DAREDEVIL addendum

Having now watched into episode six of this new Netflix series, I better understand its huge pull on audiences (it's currently rated 9.2 on the IMDB by more than 38,000 viewers).

Episode five deals in part with the problems of wretched, venal, corrupt, big-city landlords and their tactics in removing unwanted tenants. Having been involved in the activities of one such a group back in the 1970s on a particular block of West 77th Street in Manhattan, and then reading an article in New York Magazine only a bit more than year ago about how this family is still at it, I found myself grabbed all over again by the subject via this particular Daredevil episode.

The series' concern with the downtrodden is not only commendable but handled in such a way that we're made to learn of the despicable tactics of these landlords and what this does to their working-poor tenants, and thus we root all the more strongly for the success of the little group led by lawyer/vigilante Murdock (shown above in the latter guise; below, left, in the former). And if you wonder why some of us look to our entertainment to offer an understanding of what is going on across our country policed by too many cops who are dirty in too many ways, it's because we can find little hope in the reality around us. (For yet another devastating example, read today's report on the TruthOut site about police accountability in Chicago.)

The introduction, at the end of episode three, of Wilson Fisk, in the larger-than-life persona of Vincent D'Onofrio (shown from the rear, below), is inspired -- offering up the major villain of the piece as a lost little boy, suddenly falling in love with both a piece of modern art and the woman from whom he is purchasing that art. Soon enough we see Fisk in another kind of action, as a murderous thug dispensing with an underling in one of the more grotesque killing scenes we've witnessed (yes, this series is way too violent for children).

But for adults ready to be entertained and provoked by the subject of how the increasing combination of money, power, corporations and criminals (you might even think of them as Republicans and/or Libertarians) are taking control of our country, Daredevil is a sure bet. (Ayn Rand would have loathed a show like this.) One of the best individual reasons to subscribe to Netflix, it can be found by clicking here.