A+ TV Review: Daredevil (Season 1)

Watch| Netflix Streaming
Starring| Charlie Cox (Matt Murdock/Daredevil); Deborah Ann Woll (Karen Page); Elden Henson (Foggy Nelson); Vincent D'Onofrio (Wilson Fisk); Toby Leonard Moore (James Wesley); Vondie Curtis-Hall (Ben Urich); Ayelet Zurer (Vanessa Marianna); Rosario Dawson (Claire Temple)
Rating| A+

This was my most anticipated show of the year.  I love Charlie Cox (from his role in Stardust) and I love Daredevil (from the few graphic novels I've read him in, particularly Marvel 1602) and I love Marvel, so nothing could go wrong.

And nothing did go wrong.  This, ladies and gentleman, is how you make a television series.  Being able to binge watch it didn't hurt, either.  I can't say anything bad about this show.  I think it hit all the marks it promised to, and I loved everything about those targets.  However, it is VIOLENT.  Graphically violent.  It's not a family show like Agent Carter or SHIELD or even the rest of the Marvel movies right now.  It's dark, and scary, and breathtaking, and bloody.  You've been warned.

Personally, I like a lot of violence in shows and movies.  I don't like it on network TV where any small child could view it, but the more heads rolling the better.  I don't like needless violence like in slasher pics, because it's just happening for the gross out.  Daredevil hit it in the middle.  There were some parts where you could see the blood or the guts or the exposed rib cage on a decaying corpse, but the violence wasn't just made up of moments like that.  It required reading between the lines and listening for bones cracking and people screaming.  And I enjoyed the rawness behind the fighting choreography.  The idea that Matt is just a street level hero was completely sound and well kept.  He takes as many punches as he gives and it's a nice change of pace.

The villains were a high light.  D'Onofrio shines like a star in this show.  His villain has made it into my all time favorites.  A good villain makes for a great hero and an even greater story.  And he's not the only good villain.  His "grunts" and "underlings" are just as good.  I felt threatened by them all like they were real people.  And they were each given a past and thoroughly three-dimensional.  Not just the villains, though, but all the characters.  Besides Matt (who was AWESOME in every sense of the word), Foggy, Karen, and Ben, were individuals with their own goals.  Not just good; but human.  One of my favorite things about the show is that everyone is humanized.  Even the bad guys were just people and not something more (perhaps we should talk about Madame Gao somewhere else...), which was a major theme of the show.

I loved the fact that this show didn't play around with love to much.  There were moments of tenderness between certain characters, but it wasn't a major story line.  And in a situation such as was happening on this series, it would make sense that romance takes a back seat.  It kept the show real and the characters interesting.  Another thing that I loved was that there were no plot holes.  There are moments left open (for later seasons) but they have little bearing on the plot.  Even when there were questions, or things that didn't make sense, they happened for a reason.  Everything came full circle in some really cool and unexpected ways.

The only disappointment... no Easter egg for Age of Ultron or Jessica Jones.  AoU comes out in less than a month so I suppose if I have to I can wait ;)

Basically, this show is worth getting Netflix for if you don't have it already.