(Caution: Spoilers abound below.)

The first thing you notice are the yellows and greens.

I’m talking about a fight scene from the second episode of Netflix’s Daredevil, a scene known now to fans of the show simply as the “hallway scene,” a scene that caused me to bolt upright in my chair and frantically text my boss (a fan of the show) a series of jumbled expletives and question marks. Done in a single take, colored in the aforementioned yellows and greens, it shows Charlie Cox as Daredevil (né Matt Murdock) taking on a group of child traffickers in a dimly lit hall.

Over the course of the fight, Murdock grows exhausted, somehow summoning the strength to throw punch after punch. You see the fatigue set in as the seconds turn into minutes. It’s agony. He falls down, he gets hit. He bleeds.

It’s not only the best fight scene on TV this year, it’s the greatest television fight scene I’ve ever seen.

Before we get into more, I should say that this scene is one that is not original by any stretch. It wears its influences on its sleeve, but the influences are so tastefully selected, and the execution so wonderfully done, I can’t even muster up a little Internet rage over it.

The scene borrows fruitfully from the imagery of Frank Miller’s The Man Without Fear, and for anyone who’s seen the original version of Oldboy, you could be forgiven for getting a sense of deja vu.

So, yes, the color palette and the inspiration for the scene’s setting are not wildly original. But that doesn’t make the scene any less meaningful or important. (Every scene Tarantino’s ever done was inspired by something else, and that doesn’t mean I’m skipping his newest movie.)

But for now, please, the scene. Directed by Phil Abraham, it’s done in a single take, and interviews with the stunt coordinator and the actors involved confirm it really was just one shot. (With a small amount of help from stunt doubles, it’s mostly all Cox doing the fighting as well.)

Much has been made lately of the “single take” approach to television, with reams of takes already written about the incredible True Detective scene that got us all riled up for a few weeks there last year. The single take in the hallway scene isn’t as demonstrative as the True Detective scene, but arguably more powerful.

In True Detective, the lengthy single take allowed director Cary Fukunaga to yank the viewer across an entire housing project, through homes and yards, as bullets whizzed by and sirens blared, capturing the adrenaline and mania of a loaded-up Rust Cohle as he crossed the line over to evil in the singleminded pursuit of his case.

Daredevil’s scene is a little shorter, but the single take not only serves to allow us to experience the fight in real time and to capture the adrenaline in it, but also to come down from that adrenaline and experience the fatigue of the fight as well. What starts as a rip-roaring battle ends as Murdock, bloody and broken, summons his last bit of strength to stay alive. We’re right there with him, our eyes tired from lack of blinking, hanging on, and on, as the scene extends and extends. It’s almost tortuous by the end. We’re begging for a cut, if only to let our hero breathe.

The scene is an exercise in humanity. Unlike most superheroes, Daredevil is defined by what he lacks. He’s blind. His other senses are stronger, but he is far from invincible — for every punch he throws, he takes one right back.

I know this might get my nerd-card revoked, but I never much cared for any of the Spider-Man movies, if only because it seemed so silly to me, this man in red swinging in CGI from building to building. Spidey always came across as weightless to me, which made him unreal.

Compare that to Daredevil in this scene, who is nothing but weighted down. He doesn’t float from building to building; he lurches down a hallway. He is far from Superman, or any hero who can fly. In this scene especially, he is bound to the earth. What marks him? Gravity. Exhaustion. Fatigue.

This is the show’s stunt coordinator Philip J. Silvera speaking with the Observer about the scene:

I think this was what started defining the show for me, and the weight that was being played into it. Phil Abraham was directing, and it was always scripted that this scene was going to be a one-shot. For me in my head, with the time we had, I said let’s do wipes and we’ll be able save things. But Phil challenged us to do a pure one-shot, which really just brought a grounded real feeling to the whole thing. We were able to slow down the fight, and just have this raw, animalistic feeling happening.

Note the words he uses here to describe the scene: Weight. Grounded. Real. Slow. Animalistic.

The animalistic part is what drew me to this scene, and why it’s one of my favorite fight scenes I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. By the end, Murdock isn’t showing off with his fighting. There’s no derring-do, no KAPOWs or THWACKs. He’s an animal in a corner. He’s a deer with a wolf gripping its leg. He fights not because he wants to, but because he needs to survive. Every punch carries meaning.

This isn’t superhuman; it’s de-human.

It was during my tenth viewing of the scene in about a 24-hour period that I was strangely reminded of a scene in The Fugitive. Harrison Ford, playing Dr. Richard Kimble, has just escaped from a train wreck, and he stops in a hospital to dress his wounds. The U.S. Marshall officers are hot on his tail and he doesn’t have much time. He’s our hero, and this is time for him to act heroically.

And in that moment, with everything on the line, Kimball stops and makes himself an egg sandwich.

Ah, I thought to myself, flabbergasted. Of course. He’s a person. He needs to eat.