Let's Compare and Contrast Scenes From Daredevil: Born Again and Black Lagoon

Good storytelling is difficult. When a creator carefully considers every detail, the individual pieces form a cohesive whole. This cohesion ensures the audience’s investment. However, some creators often take shortcuts, either out of expediency or laziness. The latter scenario is cataclysmic to the conveyance of a story and should be avoided at all costs.

An example of this is the Season 1 finale of Disney/Marvel’s Daredevil: Born Again, specifically Episode 9, "Straight to Hell". We witness Vanessa Fisk presenting an incarcerated Bullseye with a deal to assassinate Foggy Nelson—a lawyer whose partner, Matt Murdock (Daredevil), previously threatened her and her husband’s criminal empire. Now Mr. Nelson seems to be on the cusp of uncovering their most recent criminal conspiracy, requiring Vanessa to take drastic action. Utilizing a legal loophole that acquitted her husband, Wilson Fisk (the Kingpin), as well as manipulating Bullseye’s fragile state of mind, Vanessa is able to put him on the path of carrying out her fiendish scheme.

Now at face value, that doesn’t seem all that bad, right? Except it does—especially when prior events from Season 3 of the original series are taken into account. This “deal” Vanessa pulls out of her cooch makes no sense and is flat-out impossible to reconcile with previously established continuity. The crimes of which Wilson Fisk is guilty include, but are not limited to: racketeering, murder, corruption, and orchestrating a conspiracy with compromised FBI agents. In particular, Fisk manipulates FBI Special Agent Ray Nadeem into working for him under threats to Nadeem’s family, using him and the resources of the FBI to eliminate his enemies, and consolidate power in New York City.

When Ray Nadeem decides to turn in state’s evidence to expose Fisk, The Kingpin orders Bullseye to assassinate him to secure his silence. However, knowing that Fisk would be gunning for him, Ray had arranged to have the evidence sent to Foggy Nelson upon his death. Foggy then realized this would be exempt under the court’s hearsay rule as it qualifies as a “dying declaration.” This posthumous final act by Ray Nadeem ensured that Fisk’s house of cards would come tumbling down, redeeming himself and the organization he worked for. In short, Ray Nadeem was a hero. While Fisk initially managed to manipulate his aspirations to climb the ranks at the FBI, Ray chose to put his own life and family on the line to atone for his sins. Sacrificing himself to bring Fisk down. Something that fit in rather nicely with the show's Catholic underpinnings.

But nah! Who cares about that sap, right? Besides, we need to justify Fisk becoming mayor of NYC so we can fraudulently benefit off the character’s popularity and make him yet another boring-ass strawman of Trump. To say that this plot point irked me would be an understatement. It’s downright criminal. Reducing a wonderfully realized, three-dimensional character like Ray Nadeem to a pathetic footnote because the writers wanted to justify their show’s existence is infuriating. Regardless of how you slice it, Wilson Fisk cannot get an acquittal, much less become mayor. Consequently, Daredevil: Born Again is absolute shit, by the way.

So, what about an example of good storytelling?

In Black Lagoon’s 15th episode, "Swan Song at Dawn", the conclusion to the "Bloodsport Fairytale" arc, Madame Balalaika—an ex-Soviet military commando and head honcho of Hotel Moscow—finds her organization under siege by the Vampire Twins. A sadistic, incestuous pair of Romani child assassins who are tearing through Roanapur and causing absolute havoc. Balalaika decides to lure one of them into a trap, using herself as bait. Eventually, Hansel arrives, greeting Balalaika with a cheerful demeanor and a sinister grin. He’s elated to finally have a chance to kill Balalaika, even mocking her by describing how one of her men cried out for her help while he was torturing him. Balalaika says nothing. Her expression is completely emotionless—a cold, heartless exterior hiding a flaming pit of rage at the insolence of this snot-nosed little bastard.

She confesses to being impressed by his tenacity but tells him the game is over, demanding an apology for the twins’ slaughter of her men and all the trouble they’ve caused. Hansel dismisses her and decides to just kill her instead.

Big mistake. At her signal, a sniper on a nearby rooftop zeroes in on Hansel and blows out one of his kneecaps. Then, when Hansel tries to hurl an axe at her, the sniper takes his hand too, blowing it to bloody chunks mid-swing. Hansel thought he had her cornered, but Balalaika rebuffs him, revealing that the men he and his sister had been ruthlessly massacring for shits and giggles had actually been leading him straight into her trap.

The dialogue and delivery in this scene are incredible—especially Patricia Drake’s English dub performance as Madame Balalaika. Her tone is cold and almost completely bereft of emotion, with the exception of one moment earlier where she demands Hansel kneel and apologize—right before the shot to his knee. It's the only time she ever truly emotes anything other than weary contempt. The rest of the time, she’s more frigid than the Arctic tundra. She tells Hansel flatly that he’s going to die for what he’s done, but the sadistic little brat impotently retorts with his childish philosophical ramblings, claiming that he and his sister will live forever through the destruction they’ve wrought. That their violence will leave a mark, effectively granting them a kind of immortality. Balalaika is briefly amused by the notion before dismantling it completely, quoting Oingo Boingo: "Nobody lives forever, that’s just the way it goes."

To the twins, violence is a twisted game where they have all the power and agency, and everyone else is their playthings. To Balalaika, the act of violence is something far more serious—a harsh reality she’s lived with for years. She understands it as a means of control, its necessity, and its effectiveness as a method of maintaining order and control.

She then rubs salt in the wound by telling Hansel that thanks to the blood loss from his injuries, he only has minutes to live. She decides to use that remaining time to dedicate his final moments to the memory of her fallen comrades, whom Hansel senselessly murdered. Balalaika stays ice-cold for the remainder of their time together. Taking her time exacting her revenge and forcing Hansel to face the consequences of his violence, like a stern maternal figure disciplining a rowdy child. She doesn’t show Hansel any mercy, even as he lays dying on the ground crying, continuing to bleeding out—yet her cold “Don’t cry, you fool.” subtly betrays her internal conflict.

After Hansel dies, one of Balalaika's subordinates contacts her, clearly unsettled by what they just witnessed. Balalaika regretfully admits that she needed to satisfy her desire for revenge, even if it meant doing something she wasn’t accustomed to: killing a child. Her final line punctuates the gravity of the entire ordeal: “I’m getting too old for this. I feel… I feel exhausted.”

Balalaika is ruthless, efficient, and pragmatic. She suffers no fools, takes drastic action when needed, maintains control of the situation at all times, and never leaves anything to chance. She’s a force to be reckoned with. However, this episode shows the human cost of her profession. We see a chink in the armor—a glimpse of her vulnerability. Under that frigid Soviet military exterior, she’s still human. Even though she saw it as a necessary act, killing the Vampire Twins—monsters or not—still haunts her. It’s one thing to kill hardened criminals and assassins, it’s another thing entirely when it’s something as innocent as a child. The job is grim and dirty, but someone has to do it.

The visuals, writing, and vocal performances carry this sequence to greatness. Sunao Katabuchi’s direction and adaptation brilliantly captures the grit and raw emotion of Rei Hiroe’s manga, and Patricia Drake deserves huge praise for her vocal performance as Madame Balalaika.

I won’t get into the Vampire Twins’ backstory because… yikes. Honestly, I think it’s best to go into the show blind. That said, everything from the animation to the voice acting is spot on. When I want to sell someone on Black Lagoon, this is the exact scene I show them. Madame Balalaika is my favorite character in the entire series, and that’s saying something given how colorful the rest of the cast is. Strongly recommend you check it out.

Oh, and fuck Daredevil: Born Again.