1x01 Snow Gives Way

[5.1/10] Not every main character has to be likable, or stay likable for that matter. Plenty of great shows of all genres features less than great people at their center. But even if the audience doesn’t like the protagonist, he or she has to be somebody that the audience wants to spend time with, that they want to get to know better, that they want to see face whatever obstacles in front of them, whether they’re rooting for the main character to leap over it or stumble.

That’s Iron Fist’s biggest problem out of the gate. Danny Rand doesn’t do anything so terrible in the episode. His knocking out security guards and breaking into someone’s home (which, admittedly, used to be his home) is questionable, but fairly par for the course when it comes to superhero stories, especially those involving long-gone orphans, of which there are a surprising number. But after an hour with him (in an episode that runs 56 minutes and could have managed better with 30), there’s no good reason to want to hang out with him for another twelve.

Some of that can be attributed to pilots and opening chapter inevitably being something of a feeling out phase between the show and the audience. Some of it can be attributed to actors and writers needing to get their legs under them and figure out the character. Growing pains are a part of almost any television show, and it’s important not to judge a show too harshly out of the gate.

But man, Danny is kind of insufferable. It takes a lot to make the main figure of a story about an orphan who lost his parents in a plane crash coming home to put his life back together annoying, but “Snow Gives Way” manages it. Part of that falls on star Finn Jones’s shoulders. He plays the vibe that shows Danny as equal parts naive, peaceful, and a little crazy well enough. But in the first frame at least, he doesn’t really have the charm to make some of Danny’s rougher edges seem cute rather than intrusive.

Instead, he comes off like a freshman who just finished his first Eastern philosophy class, and boy does he have things to tell you about life! The scraggly beard and well-worn clothes are intended to be a sign of the humble circumstances he’s come from and the simple existence he leads, but inadvertently make him look like an average hipster stereotype, one patchouli container and lecture about mother earth away from being that guy you ran into at the bus station who won’t take a hint that you’re not quite as interested in cooperative farming as you’d politely feigned earlier.

It doesn’t help that there’s little compelling about his would-be foils in the early going either. Ward and Joy Meachum are generic children of privilege with the perfectly-coiffed hair and snappy outfits giving way to cold receptions and calls to security. With any luck, they’ll both get a little more shading as the series goes on, but like Danny, their introductions are full of cliches and unfortunately developments that makes you prefer they’d simply go away.

They do, however, take part in the flashbacks that are supposed to give you insight into who this new generation of Rands and Meachum are, and how striking that is given where they both started. There’s some bog-standard daddy issues material at play, with young Ward being a jerk, presumably because his dad drive him to be, and kind Danny being bullied, partly out of jealousy for the loving relationship he has with his dad. While that could be a solid grounding for both characters, the bad dialogue and corny execution stymies it from the start and prevents it from rising above a bad Draco Malfoy routine.

The same goes for the only thing approaching a reveal in the episode. Despite protestations that he died twelve years ago, Ward’s father, Harold Meachum, is still alive and well and pulling strings behind the scene. Harold is a cut-rate Nathan Fillion doing a weak riff on Wall Street, and it only makes the father-son conflict that much more hackneyed and unadventurous. Recent Netflix Marvel shows have been cagey about who their true big bads are, but even as an interim antagonist, Harold leaves something to be desired.

Pretty much everything here does. Very little of “Snow Gives Way” is actively bad. There’s some rough dialogue, janky-looking CGI, and awkward uses of Danny’s “powers,” but for the most part the opening chapter of Iron Fist is blandly competent. Many pilots are pulled toward bland competence from the twin necessities of introduction and exposition that consume plenty of first installments of good shows. “Snow Gives Way” in particular could be forgiven for some of it given that it’s the fourth of four shows in the Defenders sub-universe and thus it has to contend with a degree of familiarity before the audience has seen a single second of the series. But the whole episode just comes off as a thoroughly dull exercise in going through the motions of a superhero story.

Again, that might not sink the episode so low but for the fact that Danny Rand, or at least this version of him isn’t a particularly interesting guy to base a story around. Sure, the premise is solid enough -- billionaire child, presumed dead, returns home, knows kung-fu -- but the result we get from that is a kind of creepy guy who gives off a certain condescending or oblivious vibe to everyone he comes across (particularly Colleen Wing).

In different hands, that obliviousness could be semi-sweet, or an endearing testament to how removed from society he’s been all this time. But here, we just get a guy who seems to disregard everyone else’s wants and wishes to further his own. There’s room for Jones to grow into the character, room for the show’s writing and plotting to improve (though with late season Dexter showrunner Scott Buck at the helm, good luck), and room for the story to fall into place. Still, as an opening salvo, Iron Fist delivers a big dose of flat, uninteresting dullness from a guy you’d just as soon not see again.