Shaun Munro reviews the third episode of Iron Fist…
After a mediocre season premiere and flat-out bad second episode, Iron Fist hopes to change things up as it swaps out writer Scott Buck and director John Dahl for Quinton Peeples (Flashforward, 11.22.63) and Tom Shankland (House of Cards, Luke Cage) respectively.
From the outset, things are definitely looking up; the brief flashbacks don’t have the same awkward choppiness and cheapo filter effects, and though the fight scenes are still over-edited into oblivion (especially a close-quarters fight between Danny and a surprise assailant), the general direction and framing is evidently improved.
Narrative, though, it’s still mostly wading through treacle, promising interest but failing to deliver. For starters, episode three introduces some cringe-worthy, forced sexual tension between Danny and Colleen that’s wholly unnecessary, threatening to make yet another superfluous Marvel Couple out of the pair.
At least Finn Jones gets to show a little more personality here, sounding off on the students at Colleen’s dojo and getting a haunting glimpse of his own grave, but the brevity of these weighty scenes suggests they’re going to be outliers rather than indications of an overall course-change moving forward.
Similarly, Jessica Stroup gets to do some Real Acting during a curb-side chat with Danny and a heart-to-heart with Ward, while her ruthlessness shines through during one legitimately creepy scene that shows just how far she’ll go to secure good business.
The Meachums continue to be mostly ponderous, though, with the father-son dynamic between Ward and Harold almost eye-rollingly cliched, and a big, emotional confrontation at a restaurant feeling stagey and over-affected. As for the Meachums’ snoozy business dealings, they take another contrived turn here, with a significant plot point revolving around a clay bowl Danny made as a child, something that would be unlikely to have much conceivable legal standing (but the show would have you believe otherwise).
Even Colleen, the highlight of the past two episodes, is relegated to a giggle-inducingly silly subplot where she attends and participates in a cage-fight club in a manner that seems to contradict her established character, but at least there’s room here for future episodes to address the whys and whats. If the women do feel relatively under-served in this instalment, fans are at least gifted with the return of Marvel mainstay Jeri Hogarth (Carrie-Anne Moss), and even if she’s not exactly tasked with doing much of interest, her presence is still very much welcome.
In terms of big-picture story, this episode does nod towards the series’ further trajectory while beginning to move it somewhere, and it’s definitely an improvement in terms of action and character work, but Iron Fist remains really just about watchable at this stage. It’s hard to call it good, but merely an improvement after a fairly lousy second episode. Get ready to groan at that immensely lame cliffhanger ending, though.
Shaun Munro
Originally published March 19, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
