Leopold and Loeb were famously brutal murderers who Clarence Darrow helped avoid death sentences. Loeb was killed in prison, but Leopold went on to help improve life in his prison, participate in malaria research, and work as a medical lab technician – probably helping to save and benefit many more lives than he took. As Matt Murdock might put it, he got a chance to try, and he took it.
For a show that is primarily about people beating the absolute crap out of each other, Daredevil gets pretty deep.
I’ve always had some mixed opinions about murder and retribution. I don’t support the death penalty, I don’t think the state should be killing people at all, let alone based on our rather … spotty judicial system. At the same time, the idea that a surviving family member or lover who knew who the killer was might go after them, I think I’d have a hard time not sympathizing. I guess at a bottom line, I agree that there are some people who just need to die.
Or I did, at least. Maybe I still do. But Daredevil, in its first four episodes, presents some pretty compelling illustrations of how it might not ever be that simple. What does Karen “deserve” for killing Wesley? If some or even many people in a group do something terrible, do all of them “deserve” retribution? Can we ever judge a person as an individual, when as Father Lantom puts it, we are each “a whole world”, a web of connections to other people?
Moving past the thinking stuff, the excellence of the fight choreography continues in this second season. They make some clear nods to the famous hallway fight in the first season, along with the echoes of The Raid movies, Oldboy, etc. So much more than the super senses, it makes a case that Daredevil’s main superpower is that he just won’t stay down. Somebody needs to get Matt an audiobook of Concussion though. Helmets won’t save you.
At this point I expect a character played by Jon Bernthal to be an asshole, honestly, but the writers broke past that and Bernthal sold it. He gives a speech that at one level is entirely predictable but as a whole will tear you up. So much better for being unexpected, and part of why I can’t wait to watch the rest.