[7.7/10] Given the dearth of LGBTQ characters in major mainstream works, I feel like there’s a tendency for fans to ship any two people of the same sex who shows the slightest bit of friendship or affection for one another. That makes me hesitant to suggest what I’m about to suggest for fear of falling into that trap, but here goes anyway -- Danny has better chemistry with Davos than he’s ever had with Colleen.
In fact, I think there’s a fair read of the final scene of this episode, where Davos sees Danny embracing Colleen in the rain like in so many romcoms, as Davos walking away upset that his crush is with someone else. But whether you consider it a bug or a feature (and I consider it the latter), what’s interesting is that the episode works equally well with and without that subtext.
If you choose to read it without that element, Davos still has one of the better motivated (and better-acted) presences in this show in just a couple of quick episodes. He is pulled in two directions, because he is clearly fiercely loyal to Danny (his “I won’t leave you” while Danny’s getting stitched up by Claire evidences that), but he’s also jealous and resentful of him. That makes his reactions to Danny and to the new life he’s scratched out for himself in New York layered in a way that really only Ward Meachum’s have been on the show so far.
On the one hand, Davos admits that he feels a little usurped by Danny, that he believed becoming the iron fist was his birthright and the fact that the monks chose Danny instead of him still eats at him. And, to add insult to injury, Danny abandoned his post, and set his duties aside. Danny has the thing Davos wanted most in the world, a thing that was denied him, and seems to be walking away from it, shirking his responsibilities. It’s the sort of thing that would bother anyone, and Sacha Dhawan conveys the restrained frustrations of his character well.
But on the other hand, Davos feels betrayed at a more personal level. When he tells Claire that he treated Danny like a brother and that he nevertheless just left without saying a word, you can see it emanating from a more personal sort of hurt, the type that believed they had a friendship that could not be disregarded so easily. That friendship is given texture by all of Danny’s previous fond recollections of the hijinx the pair would go together, and that adds depth to the conflict between the two friends when Davos questions Danny leaving Kunlun and asks what appeal this world holds for him.
And yet, it can also be taken a step further, that Davos is not simply hurt as a friend and brother in arms, but as someone who has romantic feelings for Danny that may not have been reciprocated or ever even acknowledged. I’ll admit this may be a stretch on my part, and perhaps I’m taking the completely dead romance the show has tried to sell between Danny and Colleen, in this episode especially, seeing Finn Jones have a modicum of chemistry with someone on this otherwise anodyne show, and concluding that by comparison, his concordance with Davos must be love. But either way, there’s clear affection, whether filial or something more, between the two of them, that creates interesting and conflicting motivations for the pair.
I’m as shocked to say it as anyone, but this also gives a really interesting answer to the question of why Danny left Kunlun. For a while, the assumed answer was a pragmatic one -- to find out what happened to his parents, but we also get an emotional one here. Danny, understandably, felt “empty” after what happened to him and his parents, and he thought that becoming the iron fist, reaching the pinnacle of the cultural collective he was brought into, would fill that in his life.
Only he finds that when he achieves what he set out to do that it isn’t as fulfilling as he’d hoped. He sits around at the gates of Kunlun stacking rocks and seeming like his duty is a tedious and hollow one. Seeing the bird flying free as a sign is kind of cheesy, but it still speaks to a relatable notion of having done what you set out to do, and yet it not fixing the deeper-seeded problems within. It adds a human dimension to Danny’s struggle that’s been lost in the usual orphan backstory and generic kung fu material.
We also get more hints that the Monks of Kunlun are not exactly sterling examples. It’s appropriate that Danny is expected to go into a cave to face trials to reach the next level of his training, because there’s a real Jedi vibe to all of his. Danny and Davos have been trained to suppress their anger and other strong emotions – such sentiment is not appropriate for a weapon – and yet it’s still there, haunting Danny and blocking his chi.
There is a sense, brought forward in an occasionally dull but generally good conversation with Claire, that Danny never really processed what happened with him and his parents, and those difficult emotions are still affecting him, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it. There are connections he has to this world that he just can’t shake using his Kunlun discipline.
Unfortunately, one of those connections is Colleen. The whole tortured “how could you lie to me?” angst between them is pretty awful, especially because we know they’ll inevitably overcome it and team up to help one another. Without good performances or writing in the overwrought scenes between the two of them, it just feels like a perfunctory bit of squabbling without any emotional punch.
And to add insult to injury, we get more Bakuto here, who plays the angry cult leader with all the charisma of worn hockey puck. There’s a common theme to this episode, with both Danny and Colleen realizing that the organizations that trained them may be less than noble, but since we just got introduced to this sect of The Hand and Colleen’s connection to it, her half of the proceedings have no weight.
The only bit of real intrigue is that we learn Bakuto’s sect is doing the same blood draining stuff that The Hand was doing in Daredevil Season 2. Otherwise, it’s more nonsensical, shoehorned in antagonist stuff that detracts from the better-than-usual things “Lead” pulls off here (including giving Claire more to do and showing off her sarcastic edge).
Much of that comes down to Danny and Davos, and whether you’d like to think of them as symbolizing an unrealized crush or simply brothers in arms, their connection has a force that’s been missing on the Danny side of this show (the Meachum side continues apace with some good if brief and kind of creepy, Joy-Harold material), and instantly adds a new dimension to Danny’s return to New York City.
Wouldn’t it be easier and safer to put the robots (replicas) on the space mission? Like duh? They do not need life support system, food, and physical activity. Would it be nicer if they actual humans stayed in their homes and spend their time with family?
Somehow, the pilot of story twisted to make us watch 80 minutes episode, almost as long as a movie. Just to tell us that we need to take care of our family and loved ones! The only explanation for this movie plot is that the astronauts were already in a long distance space mission and later on, they have decided to make the replicas for their families.
Great episode, but it didn't feel like Black Mirror. It's missing the sci-fi element, the dystopian topic, the futuristic technology aspect.
Holy Mother of... That cliffhanger! Oh my God! His wings!!! I can't believe it. that ending confused the fuck out of me. So many things happened in the episode. The wings, that desert, and mom's in an alternate universe. Let's Supernatural this, boys!
as much as I want Chloe to know who Lucifer really is, I swear I had the goosebumps when he was talking to her on the phone. he wanted to spill the beans! But then Lucifer gets hit from behind and is driven to a whatever the fuck was that place, gets hit by who knows and his wings appear. mother of all cliffhangers. I need answers so desperately. Oh my God, when he comes back,every single time he takes his shirt of (not that it matters to me wink) his wings are gonna come off. How do you hide it? And who has the power to get his wings back? God, probably. Plus, that someone knocked him out when Chloe wasn't even there so it has to be God, right? Or Michael? Although I always thought Amenadiel was the version of Michael. Maybe he got his wings back because he was a good son and taking care of mom? Not entirely sure why he was just drying in the dessert, though. Lots of unanswered questions.
And that tear in reality looked exactly like the one we saw in Supernatural, just saying. Loved also the possibility of Mom ruling Hell, like wtf.
Even when Lucifer is covered in blister and beaten the hell up, those wings make him even sexier.
Now that I think of it, what if that scene was a flashback of when he first fell from Heaven? Although he landed on a beach and not the dessert.
I loved that Charlotte is still alive. I loved the actress, though I hated mom. But I loved her performance. Dan is a sweetheart and no one will convince me otherwise. And my poor Linda. Ufff, thank God she's ok. I couldn't handle her getting killed off. Maze is absolutely awesome and seeing Amenadiel happy makes me happy. So I guess both the wings and Amenadiel's powers coming back were a gift of God for doing the righteous thing.
worst episode of the serie
I really hope this will be the last season, this premiere made me feel that they're just pulling ideas out of their asses, by now. The show has come far from what MAoS used to be, and I don't mean it in a good way.
But I liked badass Clark Gregg!
i think half of the characters will turn into ashes until the end of the season
You better believe that I spent the last 15 minutes of this episode screaming internally. You know that meme with a cartoon dog sitting inside a burning room, saying "This is fine"? That's me right now.
I'm just... speechless. I don't know how to process everything that's happened. I can't even name all the emotions that I'm experiencing at the moment. A part of me wants to cry, another wants to laugh, but not in a good way - more in the awkward, panicked way, like when something bad happens and you react in the most inappropriate manner imaginable.
Let's start with the most obvious thing, the one that I've talked about quite a few times in the past: Iain de Caestecker and Elizabeth Henstridge's acting. Those two are like goddamn magical unicorns blessed with so much talent. Separately, they're utterly magnificent and deserve all the awards (which they'll never get because there is no justice in this world). But when you put them together, it's honestly one of the most powerful things I've ever seen. It's a nuclear reaction, a supernova, galaxies crashing together. It takes my breath away. Remember when FitzSimmons were supposed to be the comic relief in season 1? That definitely didn't go according to plan. Those two are the beating heart and the soul of this show. I'm not exaggerating when I say that one of the main reasons why I want Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. to go on forever is because I can't get enough of the magic that Elizabeth and Iain create whenever they're on screen together. When I watch them, I understand what it means that something is greater than the sum of its parts. The showrunners truly hit the jackpot of the millenium with those two. They elevate the quality of the show with their brilliance. In their hands, even the weakest of scenes and the corniest of dialogues turn into something special, and great moments become mindblowingly epic.
Fitz and The Doctor's interactions left me with my jaw on the floor. Especially that tiny moment when The Doctor mocked Fitz's stuttering (by the way, that's some excellent continuity right there, Fitz's aphasia coming back and getting worse when he's very stressed or upset). It made the big reveal all the more shocking and heartbreaking for me. I didn't see that coming at all, and I swear my soul left my body for a second when I realized what was going on. I'm almost in physical pain just thinking about it. I have no idea how Fitz is going to come back from this. I have no idea how he can ever patch things up with Daisy. I can't believe the writers did this to me. Can I sue them for causing me emotional distress?
Jemma finding out that Deke is her and Fitz's grandson was so lovely and touching. I always cry when Elizabeth cries, so naturally, I turned into a sobbing mess. And of course she threw up at the end there, and we know that in TV world women only ever puke for one of two reasons:
They've had too much too drink (alternatively, they took drugs - I'm looking at you, Jessica Jones).
They're pregnant.
Since Jemma wasn't knocking back shots or snorting cocaine in this episode, I think it's safe to say that there's a lil' British science bun in the oven. Normally, I'd be fucking ecstatic about this, but I think this episode has killed my ability to feel happiness, at least for the time being.
I guess some other stuff happened in the episode, the Russian dude from last season is back, Hale is working with the Kree or something, Hydra's back (could we perhaps stop beating that dead horse already?), but to be honest, I currently don't have the emotional capacity to give a fuck about any of it. I need to lie down on the floor, curl up into a ball and stay there for a while.
See y'all next week for more suffering!
smart concept, very dull and boring execution
Great episode.
Like before, this show is at its best whenever they move away from Harley & Ivy. This deconstructed version of Gotham is so deep and interesting that it's always fun exploring these alternate versions of established characters.
Props to Conner Shin for writing this amazing episode and he's not even credited on IMDb yet.
I've never been more heartbroken over a character's death like Eddie's last words were the saddest and proudest words he's ever said and yeah i sat there screaming crying sobbing throwing up
Apparently they didn't think they'd get renewed themselves after this hilariously crappy season, so they pretty much ended it, huh?
At least they had the guts to close the (main) storyline - sort of at least.
Yet they make the continuation of this tattoo thing even more ridicolous as it seems.
I'm out. The end is satisfying enough to close this show for me and the "cliffhanger" is giving me an outlook on how far they are willing to go with the stupid tattoos. Early on I said in the long run the show's downfall will be the "mysterious tattoos".
It gives a too strict frame to work in...aaaand that's exactly the reason why we got glowing tattoos now. Great.
Very well done, writers.
Edit Nov 2022:
Years later I let it stream on Amazon on the second monitor and wow. Wow.
First two seasons and Blindspot was around 5/10 with a weaker end but the 4th and 5th season bring it down to a 2/10 easily. It's that shitty. Not just bad but really, really shitty. Crazy they got to 5 seasons.
That was a really great episode that tied everything off nicely... & then we had that ridiculous epilogue, which might as well have been replaced by a scene where they actually jump over a shark, because WHAT. Two characters get together purely because they're the main characters, even though they don't belong together. Then suddenly it's 2 years later she's hanging out in Asia, & then he shows up (& I guess they were married or something cos she mentions a ring?) saying their whole team got kidnapped & a box got left behind, & they both have to touch it to open it, & then they both touch the item inside it & a picture just appears on metal, & then they hold it next to the tattoo it depicts & ALL HER TATTOOS START GLOWING like WTF.
I don't know what's worse, the ridiculous sci-fi tech on display (I know they pull a lot of shit that isn't possible on this show, but this is just stupid), or the fact that the setup is that most of the interesting characters are out of the picture & we're left with just two characters, only one of which is interesting. Seriously, Kurt is by far the least interesting character, probably because the whole plot is based around things from his past, so the writers didn't bother developing his character beyond 'angry guy who shouts a lot', & this would be fine (plenty of other interesting characters after all, & if that's his thing then hey that's his thing) were it not for the fact that the bloody show keeps presenting him as if he was anything other than dull. I'd much rather have him be the one who got kidnapped & everyone else had to get together to find him.
Unless that whole bit turns out to be a dream sequence or something...
Does anyone else still find Ivar unbearably annoying?
Probably the best episode of the series. That fight scene was fucking amazing.
The story was fine but it didn't seem like a Black Mirror episode at all. No new tech/sci-fi element. More of a typical thriller.
Black Mirror used to be about technology and its impact on society.
This was just a horror story with a nice twist at the end. More Twilight Zone than Black Mirror.
i cant believe one of the best eps (so far) this season is where joker gets to be wholesome and the damn mayor of gotham :sob:
Pretty fun episode - unfortunately the Harley and Ivy dynamic seems to be more of detriment to the show, as the show is at it's best when it's off those two. Lots of Joker DC nods, ranging from Batman 89 / The Dark Knight and even Joker (couldn't see any Leto ones - though I'm not sure). Even a potential node to Sean Murphy's White Knight run.
That being said, something was still missing for me overall. Previous seasons were pushing for my top 3 - top 5 of the year. This year I don't know if this will be top 10. Admittedly, we've had a lot of great TV but something is just off overall.
Eddie should have got a spin-off but based on the Dungeons and Dragons 80’s cartoon series lol.
EDDIE MUNSON PLAYING MASTER OF PUPPETS IN THE UPSIDE DOWN WAS LEGENDARY!
"Chrissy, this is for you."
(imagine Oprah): You get an Iron Fist! You get an Iron Fist! Everybody gets an Iron Fist!
Good episode as usual but with a few logical mistakes. So they vented the Zephyr because they needed the cold to kill the shriek but Yoyo and the other agent didn't freeze at all?
Iain De Caestecker deserves all the awards.
Bob! I kind of figured he would die, but I hoped he wouldn't. I had started to like him.
The whole Bob situation was so obvious. I saw that coming from a mile away.
The interactions the Inhumans have with pretty much every normal person they encounter is like. "I know we just met, but did we just become best friends ?" It's like the people they meet take a blood oath to help them, when they just met.
Everything wrong with Iron Fist is pretty much what's wrong with this show. I mean every character is too open, like Danny is about being the Iron Fist and chi.
Which is why Black Bolt is the best character because.... he doesn't talk. The action I think is at least fun. So that isn't the problem. Everything just feels rushed.
The best relationship in the show is of Crystal and Lock Jaw. Which is sad since he's a CGI giant dog.
My favorite thing about this episode was recognizing locations from lost.
[4.8/10] I could live a long and happy life without ever having to hear another superhero agonize over whether it’s okay to kill the obviously evil, dangerous bad guy who is confronting them. There is an inherent tension between the hero of the story taking this rigidly moral stance with the fact that if they’re out there punching and kicking and blasting their way through goons, they’re invariable causing untold human suffering regardless of whether they actually extinguish a life or not. Can it be done well? Yes, but it’s been done to death, even among the Marvel Netflix shows, and Iron Fist is absolutely not equipped to find new wrinkles in that venerable theme.
That means that when “Dragon Plays with Fire” chooses to center the show’s entire finale, and by extension, the crux of the series, on the question of whether Danny should or should not kill Harold Meachum, it drags most of the proceedings, and by extension much an underwhelming show, into the muck with it.
And, as always, a big part of the problem stems from the fact that Finn Jones is a pretty lousy conduit through which to explore Danny’s dilemma here. The whole premise of the finale is that Danny is initially reserved enough, but upon learning that it was Harold who killed his parents, he flies into a rage and determines to kill Harold not out of a sense of righteousness but out of a sense of unholy vengeance. The big knock against that tack is that Jones is pretty awful at playing enraged.
In some ways, Jones’s boyishness has played to his advantage on the show. While I’ve still found Danny insufferable through much of Iron Fist, if there’s one way that Jones has succeeded in his portrayal, it’s that Danny does seem like someone who still has a childlike view of the modern world. But the downside to that is that his “raging anger” at Harold after learning the truth about his parents comes off more like a toddler’s temper tantrum than the emotional results of stomach-wrenching vendetta. Much of “Dragon” calls on Jones to play a man who’s dealing with the fire within, but when that fire comes off as more of a sparkler causing mild irritation, the whole episode suffers.
(As an aside, Gao was one of the few highlights in this episode and Iron Fist as a whole. Her calm and honest but manipulative bent made more out of her scenes than the sum of their parts.)
It also doesn’t help that the whole todo culminates in a series of fight sequences out of a third-rate 90s action movie. The episode dutifully moves all its players into place -- Joy learning the truth about her father, Ward helping his new allies take him down, Colleen cautious but ready for battle, and Claire as the doubting thomas -- to lead into an inevitable, underwhelming showdown between Danny and Harold.
While certain aspects of this confrontation are silly, but fall well enough into the category of pulpy fun to tolerate -- like Danny swinging through the glass of Harold’s office or using his iron fist to punch an incapacitating shock wave across the room -- many of them just come off as stupid. Why, for the love of god, did we need a scene of Danny and Harold playing American Gladiators with a very fake-looking pair of steel beams?
The whole roof sequence is a gigantic helping of stupidity and cheese. Harold taunting Danny about how long he’s wanted to kill Wendell Rand, or doing the usual scenery-chewing villain monologuing, was entirely unnecessary and belied the attempts at serious and profundity the episode made. At the same time, Danny was just an idiot. Even if he didn’t want to kill Harold which, given what we know about him, makes little sense, why didn’t he do more to, as Bakuto (god help me) said, at least subdue Harold? The hits he takes and submissive response to Harold’s attacks were imbecilic.
Nevermind the bevy of conveniences and contrivances that follow. The whole imagery of Harold as the dragon with the two construction lights behind Danny was weird and cornball. Danny turning his back on an impaled Harold was dumb to begin with, but then having zero awareness to get rid of Harold’s gun, which inevitably Harold tries to use, was one of those “we need something plot-convenient to happen here, so the characters have to be blind fools” moments. By the same token, Ward stepping in to shoot his father was the worst sort of cop outs to these “Can I take a life?” stories, where the hero gets to preserve their moral purity, but the bad guy gets disposed of anyway.
What follows are scores of teases and hints and ending character beats, most of which are just as underwhelming or rushed. While Ward, who has been the secret MVP of this show, still getting emotional over his father’s death and renewing his friendship with Danny (while Hogarth amusingly takes the stuffing out of them), was a nice moment, the rest of it was Iron Fist’s usual on-the-nose philosophizing and loud character work. Claire telling Danny and Colleen they were messed up was an especially odd little moment that seemed to be aiming for profundity and coming up with clichés. And the late tease with Joy, Davos, and Gao had super rushed developments for nearly all the characters.
“Dragon” continues a long string of less-than-satisfying finishes to these Marvel Netflix shows, where even the better ones have trouble sticking the landing. While the show at least had the good sense to center its finale on the show’s central characters rather than fixating more on Bakuto or larger concerns from The Hand, the macguffinism, the generic action movie bad guy confrontation on the roof, and the stupidity of the way the show addressed its characters’ actions and the moral code of its themes leave this finale as a weak ending to a weak series.
When I heard that Scott Buck, the showrunner who ran Dexter into the ground was doing a Netflix series, one with complicated racial politics at play no less, I was hoping that it might at least be the entertaining type of bad. Instead, Iron Fist was just competent to be passable, but just dull and mishandled enough to be thoroughly meh throughout. There are certainly bright spots -- the Meachum family drama turned out to be unexpectedly compelling, and Colleen shined before she got sucked into Danny’s romantic orbit -- but on the whole, Buck and company couldn’t figure out how to tell an interesting story about its main character, couldn’t find a way to make the show fun even if it couldn’t be capital-G Great, and couldn’t find a lead to breathe life into the show’s weaker moments and scenes and thereby elevate the series as a whole.
In the final tally, Iron Fist feels like an inferior rehash of themes and archetypes that many other superhero stories, including those featuring Danny Rand’s soon-to-be Defenders teammates, have already dramatized in a much more interesting, entertaining fashion. Next time, stay in K’un-Lun, Danny.
[7.0/10] There’s a weird thing that’s happened with almost every season of the Marvel Netflix shows, where I end up liking and caring about the side characters way more than the hero (the exception being Jessica Jones, both for having a better hero and some weaker side characters). If you’d told me at the beginning of the series that here, a little ways past the halfway mark, I’d be most interested in the two generic children of privilege and their family issues, I would have laughed you out of the building.
But here we are. In one half of the episode, you have a trio of good guys flying to China to try to take out one of the most intriguing villains in this whole subuniverse, and I could hardly care less. And on the other, you have a pair of well-heeled American Psycho wannabes struggling with the legacy of their father and their name, and it’s the most engrossing thing the show has ever done. TV shows are funny sometimes.
Suffice it to say, the development of the Meachum kids is the best thing Iron Fist has to offer. The conflict between the two of them, where Ward wants to run away and is willing to take quite a haircut to do it (not literally of course), whereas Joy wants to fight so badly that she’ll turn the offer down for the both of them, prompts a very intriguing confrontation for the two of them.
The bit where they sit down on a park bench and let some truths spill out is one of the best scenes in the show thus far. For one thing, it adds more to the internal contradictions that we’ve seen in both characters for a while now. Despite the fact that Joy seems to be the more sensitive and empathetic Meachum sibling, she is willing to do things like have a P.I. (implied to be Jessica Jones) follow her fellow board members for blackmail purposes, that suggest she has a more ruthless side herself.
She confesses, however, that it comes from a place of admiring Ward, of wanting to be like him, with the dramatic irony that Ward doesn’t even want to be like him. The actor who plays Ward does some tremendous work in this episode. The sense that he’s being praised for enacting his father’s plans, that his sister admires him for living a life he wants to escape, for feeling a connection to his flesh and blood that he has to constantly lie to, creates a true sense of comprehensible turmoil for the character that the actor delivers nicely.
There’s little to no music in that scene, just two people spilling their guts, admitting their hurt, and being unwilling or unable to fix it. Ward tries though, and the fake out of him legitimately meaning to show her Harold’s apartment and then having the scene of the crime turn out to be too much for him was very well done. I’m not sure I ever expected Iron Fist to take a page out of The Shining’s playbook, but Ward seeing blood rush from the elevator’s various orifices was a nicely disturbing image and an effective way to dramatize his growing trauma at witnessing and eventually participating in death and dismemberment.
Of course, what’s even more intriguing is that Ward, true to form, does not come clean to Joy about what’s bothering him, even a little, instead spurning her and projecting his frustrations onto her. His rejecting her earnest pleas for understanding and sibling friendship are sad in that they not only break down this relationship that seemed to be heading to a new place of trust, but speak to the way in which Ward is already too damages by what he’s been through and the father that raised him to make it out of this quagmire. It’s hard to make a character both tragic and kind of an asshole, but Iron Fist pulls it off.
And then there’s a much duller story being told with Danny, Colleen, and Claire on the other side of the world. It’s hard to put my finger on why this one was so much worse than the Meachums’ story, but if I had to drive at something in particular, it would be the fact that most of the episode borrows a page from The Walking Dead’s least enjoyable quality – a propensity to have tons of scenes where characters debate Important Things™ in really dumb and obvious ways, with the utmost seriousness.
We get it on the plane where Danny and Claire discuss liking people and choosing destiny and all the usual dross. We get it between Danny and Colleen where they talk about losing their parents. Hell, we even get it between Danny and drunken master guy with the whole “wearing your oath like a mask” exchange that lays it on thicker than chunky peanut butter out of the freezer.
That speaks to the other weakness of the Danny half of the episode – underwhelming fight stuff. Contrary to some other critics, I’ve found the fight choreography on this show generally serviceable, if at times somewhat generic. But the drunken master fight was pretty crappy, with no real sense of combat or flow despite the obvious gimmick. Drunken Master guy was annoying, which didn’t help, but the mix of styles didn’t really tell the story the episode was going far.
To the same end, Colleen’s sword fight was pretty interesting, but then just sort of fell apart. The initial back and forth had some nice shades of Kill Bill and the works it paid homage to, but eventually the demands of TV drama caught up to it.
The rest of the episode, with Danny losing control and confronting Gao and the gang getting into another uninspired scrap with her local goons just sort of petered out. Not to beat a dead horse, but much of that falls on Finn Jones, who has a tough time convincingly selling Danny’s frustrations and breaking point here (even if the way his pummeling the drunken master is shot and edited was pretty well done).
Maybe that’s the difference. Ward and Joy are not the best performed characters ever on television, but they have humanity to them as they struggle with something somewhat implausible but that has roots in real human emotions of inner conflict and family problems that the actors are able to convey. Danny has to do much more fantastical stuff, and the show tries to ground it in a human struggle, but Jones can’t keep up his end of the bargain. The upshot is that in a show with kung fu and ninjas and magic powers, the most interesting part is, oddly enough, the two rich kids dealing with getting kicked out of their father’s company.
