After last week's episode, "Dogs" feels a bit like a set-up for bigger and better things. It's not that this episode wasn't good, it's just that it feels like wheel-spinning. Following Matt's defeat at the hands of Frank Castle, he's left reeling as the gunshot wound to his head briefly shuts down his ability to hear. Charlie Cox and the show do a great job of showing Matt's terror at the situation as he suddenly begins hearing tiny things much louder, then hears nothing at all. For most of the episode, he just kind of lounges about in his apartment, trying to lick his wounds, though he does pick up the interesting development from Melvin that Frank apparently shot him in the part of the helmet that wouldn't have broke, suggesting Castle doesn't want to kill him.
Speaking of Castle, we get to see some scenes from his perspective as he goes out and buys a police scanner to get another shot at Grotto, the sole survivor of his Irish mob massacre. The scene's a surprisingly laid-back one, as he simply buys the scanner from the world's sketchiest pawn shop owner, takes the man's ammo, then either savagely beats or kills him after discovering that the man sells child pornography on the side. Jon Bernthal as the Punisher was one of those casting choices I didn't realize worked until I really thought about it, and he does a great job selling Frank's intensity and casual intimidation. The moment he hears the man say "no older than 12", you know that he isn't coming out of the scene unscathed.
Grotto is also the major driving force of Foggy and Karen's plotline, as they're forced by the aggressive DA into taking part in a failed sting on the Punisher with Grotto as bait. Grotto is a surprisingly likable character, in spite of being a criminal, and we begin to feel for him as he's forced into an increasingly dangerous situation that almost ends with his death. The sting ends with both Grotto and Matt, who attempted to stop Frank once again, missing, the Punisher slipping through the police's clutches, and Karen thoroughly angry with both the DA and Foggy for not standing up to her.
All in all, this was one of the weaker episodes of Daredevil, though not as bad as some of the later episodes of the first season. (I'll take weak crime drama over weak cookie cutter superhero stuff anyday.)
Overall Score: 7/10
Notes:
*The "girl ain't older than 12" line was likely a reference to Frank Miller's Man Without Fear series, in which one of Kingpin's men kidnaps a girl to take part in a prostitution ring and says an almost identical line.
*Having the Punisher keep the Irish gang's dog rather than kill it is one of a few "see, he's not a real villain" scenes that the show has thrown us thus far. It's working, to a degree, though that could change depending on how ruthless Frank gets this season.
*Foggy struggling to find Matt was another good scene, as his panic rises higher and higher as he searches for him and works as a nice callback to last episode, where Foggy mentions dreading the day he or Karen simply finds Matt in a coma or dead.
*I'm watching an episode ahead of these reviews, so it's hard not to accidentally mix things up from time to time.
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