TV Review – With “Shoot The Moon”, ‘Daredevil: Born Again’ Is Already Killing Time

Nothing in the young second season of Daredevil: Born Again makes it more clear that the creative team is viewing the season less as a specific installment in an ongoing serial narrative and more simply the second half of the first season than its second episode, “Shoot the Moon.” In it, a dizzying number of plot threads are advanced, introduced, reintroduced, or simply restated. It’s the kind of episode you’d more typically see later in a season, as the endgame is approaching, a way to check a lot of narrative boxes in the short time remaining. That sort of episode coming in the second episode of a season is baffling – but at least makes a little more sense if viewed as episode “1×11” instead of “2×2.”

To offer a plot summary of “Shoot the Moon” would be exhausting, especially a chronological one, given the way the episode jumps from plot point to plot point, often with little segue. Some highlights include: Matt (Charlie Cox) escapes from Cherry’s (Clark Johnson) apartment in the wake of Bullseye’s (Wilson Bethel) intervention in the AVTF attack, unmoored by the assistance he received from his best friend’s killer. Cherry is still alive – so the sprawling cast isn’t so much pruned as expanded, especially since it leads to a return of some of the Cherry/Daredevil-sympathetic cops from last season as well, notably Angie Kim (Ruibo Qian). Also returning from last season: Angela (Camilia Rodriguez), niece of slain vigilante White Tiger, and her aunt, who suddenly become POV characters when they’re caught up in another sequence of distracting verisimilitude involving the AVTF, driving Angela to Kirsten (Nikki M. James) and the Kirsten/Matt Murdock law firm (which also seems to be where Kirsten lives?), where her uncle’s gear just happens to be.

On the villain side of things, Vanessa Fisk (Ayelet Zurer) is haunted by Bullseye, which leads to a trippy-ass dream sequence getting inserted into the episode. Heather Glenn (Margarita Levieva) continues to be The Worst as a result of PTSD. The mayoral team discovers that the anti-Fisk videos have to be coming from inside the (mayor’s) house since it utilizes footage exclusive to that office, leading Daniel (Michael Gandolfini) to lightly shakedown BB (Genneya Walton) while Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) somewhat less lightly shakes down Sheila (Zabryna Guevara). Also, Cole North (Jeremy Isaiah Earl) is back and rejoins the AVTF, shortly before it (somewhat randomly) launches an attack on Josie’s Bar that drives Matt and Karen (Deborah Ann Woll) from their two-episode-long base of operations. That’s…a lot.

To be clear, some of this stuff hangs together better than others. There’s a broad theme of duality running throughout “Shoot the Moon,” both in terms of the usual stuff like the public and private faces of the series’ main duo (Matt Murdock, lawyer/Daredevil, vigilante and Wilson Fisk, magnanimous mayor/actual criminal Kingpin), to the (admittedly brilliant) way Fisk realizes he can weaponize Matt’s dual identity against him (praising Matt while denouncing Daredevil, thereby putting New Yorkers on the lookout for both), to the reveal of BB as the anti-Fisk agitator (officially confirming her status as a “pro Fisk by day, anti-Fisk by night” journalist).

It’s even layered into the way the episode is shot and cut, with extended sequences comparing/contrasting various duos. There’s the back and forth between the Matt/Karen and Wilson/Vanessa bedtime scenes, the episode putting the series’ “heroic couple” in contrast with its “villain couple” even though they aren’t directly interacting. Or the “shakedown” sequences, in which both Fisk and Daniel, to varying degrees of severity and menace relative to their stations, exert their influence over two subordinate (to them) women (of color, it’s worth noting), thereby furthering the quasi father/son, ruler/heir connection between Fisk and Daniel present in the series and punctuated earlier in the episode without outright stating anything.

But for the most part, these bits of thematic and editorial panache, such as they are, are but brief ports in a storm of unrelenting incident in “Shoot the Moon.” It’s never a good thing when any attempt to summarize an episode of TV basically boils down to “and then this happened, and then this happened, then this happened” and there’s nothing that helps connect the previous bit of incident to the next, but that’s largely what this episode is. With the start of the vigilante trials looming in “The Scales and the Sword,” the subsequent episode released at the same time as this one, it seems clear the creators felt the need to speed run through some plot points, thematic punctuation, and narrative business before getting to that. Which is also likely why this episode comes as part of two-fer release; it’s workmanlike, presumably addressing things the story needs to address before it gets to the stuff it wants to do, which while necessary sometimes, rarely makes for a satisfying experience on its own.

The Legal Pad

• This series has largely downplayed the religious aspects of Matt Murdock’s characterization, so I got mildly excited when the episode cut to a church. But then it just turned out to be Bullseye.
• He is looking for Sister Maggie aka Matt’s mother. She’s said to be in Europe, so presumably not appearing in this season, but nice of the show to acknowledge her.
• Cole North is the cop/AVTF officer who seemed mildly reluctant about the group’s extra-legal tactics last season, before appearing to die in the explosion of Matt’s apartment. The comic book version of the character, while complicated, is ultimately sympathetic towards Daredevil, so I’m curious if his insistence on getting back in to the AVTF is part of a secret face-turn, or if the show is straying from the character’s comic book counterpart.
• For all that the sequence involving the AVTF at the bodega (as well as its arrest of the Greek restaurant owner) are once again ripped from the headlines in a less entertaining way, one bit of non-verisimilitude is Fisk realizing he can weaponize Daredevil’s secret identity to his advantage, a tactical move so brilliant it shows Fisk to be way smarter than the president that his mayoral plotline is meant to mimic.
• I’m torn on whether it was good to do the BB reveal so soon, given how obvious it was, or if it was a bad call, as what should have been a big deal largely got lost in the churn of incident in this packed, scattered episode.
• Also, while this episode hardly needed MORE scenes/characters, I did miss Mr. Charles.