I’m a night owl, so being up on the east coast of the US when Netflix posted the entire 13 episode first season of Daredevil wasn’t that big a deal for me. Daredevil IS a big deal for me. He is my favorite character is the Marvel universe. His is the only Marvel book I will never drop no matter who writes it. Aside from Batman, he’s my favorite hero period. I had a very good feeling that Netflix got why the character was so interesting. Now I’ve seen the pilot episode and I can tell you for certain that they do.
From a brilliant opening ten minutes that tells more about the character than some scripts would take ten episodes to do, the pilot establishes the character, Hell’s Kitchen, ties it to the main MCU through several overt allusions to the wreckage of New York in the wake of the first Avengers film (plus a bunch of Easter Eggs for longtime fans) and sets up a season-long showdown between Matt and Wilson Fisk. If it weren’t for Game of Thrones (which we also get back this weekend), I would say Daredevil has the best opening credits sequence on TV. It’s gorgeous and – along with Drew Goddard’s brilliant script – totally in keeping with the best aspects of the character.
My only frustration is that I have to travel all day today and it’ll be tonight before I can mainline more Man Without Fear. It’s only one episode, but House of Cards may not be the best show on Netflix any more. This is that good.
9.75/10
Killing Time 