Netflix Retrospective - Iron Fist Season 1 Episodes 7-8 - Felling Tree with Roots/The Blessing of Many Fractures

Felling tree with roots

We open with Harold sleeping, he’s been watching some of the early episodes, hasn’t he? A handprint in the glass and he’s dragged out of bed. 2 nameless members of the hand tell him he’s showing a rebellious streak. He finds it odd that they didn’t tell him that Danny is the Iron Fist, and they’re about to get him to cut off a finger but Danny walks straight into them. A fight ensues, a fight that ends with Harold murdering them. Which is the only way that could’ve ended, otherwise the Hand would’ve discovered their team-up and Harold would be dead. Just saying, he didn’t need to come up with the ‘he was gonna kill you’ excuse.

Danny can’t summon the Iron Fist because of the events in the last episode. Harold explains that Madame Gao is the person who gave him renewed life in exchange for his service to the Hand, Danny asks about her knowing his father but Harold claims to know nothing about it and tries to convince Danny not to play that game. Harold then proceeds to chop off his own finger to ensure Gao doesn’t find out. Roll credits.

Joy confronts Ward over his behaviour, and begins to let things slip… He can’t tell her anything and when Harold calls, she storms off. Back at the Dojo, Colleen is stitching Danny back together, he has been bruised from the fight, they discuss Gao until Danny gets a text from Claire, she’s secured Sabine but of course her father is still captured at this point.  

They sit and drink and it’s absolutely thrilling, I can tell you.

  

Unfortunately, this scene goes on for some time. They kiss and I’m still bored. Ward arrives at his father’s place, still on edge after everything, he enters and sees the two dead bodies, who Harold is beating with the hammer, knocking out their teeth so the police can struggle to identify the bodies. This makes Ward feel incredibly uncomfortable. He has to put one in the back seat of his car, where he finds a bottle of the pills he’s been taking.

He takes the bodies to the park as asked, he begins talking to the bodies before dumping them in the lake. He finds $25 mil in his personal account. The next morning, Danny is standing looking out the window, listening to the quiet. And it’s time for more boring sh*t and kissing, next scene.

Danny asks for his father’s files and that bullsh*t with the chemical plant shows up again, also Gao shows up for some reason. This is a really stupid time for her to show up, and to compound the stupid, Danny leaves the door open. Gao remarks about having seen Iron Fists before, but none of the others would’ve backed down. Danny asks about his father, she just remarks how she realised that Danny left in dereliction of his duty. She offers him a chance, if he stop his war, he can reap the money and the consequences of the war need not affect his friends. She leaves via a passcode in the elevator, but Danny manages to summon his iron fist to descend with them.

On the 13^th floor, Danny sneaks around. Ward seems to be booking a holiday, and Joy seems to be encouraging him to take a break too. Of course Harold may not be seeing eye-to-eye with him here. Gao gets a report that the drug is breaking sales targets within months, and they’ll be using Rand shipping networks to ship the drug across the Eastern Seaboard. Gao leaves and Rand confronts the woman, he defeats her and warns her the last guy he defeated was violently murdered, so she should run, but give him access to their device so he can find them before they find her.

Meanwhile Coleen is confronted by her old master Bakuto. They talk… and I’m getting bored again. And I think you can guess where this arc is going, Bakuto works for the Hand. Now I’ve told you that we can skip half a season’s worth of drama. Danny returns to his office, moments before the board meeting was due to start, makes a change. His shirt’s dirty but thankfully there’s a convenient change in the office. All of Danny’s father’s files are gone, all that’s left is his work pass.

Danny completely overrules the pre-written speech and decides to use his authority to shut down the plant that may be causing cancer, keeping all the staff on payroll to avoid any unnecessary job losses. He gives a, I guess well-reasoned justification, but bear in mind, government inspectors found nothing, alternatively they were bribed by the Hand but I don’t know if that has occurred to him yet. The board aren’t happy but Danny did something underhanded but actually smart… I know, I’m as surprised as you. He told the press about this, rather limiting the board’s hand, and he also owns a majority stake in the company so f*ck all of you

Danny goes to Harold with the tablet, containing all the info on Gao’s synthetic heroin operation. Just want to say that it’ll be like 3 seconds before Gao realises the tablet’s missing and moves everything! Anyway, they isolate a manufacturing plant and Danny wants to rescue Radovan, but Harold encourages him to strike down Gao instead.

Colleen is telling her class that Daryl, that kid from the beginning participating in underground fights has been given a scholarship to a university. Sadly, yes, this is going to come back later. Danny watches from the door. The class leaves and Danny tells Colleen about the Hand knowing about her, also that they have a limited window to get Radovan. Ward is told his card was declined, he checks his account and finds nothing. Poor guy can’t get a break.

Danny heads to the hatchet men, asking them to help him fight off the Hand. And it turns out that one of the louder board-men has ousted him, Joy and Ward from the company… using the same logic that got Harry ousted in Amazing Spider-man 2. Unsurprisingly, the Hand appear to be packing up, the Hatchet men storm the company, as Colleen and Danny spring Radovan, unfortunately he’s already given up the secret of the synthetic heroin.

He mentions the city of Anzhou, the place Danny would’ve gone had the plane not crashed. Radovan I think is dead, since they don’t have any use for him. Ah, the famous Midland Circle shows up again, we’ll get to that when we do the Defenders later on. Meanwhile Ward confronts his father. Apparently, he’s been embezzling funds from the business, something that Harold knew about and had been hiding from the relevant authorities. Ward’s had enough and seeing a knife, repeatedly stabs his father to death.

He drags Harold to the lake with the bodies from earlier. If you think they’re pulling a cottonmouth at this point, he’ll be back in one or two episodes time.

It took a while to get going but this did get going and when it did it was good

Rating 7/10

The Blessing of Many Fractures

We open with Claire reading a letter from Luke. She gets a call from Danny, but a hand with a knife slips the phone away. Danny heads up to Harold’s apartment but finds it empty he sees a pool of blood as the elevator comes up, Colleen heads to Claire’s house and manages to lock in her would-be attacker.

It’s Ward in the elevator who feigns surprise at finding all the blood. Danny blames himself for not backing down from Gao. Ward is a jerk, but it’s not all that surprising, given he wants to overcompensate for the fact he was the murderer. Danny leaves and Ward unpacks the bleach to clean up.

Danny’s heading to Anzhou, believing that his father suspected something was up, and that ultimately lead to their death. And we get this glimmer of adults

“Have you stopped to consider this idea totally sucks”

“It doesn’t suck, OK!”

Claire points out that it might be a trap and Gao is using his father as bait. Colleen says she’ll go to back him up and since this show needs to fill its quota for Claire Temple, she decides to go too. Even though she can barely fight and might end up being more a liability than a help. Danny has a stupid as f*ck plan.

Meanwhile, it’s time for our resident asshole to give them the termination agreements, $100m each but only if both sign. Ward is seeing blood on his sleeve. And good god, this subplot’s tedious, fortunately since Danny doesn’t have a job title, they don’t have to offer him severance, so he can be absent from the plotline. Ward is OK to sign and end this chapter of his life but Joy is not. Joy says she earned her place here and isn’t willing to give it up without a fight.

Turbulence is not fun for Danny and we get Claire getting into their private business for absolutely no reason, so f*ck this scene, next! Now her getting invasive is over, lets get to her being a jackass, and justification of murder and all that. Look, I don’t like it when heroes kill people, but Jessica Jones did and honestly, it was the right move, after an entire season where that moral was repeatedly explored. Hearing Claire Temple preach about it through Luke Cage and Iron Fist is annoying, not interesting. Even Colleen backs him up.

We also get an excuse to reuse previous footage when more turbulence comes and Danny is having a panic attack. Meanwhile Ward sees Douchebag McAsshole about having his severance not tied to Joy's, in exchange for decreasing his fee to $30m, plus half a million to ‘chew crow’ with the board. Douchebag McAsshole here declines, Joy had already called to tell him they were declining the offer.

So we cut to wherever it is they have pretending to be China, Danny and Colleen are running surveillance on a Rand plant. Colleen says she watched her mother die too, from illness of plot convenience. Bored of waiting, Colleen approaches a beggar outside with Danny’s wallet and offers to pay for information.

Ward confronts Joy who reveals she had a gambit the entire time. Jessica Jones, she’s not mentioned by name but they mention how she’s often drunk, so it’s her. Guess this predates Kilgrave given where she’s at after. Ok, so more dialogue between the two and after what feels like a month of back and forth, Ward concedes to tell her the truth, next scene.

Danny and Colleen are ready to burn the factory now the staff are leaving and they take 3 seconds showing us a phone falling in the car… I hope this leads somewhere. The factory contains tonnes of synthetic heroin and convenient bottles of gasoline. Claire sees Gao approaching and sounds the horn to warn them, thankfully they can hear her and hide, a ninja is sent out but Claire drives off. Rand sends Colleen after Claire whilst he goes to confront Gao. Time for some action, finally.

Colleen fights a ninja, whilst Danny has to fight a drunk man with his own ninja skills or something. Danny is completely over-matched, until he isn’t and begins beating him down until Claire stops him. Ward takes Joy to his father’s penthouse but he’s seeing blood everywhere and storms out. When Joy asks, he begins chewing her out.

OK, so Danny has trouble controlling his anger, I could’ve told you that in the first episode. Gao comes in, telling her guards to kill Claire and Colleen, wanting Danny alive. The trio prevail and, in the process, Danny sees the same poison that was coating the guards’ weapons was also use on the pilots of his plane.

Gao looks terrified, and I’m not convinced she’s not faking it. Danny glows up, for the first time in the episode and punches through the wall behind her, missing her face, they take her captive despite the fact she’s capable of moving objects with her mind. Evidently she’s playing them.

But we’ll get to that next time. This was a dull episode, it had its moments but Ward’s subplot keeps intervening.

Rating 6.5/10