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Five Thoughts on Iron Fist’s “The City’s Not For Burning”

By | September 9th, 2018
Posted in Television | % Comments

With hatchets sharpened, we charge into Iron Fist season 2, episode 2: “The City’s Not For Burning.” There’s some weird stuff in this episode. Some of it is a real bummer. But there’s also an epic punchdown in a stone temple where the only weapons are fists and ribbons. So yeah, it’s not all bad. Let’s take a look at what happens!

1. A real hatchet job

After the Hatchet Gang (are they really just called the Hatchets?) kill a Golden Tiger, Danny and Colleen get dragged into a triad war. That’s one of those things that would have gotten me pretty excited on paper, but in practice, it’s fine I guess. The episode seems to know its only somewhat interesting, because all of the weighty scenes are the ones with Ward, Joy, and Mary.

There is an interesting diversion where someone named The Rhino wants to see/kill Colleen. Rhino has an unaffiliated gang that wants control of the streets because they are the kids who grew up on said streets. That’s pretty intriguing, but it took the whole episode to get over my disappointment that Rhino was just some kid and not Aleksei Sytsevich. You call a character Rhino in a Marvel show, I want to see a dude trapped in a big silly Rhino suit.

Most of this plot (which I guess was the A plot, but it felt like a B plot) was scenes of Danny and Colleen moralizing. Which is sort of a drag! Danny is fine. Colleen is wonderful. But I don’t need to watch them going around telling everyone why peace is better than violence. First off, they don’t have the moral standing to land these lectures. They’re not Bruce Lee. They’re not even Shang Chi. Second, the lectures are extremely condescending, especially Colleen talking to the kids. She doesn’t try to empathize with them in any way. Third, it’s mostly fruitless. It’s genre blindness. We know the heroes are going to have to punch some bad guys, so scenes of them talking about how they really wish they didn’t have to seems like wheel-spinning.

2. Mr. Brightside

I didn’t really notice it until this episode, but Danny was a ray of sunshine. Mary says as much when they had their run-in and it made me realize: Danny doesn’t need to brood! I know, the Iron Fist is a terrible burden or whatever, but broody Danny is such a bad look. In the comics, he’s a lovable airhead. On the Netflix shows, we got Matt for good old fashioned brooding and Jessica for cynical alcoholic brooding. Finn Jones just isn’t in the same brooding league as Charlie Cox or Krysten Ritter. But having him smile? Making him the one optimistic hero? That’s a great look! More of that please!

3. Finally, K’un Lun

If last season was to be believed, K’un Lun was the shittiest magical city ever. If I recall, it was a single sad shed where children went to go get beat. Now this, this is K’un Lun! A huge beautiful room made of polished stone that is quickly drenched in the blood of combat. That’s what’s up. The episode doles out little servings of the Danny and Davos fight, and it’s a good’un.

From the comics appropriate masks, (the mask of the spirit of Wu Ao-Shi, the Pirate Queen to be exact!) to the friends turned rivals, it was classic “Iron Fist.” The part where both combatants refuse to yield was taken right out of the comic in fact, though there it was a fight between Davos and Danny’s father. The duel between the blood brothers is brutal, emotional, and Davos shows no mercy. In the end, it’s the old Masters who decide to send Danny to face the Dragon. I just want a whole season of this. No board room meetings. Just duels in stone temples and like, hella Dragons.

4. Fun at parties

“Say hello Davos,” Joy tells her brother. “Hello Davos,”Ward replies, in the best line reading of the entire show. Seeing the villains be villainous was mostly filler, but the characters are too fascinating to be bored. I was into this story until… I was not.
It culminates in Davos being told he needs to have sex with the senator’s wife for nebulous blackmail purposes. Davos’ personal stakes are apparent- he’s an ascetic monk and possibly a virgin. The plan’s stakes are less clear- what purpose does this blackmail serve. The scene that transpires is supposed to be uncomfortable, but for me at least, it crossed the line.

Continued below

Imagine for a second the roles were reversed. A man told his female colleague that she had to have sex with a man as part of their business arrangement. The woman says no to her colleague, no to her perspective partner. They don’t care. She tries to protect herself using violence, but that just turns the man on, and so she’s sexually assaulted. That’s pretty much what we saw here, but at no point did the show tell us that we should have sympathy for Davos. Maybe it was because he was a man, maybe it’s because he’s a villain, but we just watched a dude get raped and it was icky and I didn’t like it.

5. Five fingers of death

So what kind of ickiness do I like? The martial arts kind that involves deadly pressure points. Once we were back to the creeping horror elements and the superpowered death fights, I was back in. It just took a lot of weightless scenes and one far-too-heavy scenes to get us here.

Plus we end with Mary and her totally intriguing, absolutely scary sticky notes: Stay away from Danny Rand. That’s good advice Mary. You should listen to whatever entity is leaving you those notes.


//TAGS | Iron Fist

Jaina Hill

Jaina is from New York. She currently lives in Ohio. Ask her, and she'll swear she's one of those people who loves both Star Wars and Star Trek equally. Say hi to her on twitter @Rambling_Moose!

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