Iron Fist 1.01

Snow Gives Way

I didn't mean to watch the whole episode. I thought I would just give it a try. I didn't love it but I also didn't hate it. I would have to say that I liked it.

Danny Rand returns to NYC. He has been missing, presumed dead, for 15 years. Now he walks around barefoot and lives on the street. He tries approaching some people he knew when he was last in New York, the Meachum siblings: Wade and Joy. They don't believe he is Danny. They sick security on him, He tries approaching them individually away from their high-rise office building in Manhattan but isn't any more successful.

Danny meets a martial arts instructor named Colleen Wing when he is hanging out in a park. He tries talking her into letting him teach a class at her school. She brushes him off but later witnesses how he deals with Meachum's security.

He tries approaching Joy one more time toward the end of the episode. This time she agrees to talk to him. He starts to tell her about what happened to him but he doesn't get very far before he realizes that the tea she gave him was drugged. He collapses and wakes up in a mental institution just in time to get injected with another sedative. The way this part is done and placed just at the end of the episode makes it seem as if all that came before was might have just been a dream. I don't think it was but the thought did occur to me.

This feels like a slow burn. There aren't a lot of fights in this episode. I can see how people who like to shotgun episodes of shows like these wouldn't be too excited after watching the first episode. It is quieter and feels more sedate than the other Marvel Netflix shows. I'm not confident that it will be in the same class as the other Marvel Netflix shows but I want to continue watching.

I'm not coming at this show with any preconceived notions of what came before it. I have read very little of the Iron Fist or Power Man and Iron Fist comic books. I haven't heard anyone praising the virtues of this show. I have heard a lot of grumbling from people who either haven't started watching it or only watched a few episodes. At the moment on Netflix the consensus rating is 1.5 out of 5.