Danny is a Dumbass

I think common opinion on the run of NetflixOriginally started as a disc-by-mail service, Netflix has grown to be one of the largest media companies in the world (and one of the most valued internet companies as well). With a constant slate of new internet streaming-based programming that updates all the time, Netflix has redefined what it means to watch TV and films (as well as how to do it). Marvel television shows is that they start to fall off with Luke Cage: season one (in no small part because that season really falls off halfway in), but the shows hit a true stumbling block with Iron Fist. Whatever the Netflix creators had going on, they managed to squander all the momentum once they got to the fourth of their main heroes, and that’s when opinion truly swung. After that the shows never really found their footing again, and it was no surprise that the shows all eventually got canceled.

Of course, since we’re getting a kind of mini-revival of the Netflix universe within the MCU, with the start of the resurrection of Daredevil: Born Again seasons one and two, and a full-blown reintroduction of all the main heroes with the upcoming season three, it was worth going back and reevaluating all of these shows. Were they all as bad as I remembered? Did the drop off truly happen? Most importantly: was Iron Fist just as bad as everyone says it was (myself included).

Going back-to-back-to-back with these shows in a way you likely didn’t back in the day has shifted my opinion on the shows some. I really liked Luke Cage more than most back in the day, but I can’t deny the dropoff is real in that series. And now with Iron Fist I have to admit that I didn’t hate the show as much as I expected. Don’t get me wrong, the show isn’t great, and I don’t think that the casting of lead actor, Finn Jones, was very good. But there are more bright spots to the series than I remember, and it really works better than it had any right to, especially in the middle of the season when everything starts coming together (even if it kind of fails to truly live up to its potential in the end).

Iron Fist is focused on Danny Rand (Jones), the long-lost billionaire heir to the Rand Corporation and Rand fortune. Thought dead for fifteen years when his family’s plane went down in the Himalayas, Danny was actually the only survivor of the plane crash. He’d been found by monks and raised by them in their hidden monastery in Kunlun, a mythical plane sealed away beyond a vale every fifteen years. But now he’s back, and in New York, wanting to reconnect with his life and pick some things up where they’d been left when he was ten years old.

But resuming his life isn’t that easy, especially when his two former best friends, Ward Meachum (Tom Pelphrey) and his sister Joy Meachum (Jessica Stroup), run the Rand Corporation and refuse to even think that Danny could somehow be alive and in front of them. And even if he could get them to accept him as their lost friend, there are bigger matters at stake, like the fact that Danny won the right in Kunlun to be the iron fist, the legendary defender of the land and the sworn enemy of the Hand. Oh, and somehow the Hand has wormed its way into the Rand Corporation and are using it for their own devices. Danny has a lot of work in New York City before he ever thinks of going back to Kunlun.

Let’s not mince words: Iron Fist’s first season is messy. It has a lot of storylines to tackle and a lot of setup it has to get through before we’re even allowed to enjoy the main adventure, and its shakiest moments all come early on what it’s trying to get going. Danny, to be blunt, is an idiot, and the entire first third of the season, when everyone doubts him, thinks he’s crazy, and refuses to deal with him, is all a mess of his own making. Of course, it would be hard for anyone to believe that he’s just been missing for fifteen years, after supposedly dying when he was ten. And of course his company wouldn’t want to let him back in after they’ve entrenched their power without him. These are simple facts anyone could have anticipated, but Danny goes in half-cocked (or, really, full-cocked), without a plan, and just expects everyone to bend over backwards for him. He sucks.

I do think the first third of the season would have been better if the plotline to introduce Danny were handled better. It could have been approached more as a mystery, with a guy saying he was Danny showing up, and the doubt about if he was even who he said he was powering the storyline throughout the season, without the show even spoiling it for us until everything is revealed at the end. That’s a more mature way to handle the story, and it keeps the audience guessing, which is better way to get them invested in the story than how this season handles it. Instead of being intrigued by Danny, the man raised by monks with an unbelievable story, we just think he’s a fool the whole time.

Once the season settles in, though, and it becomes a power dynamic between Danny, now the majority shareholder, fighting against a company that wants to make profits without necessarily doing anything good with them, the story becomes interesting. Danny is dumb and naive but he has his heart in the right place, and he feels heroic battling for people that have been wronged by Rand’s corporate decisions and striking down profits for drugs that could save people’s lives. This was a storyline I liked, and for a while I was really digging the season despite all my misgivings.

Unfortunately the story eventually stumbles again. It gets mired in the plotline of the Hand, with two rival factions battling against each other and Danny is just sort of stuck on the periphery, getting batted back and forth by everyone because he’s too trusting. Everyone uses his naivety against him, and that doesn’t make for a compelling hero. He goes from idiot to interesting and back to idiot again over the span of thirteen episodes, and by the time the plot sort of resolves itself with the Hand kind of defeated (but not really) and Danny sort of accomplishing his goals (but, again, not really), you don’t really feel like you’ve seen a good story.

It certainly doesn’t help that the show can’t even figure out its focus. Is the story going to be Danny proving he’s who he says he is? Nope, that’s disposed of early on. Is it him battling against the very company he fought so hard to reacquire? Nope, that two ends prematurely and sends the hero spinning off in a different direction. Is it Danny battling against the Hand? Well that would seem to be what we’re left with, except even that isn’t the final story the series has to tell and it isn’t satisfying. So what about that shadowy figure controlling Ward, who has been calling the shots from behind the scenes…?

Okay, that is apparently the real goal of the season, and it, too, sucks. The shadowy figure is really Harold Meachum (David Wenham), the father of Ward and Joy, and he goes from being a pawn of the Hand to somehow running the show. But Harold never really comes into focus either. He’s kind of a dark version of Danny, powerful, corrupt, and out for himself, but the two don’t spend enough time together for the series to nail that aspect. And when it comes time for Harold to retaliate against Danny in a bid to take all the power over Rand for himself, it feels like a half-assed climax for a story that never got the development it needed.

And all of this is for what? There's abig, gaping hole in the middle of the show, and that's Danny Rand. Even if we ignore the performance of Finn Jones, the series fails to establish one very important, key thing: why is Danny in New York City? It hems and haws about it, but Danny never really gives us an explanation beyond, "I just wanted to know." Someone with this much baggage, with this level of self doubt, who struggles so hard to figure himself out and who can't even come up with a good reason to go home beyond, "just because," never should have been able to gain the power of the iron fist to begin with. But the series never addresses that, and its one more sin Iron Fist has to account for.

I feel like Iron Fist struggles in a way similar to the struggles Luke Cage had in its first season. It has an abundance of ideas, probably too many to fit into a single season, and it lurches back and forth swinging left and right as it works to find some kind of footing and handle all its stories within thirteen required episodes. Instead of mashing all these ideas together, what we should have gotten was one season (or one volume within the season) of Danny in New York, trying to prove who he was while fighting, at night, against the Hand. And then, in the second season (or second volume) he could gain power over his corporation, only to learn there are vipers just as deadly within as they were when he was fighting the hand before. That balances things better and lets each story play to its strengths while getting focus.

The show works best in the middle of the season because it has a couple of things going for it: a storyline that’s interesting (in large part because it doesn’t have the Hand involved at all), Jones finally settling into his lead role in a convincing way (largely because it requires to least amount of martial arts from him, which he’s clearly not great at), and it focuses the best on Colleen Wing (Jessica Henwick), the best character on the show. She’s strong, she’s tough, she’s interesting, and she’s a far more engaging character than Danny. She honestly shouldn’t just be a supporting character and love interest on the show. She’s too good for Danny and should be the lead (even if it took this long for me to get around to her as I had a lot to bitch about first).

Iron Fist is incredibly uneven, and at times really hard to watch. It doesn’t do a great job giving us an introduction to the lead hero, and it really doesn’t handle its Hand material well at all. The momentum the season should have given us leading into the big crossover series, The Defenders, wasn’t there, especially considering that the Hand was going to be the big villain over there as well. Even the parts of this season I liked aren’t enough to truly elevate it. The show wasn’t quite the slog I remembered it being, but at the end of the day Iron Fist is the least interesting show in the whole Netflix run so far… and it actually gets worse from here.