DAREDEVIL Season 1 Episode 5
Episode Title: “World on Fire”
Writer: Luke Kalteux
Director: Farren Blackburn
Previously on Daredevil:
One of my greatest fears for Daredevil is that it could succumb to the relationship “shipping” that sometimes overpowers Arrow. I know that there are fans who go crazy for the “Olicity” pairing on that show between Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak. But Arrow is never more CW than when it comes screeching to a halt so that Oliver and Felicity can have another “moment.”
There’s a scene in Daredevil episode 5 that comes very close to being CW-ish when Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) tells Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) that she can’t love a man who is so close to becoming the thing that he’s fighting against. That’s a line that Arrow fans have heard many, many times.
“World on Fire” was very much a romance episode of Daredevil, with the attention split between three couples before the episode lived up to its title.
From this point on, there are full spoilers ahead for Daredevil episode 5!
As alluded to above, Matt and Claire were on the verge of a full blown relationship early in this episode. After the Russian mob discovered Claire’s connection to Matt, he moved her into his apartment until things get settled. And the kissing started soon after.
After five episodes, I’m not surprised that Matt and Claire are the core relationship of the show. Cox and Dawson have a really great, seemingly effortless chemistry between them that is really fun to watch. It was only the aforementioned bit of dialogue about not being able to love Matt that seemed out of place. Aside from that, I really enjoy their scenes together.
The more shocking romantic turn is that Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) and Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) actually do have an attraction to each other. Their bar crawl from episode 2 is going somewhere. Henson had several really funny moments in this episode (“I’m delicious”), but he also had a chance to show off Foggy’s more heroic side when he told off his ex-girlfriend at the rival legal firm and when he brought Karen along to work on housing repairs in the apartment of his latest client.
Foggy and Karen are even kind of endearing together. That said, Karen still drops some hints that she is interested in Matt. She even asks Foggy to touch her face like a blind man would almost as a substitute for something that Matt hasn’t asked to do yet. It’s probably no coincidence that this happened in the episode where we finally “see” the world through Matt’s eyes. He’s not exactly blind, but everything looks like its on fire, hence the name of the episode.
The passions also ran deep between Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Vanessa Marianna (Ayelet Zurer) despite his awkwardness. It’s refreshing that Vanessa had some idea about Fisk’s real nature and she came to the date anyway because she’s into the danger that he represents. To a certain extent, Vanessa even seems to share Fisk’s mindset about his plans for Hell’s Kitchen. When he tells her who and what’s burning in their city, she says “good.”
Getting back to the events of the previous episode, Fisk and his righthand man, James Wesley (Toby Leonard Moore) tricked Vladimir (Nikolai Nikolaeff) and the Russians that “the man in black” decapitated Vladimir’s brother. Naturally, this led the Russian mob to declare war on Matt’s alter ego.
One of the things that this episode kind of glossed over was that Matt got an innocent bystander killed during one of his attacks on the Russian mob. One of the blind couriers from Madame Gao’s operation caught a bullet to the head… and Matt didn’t even seem to react to it or feel any grief about it. Although it was very amusing to see how terrified that Russian mobster was that Matt would take his head.
Another standout sequence in the episode came during Matt’s otherwise innocuous visit to the police station where his gift allowed him to overhear two dirty cops execute one of the Russians who brought up Fisk’s name in the hopes of a deal. Fisk is only slightly aware of Matt’s activities at this point, but Matt seems to realize who his real enemy is.
There was also a nice swerve when it appeared that Fisk’s gambit had backfired against him. Vladimir and the Russians came to believe that Fisk and “the man in the mask” were working together and they planned a massive hit on Fisk… right before Fisk blew up several buildings in Hell’s Kitchen to wipe out their organization.
That explosion was a very clever way to establish where all of the major players were at the time. Fisk and Vanessa were at a higher vantage point as the city burned, while even Foggy and Karen were caught in the outskirts of the explosion. Matt narrowly avoids being taken out himself, only to be surrounded by cops in the series’ first cliffhanger ending.
Silly Netflix, cliffhangers have no power here. I can just watch the next episode right now…
Click here to read CraveOnline’s review of Daredevil Episode 6!
