10 Thoughts/Questions: Iron Fist

I finally watched Iron Fist. It took me as long as it did partly because Felicia and I were watching nothing but Running Man for like five months straight (we totally watched every episode, by the way), and partly because I had heard not great things. Alas, most of those not-great things were on the nose.

But watched it I did, mostly because I am a completionist, so here are my 10 Thoughts/Questions for Iron Fist. There will be spoilers.

1. Let’s get the important bit out of the way first: I had no horse in the race of whether or not an Asian man should have been cast as Danny Rand. I honestly didn’t care one way or the other. But when Finn Jones, a white guy, was cast as Danny, I was excited to see how the show would handle the character being a third culture kid. Danny Rand is 10 years old when he crash lands in the mountains and is taken into K’un-Lun. He then spends 15 years there before coming back to New York. So, how will this white American kid who has spent most of his life (and most of his formative years) in an entirely different culture behave, with no “stabilizing force” for him to see what white Americans should behave like (he’s fully immersed; there are no other white Americans there for him to emulate or learn from)? How will his tastes, mannerisms, and outlooks have changed? According to the writers of this show, not one fucking bit. Danny still behaves like a typical American, even though he should be anything but.

And that was fucking disappointing.

2. Compounding the problem that is Danny Rand (and there are many; I will touch on more below) is the fact that he is just so goddamn boring. Literally every other character in the show is far and away more interesting than Danny Bland (yes, I make cheap jokes form time to time). From the Meachums to Madame Gao, from Colleen Wing to Davos. Even the ridiculously named Bakuto was more interesting than Danny (PS. I looked it up and Bakuto is based on a comics character of the same name that appeared in three Daredevil comics seven years ago, but he was Japanese there and his name made more sense). You’ve got problems when your title character is the least interesting thing about your show.

3. Ward Meachum’s loyalties flip-flopped more often than Drake’s during an NBA season. It was ridiculous how many different people he was with and against, and it was sometimes hard to keep track. Also, how did this dude end up winning pretty much everything? He’s free of his father, he doesn’t die or end up in prison (after the first episode, I was 100% quoting Kanye: “It's only two places you end up, either dead or in jail”), and he’s still the co-CEO of Rand Enterprises along with Danny. You are one lucky motherfucker, Ward Meachum.

4. Where the fuck is K’un-Lun? And I don’t mean because the last episode revealed that it had disappeared from where Danny thought it was (because this is a mystical city that moves around all the time, so not really surprising that it has moved again). I mean why wasn’t it featured on the show at all? We get like three Immortal Weapons (maybe? I’m not actually sure who those fighters were supposed to be, but the female fighter was at least modeled after and credited as the Bride of Nine Spiders), we barely get to see Lei-Kung the Thunderer (wasting the brilliant Hoon Lee in the process), and that was just as some kind hallucination, and we never get to see Shou-Lao the Undying, who is a friggin’ dragon. That is just bullshit.

5. Finn Jones really should have learned some kung-fu. All of his fights scenes are pretty boring, and not at all shot very well (except maybe the hatchet hallway fight and the fight alongside Davos in the Hand school, but I have to watch them again to confirm). By comparison, most (not all) of Jessica Henwick’s fight scenes are much smoother. She seems to actually know what she’s doing, and there aren’t as many cuts to break up the flow (especially her underground cage fights). Even that inky kid in the opening credits fights better than Finn Jones. Again, if your main kung fu character can’t even do kung fu, you’ve got a problem.

6. What exactly was Harold Meachum’s plan? And Bakuto’s? I know Harold’s endgame was to free himself of Hand control, and Bakuto’s was to defeat Gao’s Hand, but how were they going to get there? Harold seems to not actually know what to do until Danny shows up, and even then he seems to know nothing about how the Hand actually operate so knows nothing about how to actually take them down. And Bakuto is... training kids? How are they going to take on Gao’s army of ninjas? While we’re on the subject, how is Gao suddenly Hand? Wasn’t she not Hand in the first season of Daredevil? Wasn’t Nobu the Hand, and Madame Gao Triad? Also also, why does Colleen Wing not know how evil the Hand is, and why does Bakuto keep it a secret from her for so long until it’s convenient to the plot?

Let’s not mistake “interesting” for “making sense” as nearly every character made no sense at multiple times during the season (except for Davos; he made sense the whole way through).

7. Is there anything I liked about this show? Yes, yes there was, and here is a mini-list about the stuff I liked:

a. Davos’ accent.

b. The Chinese video showing a proper Iron Fist in a proper Iron Fist costume (that was Orson Randall, presumably?).

c. Everything about Jeri Hogarth (and it’s a bit weird that I like her so much since the last time I saw her, she was attempting to manipulate, and then accidentally killing, her wife via the Tenth Doctor).

d. The fact that Madame Gao totally reneges on her deal with Danny after the mini-tournament, like we all knew she would.

e. Davos’ face.

f. Claire Temple, especially when she gives Danny the look of “What the fuck are you thinking, son?”

g. The tiny snippets of Hoon Lee, who was criminally underused, but will hopefully be used much, much more in Season 2.

h. The fighters not named Danny Rand in the Hand’s mini-tournament, especially the Russians and the Bride of Nine Spiders. Can there be a show about them instead (and if they throw in Fat Cobra, I will love that show with all my heart)?

i. Davos’ body.

j. Really, everything about Davos. I love Davos, is what I’m saying, and Sacha Dhawan, the actor that plays Davos, may have just replaced somebody in my Five.

8. Madame Gao is totally the Crane Mother, right? And she’ll be making Davos into the Steel Serpent next season? And we’ll get a proper tournament with proper Immortal Weapons in proper K’un-Lun? You know, a proper Iron Fist TV show? God willing, Finn Jones will have learned to fight by then. Or maybe they’ll give us Wu Ao-Shi instead. That would be awesome.

9. It was somewhat heartbreaking to see the mostly good Joy Meachum get so totally broken by her family by the end of this season. She spent most of the show as someone who loved her family and her company, and ended up hating both thanks to the machinations and perceived machinations of Harold, Ward, and Danny.

10. The first time Davos shows up in the show, he tells Danny that he is the worst Iron Fist. I think Davos was all of us in that moment. Later, he says he would have made a better Iron Fist than Danny. Yes, yes of course Davos would have made a better Iron Fist. Daredevil would have made a better Iron Fist. Hell, that kid that Danny smacks in Colleen’s dojo would have probably made a better Iron Fist. Danny Rand’s a bad Iron Fist, is what I’m saying.