Shaun Munro reviews the fifth episode of Iron Fist…
An unexpected sojourn into New York’s grim heroin trade presents a disturbing, propulsive start for Iron Fist‘s fifth episode, bringing a welcome grit to the table that’s been largely missing from the series so far.
Character development has been a real bugbear up to this point, but for a moment here it actually feels well-drawn and consistent, with Joy being humanised through the clear disparity between her closed-off, corporate persona and more subdued sense of humanity in private. A similar attempt to endear Danny to the audience isn’t quite as effective, though, because his caring reaction to the mother of a cancer-ridden child, possibly caused by a Rand Enterprises operation, seems incredibly stagey and implausible. The script is certainly partly to blame, but Jones’ performance is hardly faultless.
Danny’s kinda-but-also-not-romantic takeout scene with Colleen is more cringey than anything, and the typical unintentional-invasion-of-body-space sexual tension cliches are more likely to elicit groans than flutters of the heart for many. However, some of the episode’s later scenes do at least demonstrate some palpable chemistry between the two. Furthermore, fans get a fun cameo from Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson) out of it, and it’s surely not the last time we’ll see her this series.
Though Joy’s multi-faceted examination definitely perks the largely flat Meachum side of the equation up a little, Ward is still something of a struggle. His past personal issues – specifically a substance abuse problem – are prodded at surface level, but it again returns to the well of soap opera melodrama for inspiration, and basically presents what passes for the most transparently boilerplate “character development” possible. It’s sadly only marginally more interesting than the tiresome glut of business chatter that inevitably follows.
On the action front, this episode’s big set-piece is a laughably cliched stealth mission pulled straight out of a mediocre 90s B-movie, as Danny and Colleen camp out at a pier to acquire evidence of a heroin shipment. Admittedly, a rough-hewn fight scene inside of a moving truck has its moments, but is followed by an awfully shot-and-performed jump stunt that, in its out-of-place silliness, again recalls those naff action thrillers of decades past.
The episode is capped off by two welcome moments of wanton brutality, though; a gory surgery scene featuring one of the more interesting uses of a credit card in recent TV history, and a shockingly grotesque ending that again proves the benefits of this show airing on Netflix rather than a traditional network.
With the concrete introduction of Madame Gao (Wai Ching Ho) as a force to be reckoned with, there’s a lot of promise moving ahead, even if this episode didn’t do as much to build on the improvements of the previous entry as one might’ve hoped.
Shaun Munro
Originally published March 21, 2017. Updated April 11, 2018.
