1x03 Rolling Thunder Cannon Punch

[6.5/10] Why isn’t Colleen Wing the protagonist of this series? I mean, I know why. Danny Rand is the Iron Fist from the comic books, and lord knows the muckety-mucks at Marvel were not going to upset the applecart on that one out of the gate. But that rhetorical question is to make the point that when it comes to this show, Colleen Wing is, in a quarter of the screen time, about ten times more compelling than Danny Rand as a character and about a thousand times less insufferable.

Much of that comes from the writing. The theme of this episode is money, what people do to get it, what role it has in their lives, and what things are more important than that. Pretty much every character in the episode is touched by this theme in some way, whether it’s Colleen chastising one of her students for fighting for money only to try it out herself, or the Meachum kids offering organs in exchange for support for a deal, or even high and mighty Harold, with all his money and power, being stymied by a more powerful force.

The problem is that the upshot of these theme for Iron Fist’s main character is that he’s just too pure to care about money. He is devoted to spirituality, and discipline, and his name, and shame on all the rest of you for forgetting about the more important things in life! And oh my god I just cannot take it. It’s clear what “Cannon Punch” is going for on this front -- to show that Danny is uncorrupted in the way his friends have been in a way that’s supposed to make the audience like and appreciate the steadfastness of his conviction.

Suffice it to say, it doesn’t. Instead, it just makes Danny come off like a supercilious douchebag, lecturing anyone who dares cross his path on, once again, how they’re doing everything wrong and how he cares about The Things That Really Matter™. It makes him annoying as all get out, and has you rooting for one of the bad guys to womp him on the nose and tell him to settle down.

That sort of character writing would be a tough row to hoe for anyone, but Finn Jones is absolutely incapable of rising above the material. Every time he corrects one of Colleen’s students or chastises the Meachums in an “I thought we were friends” moment, he comes off incredible condescending and rude, not noble, like a stranger at the grocery store telling you how that box of cereal you bought is slowly killing you with gluten and toxins.

The worst offender in this regard is the scene where he spars with Colleen. The clear intended tone from the sequence is supposed to be slap-slap-kiss chemistry between the show’s two main good guys, particularly when an arm lock puts them in close quarters. The issue is that explaining all the things the previously-established-to-be-perfectly-capable Colleen is doing wrong, doesn’t make Rand seem like a super talented and in-touch kung fu master; it makes him seem like a patronizing dick. The optics of the whole thing make the degree of difficulty high out of the gate, but Rand’s demeanor and the way the scene is written doom any hope the scene might otherwise have.

That stinks because when Danny is shuffled off to the side or mostly a sidekick for whatever reason, the show actually becomes half-decent. The scenes can still be excruciatingly long and the dialogue very labored, but by focusing on other, more compelling characters, there is an intrigue to the series that’s pretty well missing entirely when the black hole of likability at the show’s center is on screen.

Colleen is the best example of that. Despite the aforementioned cruddy scene, she’s the most interesting part of “Cannon Punch.” For one thing, she is the only non-evil person in the show thus far to call Danny on his bullshit. When he goes all “I disdain your lack of respect” on some of Colleen’s students, she tells him that this is a place for people who are being hurt or abused in their real lives to go to get away from that, that they absolutely do not need his bullying, and he can get the hell out.

By the same token, her cage-fighting bit at the end of the episode is the most exciting action set piece there’s been in the show so far. The image of the strong but wiry Wing taking on a burly Russian Brock Lesnar analog, holding her own, and even winning the fight (albeit with a punching technique she learned from Danny, because of course), creates a compelling David and Goliath story before the would-be bell even rings. The fight choreography is solid, and the environment is raucous and engaging.

The episode’s also livened by the reappearance of Hogarth of Jessica Jones and (briefly) Daredevil fame. Making Hogarth the slick boardroom-based antagonist for the Meachums is a canny choice, one that allows Carrie Anne Moss to show off her talents and instantly raise the acting quotient of the episode. I’ll say this for the Marvel Netflix shows -- as a group, they collectively have a lot of problems, but the powers that be sure as hell picked the right characters to float between the shows.

Still, that just makes the weaker characters at a show’s core all the more glaring. It’s interesting to seem some depth given to the Meachum kids, with Joy being shown to have a dark and/or mercenary side in their “negotiations” with Patel, and Ward expressing a desire to give up on the confined life he lives as the “inheritor” of his father’s fortunes, but it’s meager shading after a dull introduction. In the same way, it’s interesting to see the proud, bold Harold bow down in broken glass to Madame Gao’s voice, but he’s been such a cartoon character thus far that it amounts to one good moment in near-three hours of television, which isn’t a great ratio.

But right now, the biggest thing holding Iron Fist back is its lead. When you write a character who seems like a smug know-it-all with everyone he encounters, and juxtapose him with another character who calls him out for that sort of B.S. and proves to be a badass in the same episode, you can’t be surprised when the audience latches onto the character who’s more of the foil than the protagonist, and that’s a problem.