“Be careful of the Murdock boys, they got the devil in them.” Marvel’s Daredevil has officially made its Netflix debut, and episode one “Into The Ring” offers a refreshing take on the superhero origin story.

Right away we’re treated to a short origin scene of young Matt getting his powers, blinded by a chemical spill. But a coming of age story, or a tiresome realization that the city needs to be cleaned up doesn’t follow it up; instead we meet a man who is already Daredevil.

The fight scene on the docks does a brilliant job at setting the tone for the series. It may play out a little like the one from Batman Begins, but it’s noticeably more raw and unrefined. Matt’s powers are barely alluded to; they’re just taken as fact. The brutality of the first scene is immediately followed up by playful banter between Elden Hansen and Charlie Cox who have immediate chemistry.

It’s quickly apparent that this episode is more Karen Page’s origin story than Daredevil’s. Foggy and Matt meet her in a moment of desperation. She wakes up covered in someone else’s blood framed for a murder she didn’t commit and with nowhere else to turn she goes to Nelson and Murdock.

Visually the show uses a ton of natural lighting to create intense and dramatic moments that help to establish a noir appeal. The camera angles don’t have a ton of inspiration just yet, but a scene later in this episode lit only by a intrusively bright billboard proves the show may still have tricks up its sleeve.

Early in the first episode the burning question of how this all ties into the Marvel Cinematic Universe proper is answered by way of “The incident.” That’s what they call the events of The Avengers. But, Matt and Foggy are in the beginning of their career and willing to rebuild in Hell’s Kitchen.

As they get tied into Karen’s story, they start to uncover the secrets of Union Allied Construction. There are vague ties to Wilson Fisk, but he doesn’t appear anywhere within the full running time of the episode. He’s smartly absent, and because of this his presence becomes all the more foreboding. Thanks to stellar casting his known associates create just as much menace as the big bald Kingpin. His assistant is calm and menacing with only a few scenes.

So far, the biggest issue to take with Daredevil is that it doesn’t abide by the normal conceptions of serialized storytelling for television. There is nothing resembling an act break, or even really a story break. It’s designed to be binged and heavily serialized, made with the foreword knowledge that the next episode will be immediately available to those who seek it out.

This might be an issue for some, but we live in culture obsessed with binging. There is something to say about the obvious rise and fall of drama in a week-to-week presentation, but perhaps this represents a new age of television.

Which is certainly true of Daredevil as an entry in the ever-popular world of superhero genre fiction. This show is less capes and tights and more crime and punishment. It immediately edges itself out as something more daring. The result is a smartly crafted 13-hour movie that isn’t afraid to play with expectations set forth by the genre.

“Into The Ring” proves to be an excellent episode of television but a weird pilot that only feels like one small step in a very large story. Again, this perhaps represents a different age of television outside the tight reigns of the ratings box, but as a compelling set up for the remainder of the season it leaves a little to be desired, which is probably what Netflix is counting on.