Daredevil S02 E04 – Leave the dog alone.

Previously: Matt and Frank had feelings on a roof.
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Penny and Dime

Annie: We open on a wake? A funeral? Basically, a man is giving a toast in what looks like a church, surrounded by lots of caskets and lots of baddies. Finn shows up and the baddie henchmen pull their guns. The toast-giver tells the henchmen to put their guns away and bring his friend Finn a drink. 

Finn opens a casket and starts talking about how he didn’t want this dead guy to follow in his footsteps and now he’s dead. Toast-giver guy unhelpfully points out that death is kind of part of the gig, and Finn stabs him in the eye with an ice pick. He just pushes that thing right in and man. These noises are gross. 

Catherine: Effective way to get a point across, though. 

Marines: Yeah, nothing says “wow what a bad guy” like the Foley folk going ham on the squish noises. 

Annie: Once the toast-giver is good and dead, Finn threatens the gathered goons that if they don’t find the shooter that stole his money and killed his son, they’ll all be dead too. For effect, he dumps his son out of the casket.

With some threats and gun-waving, the goons are able to get the address to Frank’s (the shooter and stealer’s) apartment. 

Finn and his goons go to Frank’s apartment. There is no money to be found, but Frank’s dog is there. I am genuinely concerned about the wellbeing of this dog, it’s giving me anxiety. They steal his dog and leave. Cut to Frank watching them from across the street.

JUSTICE AND WAX!

Matt’s apartment. Karen knocks on the door; Matt tells her he’s almost ready. She helps Matt tie his tie for Grotto’s funeral. Matt admits he’s recovering from something, but not sure what it is. Karen asks if he’s feeling better, and he says he isn’t. Matt gets a little flirty and tells Karen he bets she’s good at tying a tie. Karen explains that it’s all thanks to her brother, and Matt is surprised she has a brother. Karen tells him he never asked. You know. Cuz Matt’s a little into himself.

Mari: He has a lot going on! All these bad guys aren’t going to beat themselves up in hallways!

Annie: Grotto’s funeral. The priest is talking about how he died without redemption, with only Matt, Karen and Foggy to call as friends. Like funerals are no walk in the park, but this one is extra depressing.

Matty, who has to make it all about him always and forever, asks to have a word with the priest. The priest tells Matt that he did everything that he could, but Matt is carrying that heavy Catholic guilt and wants forgiveness and doesn’t get why he’s still feeling so guilty. Priest explains that guilt can be a good thing. It lets you know that something is wrong and that your work isn’t finished yet.

Cut to the Punisher, dressing his wounds in the dark, using a flashlight to see. He finishes and the camera falls on the briefcase at his feet. Is he living in that van now? 

Karen is showing Matt and Foggy the x-ray of Frank’s head, saying that he’s lucky to be alive. She figures there’s got to be a Reason the ADA gave the file it to her, and while she doesn’t want to come off sounding like a crazy conspiracist, she thinks Reyes might be trying to cover something up. 

She decides that they need to find Frank Castle. Foggy goes to answer the phone and Matt and Karen flirt a bit. Matt is complementing her on how she’s got great qualities and NO PLEASE STOP THIS.

    Foggy interrupts and gets Matt back on task. 

Foggy and Matt are discussing lawyer things and call out to Karen. But Karen’s not there. Neither are the files. Matt wants to chase off and do the rescue the damsel in distress, but Foggy tells Matt to find the Punisher first.

DD!Matt finds Melvin, who’s all excited about the new and improved Daredevil suit. Apparently, Melvin’s business is booming and there are a lot of people needing fancy suits. DD asks Melvin if he’s made anyone gear, but Melvin swears he’s not doing that anymore. Melvin tells DD to stay safe, and that he’s even making himself his own suit. (What could possibly go wrong?)

Karen finds a very nervous former hospital employee named George Buck. He asks her if she’s one of them, and she explains she just wants to help him get his job back. She offers to buy him a cup of coffee. 

Outside, Karen is interrogating Buck about Frank, who he only knew as John Doe. He explains the bullet went right through his head. The only visitors Frank had were men and women in suits and earpieces. Buck says the suits pushed for a DNR on Frank, and that they pulled the plug on him and he even died. But Frank then came back to life. Frank then grabbed Buck by the scrubs and demanded he take him home. Seems fair. You don’t say no to guys who can survive being shot dead.

Buck tells Karen he knew he shouldn’t have done it, but he did it anyway. (M: On account of the scary death defying man…) Karen asks him if he has an address.

Carousel of Horrors. It’s not actually, but I find nothing good happens at carousels. Frank is sitting on a bench just watching the carousel until long after no one’s riding it anymore and they shut the lights off. 

One of Finn’s goons sit down next to Frank, and he’s brought friends. They stab him with a syringe of something and shout about how they want Frank alive. Even though he’s been drugged, Frank still manages to get a hold of Goon 1’s gun and gets in some murders. The drug is starting to take effect and Frank is struggling. Finn and more of his goons finally take him down with the help of some tasers.

Crime scene. Mahoney shows up, draws his gun and finds Daredevil waiting. They argue about who’s on which side for a bit. DD is insisting they’re on the same side, but Mahoney tells Daredevil that he’s on his own side.

Mahoney gets radioed about the shooting at the carousel. When he looks up, Daredevil is gone.

Karen is detective-ing again. She takes a cab to Frank Castle’s place and performs some casual breaking and entering. 

Back at the carousel, Daredevil arrives. With his super!hearing he finds one of the goons is still alive. Daredevil tortures the goon into telling him where Frank is.

Speaking of Frank, he’s getting beat up by Finn’s goons. Finn downs a bunch of drugs and asks the goons to give him some alone time with Frank. Finn wants his money back and Frank headbutts him. Finn gets out the power tools and drills into Frank. Have I mentioned how much I absolutely hate torture scenes? Okay, good. Because I fucking HATE torture scenes.

Catherine: Same. And there are more than a few of them on this show.

Mari: I feel the need to also mention that I hate them, to really drive home the point that this is the worst. 

Annie: Chez Frank Castle. Karen is snooping around. She finds a lot of kid’s stuff.  Toys, and a kid’s bedroom. She finds a kid’s book with the same phrase that Frank used earlier (One batch, two batch, penny and dime). Coincidence? Karen keeps searching the house and finds a bunch of  framed photos of a little girl, a photo of Frank kissing the pregnant belly of a lady, and photos of Frank in uniform, a long with his military medals.

Back at Finn headquarters, Daredevil shows up to surprise the goons guarding the house. And then he knocks them out.

Finn is threatening to torture Frank’s dog. Okay. I don’t like torture scenes. I fucking HATE hurting animals even more, so I’m fucking out if we torture the dog, this is bad news for my DD recapping days.

Mari: I feel like if the recap just suddenly ended and we never recapped another episode of DD again, the people would understand.

Annie: Frank saves the day by telling Finn where his van is stashed. In exchange for this info, Finn’s going to let Frank live until he’s got his money back. Finn calls someone and tells them where to find the van.

Meanwhile, Daredevil is still FIGHTING.

Two goons find Frank’s van, the money and that it’s been rigged to go boom. Oops.

Back at Finn HQ, shit is going down. Frank has broken free of his ties, makes quick work of a goon and steals his gun and shoots his them all.

Mari: Okay I have to also mention that Frank gets free because he planted a blade in his own arm, like what the fuck. He digs it out to cut his binds– SIR. IT’S TOO MUCH.

Annie: Finn is shot. Frank is standing over him and asking Finn who killed his family. Finn gives zero fucks about who killed Frank’s family, even with a trigger-happy Frank standing over him. Frank doesn’t like that answer, and shoots Finn. RIP, Finn. 

Goons are closing in on Frank, but Daredevil shows up and takes the goons by surprise. Frank wants to kill them all, but that’s not Daredevil’s jam. They agree to not murder any of them, but Frank isn’t happy about it. Daredevil helps Frank up.

    Karen is still snooping around, as she sees a van rolls by the house. Karen keeps poking around and it looks like Frank had a wife and two kids, according to the photos. Karen spots a family photo taken at a carousel. The van pulls up outside the house. Maybe Karen should leave?

Daredevil gets Frank to a graveyard. He is hurt pretty badly. They’re bantering and Frank admits he was wrong about Daredevil being a pussy. DD asks Frank about the weird penny and dime rhyme. Frank explains it as being a line from his daughter’s favourite book.

Frank tells Daredevil that in his time in the military, he never got scared, that it was always easy for him to kill and watch his buddies die. He said the first time he got scared was on the plane going home, worried he wasn’t going to actually make it home. Frank tells Daredevil about seeing his daughter again for the first time, about how he went straight to her school and that his daughter didn’t know he was there. He says he couldn’t understand how his daughter, something so beautiful, could be from him. Frank talks about when his daughter spotted him, she ran to him and they hugged and he cried and the teacher was filming it all for YouTube. Frank talks about how his daughter held him up and how he got home and it was just the same as when he’d left it. He tells DD about how his daughter begged him to read her the book, but he was too tired, he promised her that he’d read it to her the next night. But he didn’t know that she wasn’t going to have a tomorrow. Frank tells Daredevil that he thinks he’s done.

It is heartbreaking. 

Catherine: It is. I’m not a huge Punisher fan because of the whole, ya know, wholesale murder thing and I truly, truly do not believe that he is the type of hero that we need to be seeing on TV right now. But…his backstory is sad? Where was I going with this? 

Mari: Exactly to my feelings. The whole tortured murderer is not exactly new ground, but Jon Bernthal sells it pretty well. I also think it works because all of Matt’s enemies are warped counterparts of his. He could’ve easily been this dude, and so we feel something about that even if we don’t necessarily feel for the guy who thinks the wholesale murder route is the best route.

Annie: The police show up and Mahoney is keen on arresting both Daredevil and Frank. Daredevil talks his way out of it by telling Mahoney he should take this win and good PR and take all the credit himself. That to keep the Kitchen safe, Mahoney has to be the one that takes Frank in. Mahoney releases DD and tells him that he doesn’t know who DD is, but that he knows DD ‘ain’t him’.

Matt, Karen and Foggy are celebrating with drinks, with news of the arrest all over the TVs. Matt asks Karen if she’s okay and touches her arm. He then asks her about her brother. 

Outside, Foggy is making fun of Matt, telling him he might just end up happy if he isn’t careful. (C: LMAO. Don’t worry, he never does.) (M: Esecially not if Foggy is gonna say stuff like that, this is TV Foggy my god.) Foggy heads home as Karen joins Matt outside. Karen offers to walk him home. In the rain. 

Karen and Matt stop and laugh and get rained on. There is this weird slow-mo thing as Matt ‘watches’ a raindrop fall on Karen’s skin and listens to her breathing and then they kiss. And I am super not here for this. Boooooo. Team Heartless Cow! 

Catherine: I don’t even think this counts as Team Heartless Cow. I love them both, but they are God awful together and it only gets worse. 

Mari: This is not the foreshadowing I wanted, Catherine.

Annie: Karen tells Matt that she’ll go out with him. NOOOOO. And they part ways.

Inside his apartment, Matt grabs a cold one and is enjoying himself a little too much. The moment doesn’t last, though, as he has to catch something thrown at him. Big reveal: Elektra is sitting on his couch.

  Fade to black.

 

Next time on Daredevil: Ex-lover brings trouble in S02 E05 – Kinbaku.