1x09 The Mistress of All Agonies

[6.8/10] I have to admit, I did not imagine we would see Harold Meachum again. The image of him emerging from that swamp, pulling a knife out of himself, and crawling to shore was a gripping one. It uses the audience’s own confusion and surprise at what’s happening with Harold’s own to create a scene that serves as a game-changer on both sides of the screen.

As I mentioned in my write-up the prior episode, Iron Fist has effectively become a tale of two tales -- one involving the trials and tribulations of the Meachums which is, against all early indications, the most compelling part of the show, and one involving Danny’s adventures with the good guys, which have devolved into more twisty ninja stuff and pretty well fallen flat all around.

While the episode spends a good amount of time following around Harold as he acclimates to the fact that he’s come back from the dead...again, we also get Danny, Colleen, and Claire back in New York with Gao tied up in Colleen’s dojo. And the contrast between those two events teases out the weird way that plausibility works in television shows.

Harold coming back from the dead is genuinely supernatural, the sort of thing that is completely outside the realm of real life. And yet it never hit the bullshit detector in my brain for a few reasons. The first is that the show already setup, albeit somewhat mysteriously, that Harold made a deal with The Hand to be able to come back from the dead, which means this plays off what we already know. The second is that it treats this as a serious event, as a process where Harold is disoriented, barely lucid, sounding like a child in his interactions with a mom and a hotdog vendor. The show takes a supernatural thing, but gives it the ring of truth in how it affects the characters.

The situation with Gao is the reverse. Everything we’ve seen of her in the Netflix Marvel-verse suggests that despite her aged appearance, she is extraordinarily powerful and, to boot, employs the services of some pretty reliable (if disposable) badasses. So how is it that our trio of heroes are able to get her onto a plane, through New York City, and then keep her tied up? It strains credulity that she wouldn’t be able to break out when no one’s looking and bolt, or signal her guards to come rescue her (which, in fairness, she maybe does eventually) or some other such thing.

Getting someone onto a plane and tying them up is, in comparison to Harold’s story, fairly prosaic stuff, but it sets off my bullshit meter because it contradicts what we already know about the character. There’s explanations you can try to offer for it -- Danny’s money surely helps with the transportation, maybe Gao wants to be caught to spy on/manipulate Danny, or maybe she’s frightened enough by Danny’s display from the prior episode to be more compliant until the moment is right -- but when she first shows up as Danny’s captive, the whole thing feels like a cheat. The sodium pentathol nonsense only deepens that hole, and while it’s nice to get minor hints at her backstory, the whole setup is kind of wasted.

It does give Gao the opportunity to go full Hannibal Lecter on Claire and Colleen. But what should be a cool opportunity to have her dress down our heroes gets lost in cryptic doublespeak and heavy-handed psychological deconstructions. Her “you think you’ll be special” speech to Claire was stock bad guy stuff, as was her “I knew your grandfather” talk with Colleen (who at least had the decency to be cognizant that Gao was trying to get to her). There were a lot of cryptic teases that happened here, and Gao was at the center of them, which should improve them, but instead just mired her in nothing.

It wasn’t limited to Gao though. We get some random guy who takes over a food truck, parks outside the Rand building, and makes throwing stars out of tinfoil. Okay... Again, I’m sure this will be paid off in future episodes, but for right now it just seems like a pointless throw-in with more plausibility questions. We also get the return of Sensei, the douchebeard guy who is apparently schooled in magical karate and whose delivery of every line sounds absolutely ridiculous. Granted, some of the lines are written ridiculous, but I sort of instantly rolled my eyes at this guy when he first showed up, and his return appearance only heightened that reaction.

Thankfully, we have the Meachum stuff to fall back on. Again, Harold wandering the city in a state of disorientation made for some interesting scenes. He has the right blend of unhinged and fully-realized to him that made those moments where he’s putting himself back together strangely transfixing.

We also get some interesting character development, where the realization that he can’t die (or at least not permanently), affects his behavior, with a feint that he may even become a better man. He trades his vitality smoothies for bourbon, and trades his tough love for Ward into hugs.

Of course, it can’t last. Harold’s tearful embrace of his son and promise that Ward can truly leave if that will help repair the family are, it would seem, just another part of Harold’s manipulations, which lead him to threaten to involve Joy in all of this and get Ward locked up in the same mental health facility Danny did in episode two.

I don’t know how I feel about the “they come back worse” bit from the gang leader who talks to Ward, but I do like the idea that Harold, who was already pretty vicious, is less in control, more apt to lose himself and do things like kill his assistant with an ice cream scoop. The fact that he reveals himself to Joy is another of those things that promises big things to come.

This all seems to be setting up Harold as the show’s real big bad. It would tie a number of things together, from Ward’s issues with his father and his surrogate brother, to machinations with the hand. And Danny seemingly gets a hint that Harold was involved, or at least complicit, in Danny’s parents’ deaths. That would be a little too neat, but the lack of death thing at least makes him an interesting antagonist who can’t just be punched into submission. (Or maybe he can? I’m not sure how this thing works.) Either way, it’s another example of the Meachum side of this show having intriguing details and nice character work, while the Danny side devolves into clichés and less plausible developments.