After so many negative reviews, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the first episode. But what will episode 2 bring?
Iron Fist s01e02: Shadow Hawk Takes Flight
writer: Scott Buck
director: John Dahl
Netflix
Quick Review: In the previous shows, all the Marvel/Netflix dramas have started off with a breakneck pace. That is not happening here. The passing is much more deliberate. It slows things down to a slow boil. This episode feels like it wants to wrap up the mystery of who is Danny Rand as well as start the simmering on what those nasty Meachums are up to. And while I can see there being a promise in those storylines, they aren’t really doing it for me. I feel that we, the audience, have been explicitly told that this is Danny Rand, so the mystery aspect isn’t that engaging. Also, the Meachums have yet to really hold my attention. After Wolf of Wall Street and Billions, I need something more than a bit of mustache twirling to care about a financial bad guy. I wouldn’t call this a bad episode, but it was still rather dull.
Spoilers Lurk Below
Analysis:
I really want to know why we are supposed to care about the Meachums. They seem just overall jerky, and I have no doubt they will be connected to dark forces of crime, but that alone does not an interesting villain make. Also, the show is trying to hard to establish Daddy Meachum as the ringleader, Brother Meachum as the evil son trying to do right by daddy, and Sister Meachum as the one not fully in on the evil scheme. I would not surprise me at all is before the end of this season is Brother kills Daddy and Sister breaks good and proves to be the downfall of the Meachums. For ultimate cliche something bad will happen to her for the part she has unknowingly played.
As for the psyche ward scenes, sure. Again, they basically serve to establish that Danny is a little broken, but also that he is indeed who he says he is. Oh, and that the Meachums have reach. All in all it felt kind of like a detour to nowhere. I’m okay with this little bit of excursion, as long as we don’t come back to it.
As for Colleen, I’m not really sure what she is going for in the exercise shown. What is this for? Can they, as a group, successfully attack person in broad daylight? That doesn’t seem like a good thing to learn. I’ll admit that it was majority men learning how to attack a woman also felt kind of weird. I get what the show was trying to do, but it just didn’t work.
Also, we get our first glimpse of the Iron Fist. I hope this is the early version and we get something more impressive later. As a level one, still fighting off drugs Fist, I’ll allow it. But I need something cooler looking later on.
Wrap Up:
So, that was episode two. The slow burn angle does set it apart from the other shows, but it also isn’t quite clicking. None of it is bad bad, but it also isn’t wow good. Really the most disheartening part is the past track record of these shows. Normally the opening episodes are the best. If that is the case here, its going to be a long show. However, in normal tv the early episodes are where the show figures out what it will be and they often get better from there. Hopefully that will be the case here.
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Deadly Troubadour 