Iron Fist S01E13 Review: Frankenstein's Monster versus the Iron Fist

Iron Fist, Season 1, Episode 13: Dragon Plays With Fire

Well, it's a good thing this ended. Even without the racist undertones the show suffered from an agonizingly slow opening, an inconsistent batch of villains (though, credit where credit's due, the Hand is a lot more interesting than the generic ninjas in Daredevil), poor writing and scripting, and a strange economical approach towards action sequences. Again, the show has had a lot of great potential which is just squandered so much. A lot of the actors cast were great and charismatic (even if the scripting is asinine at times that you'd think they're dubbing anime instead of making live-action TV) and we've got the roots of several great storylines and characters. But, well, everything fell flat on its face. 

So, after being framed for the drug stuff, Danny learns that Harold killed his parents, but he needs to go to talk to Madame Gao to figure it out. It's such an unimportant detail in the grand scheme of things that I've honestly totally forgot about the mystery of Danny's parents' death, but it's obvious, really, that Harold's the one that did it. 

Also, no one really made any kind of response to Harold Meachum returning from the dead and seizing control of the company mere days after Danny Rand did the same, and hours after Danny Rand got framed?

The confrontation was decent enough, with Ward, who's possibly the most well-written villain in all this if not for his annoying drug addiction subplot, having thrown in his lot with Danny. Harold waltzes in into Rand Enterprises and basically takes it over for all of one day. After a brief consultation with Jeri Hogarth, Danny, Colleen, Claire and Ward do their thing. Ward gets hit with a golf club. Claire blows up a peanut cart. There's this obvious-CGI sequence of Danny groundpounding the floor with the Iron Fist, which totally cut a lot of people standing at ground level with the falling debris.

Then there's the confrontation on the rooftop, where Danny overpowers Harold -- though we did get a hilarious bit where he's so confident that he gets shot in the hand. Harold fights Danny, rants like a madman for a bit, Danny decides not to kill him, Harold shoots him but Danny blocks it with the Iron Fist, Ward shoots Harold, he falls down, he gets cremated. Danny's name gets cleared, Ward gets the company. Harold was definitely erratic and shitty near the end, but at least it's Ward that kills him. After the amount of abuse the fucker heaped on the boy, definitely appropriate for Ward to be the one delivering the killing blow. 

The epilogue sequence was a lot more messy, though. Danny decides to return to K'un Lun, only to discover dead bodies of Hand agents (not so high and mighty about leaving your boring post now, huh, you dirty deserter?) and the gateway to K'un Lun closed and/or disappeared. There literally is no reason for Danny to decide that, hey, he needs to go to K'un Lun now after last episode made such a big deal about him not wanting to go back -- it would've been something if last episode's fight with Davos had him talk about how he's going to solve the mystery of his parents, or because of his love for Colleen, but no.

And honestly a lot of this Hand stuff looks like it's going to be built up for the Defenders, and since a crapton of questions about K'un Lun and whatever (we did get a random flashback of the dragon's eyes, which isn't worth jack) is going to be answered there, and if it's going to be as oblique as this series then I really hope Defenders can get it right.

Oh, Gao gets herself free, hopefully for a far, far better third rodeo. She was so good in Daredevil, and I feel that she's absolutely a missed opportunity here. Joy confronts her father, basically realises that her father's a liar... and what does she do? Does she try to collaborate her story with her obviously-abused brother? No, she just straight-up meets Davos (how the fuck did they know each other) and swears that she will murder Danny Rand. What in the utter horse shit is this kind of logic thinking? It's so dumb. Even with Gao's manipulations, I'm honestly not quite sure just how Joy's mind went from "let me confirm the nonsense Ward's been saying" to "Danny Rand is the antichrist and he must DIE!"

Best part of this episode? Hogarth and Claire's snark. Claire's exasperated "is there a version of this where we don't kill anyone?" after Colleen's deadpan reaction about how she's going to kill Harold instead of Danny is hilarious, and Hogarth's quick recovery from her surprise by reminding Harold that falsifying death is a grievous offense. Her cutting jibe at how emotional Danny and Ward are (with horrible I-am-feeling-this-way dialogue) is equally funny.

Still, thirteen hours later and Claire never gives us any reason -- not even an obviously-handwaved one as to why she doesn't call in Daredevil for help at any point. Hell, a simple "a friend of mine could help, but he's grieving and/or hunting the Punisher" 

Good lord, this kind of ended horribly, doesn't it? Iron Fist wasn't completely bad, but it started poorly and ended poorly, and thanks to relatively inconsistent writing and somewhat sub-par fight scenes (let's be honest and just compare this to Arrow or Daredevil) it's not been an entirely enjoyable series for me to watch. There was so many ways that this series could've been done better.