For a show that typically eschews the trappings of normal superhero fare, Daredevil sure embraced them with gusto in “Condemned.” For the most part it was a bottle episode featuring Daredevil and Vladimir, and for the most part it was successful, save for some minor criticisms.
We begin by seeing Daredevil escape from the cops who were arresting him at the end of “World on Fire.” He does this in the usual Daredevil way: by beating the shit out of them. I’m okay with him being the quintessential man with a hammer, because the fight scenes in this show are so beautiful and brutal I could just watch them all day. Naturally, the cops are dirty, because 99% of the cops in Hell’s Kitchen work for Fisk (earlier, Blake and Hoffman are seen traipsing through one of the bombed-out warehouses, barking orders to kill any surviving Russians). Daredevil and Vladimir escape to a nearby hospital – well, DD carries Vlad’s unconscious body – and it’s at this point that “Condemned” truly begins.
In a great scene, Claire talks Daredevil through cauterizing Vladimir’s bullet wound, which in keeping with Daredevil tradition, he does with a road flare. Vlad’s screams alert a nearby police officer, who calls into dispatch, and then shit starts hitting the fan. While investigating, the cop (Sullivan) gets subdued by DD, who tells him to call in an all-clear to dispatch. Sullivan instead yells out their location, and this is the first instance of things going from bad to worse for our hero.
It’s here that I must make a digression, and voice my one major complaint with “Condemned,” which is with Matt’s extrasensory powers. I get the story of Daredevil, I do, and I’m willing to believe that he’s so finely attuned to his other four senses that he can make his way around a warehouse he’s never been in, and easily win at fights. But there were times in “Condemned” that the show about a masked blind vigilante wasn’t believable. I don’t get how Matt, just by listening, can tell that there’s duct tape and a box of nails, “half empty,” in the room with him. I’ll buy that duct tape and nails have particular smells to them, but wouldn’t everything in this abandoned warehouse be pretty well-coated in dust by now? And even if it weren’t, how would he tell that the box of nails is half empty? Can he hear nails? Is that canonical? Sound off in the comments.
Anyway, back to the actual review.
Vlad and Daredevil have a great back-and-forth. There’s that adversarial chemistry so important to shows like this; it’s hard to pull off, and even though Vlad is more of a one-off villain, it’d be disastrous if he and DD had no chemistry together, because they spend almost the entire episode with each other. They fight more than once, and once again Daredevil does a great job of showing the physical toll that fighting takes.
Fisk contacts Daredevil on Sullivan’s walkie talkie, and this is the scene I’m talking about when I say that “Condemned” is more “superhero” than “noir.” DD and Fisk’s conversation is the classic bit where the villain tells the hero “You and I have a lot in common,” which keeps getting reused despite its ubiquity. Having the tete-a-tete take place over walkie talkies – a man in a mask and a man who won’t say his name, separated even further, yet still so close – was a novel idea, and Vincent D’Onofrio and Charlie Cox bring their usual level of excellence to their roles. But it’s been done. That’s not the most insightful criticism I could offer, I’m sure, but that’s what it boils down to.
Next, Fisk employs the classic supervillain technique of turning the city against the hero. A sniper kills Blake and two other cops, in order to make it look like Daredevil’s doing. Inside the building, a dirty SWAT officer stabs Sullivan in the neck, just to make it that much worse. Daredevil is already long gone, having escaped through an access tunnel grate with Vladimir, who finally gives up the name Leland Owlsley, Fisk’s accountant. Daredevil leaves Vlad in the sewer (at Vlad’s request) and the last shot of the episode resembles nothing more than Daredevil walking out of the mouth of hell. His walk just drives the point home.
Overall, “Condemned” wasn’t a bad episode. I don’t think this show is capable of producing bad episodes. The bottle episode formula was surprisingly successful, save for those two complains I outlined above. But more importantly, Daredevil has a name now, and you know that can’t be good.
A Few Thoughts
- Foggy and Karen take Mrs. Cardenas to the hospital. That’s, uh…that’s about it
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Weirdly enough, Fisk seems to care what his associates think of him. He looked genuinely concerned about upsetting Madame Gao
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You know, if the main character didn’t wear a mask, this whole should could easily be a Denzel Washington movie
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