Daredevil: In the Blood

Spoilers for the episode

Story:

The Russians continue to try and find the man in the mask while Matt continues to cause problems for them. Claire is still in hiding and Karen continues to investigate despite Ben’s warnings of the dangers. While Fisk goes on a date and we learn why people are so scared of him.

Recap:

It’s starts eight years ago in a Siberian prison with two brothers planning to escape and find a city where they can be kings. The guards have left the dead body of their cellmate for the rats so one of them makes weapons out of his rib bones. It’s very disgusting.
In Hell’s Kitchen a Russian is escaping from Matt and he gets in a car as Matt pushes a guy out a window and the body lands on the hood. The guy drives away anyway.
Then we cut to Claire sewing up Matt’s shoulder. The guy he threw off the roof in the second episode is in a coma. I’m still surprised he’s not dead. You know after having a fire extinguisher dropped on him from a few floors up, being stabbed in the eye and then thrown off a roof.
Claire’s still in hiding from the Russians so she’s living in her friend’s apartment where she’s meant to be cat sitting. But she’s allergic and only supposed to be coming in twice a day to feed the cat so she’s not having fun.
She tells Matt he needs to get body armour because a bullet’s going to slow him down a whole lot more than the armour will. There’s the reason for him to have a costume and it’s good that they mention it early on because you don’t want that to come out of nowhere. Especially if the audience is used to no costumes.
He pretty much ignores her suggestion but gives her his burner phone to put her number in so he’ll call before dropping by with a major wound that needs stitching.
He asks her if she’s ever heard of Wilson Fisk and she hasn’t. There’s no record of Wilson Fisk he can find. She questions his methods of punching his way through all the henchmen but he says apply enough pressure and someone will break.
Wesley is meeting the Russians who he’s transferred property to through a third party but they are light in payment this week. He says they can’t handle one man and the rooftop people have been talking behind the Russian’s backs. Wesley offers to help them in providing services.
Vladamir insults Wesley as he walks away and points out to his brother that telling people not to say Fisk’s name is just a strategy to make him seem more than a man. Then they decide to wake up the man Matt threw off the roof from his coma.
Elsewhere Karen and Ben are in a diner discussing what happened to her. He doesn’t believe the man in the mask saved her. He tells her to move on because loads of people are dying. He needs credible sources and she’s not credible because of her past.
She points out all his past victories, he brought down the Italian mob, and asks what happened to that man. He says he got old and less stupid.
The Russians visit the coma guy. They’ve got people watching Fisk but he’s cautious and hasn’t come out of hiding yet. Anatoly doesn’t want to loose everything they have to pride and go back to shitting in a bucket.
They drug coma guy to wake him up. They ask him what happened and he says the devil and a woman and gives an address then I assume he dies. They go to her flat and find the boy who found Matt in the dumpster.
Wesley thinks Anatoly is the more reasonable of the brothers but Fisk wants it to be handled quietly. If the brothers can’t handle Matt he’ll find another solution. They stop and he tells Wesley to stay in the car.
He goes into the Gallery and asks the woman from last episode out. I like this scene he’s not overly pushy and respects her answer when she says she’s working and can’t leave. That’s probably why she ends up saying yes. It’s just refreshing from so many stories where the man is determined to convince the woman. Fisk may be evil but at least he respects women.
At the friend’s apartment Claire is still suffering from allergies. I love that she hates the cat. It’s refreshing because so many women end up with cats in stories. There are noises outside and shapes in the window.
At the police station Foggy and Matt are bailing out an electrician who almost burned his house down. Foggy gets in a cab as Matt gets a call from Claire who’s being attacked.
He gets there after throwing his cane away and parkouring on the roofs in his street clothes. I’ve now read enough of the comics to know he’s bad at keeping his identity a secret and it looks like the TV version isn’t going to be any different.
He gets there and she’s gone so he listens. He hears her in the boot of a car and chases but he looses them.
At an auction Karen is there to see who buys the Union Allied computers. Ben turns up as she’s sketching people. He tells her to stop. Two others aren’t bidding either because they’re there to see who else is taking notes. He tells her to win something and meet him later.
At the cab company they pull Claire out of the trunk and she puts up a fight.
Matt goes back to Claire’s and finds Santino all beaten up. He feels guilty for telling them where she was but Matt says it’s not Santino’s fault it’s his. Santino saw them get into the front of a taxi.
Fisk and Vanessa are having dinner in a restaurant. It’s a little awkward and she says he doesn’t do this much. He says he’s been preoccupied for a long time and fiddles with his cuff-lings. She likes the character of Hell’s Kitchen but she didn’t grow up there.
He was sent away when he was young but he came back when he realised the city was part of him. He wants to make it better for people like her.
At the taxi company they interrogate Claire asking for Matt’s name and she gets really beat up. She’s also still calling him Mike at this point so she can’t actually give them his name.
The lights go out so the bad guys turn on the car lights. Matt starts taking them out one by one. Claire gets herself out of her bindings but a guy grabs her. Matt breaks his arm and Claire hits him with a bat. She then breaks down crying and Matt gives her a hug.
Karen meets Ben at a diner. He asks her what she bought. She got office equipment and charged her bid to the law firm.
He was there to investigate too. He told her to move on but he didn’t say he would. A lot of his sources have died because they underestimated what people in power will do to stay in power. They need to be smart so he tells her to sign the union allied papers and then gives her rules about how they are going to do this.
The brothers show up at their Taxi business to find everyone beaten up. Anatoly decides they need Fisk’s help but Vladamir isn’t too keen.
So Anatoly’s smart but not that smart because he decides to interrupt Fisk’s dinner with Vanessa to ask for his help. Even if he wasn’t a psychopath that’s not a good way to ask someone for help. It was Wesley that offered the help so just ask him.
The dinner was going well when Anatoly shows up and ruins it. Fisk rushes Vanessa out of there and tells Wesley to put Anatoly in a car.
Karen tries to explain all the office equipment to Foggy and it’s her lucky day because Foggy was complaining earlier in the episode about not having office equipment.
Matt takes Claire back to his place and patches her up. He’s feeling guilty about her getting hurt and apologises. He didn’t want to put anyone else at risk but she says it was her choice to pull him from the dumpster.
She wants to know he has an end game but he says he’s just trying to make his city a better place. He thinks he’s not making anything any better but she says he is and references the little boy he saved at the end of the second episode. He’s saving people. She’s scared but he can do something about it. He tells her his name because after tonight she’s earned it.
Vanessa is having second thoughts after the Russian intruded. She’s not interested in gestures or whatever it was that happened at the restaurant. She’s not sure him being different is such a good thing.
He enjoyed the date but he promises not to bother her again if she doesn’t want him to. That’s better than most who seem to think they’re entitled to women. She doesn’t know how she feels and walks away.
Wesley acts all ominous in the car to Anatoly. He points out a call would have been more appropriate.
Anatoly wanted to talk to Fisk in person and put everything behind them. Fisk pulls him out of the car and kills him in a way I’ve seen them do on the walking dead. That is how gross it is. He uses the car door to decapitate him. All the while shouting about how Anatoly embarrassed him in front of Vanessa. It has quite an impact. Maybe it’s because the violence doesn’t happen all the time so it holds more weight when it does. And Fisk has been so calm throughout this episode. This is just an explosion of rage.
Fisk tells them to send the remains to his brother. Which is just mean. So it’ll start a war.

Thoughts:

This episode was good. It advanced a lot of plot points while letting us get to know the characters better.
The end of last episode was an introduction to Fisk and this one shows us he has a vulnerable side but you don’t want to see it because it’ll probably be right before he kills you.
I liked his date with Vanessa because she’s not an idiot and he doesn’t push her to be with him. But he’s got a really violent temper and you understand why people fear him.
I now really like Claire. She hates cats and isn’t a victim. She makes it clear to Matt that this was her choice to help him and she understands the consequences.
It’s interesting that Matt and Fisk are both trying to help the city but going about it in different ways. Matt’s trying to help the people not be murdered and abused but I’m not sure how Fisk is helping. I think he’s seeing the bigger picture and not caring about all the little people. He’s got some big plan but we don’t know what it entails. It’s probably to get him more power because that’s what this episode was about. There’s lots of talk of power and how you keep it. The Russians don’t want to loose it while Fisk is only concerned about gaining more.
I like that Karen is now being taught by Ben how to investigate and he lays out how dangerous it is to challenge the powerful. The stakes are getting raised.
Matt questions if he is helping and I think we needed that scene because when you’re in that morally gray area of beating people up who are hurting others you need to question what you‘re doing. Otherwise you can step over the line really easily when you act as judge, jury and executioner. The power goes to your head.
Fisk doesn’t flinch at dealing out death. And as much as I question if the people Matt hurts would actually survive, he’s not actually killed anyone yet. Feeling bad is good. It means you’re on the right side. Matt’s still got empathy for other people and that’s why he’s doing it for the people not for more power.
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