Iron Fist: Shadow Hawk Takes Flight
March 20, 2017 4:56 AM - Season 1, Episode 2 - Subscribe
Danny Struggles with his new surroundings. Colleen dishes out a harsh lesson, and Joy sends an unconventional message.
"You might want to sound a little less like a fat duck… I could hear your feet slapping on the sidewalk a mile away. I could smell your garlic breath before you walked out the door. And what the Hell was that, Jenny, Yoga? You move about as fast as a pig, swimming in gravy. I can’t… If I say anything, I’ll just end up crying. This was a fail, guys... Do better!"
-- Colleen Wing describing one of only two action sequences in episode 2.
"You might want to sound a little less like a fat duck… I could hear your feet slapping on the sidewalk a mile away. I could smell your garlic breath before you walked out the door. And what the Hell was that, Jenny, Yoga? You move about as fast as a pig, swimming in gravy. I can’t… If I say anything, I’ll just end up crying. This was a fail, guys... Do better!"
-- Colleen Wing describing one of only two action sequences in episode 2.
Danny is just such a naif, and I don't know if the show has earned my patience to stick around and find out why. He volunteers the existence of Kun Lun to the psychologist so readily and needlessly that I practically wanted him to get committed so he learned to keep his mouth shut.
And remember, this is supposedly him AFTER he has been trained to be a weapon by the monks. Whitey McSplainsalot, the Wushu Prince Mishkin of the Upper East Side.
It's not only the racial politics; it's also the shadow of things done better. I don't just mean Arrow: the wealthy corporate heir who gets lost in the East and comes back a superhero is also the plot of Iron Man and Batman Begins, arguably between them the genesis of the past decade's superhero fixation. They are not putting enough new spin on this story to make it work.
I'm another episode or so in past this, but it's a toss-up whether I'll watch the series out.
posted by gauche at 10:58 AM on March 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
And remember, this is supposedly him AFTER he has been trained to be a weapon by the monks. Whitey McSplainsalot, the Wushu Prince Mishkin of the Upper East Side.
It's not only the racial politics; it's also the shadow of things done better. I don't just mean Arrow: the wealthy corporate heir who gets lost in the East and comes back a superhero is also the plot of Iron Man and Batman Begins, arguably between them the genesis of the past decade's superhero fixation. They are not putting enough new spin on this story to make it work.
I'm another episode or so in past this, but it's a toss-up whether I'll watch the series out.
posted by gauche at 10:58 AM on March 20, 2017 [1 favorite]
i am *really* struggling with this series. I keep trying to explain Danny's behaviour to myself by repeating "he was 10 when he was locked away from the rest of the world, so he's a 10 year old in a 25 year old's body. This is why he's so STUPID with people and situations.....".
also he keeps saying "i was taught to control my emotions", and then manages to flip out every episode and, maybe, apologise about it later......
posted by alchemist at 12:34 PM on March 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
also he keeps saying "i was taught to control my emotions", and then manages to flip out every episode and, maybe, apologise about it later......
posted by alchemist at 12:34 PM on March 20, 2017 [5 favorites]
Apparently if you’re rich, you can get any random homeless person committed!
I think my favorite part of that is that they didn't get into trouble for drugging him. I'm pretty sure that's a hard one to justify, even in self-defense.
hey had the sets & the actors, they couldn’t maybe show us what happened? Also, for what I thought would be a martial arts focused series, there as about 50 minutes between any actual fighting.
Yeah, you've summed up my biggest trouble with this whole episode. The only other thing was the bit with Colleen having her students attack her for practice. I used to know a lot of LARPers in my misspent youth - never really my scene - but I remember how unhappy the cops were to see people with weapons in the park, and those weapons were only foam.
I can't see her outdoor exercises going over well with the NYPD.
[I will not be offended if someone else who's already binged wants to post episodes or a full series post.]
If nobody else gets to it, I can help when I have a little more time. (Need to make up for the work I missed binging this, heh.) Despite my personal preference, it sounds like episode-by-episode was still the better structure as a lot of people didn't have time to down the whole thing at once.
posted by mordax at 12:53 PM on March 20, 2017
I think my favorite part of that is that they didn't get into trouble for drugging him. I'm pretty sure that's a hard one to justify, even in self-defense.
hey had the sets & the actors, they couldn’t maybe show us what happened? Also, for what I thought would be a martial arts focused series, there as about 50 minutes between any actual fighting.
Yeah, you've summed up my biggest trouble with this whole episode. The only other thing was the bit with Colleen having her students attack her for practice. I used to know a lot of LARPers in my misspent youth - never really my scene - but I remember how unhappy the cops were to see people with weapons in the park, and those weapons were only foam.
I can't see her outdoor exercises going over well with the NYPD.
[I will not be offended if someone else who's already binged wants to post episodes or a full series post.]
If nobody else gets to it, I can help when I have a little more time. (Need to make up for the work I missed binging this, heh.) Despite my personal preference, it sounds like episode-by-episode was still the better structure as a lot of people didn't have time to down the whole thing at once.
posted by mordax at 12:53 PM on March 20, 2017
The worst bit is definitely the beginning, though I can't speak for it getting to any particular heights.
posted by Sebmojo at 1:01 PM on March 20, 2017
posted by Sebmojo at 1:01 PM on March 20, 2017
I had the exposition to the psychiatrist issue as well. Even a ten year old should know that talking about journeying to parallel dimensions is not going to help with convincing people of his sanity. If its just a matter that he does not want to lie, all he had to say was that the settlement was remote and it was not practical to return immediately. Not to mention, telling everyone and their brother that he's the Iron Fist surely is not helping.
Danny's temper thing also baffled me. I'll admit he's not the comic character I know most about, but I don't recall any other version of Danny Rand losing his temper so much, let alone expressing it by slamming furniture around. He had enough discipline to win all of the battles to make it to the top, but not the discipline to wait through a ten minute conversation that's not going 100% his way?
posted by Karmakaze at 12:03 PM on March 21, 2017
Danny's temper thing also baffled me. I'll admit he's not the comic character I know most about, but I don't recall any other version of Danny Rand losing his temper so much, let alone expressing it by slamming furniture around. He had enough discipline to win all of the battles to make it to the top, but not the discipline to wait through a ten minute conversation that's not going 100% his way?
posted by Karmakaze at 12:03 PM on March 21, 2017
Holy shit, Ward. Could you be more of an obvious baddie? Maybe you could grow a mustache to twirl? All you had to do to get Colleen on board is not out-creep Danny, but congratulations, you somehow managed to do that.
posted by ODiV at 12:54 AM on March 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by ODiV at 12:54 AM on March 22, 2017 [1 favorite]
Ward is very much in the mode of Fred Armisen playing Patrick Bateman. I'm just waiting for the episode when he invites someone (his dad's flunky, for example) over for drinks and there's plastic sheeting on the floor and Ward is putting on a raincoat while he's talking about how unappreciated Huey Lewis & the News are.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:52 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:52 PM on March 23, 2017 [1 favorite]
I really really hated the way a 72-hour psych hold was treated in this show. Not so much because of what happened to Danny, because that can be explained by the rich, powerful people who were out to get him. No, it was the other patients who were there for seeming perpetuity. The impression that I got from the dialogue is that if you get picked up on an involuntary psych hold and are then diagnosed with a mental illness, they will keep you in the hospital forever. This is not how it works in the real world, and creating that misapprehension could create unwarranted fear of mental health treatment.
posted by chrchr at 11:35 AM on August 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by chrchr at 11:35 AM on August 16, 2017 [1 favorite]
chrchr, I assumed it was this particular facility that always finds a way to keep people from leaving. They don't seem to be on the up-and-up. I don't think the show was trying to paint all mental health treatment centers with the same brush. This one place seems to be controlled by the Meachum family.
posted by donajo at 2:27 PM on August 17, 2017
posted by donajo at 2:27 PM on August 17, 2017
Okay, so I'm like a year late watching this. We had a baby. Schedules were disrupted. But anyway, it seems obvious to me that these first two episodes were originally meant to be a single episode.
The end of this episode, where Joy goes "oh my god, it's really him!", and Danny finally gets his power sorted out, blows through the hospital wall, and heads off into New York to be the Iron Fist is obviously the end of the pilot episode. I have no idea why they stretched it into two, but that explains so much about the horrible pacing of these first two episodes. As well as the fact that they had to pad out this episode with a completely pointless fight between Colleen and some students we've literally never seen before just so there would be some action in this episode. I mean I hope those guys turn out to be important later on, but right now, it's like a completely random fight scene dropped in out of some other story completely.
And is there any way that Harold's little minion guy doesn't die horribly before this is over with? I mean, look at him. He's going to die, and it's going to be horrible.
posted by Naberius at 6:45 AM on June 3, 2018
The end of this episode, where Joy goes "oh my god, it's really him!", and Danny finally gets his power sorted out, blows through the hospital wall, and heads off into New York to be the Iron Fist is obviously the end of the pilot episode. I have no idea why they stretched it into two, but that explains so much about the horrible pacing of these first two episodes. As well as the fact that they had to pad out this episode with a completely pointless fight between Colleen and some students we've literally never seen before just so there would be some action in this episode. I mean I hope those guys turn out to be important later on, but right now, it's like a completely random fight scene dropped in out of some other story completely.
And is there any way that Harold's little minion guy doesn't die horribly before this is over with? I mean, look at him. He's going to die, and it's going to be horrible.
posted by Naberius at 6:45 AM on June 3, 2018
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The Good: Danny Rand totally Iron Fists a door apart in a traditional Mavel Netflix “Fuck Doors” moment. Harold receives a menacing message from the Hand that might give us a clue into why he's faked his own death.
The Bad: Our protagonist spends much of the episode immobilized. We see him stare into the middle distance as he describes the traumatic discovery of the deceased pilots and his father in the plane crash that lead to his disappearance. They had the sets & the actors, they couldn’t maybe show us what happened? Also, for what I thought would be a martial arts focused series, there as about 50 minutes between any actual fighting.
The Other: It didn’t seem like the scene where Danny describes how he spent the past 15 years in the extra dimensional K’un Lun to the psychiatrist was played for laughs, but I laughed anyway. Also, apparently Harold is the audience insert in this episode as he was watching the events unfold on a screen and completely frustrated by the lack of forward movement. At least he was able to take matters into his own hands.
[I will not be offended if someone else who's already binged wants to post episodes or a full series post.]
posted by Jugwine at 5:00 AM on March 20, 2017 [1 favorite]