Shaun Munro reviews the eleventh episode of Iron Fist…
“Lead Horse Back to Stable” opens with an intriguing flashback to Danny’s road to becoming an Iron Fist, cementing how compelling his dynamic with Davos is compared to, well, just about anyone else he interacts with. It helps enormously that Finn Jones’ fellow brit Sacha Dhawan is positively dripping with charisma, surely much more than Jones himself. In fact, Davos is arguably a more interesting – and certainly more tortured – character than Danny, and their shared history is absolutely well-exploited throughout this instalment.
Still, Danny losing his Iron Fist powers is yet another case of the show deliberately working against what most fans want to see, but at least it’s a spanner in the works that feels appropriately placed (as opposed to, say, bafflingly imprisoning him in the second episode). Unfortunately, Danny’s “performance issues” aren’t very interesting because there’s no physical way for the struggle to manifest to the viewer, and Jones’ performance simply isn’t strong enough to ably convey his inner psychological torment. Perhaps if the preceding episodes had been stronger, this wouldn’t feel like quite such a half-baked plot turn.
Bakuto, conversely, continues to be a gamely conniving addition to the show, driving a wedge between Danny and Colleen as her loyalties become torn betwixt The Hand and her lover. It’s hardly an original quandary, but at least demonstrates Colleen’s hidden layers compared to how she began the season.
Meanwhile, Claire is back to basically playing the boring medic role again, and sadly doesn’t do much else of mention, aside from a few mildly amusing interactions with Davos (such as introducing him to pizza and, weirdly enough, namedropping Pete’s Dragon).
Later on, episode eleven also appears to flirt with going the torture porn route – which wouldn’t be a million miles away from some of the gnarly gore of episodes prior – but it’s interrupted by a badly-directed and fecklessly choreographed fight that feels like a return to the unfussed “it’ll do” laziness of earlier episodes in the season.
It’s all capped by a laughably melodramatic emotional climax, replete with trite dialogue that’ll surely invite quite a few enthusiastic eye-rolls, especially if you’re still struggling to buy into the Danny-Colleen relationship, particularly in light of recent revelations.
Though this episode’s flashbacks raise the intrigue level somewhat – even while some of them feel rather piecemeal and disjointedly pigenholed into the current narrative – there’s a lot of dead-weight storytelling here with just two episodes left. Can what remains make the most of the promising Danny-Davos pairing as well as Bakuto’s villainy, or will lame duck romance take precedent? At least the Meachums’ usual melodramatic nonsense felt rather pared down this episode, so that’s something.
With just two hours to go, though, Iron Fist really should be hitting much harder.
Shaun Munro
Originally published March 27, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
