Bingeworthy TV: Daredevil

Daredevil is a streaming series released on Netflix. It takes place in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen and stars Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), a blind lawyer by day and a masked butt kicking vigilante by night. Matt has not let his disability hold him back in the least, but it should be noted that the accident that took his sight as a child enhanced his hearing and left him with an ability akin to sonar.

As a struggling lawyer by day Matt and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson) take cases defending their poor and underrepresented neighbors. This is how they come to meet Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) wrongly accused of murder. Karen quickly becomes an important part of the team as an investigator.

Much of Matt’s vigilante work centers around Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). His arch nemesis Fisk is something of a mob boss passing himself off as a philanthropist trying to gentrify Hell’s Kitchen, which brings Matt’s vigilant efforts together with his day job. Throughout the series Matt struggles with his love for the law and the reality that it is not always enough.

I love the character of Matt and how he uses his blindness to deflect suspicion of his vigilante tendencies, without ever coming across as helpless. The show, while having supernatural elements, remains grounded in real problems such as the effects of gentrification on the less affluent residents, human trafficking, and drug trafficking.

Daredevil takes place in the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe and if you are familiar with it you will pick up on the references, but you don't need to have watched these other movies and TV series to enjoy Daredevil. On a smaller scale Daredevil is companion to several other Netflix streaming series: Jessica Jones*, Luke Cage, The Punisher, and Iron Fist. All of these characters, except Punisher, come together in The Defenders.

~Becca, Technical Services

 *Read our review of Jessica Jones

Staff Review: Educated by Tara Westover

I cannot recommend the memoir Educated by Tara Westover highly enough. It is captivating -- practically un-put-downable -- and very well written. That said, it is not an easy book to read and if you're like me you'll run the gamut of emotions, including anger and frustration.

Westover tells the story of her Idaho youth as the seventh and youngest child of ultra-fundamentalist, survivalist Mormons, who do not send her to school nor do they home-school her. They also choose not to obtain such documents as a birth certificate or Social Security card for her or to seek medical help for illnesses and accidents. This is because her father views the outside world -- the government, educators, the medical establishment, and so on -- as of the devil and about the devil's business.

In graceful prose, Westover paints a vivid picture of day-to-day life at the foot of Buck Peak. Day-to-day life, however, is filled with horrific accidents, car accidents and industrial accidents mostly, and these events and their aftermaths can be wrenching to witness as are the volatile instability of her father, the submissive blindness of her mother, and the descent into sadistic violence of one of her brothers. At times, my credulity was stretched almost beyond its limit (thanks, James Frey and other memoir fibbers) but in the end I believe this author is telling the truth.

I generally avoid memoirs of dysfunction but Westover's is actually a story of redemption, for she eventually breaks free of her parents (though she suffers horrible guilt and inner conflict in doing so), studies on her own, gets herself into college, and completes her education by nailing a Ph.D. at Cambridge in England. The wonders of this book, besides the prose, which is often incandescent, are Westover's evident love for her family, even after the estrangement, and the deep thoughtfulness with which she tells her story. Equally wonderful is Westover's strength of character, the inner compass or guiding light she possesses, which allows her to escape what struck me as a living nightmare but to Westover was the only life she knew.

~Ann, Adult Services

Bingeworthy TV: Red vs. Blue

Red vs.Blue (or RvB) is a series created using voice-over enhanced game play videos from the video game Halo*. So it’s kind of like watching a first-person-shooter video game with dialogue added. This doesn't mean you need to have ever played Halo to enjoy the show!

The show was only supposed to run for one season of six to eight webisodes. RvB had an unexpected popularity and went on for sixteen seasons and five mini-series, becoming the longest running episodic web series of all time.

The show centers on two teams of soldiers (you guessed it): red team and blue team. These teams are fighting what is originally assumed to be a civil war. Each team has a base on the least desirable piece of real estate in the known universe: a box canyon in the middle of nowhere. It seems each team's only reason for having a base in this location is that the other team has a base in this location.

Mostly this show consists of the characters (identically armored people in varying shades of red and blue) arguing with each other. Each team has standing orders to defeat the other and capture the other's flag (because isn’t that what war is all about?), but neither team is much motivated to do anything and only does so grudgingly.

I would give this show an R rating for language. It is definitely not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. The first time I watched it I had no idea what to think other than, "This show is crazy stupid but also crazy funny." I’m not sure I can think of a show in recent memory that has made me laugh as much or shake my head as often as the first five seasons of Red vs. Blue.

~Becca, Technical Services

*Librarian's note: You can also borrow official Halo novels or watch official Halo live-action TV series or the official Halo anime from Carnegie-Stout Public Library.