War is coming to Hell’s Kitchen. That’s the message of “Bang,” the tense, thrilling slow burn beginning to season two of Marvel’s Daredevil. It takes balls to start a season with a slow episode, but Daredevil did such a great job of establishing its identity in its first season that it can get away with it. Director Phil Abraham, a veteran of character-driven dramas like Mad Men and Halt and Catch Fire, steadily ratchets up the tension before releasing it all in an episode-ending fight that nicely earns the episode its title. The episode is imperfect, but it’s a solid return.
No matter what really happens in “Bang,” it all amounts to the same thing: the Punisher is coming. We get our first glimpse – of a sort – when he takes out an entire dozen-man meeting of Irish gangsters. The meeting scene is long (and arguably unnecessary), but it’s as good a way as any to establish that Wilson Fisk’s absence has created a power vacuum, and Hell’s Kitchen is set to become a war zone as the competing factions – the Irish, the Yakuza, the bikers – all vie for power. The Irish might be a little shorthanded, though, as the Punisher shows up and blasts them all to smithereens.
The massacre – there’s no other word for is – is one of Abraham’s best-directed sequences. We never see the Punisher, only his results, and that’s largely the point of the character. When everyone in the bar is dead, Abraham’s camera lingers on the broken glass and bloodied corpses as if compelling us to consider the implications of one man capable of such efficient savagery. Consider that – turned on the characters we love.
That character bonding is one aspect of “Bang” that isn’t as successful. We’ve seen Matt, Foggy, and Karen become a team, so we don’t really need a reiteration of that theme. Especially because Elden Henson is still overplaying Foggy, although he and Charlie Cox do admittedly have good chemistry (as if there’s any other kind of chemistry to be had with Charlie Cox). The three of them might not make that good of a team, though; Nelson & Murdock is flat-broke, probably owing to their policy of accepting bananas and strawberry-rhubarb pie in lieu of money. (In my notes I wondered why Daredevil couldn’t just steal money from criminals, then mock up invoices explaining that their clients paid them in cash. Then I realized I just invented money laundering. It’s a good idea!)
So: the Punisher. We don’t see him until minute 43 of a 48-minute long episode, and the show pretty much builds him up that entire time. Daredevil sees his handiwork up close: cartel members slaughtered and hung on meat hooks, a method also used by Leatherface. Foggy hears about it secondhand, from a member of the Dogs of Hell (the obligatory Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. tie-in), who tells Foggy about a “rival crew” massacring some of their members. This is a good combination of showing and telling, and paints a vivid picture of the Punisher’s equal-opportunity stance on vigilante justice.
So with all that talk of what a badass he is, it’s inevitable that Daredevil would screw up his entrance, right? WRONG. The Punisher moves at the implacable speed of a nightmare: never running, always close behind. Jon Bernthal was an inspired choice for the role, and in a show so heavily centered around body language and physicality, he nails his. There’s nothing tactical or showy about the Punisher’s movement. He’s efficiency in human form; look how he disarms a security guard and disassembles his gun without breaking stride.
And it was smart to get the Punisher vs. Daredevil fight out of the way early. I’m certain this isn’t the last one we’ll see, but as villain introductions go, it’s hard to get much better than this (it’s pretty much the polar opposite of Wilson Fisk’s intro last season, and it works very well). The Punisher was originally a Spider-Man villain, and it looks as though Daredevil wants to stay true to those roots. You know what’s a good way to do that? Have him take potshots at Karen, then shoot Daredevil; cut to credits as our hero falls off a roof.
Welcome back, Daredevil.
A Few Thoughts
- Karen is a cool customer. She didn’t even slow down when the Punisher was shooting at her car
- “No ‘they.’ Him. It’s one man.”
- I dug the cold open (heat wave joke, get it?), but do we really need another shot of a hero standing on a rooftop, overlooking the city?
- Matt, stop saying things are “epic.” It’s 2016. That is not tril
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