Where "Kinbaku" was a keen demonstration on what was happening (or rather, brewing) with Matt's love life, this episode played on what has been going on with Matt's professional life as a lawyer in Hell's Kitchen. To keep things rather short: Matt is a great lawyer when he shows up, which isn't often. His friends have to take the brunt of punishment for those mistakes that Matt makes.

 

 

He can't even blame his vigilante/superhero counterpart for abandoning Foggy and Karen in their moment of need. He can put the blame squarely on Miss Elektra Natchios, who continues to wreak total havoc on Matt's life even after she left his life for ten years. Not that Matt's life is entirely stable as is at the moment -- remember, Daredevil's rise and removal of Wilson Fisk from the world now invites the Yakuza and potentially the Hand to take over -- and that's very much demonstrated in the first scene of the episode following the fight with the Yakuza thugs.

 

The Matt in the diner is much more clear about the rules and boundaries regarding his relationship with Elektra than in the scene in the loft apartment before the Yakuza fight. He very much wants Elektra to leave his life as soon as possible, and will do anything for that goal to become possible. Elektra has the opposite agenda, once again hoping that Matt will see the allure of her way of doing things that he'll cave to his more base instincts. Yes, we've seen certain moments where Matt will give in to the "devil" side of himself, but for the most part, he has restrained himself. I think Matt is still trying to figure out exactly what Elektra's larger agenda is and so he may just be going along with it to see where it can serve his purposes. He thinks the Yakuza is slowly taking over Hell's Kitchen, and then New York City, and I wonder if the implication is that there's a force (such as the Hand) bigger than the Yakuza coming soon enough. Matt just won't see it coming.

 

 

This episode surprisingly dives deep into the legal and ethical complications from the Punisher's murders and crimes. Because he is regarded as the greatest sort of vigilantes whose only purpose in life is be an instrument of vengeance, a lot of the time, we tend to ignore the consequences of his actions. He is rightfully tied up and cuffed to his hospital because he's dangerous (although I question the wisdom of putting him in the same hospital he had terrorized so recently), all the while Nelson, Murdock, and Karen have to negotiate with DA Reyes on his criminal case. We already know that Reyes is using this case as a springboard to the Mayor's office. It's a slam dunk case, a point driven home by the scene where our legal heroes meet the public defender assigned to Frank only to find out that he won't do a thing to stop Reyes from steamrolling everyone and everything.

 

The complication comes when the legal team meets Frank in the hospital for the first time. Aside from the distracting thought that Frank might possibly figure out that Matt is "Red" due to the similar-sounding voice and speech patterns, the whole sequence methodically shows how Frank goes from resigning himself to pleading guilty to changing his mind and pleading not guilty. This seems to be solely attributed to the connection Frank forges with Karen once she revealed that she had found the carousel photo in his house.

 

 

The conversation between the two of them causes Frank's suppressed memories of his dead family to re-emerge, and seems to be the impetus for changing his plea, thus changing the course of the story with Nelson & Murdock's David taking on the Goliath that is the DA's Office and Reyes. While the memories of his dead family are what drives the Punisher to do what he does, I think this makes the show adopt a rather soft stance on what exactly breaks the line between a hero and a vigilante. Once a person steps outside of the confines of the law, they have to stop being regarded as a hero. Frank obviously has no remorse with the actions he has taken so it kind of muddles how Karen reacts to him. This is a man who took a shot at her, with the possible intention to kill her in the hospital, even if she wasn't his primary target.

 

Unlike Matt, Frank just doesn't care about the collateral damage he inflicts. He only cares about achieving the mission objective, and the consequences might just work themselves out on their own. Karen just doesn't seem to accept the fact that he has killed people, and that he has largely escaped facing the fallout of that loss of life. Karen seems to sympathize with Frank because the plot demands it be so, which is something of a disappointment. Yes, there seems to be a conspiracy playing out against Frank so that would give credence to why Karen is so incredulous at the fact that Reyes is throwing Frank under the bus, but that is light evidence to put the audience in line with Karen's point of view.

 

 

Matt avoids having this kind of moral conundrum by sticking to his no-kill policy, even as his Catholic guilt complex has carried many a storyline on this show in the past. And I think Matt recognizes this difference in his initial assessment of the bed-bound Castle, and will likely inform on what he does during the trial when Frank's not guilty plea means Nelson & Murdock is thrust in the spotlight. He can't pull what he does in this episode in the near future, as Elektra takes away his focus on the case just to take a Roxxon ledger.

 

It still bugs me as to why Matt tries so hard to hide Elektra from both Foggy and Karen (shouldn't he have learned that it's a bad idea overall after Foggy found out about his Masked Man alter ego last season?) but it clearly shows the disconnect between Matt's two lives. The civilian side is going to hell with this huge trial that no one saw coming, and now, the theft of the Roxxon ledger will likely incur the wrath of both the Yakuza and the Hand on both him and Elektra. Though, I would suspect that Elektra somehow finds a way to heap all of the danger onto Matt/Daredevil because that's what she does as an overly arrogant agent of chaos. Bad things are coming. The show is just trying to stall for when they actually come about.