Week 95: The Blessing of Many Fractures, more

The Blessing of Many Fractures: This is a lousy hour of TV, but I have to give it credit for some hilarious lines of dialogue.

Ward Meachum to Danny Rand: "Are you a moron? You thought you could end a criminal conspiracy by destroying a few test tubes?"

Claire Temple to Danny: "Have you stopped to consider that this idea totally sucks?"

Claire to Danny while waiting for Madame Gao: "You really think it's a good idea to torch the one place we know that Gao might show up?"

Claire to Danny again: "If you find out that Gao did kill your parents, you're not gonna do anything stupid, are you?"

Danny after beating a man into a bloody mess: "Is he ok?"

This was a pivotal episode in my first watch of the show. The first time through the series, I hated Danny's idiotic tendency to fling himself and others into danger without a plan, "LeeRoy Jenkins"-style, and I hated that the show kept asking me to care about him and take him seriously while doing it. It was in this episode that I realized that no, the writers know that he's terrible, and that we're supposed to view him as an immature and annoying idiot, and I felt relieved. On re-watching the series today, I find that Danny's obnoxiousness doesn't bother me nearly as much because *I* know that *they* know that he's annoying, but it does make everything feel very empty and pointless. Why should I care about Danny if the writers don't care and don't expect me to care? Why does any of this even matter?

And it doesn't help that so much of this doesn't make sense. Claire is initially the voice of reason, calling Danny's determination to fly to China to confront Gao without a plan stupid and suicidal, and then on a dime she turns around and insists on going along "for Louisa… and for me." No, I don't buy for one hundredth of a second that Claire would go. Danny is called out by both Claire and Colleen Wing for not having a plan beyond "grab Gao," so he says he'll come up with something during the long flight, but after all of that trouble, what does he do in the end? Grab Gao and walk out. Then there are smaller details, like how Danny would believe that the Hand left behind such a bloody mess in Harold Meachum's penthouse (they are too disciplined and tidy), how Danny chartered a company plane with the Rand logo on it after being fired and separated from the company in the previous episode, and how multiple full canisters of gasoline are left just lying around a wooden warehouse containing a drug lab. Sure, yeah, whatever at this point.

I could bring my English degree further to bear on this hour, breaking down how the story structure conceals a lack of meaning and how the two unrelated plots reveal weaknesses in one another, but does it really matter? This show sucks and isn't worth the energy. Beyond the quotes above, all that I liked were the references to Luke Cage, Matt Murdock, and Jessica Jones (is this the first time that all four Defenders are involved in one episode?), and the "drunken master" fight because it was something funny and fresh within the series and because it took me way, way back to some early Jackie Chan. My favorite shot is when the drunken master falls backwards against the wall and some boards fall on his head, because even though his stunt padding gets exposed below his shirt and it's obviously lightweight balsa wood, they used that shot anyway because it's just a really good take by the actor Lewis Tan. He was a finalist for the role of Danny and got this scene as a consolation prize, and he's demonstrated his sense of humor in other roles like Deadpool 2. Anyhow, other than that fun fight sequence, screw this show for wasting our time. (2/10)

The Mistress of All Agonies: The show clearly has a lot of fun with Harold's second resurrection here, from his elaborate crawl out of the muck to his disoriented stroll around the city and surprisingly easy entry into Rand headquarters. (There was a missed opportunity for the hot dog vendor to say a punchline after Harold wandered off. "I have got to get out of this town." "That is the third strangest customer I've had today." "Mom said I should have sold newspapers." Something? Anything?) David Wenham is an accomplished actor who couldn't have seen much in the role of Harold as initially pitched, but I bet that this hour made the part a lot more appealing to him. The village legend as told by the Ax Gang Boss was legitimately chilling. And the restoration of Harold's severed finger was a nice touch. Poor Kyle didn't deserve to die for a lack of imagination, but seriously? Ice cream for breakfast? I have an eating disorder and I can dream bigger than that.

The Danny plot is not nearly as fun or interesting, as sadly expected at this point. Gao's attempts to manipulate are pathetically simple and obvious, and yet they keep working, because the show needs its heroes to be dumb. That the episode begins with Gao tied up in the dojo and the three heroes not having any idea what to do with her is disappointing but appropriate. I do not buy at all that Claire could fight off paramilitary dudes with body armor and assault rifles, nor that a ninja star with steel-like strength could be folded from aluminum foil; this show's ridiculousness is getting harder to bear. I'll give the episode credit for the nice shot taken from the "surveillance camera" under the dojo door, but that's about it. (3/10)

God bless Claire Temple. God bless Rosario Dawson. Her quips and subtle and not-so-subtle insults bring a bit of levity to an otherwise grind of an episode and show. Scott, thank you for bringing up that reframing, though, of everybody being in on the "joke" that Danny is kind of an idiot. In a way, I think this kind of goes back to my previous post about how these monks benevolently kidnapped this young boy and raised him to be a warrior monk. He has, from what I can tell, no real understanding of the outside world aside from what he experienced when he was a young boy. Really, his experiences are one of more trust of those people in power because that's what he saw his parents as. He has a knee-jerk reaction to fight anything that deals with The Hand because that's what K'un Lun trained him to be. When that is mixed with the greater world outside of the mountains of China, it doesn't translate for him. The two worlds are colliding in a way that they were never meant to collide, and it is creating an idiot with an iron fist.

I don't know if I've said this before or not, but Jesus Christ, this is the worst name for a superhero. The child in me is reminded of Mallrats, when Jason Lee's character gets into a debate with Stan Lee over Mr. Fantastic's anatomy.

I realize I'm nit-picking this show, and that tends to be what I do when I start reviewing or talking about shows. Unless it is genuinely phenomenal, I always seem to just find the parts that annoy me. So I'm going to go ahead and add another one. How are these people, even on a private jet, just willy-nilly flying from the United States to mainland China so easily? I cannot fathom that Danny has a legitimate passport to get him in and out of these countries. On that note, how the hell did he get back to the United States so easily in episode one?

Hear, hear to Rosario Dawson improving these shows, and pretty much anything else that she's in. She provides not just levity that makes the nonsense go down a little easier, but often also provides an audience perspective, saying the things that we would if we were there. That's why I resent moments when she suddenly changes on a dime to support the plot, like agreeing to go to China, because it feels like a betrayal of her honesty. Danny being an idiot through-and-through is a problem, but Claire turning into an idiot when the plot suddenly needs her to be one hurts so much more.