the MCU, you have the blip, Like the blip is the great just like at the sketch of any of these shows, if you
just say, like, okay, you know, Matt disappeared, but the other two didn't you know? And and Foggy moved to Boston and Karen moved to California, and now we have an explanation for why they're not in his life, and we can go forward with our lives and.
Matt would be just flipped, like right when he was supposed to deliver a closing argument or something, and Foggy would be like, damn.
It, Yeah that would make sense. That makes sense.
Well, okay. Also, like if they are trying to say that everything's different now and I want to talk about Fisk more, but don't show me Matt versus Fisk for the third time, like it's Groundhog Day over here. Yeah,
in what way is everything different? You just got rid of the supporting cast that people like, Right, one more thing that I and then I'll stop talking about Foggy briefly, but one more point that I want to make, like to your point about like this could just sound like bitter fans who are mad that a character we like is gone, But I think it speaks to a fundamental
lack of understanding about what made the show work. Like I said to a friend of mine, it felt like they fed all the scripts of the first three seasons into Chack GPT and how it spit out the themes, and then they wrote something around that, because it feels very repetitive around a lot of the concepts that the show was preoccupied, especially like the conversations between that and Fisk, but without saying anything new and without really having any
structure grounding it and so and while also missing what was necessary about the elements that were already in the show, like Foggy added something really important to the show. He was comic relief, which the show desperately needed because Daredevil's very dark show. And he was also so sensible and grounding. He had this really steadying energy that again was extremely vital. And like I remember a New York Comic Con, this was between seasons one and two, so season two was
pretty close to coming out. They had the whole Daredevil cast there and the actor including John Burnhal, though nobody had seen him as the Punisher yet because season two hadn't started. The actor who got the most applause was not Charlie and was not Vincent. It was Eldon. People lost their minds. People loved Foggy Nelson, and there was a reason for that because he contributed something really important to the show, and a huge part of that is
Elden's performance. He's wonderful in the role and he is very, very different from the comics version. But there's also a reason the comics version has been around since nineteen sixty four and taking him out like that really betrays a load of understanding of the world that they're working in.
Yeah.
Well, and that's why I talked about how this felt to me. And maybe this wasn't their minds, or maybe it wasn't, but it certainly got the effect of being the Zack Snyder a fication of this part of the MCU because you know, Schnyder decides Superman and Batman both need to kill people. Uh, Superman obviously kills Zodh And also just the whole tone of Superman is much darker and much grittier, and she doesn't have the hope that like I know you and so many others have talked
about being so essential. And Batman also, like Superman, almost never kills people, but has killed people in the comics. He literally kills Lec Luther in the Oval Office. At one point, Batman even more like declares that he will not kill people, and in the Zack Snyder verse, he's basically marking people for death when he sent it them to prison.
It just it feels but that's cooler.
Yeah, it's and it's like, if you want that, that's great. But then usually character and like, I know this will sound kind of weird to people like I. You can take any character you want and make them any gender, any race, any sexual orientation, make them a you know, fury little creature from Alpha Sentry for all I care. But what I care about is the heart of the character and what the character is about.
And like, yes, you can modernize that and things like that, but it just.
I don't, Like, I don't if if you wanted to tell a story about you could you could have just made this an entirely new story, you know. And I think that's why the killing someone it got to me so much, because obviously superherotics. Like, there's two major questions that we've come back to again and again and again. One of which is like the limits of violence and like to what extent is non lethal violence of possibility? And like when when is taking the launch your own
hands too much? And then the other part of it is the vigilanteism of it all, which you know you've been on to discuss a number of times. We just did a member bone bonus member episode about that, and surprise, surprise, it comes up is a question in this show.
So let's keep moving forward. We'll get to the vigilanteism of.
It all in a bit of this episode.
The fact that the words uh that that we heard Charlie Cox say his mystical amulet, which also was my favorite line.
I loved that it maybe so he pained.
My soul because this has so far been like one of the most grounded, non superhero, non super powery mystical mumbo jumbo nonsense coming.
But guy's got a mystical ambulet. There's nothing Matt can do about that.
Well, fair enough, fair enough, he can sue him. But let's talk about the Wilson Fisk of it all. I know that I'm a little bit more of a Wilson Fisk lover than you are, but we both have a healthy respect for this character. As you sent me a text message. He did not cook an omelet throughout this entire episode, but.
He ate some eggs.
He ate eggs, but we didn't watch cook one.
No, we didn't watch him cook one, which I.
Think it was a specific challenge you'd put forward.
He cooked at least five in the old show, which is one and two thirds of an omelet per season, and I just think that's too many omelets.
Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.
Someone who doesn't like omelets like it. Just I got the point you sent me. Also the honest trailers for Daredevil that shows just how many white surfaces that look like a white stucco wall from an earlier New York City apartment he looks at, And the answer is many. But I want to start with one of the things I think that really came out for me and I rewatch of the show. I mean, you may not fully agree, and that's fine, but is that like Matt is the
better person. They're very similar that come from very similar backgrounds. They diverge in very important ways in one of them, but they both are wrestling with this question of like, to what extent do I have the right to take violence into my own hands to do what I think is right for people who have not asked me to do what is right for them.
I say Fisk is wrestling with that question. I think he's, well, yes, that's decision.
Fisk has come to a decision and is willing to has a very strong ends justify the means about it. Matt doesn't. And that's why Matt is the hero and Fisk isn't. But one of the things that they set up is that while a lot of people are probably not going to be terribly sad to have Charlie Cox in their bed, even for only one night, that Matt is not the world's best boyfriend. Oh, he's kind of terrible to most of the women in his life. And Fisk, on the other hand, we only see him show romantic
interest in one woman through the entire thing. He's kind of adorable about it. He is so hopelessly in love with her, with the character Vanessa throughout all three seasons. And so I found the idea of him and Vanessa going to therapy because their relationship doesn't work anymore.
And again it just.
Felt like you're, like, yes, showing more relationships in therapy really important. Showing that the kind of conflicts that any two romantic partners can have when there's professional conflicts as well as romantic conflicts and abandonment issues, like, oh, that is great to show in a relationship. But let me have the Wilson Fisk who the only thing he does right in his world is that he worships the ground this woman walks on and treats her like spun gold.
I don't know you felt like, I'm no longer watching Wilson Fisk. If you're giving me another character, just give me another character. What did you think about that plot line and specific seeing them in the therapy together.
I mean I did laugh out loud when I realized what was happening, because it was like, Okay, I guess this is what's happening. But it felt very much like another instance of not understanding what people liked about the show,
because like, everything you've said is right. I am. I'm not a big Fisk fan because I typically just don't care about or four villains, But his most likable and redemptive and interesting quality is his the purity of his love for Vanessa, which I mean remains like that absolutely like it also is very much like it's so far we've only seen two episodes and only no, I guess they both touched on it. They're both pretty much blaming her for all the problems.
Which yeah, don't know what he did abandon her for a long period of time, which obviously is like in part because he got shot in the eye by Echo and like he went to Oklahoma during the Echo show and they kind of name dropped out a little bit.
But barely again, let's stick a.
Pin in that, because I do want to talk, like I said, about what we're supposed to know and not know and what's reasonable to expect your audience to know, because I didn't watch Echo and I was like, okay, yeah, but it's like they could pull it out, but right now it feels like it's going in a pretty sexist direction of like, he's so loyal and he loves her so much, and she's a big old slut who's left with this random guy, which I don't like at all,
especially if it's like it's very much timed with like her. I mean, you said the last time we spoke, you really wanted to see her step into her own as more of a crime boss, which absolutely happens, but it's at the cost of her being she's never a good person, but it's at the cost of like her being a loyal partner, it seems like, and there's this dichotomy again.
I don't want to say this is what they're doing without seeing the whole show, which I'm not going to do, but it does seem like it could be hinting at like you can either be a loyal wife or you can be a competent business woman, but you can't be both, which, oh, what decade are we in?
I mean, what year was Wonder Woman Too made in? Because we're in that.
But yeah, ladies, people can't have it all.
Nope, nope.
And also, please don't like reincarnate your ex lover into someone else's body and then have sex with that body anyway that we're not talking.
About one who.
I was like, wow, I miss something in episode two Wonder Woman, got it. Don't don't do that, it's creepy, and.
Don't waste s Petro Pasco. He's so beautiful.
But anyway, moving along, I think he makes really good points. Although it's not it's funny. I had a very different interpretation that was going on there. I thought it was fisk Is threatened that she seemed to do so well in his absence and not need him, and she feels like she just doesn't have this affection for him anymore, in part because he's now kind of coming.
You know.
Part of what we saw is that she's totally in control, she's running this meeting, but then he comes in and like everything stops, and you know, I think that is like, that's a story we've seen before where it's a lot about the man like has gone away for a while, comes back, the woman is really running things well and the guy doesn't like that, so I'll be c well, well, I'm not gonna watch it either, but fans tell me what happens, because I thought, yeah, well, and.
Also it's not even consistent because he comes back and he's like, I'm gonna run for mayor, and so we can't do crimes anymore. We have everything has to be totally above board, and she seems pissed about that because she was good at crimes and she was having fun doing crimes. And I guess fair enough. I don't know whose side to be on there. But then he immediately just starts doing crimes again. He's like threatening the police commissioner by stalking his kid.
So, yeah, what are you?
That was the previous episode, like come.
On, which, Okay, let's I want to get back to Fisk in a minute, but let's talk about the cops of it all for one second, because once we started with is some deep, deep sympathy for our loyal boys in blue, which, as someone who was a teenager under Giuliani's New York and with the deepest of respect, Jessica, I have a sense that I had perhaps a little more of an adventurous childhood than you did when it came to being chased by and occasionally not having good
interactions with the New York City Police Department. Especially, have a half of my black friends who are treated very badly. I am fairly anti cop, but especially anti NYPD, and I wouldn't like between Karen, Foggy and Matt. Wouldn't at least one of them be pretty acab by now, I mean you would think.
But again, rewatching the original show at Like I said to a friend while I was watching, like, I contain multitudes part of me. Most of me hates copaganda, but part of me loves Brett Mahoney, who is not around anymore. So the show is definitely and the show has also
always been well. It doesn't really have a consistent Even the original show wasn't consistent about this because in season one the cops are like deeply corrupt, everybody except Brat is corrupt, and then in season three the cops are totally good and fine and it's the FBI that's corrupt. But Fisk, I guess just didn't bother to buy off any cops, which feels weird to me.
There's a discount on the FBI.
I mean, clearly he's got some buy one, get one free deals going on there with the way some of that corruption is going. But yeah, with this it's length again. It's like that they're not even reading what they wrote. Because on the one hand, we're supposed to be like, oh, this commissioner, he's a pinnacle of uh nobility and justice.
But that's in the same episode where White Tiger catches two beating some guy up for reasons we still don't know, but which are clearly sketchy, and then they try to kill him, and it's like the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. And we're just supposed to accept the overall goodness of cops as a concept, but also have the cool seediness of corrupt cops, as if that's not a systemic issue.
There was one line in season one that just that episode one that just threw me because it was so blatantly pro cop in a way that like, you know, I don't expect Marvel to be like, you know, pushing the bounds too hard like Black Panther.
I think did one of.
The most extreme jobs of that and drew a lot of angry attention, as did Falcon Winter Soldier, and I thought they were great for doing it, but I know that was.
The outer edge.
But there's a line where the cops are talking about heroes and one of them says in a real like awe shocks you know, poor you. I understand why you're jealous of those heroes. He says, like, you know, we do that stuff for criminals, we just get sued. Yeah, I just like, are Netflix writers, are you asking me to feel sorry for the boys in blue who don't get to beat up criminals anymore because these you know, pesky little police mortality lawsuits?
Like really, that's what we're saying in this show.
Well, and also and this this incorporates the copaganda, but also like the larger problems with Fisk and the whole like ripped from the headlines approach of this version of the show, which is the storyline that they're telling with Fisk becoming mayor now that has happened in the comics. They're drawing on the Charles Sewell run primarily from like twenty sixteen, which yep, timing, but they are very very obviously steering in to.
Current politics, or at least it's.
A Trump allegory, and like in general, like I was very very upset when they killed Foggy. The thing that made me go, I can't watch any more of this show beyond what I have already promised to watch was that because I don't want to watch a convicted felon billionaire get elected to high office by the dumbest people in the country or in the city. I guess I don't want to watch corruption scandals involving uh, a deeply corrupt NYC mayor. I'm living that, and it's like a
walking anxiety disorder. Like I'm not saying that superhero TV shows can't tackle serious things. That's the entire point of your podcast. But I this is just like it's like if I broke my leg and then everything I watch was about breaking your leg, Like I just I cannot And if they're gonna do it, which I don't think that they should, because it is too big, it is too serious, and it's too recent, like there's no it's ongoing, you can't comment on it. There's breaking news every ten seconds.
You wrote this months ago. But if they are going, which I do give them a little bit of pass. They couldn't have known how some of this stuff would go. But if you're going to do that, you have to be smarter about it. You have to understand what's really happening. You have to have a coherent political stance. And one of the things that really struck me was, over and over and over again, especially in the like bb Uric segments, they keep talking about how crime is up, crime is
on the rise, There's so much crime. Oh my god, all the crime, all the crime. Vigilantes can't stop it. Everybody's getting murdered all the time. Just today I saw a stat that major crimes in New York City are down fifteen percent overall crime. Violent crime has been trending down in New York and across the country for a long time. Claiming that crime is up and that Venezuelan gangs are eating your dogs or whatever are right wing
lies and right wing propaganda. And you can't like lambaste these right wing figures of Eric Adams is not a democrat. You cannot lambast these figures by using their own propaganda as your world building as like a thing that is just accepted as fact, because then your position is completely incoherent.
One of the things that they show, which I was both like, this is eerily like predictive, and that this is probably written long before or Trump started doing these things, although he's certainly was talking about them, is that one of the things that a lot of right wing stuff is like, let's get rid of the bureaucracy and just get things done.
A scene where there's a scene where there's a like a big pothole and.
Like it was one like it was one Hunters and Trump well and and you know, and so he just says, screw the bureaucracy, We're just gonna fix it now. And I don't think it is intentional Trump propaganda, because I do think that's gonna come back to haunt him, Like I am almost positive, yes, yes, maybe I'm getting the right so much credit that there's going to be some version of it. Turns out that they there's a child in that hole. There's a water Maine that's gonna break
like whatever it is. You know, there's a plane that's gonna crash because I fired some FAA people. Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm mixing up the two things.
You know, but still it was just like, yeah, that is exactly what Trump does.
But first of all, as and granted you're living it more and so you can maybe.
Lee Trump says he's gonna do. I have yet to see a problem that man has fixed.
Also true, Also true, he fixed the fact that I'm lonely sometimes because a lot of people are moving to my blue state of Minnesota because.
Not safe in their own homes.
But I will say, as a New Yorker, like, yes, Eric Adams is bad, but like we reject like Trump had to take his name Trump off his buildings in New York City.
I'm kind of offended on behalf of New York.
So I'm kind of a little offended on behalf of New York City voters the idea that we would elect this guy. And what is also one of the shortest election campaigns ever known, because somehow the entire election campaign happens between Foggy being sorry, between Matt being set up on a blind date and Matt actually going on a real date with that person. So that's a very either man is very slow to text someone back, or it's a very fast election campaign.
He still either way.
Up on Karen. Yeah, it. I mean, I think it's really telling, and I guess maybe they felt it wasn't necessary to say it, but they don't say what party this yeah is running for, even if he was an independent. I mean, he has the American flag pin, which is you know, indicative of the right. But I think, I mean, you could you could. You could read it as one of two things. You could read it as it's so obvious because the metaphor they're drawing is so clear that
they don't need to say it out loud. Or you could read it as it's just kind of a toothless political commentary that just grabs things at random but doesn't really have anything to say. And to be fair, I do think a proper assessment of that would require watching the whole season, But as noted, we're not going to do that. So somebody let us know how that works.
Out exactly exactly, And so let's you talk about the Matt and Fisk of it all, because they have this meeting in a diner, which and again here's where I don't under I don't know how much of the Netflix MCU is or is not.
Canon, because.
They act like they're kind of like, you know, buddy rivals, Like they clearly want to take each other down, but they're sort of like, you know, I'll admit I do kind of enjoy our sparring matches like this, and me's like, yes, I guess I do too, and they're just kind of gently warning each other, Like what in the world was happening in that scene?
It makes no sense. And again it's like one of those things where I don't know what I'm supposed to know from the old shows and the Fisk's other appearances, and like because the one thing that because I didn't watch Hawkeye and I didn't watch Echo, So okay, the show expects you to remember pretty not obscure characters, but like you're supposed to remember who ben Yurick is and what happened to him. When Fisk is like I knew him, it's like, yeah, you strangled him with your bare hands.
But at no point does anybody say, like I can't believe he's running for mayor Matt you sent him to jail twice, or any kind of grounding, like I can't believe he got out on that technicality, or he served his twenty seven consecutive life sentences so fast, or anything. I'm like, why is he out? Why isn't that okay with him being out?
Like what?
And again, maybe that was explaining shows that I didn't watch, but it's completely unrealistic at this point for the when you have ten years of just the television movies aside for them to expect every viewer to just know that. And yeah, like the vibes between them were so weird,
Like I I don't buy that either. Like the last time they saw each other, they were beating each other to a pulp and they only resolved the situation by threatening the people that the other loved the most, right, Like Matt was like, if you don't stay away from Karen and Foggy, I will send Vanessa to jail. And Fisk was like, I will not murder your two closest friends if you leave my wife out of jail. And they're both just like Matt was.
And to be clear, too clear that moment is still canonical because at one point one of Bullseye, the guy who had been working for Fisk in the original show and who kills Foggy Matt. One of Matt's first thoughts is that Fisk sent him, Yes, and and Fisk says, no, I am still honoring I didn't break our deal, so clearly, like we're supposed to think that stuff happened at the end of season.
Three, but at the same time, Matt it was like again, it goes back to the whole idea of like what makes Matt willing to kill someone? And no, Fifs did not send Decks to kill Foggy in that moment, but he did prime Dex to become a serial killer, and he is the reason that Dex knows why Foggy is important,
so he bears some culp mobility about that. And I don't know why Matt would be like I would love to go to this diner and sit in the same booth where I sat with Electra before she died and shoot the shit with you Willie, Like.
No, yeah, it doesn't line up at all.
It doesn't seem to make sense it And you're right, like, Echoes a show that I particularly love, and I do think I was too strongly recommend you watch it Hawkeye though, like it is kind of fun, but it's not a strong recommendation from me by any means. And it's just there's so much happening, and yeah, I mean I remember thinking even within the Netflix MCU, it was starting to kind of collapse under its own weight with so many
things to keep track of. And I love these extended universes, but especially now with the blips and all the alternative you know, timelines and stuff, and now all this stuff because like clearly a lot of the Netflix MCU stuff is being carried over. One of the things that happened in season one of the Netflix Daredevil is Kingkin ran from Ayer, Like we've literally seen this happen already, and he decided he kind of pulled out early or no,
he he. He kind of announced himself as a power player in the city and wanting to sort of like be a thing, and he was being talked about as a candidate for May Yes, but then ben Eric exposed him.
Well, and I actually have a very minor this is such a deep cut quiver. But the character of Cherry, who is a retired cop who is now Matt's investigator at his law firm, perfectly fine character copaganda aside, he himself is fine, but the name Cherry was bothering me, and I was like, there is a character in the
comics named Cherry, Like is he a reference to something. No, there is a very obscure character named Cherry with an H on the end, like spelled like the fruit with an H on the end, who is a mayoral candidate that Fisk is trying to push through, who is totally corrupt, totally loyal to Fisk, and Matt manages to thwart him, and Fisk decides he doesn't know like as Matt, he doesn't know Matt a scareedevil. He decides to get revenged by having Electric kill Foggy, which she can't bring herself
to do, and then Bullseye kills her. So like Cherry himself is not an important character, but he's part of an important storyline that people are going to remember, and they used him in season one. He is absolutely a corrupt politician that Fisk is funding. In season one, we see him get arrested in that month to the end, and I'm like, just pick a different name. Why did you keep this guy the same name. It's a very
minor that is me niitpicking. But there's so many other fruits you could name a man after.
Keep making Blueberry does need to be raspberry Detective Blueberry.
The show would have been a lot better, I've done that.
So we then kind of switch gears pretty hard out of the copaganda into as you said, cops are corrupt and terrible with this story of what seems like just a regular old guy coming across two people beating up someone else, and the regular guy tries to interfere, tries to protect these people. One of them pulls out a badge and says back off. He's like, no, you're still beating up this person. They start trying to not They pull the no you're right, notice the opposite. They start
trying to just kill him for interfering. Once the witness gets it. Once the guy gets away, one of them leaps at him, and he kind of like you know, brushes him aside and but.
Doesn't like do much.
He just kind of alters the trajectory a bit, and the guy flies into the tracks and the most silent train that has ever run of the New York City subway tracks.
Because the boy is like, you had no idea the train was about to.
Come fast, like, that's not how it works.
Yeah, they I mean maybe it was express train, but still they slowed down somewhat pulling into the station. None of it made any sense. Plus they're not all lethal. I know this because I was hit by a New York City subway train. That's how I lost my leg. But that's all of the story entirely. So I was just like, oh, that that hits a particular thing off mine that I know it was gonna come up from this show.
But yeah, it just it.
And I saw where they were going, like they were opening up this interesting can of worms. But it felt to me like they kind of did a switch through because at first the story was about like innocent bystanders getting involved and when the cops don't they clear their cops.
Are you supposed to know? And that kind of a thing.
But there it becomes actually, this guy's white tiger, so actually he does go out seeking fights like this, And I sort of felt like, if you wanted the show to be about vigilanteism and superheroes, well we did have Civil War, so you could just go watch that instead. But if we're gonna do kind of Civil War point two and get into more of the questions of civil war that I keep wanting him to begin in the Civil War, why start with him not being white tiger?
Like what what you to me?
It felt like they were very confused about what they were trying to do with that storyline. What did you think about how it all played out?
I mean, I do wonder if they're trying to uh draw on the comics specifically with that. So for sorry, this is this is just what I do. So White Tiger. White Tiger is actually a really important character. He is uh the first Puerto Rican superhero in mainstream comics. He is own the second Latino superhero in mainstream comics, and the first one was El Gaucho, who was introduced in Batman comics in nineteen fifty four, so you can guess
how well that was handled. But Hector Ayala White Tiger was created co created by George Perez, who was one of the greatest artists of all time and was himself Puerto Rican, so like there was a lot more sensitivity and cultural authenticity brought to the character. So he was introduced in the seventies mystical amulet and all, but they didn't really do like, they never used him. He didn't have his own comic ever. They really didn't do much
with him, and he was a very obscure character. And like, I don't mean to dismiss him as a character because if you, you know, dig into him, you'll find a lot of Latino readers saying that like he was really important to them, but he was still quite obscure. And then in the early two thousands, he was in a Daredevil storyline where he gets it's very similar. He is intervening in a situation where cops are involved. He does
not even accidentally kill a cop. The cop is shot by somebody else, but he I think it's a cop, But he gets arrested. Matt is defending him, and spoiler for this twenty five year old comic, not the show, I don't know what is going to happen, But in the comic, the trial is going against him, and he freaks out and runs out of the courthouse and is shot to death by cops trying to escape. And that's the end of the first Latina or the first breaking
character superhero in comics, first Latino superhero in Marvel. Not great, great. I'm a little concerned. I'm hoping the show is smart enough to subvert that the way that they subverted a lot of the bad stuff that happens to Karen in the comics. Yeah, I will also say there have been several other White Tigers after that. They're all Litino litina like, they're all great tests. So the legacy continues. But I guess it sort of didn't surprise me because I was
coming from that background. Yeah, what did kind of surprise me? I guess I had expected him to be, like to see a narrative where he puts on the mask because he's inspired by Daredevil or because Daredevil is not doing because Matt is retired, and it is entirely possible that that is. I can't remember if he like stepped into the gap. I think when Matt.
Yeah, he doesn't know that Matt Murdoch is Daredevil. But at one point when Matt is talking him about it, because Matt is very outraged that he would be a vigilante, which is so hypocritical, hypocritical, but maybe he's tanneling Foggy because he basically saying to this guy, would Foggy would say to him.
I mean, I think being a hypocrite is very in character for Matt. Honestly, that band does it all the time.
But what what White Tiger says to him is well, with Dared Volgne, someone needed to step up, so Yeah, there definitely is that gap idea to it. And first of all, I love hearing more about his story, and White Tiger being in this story especially feels very significant because for those who aren't from New York people may know this or may not know this. New York City has a huge Puerto Rican population and it is very much kind of a part of the fabric of the city.
A lot of people, the.
Puerto Ricans who who moved to New York City, I call him immigrants. Is not really accurate because the are American citizens even before they move, but they've certainly like moved, you know, immigrated within the country, but often in front of themselves. Is New yor Ricans, like combining the words of New York and Puerto Rico, and it's just a huge part of the city. And so putting him in the show that is so focused on New York City
feels really right. But yeah, I think part of what threw me and part of what like, I think there are stories to tell that are related to the conflict from Civil War but are not quite the same. But at one point in the mayoral discussion, Fisk says, like, we don't need all these vigilantes running around with the and he mentions like a Spider Boy or something like that,
you know, and and he mentions Daredevil. He clearly mentioned Spider Man, which we're going to talk about the weird sort of Spider Man powers that Daredevil has in the bonus section. But yeah, it just it felt like they weren't sure if they wanted to make this about vigilanteism versus about superpowers. And I think they're going more towards vigilantism, which I think is actually, in some ways the more interesting question. That Civil War didn't get into as much
as they wanted to. But yeah, like, did you see that connection at all? Does it feel like a totally separate thing? How do you result to think about this too?
Yeah, I mean, not to open up the Civil War can of worms, but yeah, registering people as superpowers is just a bigotry. Registering vigilantes is, right, I mean, it's eradicating the idea of vigilantism because if you're registered anyway, Yeah, I mean it. Well again, it's it's one of those things that I don't think the show has thought through
very much. Because Fisk is taking a stand against vigilantes and vigilantism, and the Spider Man reference feels very weird because it feels like he I know, Matt and Peter have interacted in the movie, but it just feels like he's in a different part of the MCU And I'm like, yeah, he doesn't even go here, Like you don't know about him,
even though obviously they do. But Fisk is complaining about vigilantes because one of them sent him to jail twice and one of them shot him in the face, Like we're supposed to take his arguments as being inherently wrong because we know his selfish reasons for saying them. He wants to get rid of vigilantes because vigilantes stop him from doing crimes, and because our hero is a vigilante, and we know what side we're supposed to be on.
But I feel like that very simplistic take on things is not something we would have seen in the original Netflix show, because it was very concerned with the ethics of vigilantism and when a situation is bad enough that
vigilantism is actually required. And like, again going back to the Foggy thing, like he was a really important character because he made an argument around that, like he represented one side of that argument, which like, Kirsten may be the new Foggy, but all she talks about is Matt's love life, So like she's not given we don't know her legal or ethical opinions because she's not as well rounded of a character, I mean, to be fair. After
two episodes, give her time. Yeah, And so by Fisk saying we have to eradicate vigilantes vigilantes are bad, then it's like, well, okay, then vigilantes must be good. But oh, these poor cops, they're so sad, but also cops are bad, like why.
Do we need But also the one person standing up to Fisk is is the.
Copssion, like why do we need vigilantes? And they also keep saying, oh, there's so much crime, but they don't show any street crime, like yeah, all the crime that's committed is by the mayor and some cops Like mm hmm. It's just not a coherent argument.
Yeah, I mean, I think that's me.
Maybe the best way to describe the show is it just isn't coherent, you know, and it I want to quote one more thing from an h she's kind of going back to where we started. She wrote that episode one felt literally hostile. Genuinely, just pulling from the old show only to use it as the paradigm that is shifting for the news story feels terribly unnecessary. And on top of that, they did it badly, one of the
worst executions of a TV show I've seen. Setting aside my feelings about the way they treated the previous series, it was also really unfair setup.
For the new series. And yeah, it just feels like they had so many.
What you were just saying about the idea that it felt like they were being pulled in eight different directions and changed things makes a lot of sense, and it allows me to make you think this is less malicious
than as you said, it's probably more incompetence. And it's unfortunate that it's becoming very on brand right now because I have not seen the new Captain America movie for a number of reasons, but I know that one of the things that happened in it is that originally it was made with a Israeli character, a character who is
directly tied to the Massad as a major character. That because of all the political stuff that's been happening in Gaza the last couple of years that they decided to cut that character way back for understandable.
Reasons, but they wound up still like.
Leaving the character in enough that a lot of folks, I think rightly are not wanting to see Israeli propaganda, but also by cutting out so much of her, making the plot feel fairly incoherent, you know, because it was just the whole thing was a mess and like for different reasons, but it feels like kind of the same thing is happening here, and I just I think they need to at some point decide to like, let just give a creator some parameters, but then let the creator
like take the whole thing from beginning to end, because this is just not working.
There's a difference between a collaborative creation to process and creating by committee. And yeah, like movies and television, Like I don't, I do not believe in the auteur theory. I think everything is collaborative, should be collaborative, but there's a difference between having a few people with a vision and just generating a bunch of footage for executives to cut up in the most profitable way.
Yeah, I think it's right true. I think it's right true. Well, on this cheery note.
We will talk about a more fun part of the show in just a minute form the member section. Of course, you can have a member for only five dollars a month fifty five dollars a year. But not only do you get margareat content. Jessica is a creator of content in so many places. Jessica, where can they find your stuff?
So? I read a lot about comics on book riot dot com. In a couple of weeks there will actually be an article on this site where I recommend comic that you can read if you're watching the new Daredevil show, or if perhaps you have decided to not continue watching the New Daredubil show and you would like to read comics that are better. It can also serve that purpose. Yeah,
so that's the best place to find me. I also have a short story in the Arthurian Retellings anthology Swordstone Table, available wherever books are sold.
Yeah, please go check those things out. We will have a link in the show notes to how to get copies of that book through local bookstore network. That is fantastic. Check out the articles. There's great stuff. As I've told you before, one of my favorites is you documenting the various costumes over the years of Scroll Girl character who I knows nothing about, but I'm I'm really excited to see on screen, specifically because of you.
She's the best.
You definitely check out.
We'll have more on all of this, and we'll have more on Matt and his weird new powers in this show in just a few moments.
For the members everybody else, thank you so much. May the fourth doing what on