Daredevil Month: Cut Man

Apologies that this is late. I was kind of busy wrangling second graders for Catechism.

Without further ado, onto the episode.

The episode opens with a young man named Santino finding Daredevil in a dumpster. The young man runs to his neighbor for help. The woman who comes to help is a nurse named Claire (played by Rosario Dawson).

Matt flashes back to his childhood, where he’s watching his father losing a boxing match. His dad arrives home and the young Matt tends to his father’s wounds. Matt finds out that his father gets paid well, even if he loses, and the two agree that it’s now how you fall, but getting back up that matters.

Karen and Foggy have a little flirtation in the office. We also learn that Foggy can’t carry a tune and has bad taste in music. She’s got major avoidance issues, but Foggy knows them when he sees them.

Back in Claire’s apartment, she kind of bashes the all-black outfit and gives Matt an assessment of his damages. Matt refuses to make things personal and begs her not to take him to a hospital. She’s also reluctant to make things personal, but decides to call the guy she found “Mike.”

Flashing back to Matt’s childhood, Matt has major oversensory issues, panicking that he can’t see. His father comes to comfort him. Adult Matt wakes up with breathing problems, but Claire keeps his airflow steady.

Matt finally tells Claire about how he ended up in the dumpster: Russians kidnapped a little boy as part of their human trafficking ring. Of course, it all turns out to be a trap. Claire is kind of skeptical, given his injuries and sadly, the kid hasn’t been found. Matt’s super senses detect that someone is looking for them, going from door to door.

Flashing back again to Jack practicing boxing while Matt gets used to being blind, reading Braille and getting used to hearing loud noises. The bond between the two of them is heartwarming, even when Jack gets offered a match he can’t refuse with someone named Creel. Fans of Agents of SHIELD can already smell trouble afoot. However, the sponsors ask him to rig the fight to lose and threaten him if he doesn’t comply. Little Matt, of course, hears every word.

Back in the present day. Claire lies to the police officer looking for Daredevil. Of course, he can tell when the guy is lying. The cop is in with the Russians (or a Russian pretending to be a cop). Matt decides to drop a fire extinguisher. Unfortunately, Santino saw both of them.

On another side of town, Foggy and Karen are out at a bar called Josie’s as part of the end of a pub crawl. Foggy and Karen insist that they’re not dating, but Foggy still wants to know why Karen hangs around the office all day and hardly, if ever, goes home. It turns out that Karen is reluctant go home because of the traumatic memories she experienced last episode. She feels like she’s always in danger. Foggy points out some people in the room to cheer her up and says that they can stay out all night if she wants to. (Oh the ship tease!)

Out on the roof of Claire’s apartment building, Daredevil preps to interrogate the Russian cop. Claire asks Daredevil who he really is because she’s freaked out about the fact that he’s able to smell cologne through walls, can tell whether or not the cop is really unconscious, and can take an unbelievable amount of punishment without one damn complaint. Daredevil snarks “The last part’s the Catholicism. (He’s right, though. Catholics are kind of masochistic that way.)

Daredevil asks Claire who she is and Claire says that she was an ER nurse who treated three men that he beat up as well as a waitress he saved. She isn’t so sure that interrogation is the right thing to do.

Little Matt reads a speech from Thurgood Marshall about justice and democracy. He also feels out his father’s boxing outfit for the first time. He asks Dad if they always get up after a fight. Later on, Jack decides to change the odds and put the money in Matt’s name instead of rigging the fight to lose. He calls up a woman (most likely his exwife) and tells her to take care of Matt.

In the present day, Foggy and Karen show up at Matt’s apartment trying to get him to come out, with no idea he’s missing and very, very drunk. With no sign of Matt, they decide to go off to the fish market. Karen decides that she’s ready to go home. And this is when I start totally shipping them.

The Russian cop wakes up to see Daredevil and Claire, in a white hoodie and mask.Daredevil interrogates the guy about where the boy is. Claire gives him some pointers about where he can cause the most damage and Daredevil follows suit. He cuts the man down and leans him over the edge of the roof. He claims to be a sadist and the Russian finally gives a location, saying that it’s a trap. Daredevil pushes the guy off the roof into the dumpster and assures Claire that he’s not dead. He tells Claire lay low, but he needs her help patching up. He thanks her for her help. Claire says that she doesn’t believe what he told the Russian about enjoying the kill, but Daredevil walks out without a word.

Jack Murdock goes into the battle and takes down Creel, with Matt watching with enjoyment. The crowd cheers for Murdock…only to cut to Jack being shot shortly afterwards. Little Matt finds his father dead in an alley.

The scene cuts to the Russians, feeding the little boy they kidnapped in some run-down building. Daredevil comes in, with the start of the fight taking place behind closed doors. He beats up some more mooks in the hallway and holds out in spite of his earlier injuries. It’s interesting that the camera chooses to focus on the hallway and not lead the audience into the other rooms where Daredevil is fighting everyone else, but I’ll assume it’s your usual close-quarters fighting. Daredevil unlocks the door and unmasks himself before getting the boy out to safety. He puts his mask back on and carries the little boy out.

This is a great follow-up to the first episode and was definitely not what I expected. We get to see Matt’s origin story, complete with the death of a parent, and see that Daredevil starts to trust others (albeit not his coworkers) with his secret. There’s major ship tease going on between Karen and Foggy and it’ll be interesting to see where that goes, but mostly I like that the fight scenes aren’t actually the focus here. It’s more centered on characters making choices for the better or for the worse.

I promise that tomorrow will have another recap. I only teach Catechism once a week, after all.