Four seasons in, it can sometimes be hard for a network procedural to find new stories to tell. Yet the number one thing I kept writing in my notes tonight was “Oh my god, why hasn’t Supergirl thought to do this before?!?” I don’t know what happened to the Supergirl writers room between seasons,…

There’s a moment in The Lord Of The Rings where Frodo tells Gandalf he wishes he didn’t have to live through such hardship. Gandalf responds, “So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” It’s a quote…

Daredevil’s third season ends with a chill bro named Matt Murdock who’s super laid back about everything. How did Matt become so calm and well-adjusted? I have absolutely no idea! Nothing within this season nor within this episode explains the chipper, relaxed guy Matt has become by the end of this finale. And while,…

“One Last Shot” is the sort of episode that’s hopeful until it’s not. Given its position as the second to last episode of the season, it’s not too surprising that it seems to promise a big win for the good guys only to turn out to have a grim ending instead. But that doesn’t make it any easier to…

It turns out that when you have three likable actors playing a trio of friends, your show tends to be stronger when they’re actually onscreen together. Who knew? After a season of Daredevil that saw Matt distance himself from Foggy and Karen and then a season of The Defenders where he largely did…

There are two different ways to look at this episode. One, obviously, is as an episode of Daredevil’s ongoing third season. The other is as an episode that has to tie together all of the ominous hints about Karen Page’s troubled backstory that have been dropped across multiple seasons by multiple…

This episode opens with Matt righteously yelling at a priest, so obviously I loved it. After two episodes that favored circular plot mechanics over theme and character, “Revelations” returns to what Daredevil does best. This is the first episode since the premiere that showrunner Erik Oleson has a writing credit on…

Hey, remember when I praised Daredevil for avoiding the trope of fridging a female character in order to prove the villainy of one man and motivate the villainy of another? Well consider this my primal scream that “Upstairs/Downstairs” goes ahead and undoes that in the cheapest, laziest, most…

There are a lot of great things about Daredevil’s version of Wilson Fisk. The fact that his road to villainy was paved with good intentions of saving his city is a strong core concept for the character. His “gentle giant who can suddenly snap” demeanor is both captivating and unnerving. And Vincent…

“The Devil You Know” is an episode about two lonely, disaffected men in vulnerable positions. One relies on his support system to guide him towards the light, while the other falls under the spell of a monstrous force that pushes him towards the dark. It’s a relevant, timely story about the power…

There are a lot of upsides to Daredevil’s return to the tone, characters, and plot points of the show’s first season. But there’s one big downside too: If, like me, you watched that season over the course of three days back in April 2015, it can be kind of hard to remember what happened in it.…

Over the course of the past two episodes, a lot of characters have criticized the fact that Fisk has been let out of prison. I can’t quite figure out how much we’re supposed to buy into their point of view. I can definitely get onboard with Foggy’s argument that a murderous criminal kingpin should…

After two smaller scale episodes that largely focused on Matt Murdock, “No Good Deed” switches Daredevil’s third season into a new gear by expanding the show’s world and setting up the major Daredevil vs. Wilson Fisk conflict of the season. Unfortunately, it isn’t the smoothest transition in the…

Though he’s a risk-taking thrill-seeking vigilante, it turns Matt Murdock isn’t a big fan of change. So when his circumstances shift, he tends to reach out for a rigid ideology to define himself by. As a newly blinded, recently orphaned kid, Matt latched on to his Catholic faith as a guiding force…

Daredevil is a show built from familiar pieces assembled in unexpected ways. You see that most clearly in the show’s conception of Matt Murdock. Given his guilt-ridden demeanor, obsession with vigilante violence, and dead-dad issues, Matt could easily feel like a Batman knockoff. Yet rather than…

Michael Shannon is so great at playing over-the-top villains that it’s easy to forget how great he is at playing normal people, too. Writer-director Elizabeth Chomko’s debut feature, What They Had, takes great advantage of Shannon’s everyman likability, casting him as a gruff Chicago bar owner…

In an attempt to fill some cinematic blindspots, I’ve found myself watching a lot of Vietnam War movies this year. And if you watch enough of those films in a row, the storytelling clichés start to become more apparent: the soldier who’s gravely injured just before he’s about to be sent home, the…

For the second outing in this new era of Doctor Who, Chris Chibnall offers an episode that’s part survival story, part mystery, and part character study. On paper, those are great qualities to emphasize this early in the season, as is the choice to make this Doctor’s first intergalactic adventure a…

One of the most fascinating things about watching Supergirl for the past three seasons has been tracing the evolution of its politics. When it launched as a CBS series back in 2015—a month before the debut of Netflix’s Jessica Jones and two years before Wonder Woman’s trailblazing big screen debut—Supergirl was…

John Hughes built a career on exploring teenage archetypes. The Breakfast Club famously featured a brain, an athlete, a basket case, a princess, and a criminal. For the two other films in his trilogy of collaborations with Molly Ringwald—Sixteen Candles, which he wrote and directed, and Pretty In Pink, which he wrote…