The Defenders Season 1 Review (SPOILERS)

We live in a day of cinematic universes where everyone is trying to copy what Marvel did with "The Avengers" and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Although it seems like many have forgotten that Marvel rolled things out slowly by making five individual movies before bringing them together in "The Avengers," thus a lot of these attempted cinematic universes have been really sloppy and disappointing, making it so the novelty has worn off, thus in turn making it so my standards for these cinematic universes and movie/TV crossovers are much higher than they once were. But with Marvel's TV universe I had faith that they would do it right since they are the once who started this game. But before I dive into my thoughts on the first season of "The Defenders," I need to talk about the four individual shows that have led up to "The Defenders," since I have yet to do so on this blog. I've been really excited for this show to come out so that I finally have a good, timely excuse to talk about all of these shows. Because this has been a fun, yet very difference universe than Marvel's cinematic version. I'm not going to do in-depth reviews of each show, but I'm going to cover the basics so that you know where I am coming from before I talk about this big crossover event.

Daredevil

"Daredevil" is easily the best show of the bunch for me and I thoroughly enjoyed both seasons, albeit the first season slightly more than the second. While Marvel has been very timid to go all dark and grim with the MCU, they hold nothing back in "Daredevil" as this is Marvel's version of a hard R superhero TV show. Not for language, sexuality or nudity, but for the unrestrained graphic violence and overall dark nature of the show. But of course, many who avoid R-rated movies like the plague for some odd reason had no qualms jumping right into "Daredevil" because the MPAA doesn't deal with TV. But what can you do. Laugh at the double standards and move on with life? Now I loved this tone, not because I require graphic violence in my shows, but because there are real stakes here. At any given moment, any character, whether big or small, could wind up dismembered, decapitated or brutally injured at any given moment. Thus the tension is super high throughout, leaving me on the edge of my seat the entire time and practically forcing me to keep going to the next episode. Having been late to the party after not having Netflix for a while, while I finally watched "Daredevil," I rather quickly binged both seasons in less than a week or two.

As far as specifics go, season 1 was the origin story of "Daredevil," and although I'm picky with origin stories due to so many of them being so similar, thus making it easy to dive into cliche territory, "Daredevil" season 1 is on the level of "Batman Begins" when it comes to origins. In addition to the dark, gritty, tense tone, the character development of Matt Murdock, Foggy Nelson and Karen Page is perfection. All three characters are fantastic in their own way and react to each situation in very real, humanistic ways. The way they grow together as a team makes you really care for all of them, which in turn tears you apart when they grow apart after eventually learning of Matt Murdock's secrets as not only playing "Daredevil" at night, but also of these powers he's had since he was young that he went years keeping from his friends. It's easy for some shows to quickly arrange the main characters as this secret super team like in "Arrow" or "The Flash," but that's not the route "Daredevil" goes. We go the realistic, human route, which adds to the dark, gritty nature of the show as not only does Matt Murdock have to deal with all the monstrosities happening in the city, but he also has to deal with his friendships falling apart and his lawyer career failing him.

Then of course we have Vincent  D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk. In addition to being super picky about origin stories, the other thing I am super picky about is villains. Dark, ominous and scary is nice, but I've really grown tired of villains being evil just for the sake of being evil and attacking the hero of the show because that's what they are supposed to do. The most important element of a good villain for me is motivation. Why are they doing what they do? What happened to them that caused them to be who they are? I'm not going to lie, Wilson Fisk in the first season of "Daredevil" just might be one of the best villains in an superhero story in the history of ever. The show spends time developing his character. You dive into his backstory quite a bit and you really feel for him. You understand him. You know exactly why he's developed into such a cold-hearted monster. Yet even as he's cunningly terrorizing the city with his perfect, subtle plan, you still feel for him. And you're also scared to death of him when he's on screen because they also managed to capture the dark, ominous and scary elements of his character perfectly. There are no flaws with him. Thus we have the perfectly setup hero story clashing against the perfectly setup villain story.

Season 2 of "Daredevil" naturally suffers from the lack of Wilson Fisk, even though he's still there building up his empire in prison as Kingpin. It also naturally suffers from the fact that Matt Murdock has arrived as Daredevil since the journey in season 1 of him becoming Daredevil was so intriguing. But there's still a lot of fun to be had as he's fully suited up in the rather awesome Daredevil costume. Season 2 also introduces The Punisher and Elektra, two characters that I really loved. The Punisher is the perfect anti-hero. He's dark, scary and does a lot of bad things. But he does them for the right reasons, thus you get the perfect contrast between him and Daredevil who both have the same goal and same motivations, but have exact opposite philosophies on how to accomplish these goals. Then we have Elektra who simply does what she wants to do. She's neither good nor bad. She has no real loyalties other than to herself, but starts to fall in love with Matt Murdock, making things very complicated for the both of them as their lives are seemingly heading in opposite directions, but they can't help falling for each other anyways, which nearly destroys both of their lives. I really enjoyed it their unique, both strong chemistry as this doomed couple.

Perhaps the biggest problem with season 2 for me was the lack of an interesting overarching villain. We did some stuff with Wilson Fisk, but I got the feeling that much of that was setting up future story arcs. The actual main villain, or main villains, was the organization of the Hand, which I never honestly cared too much for. They were the mysterious, evil ninja organization quietly taking over the world. Much like the Foot Clan in "Ninja Turtles" or the League of Assassins or the League of Shadows in DC. It felt too much like a "been there, done that" for me. And done more interestingly at that. It made for some fantastic action sequences, but the organization remained too much of a mystery for me to really be invested. And when we got the payoff in "The Defenders," it wasn't very good. Thus we instead probably focused a bit too much on The Punisher and Elektra because the season didn't have much else to do. It made me excited for "The Punisher" show coming out later this year, but I feel we dwelt on that a little too much and we focused way too much on Elektra. Again, I loved her character. But I would've rather had her be a side character they built up cleverly instead of being the whole focus of the season. But overall it was still a very enjoyable season.

Jessica Jones

After clearing through both seasons of "Daredevil" super fast, I immediately jumped right into "Jessica Jones," as I couldn't hold in my excitement. And even though this show is a much different one than "Daredevil," I enjoyed it nearly as much. In fact, I'd probably slide the first season of "Jessica Jones" right in between season 1 and 2 of "Daredevil" in terms of my personal enjoyment. There's less to say here on this post because there's less show to cover. And maybe we could've even chopped this season down a bit to be more focused, but the first thing that jumped out to me with this show is that it doesn't feel like a superhero TV show at all. It was more of a drama surrounding this very broken woman who doesn't give a crap about the world and decides mostly to drink away her problems and sleep with various guys, mostly Luke Cage, though, in order to try to hide her real world responsibilities while occasionally doing some private investigating on the side, focusing specifically on busting men cheating on their wives, because that's something that she's good at that will also get her enough money to pay the bills. She hates the fact that she has powers and she rarely uses them. When she does use them, it does a good job of surprising the audience in a good way.

What Jessica can't get away from is this crazy psychopath named named Kilgrave, who is directly responsible for ruining her life. Kilgrave is brilliantly portrayed by David Tennant, many people's favorite Doctor from "Doctor Who." As I said in the "Daredevil" portion of this post, I'm really picky with villains, which is why you shouldn't take it lightly that I also loved Kilgrave. While very different than Wilson Fisk, this man is a legitimate psychopath. He has these powers where he can tell people to do anything he says and they have to obey. Seems like a useful ability to have, right? Ha ha. No. It's completely ruined him and he legitimately can't help himself. He's not just an evil man purposely using evil powers to ruin the world. He's a very broken man whose been destroyed by these powers and has thus become like an alcoholic in that he has to use the powers because he doesn't know any different. And when you make him angry or get in his way, there's not much you can do because he'll just tell you to go do some random task for an infinite amount of time that will either slowly kill you or drive you completely insane. Or he might just accidentally tell you to go screw yourself without even realizing what he just did or what that might lead to.

Now imagine you are a girl in Jessica's position and Kilgrave has decided that you're his lover. Yeah, life will very quickly go down the drain, which is what destroyed Jessica. The whole first season of this show is her trying to figure out what to do with this guy. Does she give in and throw her life down the drain for the greater good of the city or does she try to find a way to stop him? But how to stop him? She can use her detective skills to try to find something against him and turn him into the police. But how is she going to convince the police exactly who he is and what he has the power to do? And how does she find evidence and proof for the police to buy her story? And even if they do, what next? How does she successfully turn him into the police when he can just walk into the police station and make the whole police force do exactly as he says? Of course she has the option of killing him, but even though she is a depressed drunk who doesn't care about the world, she also has a conscience and committing murder is something that crosses her moral boundaries. She refuses to go that route. Yes, despite the show perhaps being a few episodes too long, I was fully invested into this story, especially when we got to the second half and things got really intense.

Luke Cage

This one is going to be a lot shorter than the other two. Because I only got four episodes into this show before I gave up on it. Listen, Luke Cage is a great character played fantastically by Mike Colter. And after he was introduced in "Jessica Jones," appearing in seven episodes, I was excited to see him in his own adventure. But when we got to his own adventure, I just wasn't sucked in. If I'm uninterested in a movie, I'll most likely bite the bullet and finish it, because it's only a couple of hours. But a TV show is a much bigger time investment. I don't have time to sit and watch every TV show that shows up and when I start a show and fail to get invested after four episodes, it's hard for me to keep going. There were times when I had the idea to go watch another episode of "Luke Cage" after I got to the point I did, but in every instance I ended up choosing to do something else with my life because I just wasn't interested enough. And yes, many of those instances included me deciding that 50 minutes extra sleep sounded more interesting that 50 minutes of "Luke Cage." Perhaps I prefer him as a side character in other shows rather than being front and center in his own.

Iron Fist

This one is even easier. I didn't watch "Iron Fist." I'm not as big of a TV buff as I am a movie buff. I was planning on watching all of shows leading up to "The Defenders" before watching "The Defenders." But after I couldn't get myself interested enough to finish "Luke Cage," I became even less interested in even starting "Iron Fist," especially given how many negative reviews the show received. Yes, I know. I should give it a chance anyways. After all, I did like "Supergirl" after a lot of people came out and hated it. But in this instance I simply ran out of time decided to jump right into "The Defenders" without even starting "Iron Fist." I figured if Danny Rand impressed me enough in "The Defenders," I would perhaps go back and watch his show. But, well, spoiler alert. I hated his character in "The Defenders." He almost completely ruined the show for me. So I think it's safe to say that I made the correct decision.

The Defenders

And now we've arrived to the show in question. The one you really clicked on to hear me talk about. Now fair warning. As mentioned in the title of this post, this analysis will contain season 1 spoilers. I'm not going to mention every detail of every episode, but I'm going to type as if you've already watched the show. So if you haven't seen our short eight episode crossover, then just know that I found this entertaining enough to give a pass to. But this is no way on par with Marvel's "The Avengers" and is also a significant step down from both seasons of "Daredevil" as well as "Jessica Jones." But I was intrigued enough to keep going after each episode and with only eight episodes of show, this was a really quick binge even on a busy weekend. So go check it out and then you can come back and we can compare notes as to what we thought. Also a quick note. I didn't watch "Iron Fist" or most of "Luke Cage" and I didn't feel lost. I imagine you could also get away with not having seen all of "Jessica Jones." But don't go into this show without having seen both seasons of "Daredevil." I don't know why you would do that anyways. But since this plays more of a continuation of "Daredevil" than anything, you're going to want to be caught up there.

The biggest problem with "The Defenders" is that the major focus of the show is on exactly the organization that I admitted to not being a huge fan of. The Hand. But this time the man behind the curtain, so to speak, has been unveiled and we are up against the five fingers of the Hand. None of whom are anywhere close to as interesting as R'as al Ghul or the Shredder. When you don't have interesting leadership, it's hard for me to care. The big boss is Sigourney Weaver, who does not pull off ominous, scary mastermind very well at all and she rather stupidly puts all her cards into a basket that all of us knew was never going to work out for her. Elektra. Because after Elektra got killed in "Daredevil," Sigourney Weaver revives her as soulless, zombie Elektra, like we all knew was going to happen. And of course you can guess from scene one that Elektra is not quite as soulless as Sigourney Weaver was hoping. Oh, and yes, the Hand also needs Danny Rand, the almighty Iron Fist, who doubles as the stupidest and most annoying character on the show, as a key to unlock some sort of final plan that's going to help the Hand destroy New York. Because, you know, why not? "The Avengers" focused on destroying New York City, so why not "The Defenders"?

That paragraph certainly sounds like I am about to take a dump all over this show. But I'm not. I just found the overall premise of these episodes to be a bit underwhelming. But good ole Charlie Cox, Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter did their absolute best to take such a silly premise and make it work, even though Finn Jones seemed dead set on sabotaging the whole thing. Yeah, if I haven't made it abundantly clear at this point, I really hate Danny Rand in this show. I actually took notes during the show because I knew I was going to be typing this up and one of my immediate notes when the Hand waltzes in and claims they need Iron Fist, I wrote, "Take him, please." It would be a worthy sacrifice to dispose of his character and put us all out of our misery. Then we could focus on the other three. With Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, we all knew from "Jessica Jones" that those two had great on-screen chemistry. Add Matt Murdock into the bunch and we have some pretty great interactions especially when they are trying to get to the point where they are trusting each other, despite them all having deep, dark secrets. That made for some good drama and some entertaining moments. And the show did a great job of making fun of Danny Rand for being a dumb character. I was happy.

Another major problem is that the show does take a long time to get started, which had me confused because there were only eight episodes to begin with. I had no idea why they were dragging their feet so much. It didn't help that this season doubled as "Daredevil" season 3, "Jessica Jones" season 2, "Luke Cage" season 2 and "Iron Fist" season 2. They painted themselves into quite the corner here because they were going so far sideward that it was hard to progress forward. Thus it took them four episodes to progress forward one episode's worth of content. Suddenly we're halfway through and it seems like we just got started. In the middle of that, it didn't seem like they had a great plan of how to get these four together, so they had them all randomly going to the exact same destination, Midland Circle, the home of the Hand. That led to some fun action sequences (episode 3), which was followed by game planning what to do with the help of Stick from "Daredevil" (episode 4), followed again by some more fun action sequences (episode 5) and plenty of boring stuff in between, before we FINALLY got to the point where I was actually completely invested in the show. The final three episodes were mostly great episodes, outside a bit of a cliche finale.

In the center of all of this is our girl Elektra, who I still really like. But I don't know if I was really wanting her to be the central focus of this season. Through her progression, the only thing I could think of is Sara Lance from "Arrow," who went through the exact same process of dying, being resurrected, acting like an insane zombie, getting her memories back and then going onto being a hero. The difference there is that Elektra isn't really a hero. She's her own thing and is quite boss as she shocks the world and kills Sigourney Weaver and then makes the remaining three (the other one got decapitated by Stick early on) follow her wherever her gray morality leads her. Matt Murdock believes he can talk some sense into her and we all think he's going to be successful. And he kind of is. To some extent. I think? The final showdown between him and Elektra is quite a fun one as an epic duel leads to some snarky, genius dialogue and is finished with them making out as the giant building collapses on top of them. And we spend like 10 arduous minutes of our characters crying over the death of Matt Murdock, which pained me because we all knew he wasn't dying. I don't think Elektra died either. Then we end with our huge *surprise.* He's alive! Who woulda thunk it!

And again, playing a big part in this was Danny Rand. Stick concludes in episode 6 that the Hand is planning on using Danny's Iron Fist as a key to unlock something. So naturally all they have to do is keep Danny away from the Hand and they win. Too bad Danny is too stupid to connect the dots, so he whines and complains the whole way through, making the other three decide to fight him and tie him up as a prisoner. I did kinda feel bad for him because he spent those last three episodes as someone's prisoner or tool. But I didn't feel too bad for him because it was evident that he had no brain and Finn Jones was certainly lacking on the acting skills. It probably didn't help that the writing here with his character wasn't that great either. Moving on. Shortly after the Defenders make Danny their prisoner, Elektra bursts in, kills Stick, knocks the others out cold and kidnaps Danny. That was all pretty boss. Thus, yes, episode 6, "Ashes, Ashes," was my favorite episode of the show. This does lead to a good finale loaded with a ton of great action sequences topped off with them deciding to blow up the Midland Circle building, which Matt and Elektra got caught in. I really hope this signifies the end of the Hand or at the least leads into something more interesting if one of them survived.

That about sums up my thoughts on the first season of "The Defenders." As far as a grade goes, I gave a grade to each individual episode while watching and this is what I came up with:

- Episode 1, "The H Word" -- 6/10
- Episode 2, "Mean Right Hook" -- 8/10
- Episode 3, "Worst Behavior" -- 8/10
- Episode 4, "Royal Dragon" -- 7/10
- Episode 5, "Take Shelter" -- 7/10
- Episode 6, "Ashes, Ashes" -- 9/10
- Episode 7, "Fish in the Jailhouse" -- 9/10
- Episode 8, "The Defenders" -- 8/10

If you do the math on all of that, that's an overall per-episode average of 7.75/10 for the first season of "The Defenders." Round that up to 7.8/10 or simply 8/10 if you want to. Somewhere in that range feels about right for me. Thus I stand my ground that this is a decently entertaining show, but nowhere near as epic as it could've been. For that I blame mostly on the premise of the Hand and their business with Iron Fist and Elektra. It was fairly underwhelming. Danny Rand also drove me up the wall the whole season, but he was balanced out by Matt Murdock, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage, who all brought their A-game. There were a lot of great chemistry between those three and plenty of fun action sequences. But I finished simply wanting more seasons of "Daredevil" and "Jessica Jones" rather than more of "The Defenders." And of course I am stoked for "The Punisher." And maybe we can do what the CW does with their Arrowverse by having each of the Defenders make cameo appearances on the other shows. I would love to see Jessica Jones show up in "Daredevil" or vice-versa and I'm open for Luke Cage showing up in either show, even though I don't plan on tuning in for his own show. So that does it here. Bring on "The Punisher" in November!