Iron Fist

I cannot quite believe how big of a train wreck Iron Fist is.

Character motivations seem entirely fluid, changing scene to scene and even line to line. As if the white-man-as-martial-arts-messiah stuff wasn't bad enough, he listens exclusively to hiphop for some bonus cultural appropriation. The first episode might as well be called "Finn Jones harasses women". More scenes seem to take place in boring office space than Daredevil, which is set in a law firm. Its portrayal of mental healthcare is only slightly less enlightened than Terminator 2. I can't comment on the plot much yet because I'm only three episodes in but so far it's a garbage fire.

I want to like Colleen Wing more than I actually do. Hopefully she does something soon other than put up with Danny Rand's awful flirting and condescension. Never seen a sparring match as negging before, so that's new I guess?

But I'm determined to stick with it to the end. All the Marvel Netflix shows go to shit in the back half and I'm fascinated to see how much further off the rails this train can go.

Unfortunate Events

I wonder if I'd like Netflix's A Series of Unfortunate Events more if it didn't remind me quite so much of Pushing Daisies.

They have more than a few things in common; from an omnipresent narrator to a visual style right on the border of the uncanny-valley, to gleeful descriptions of the weird and macabre events that occur and a peroccupation with alliteration and repetition. Daisies jacked the saturation up where Unfortunate Events turns it down, but the art design and camerawork in one will be familiar to fans of the other.

But it's not quite right.

Daisies' nameless narrator was off-screen, always ready to offer a brief comment or witty rebuttal; while Patrick Warburton's Lemony Snicket exists in much the same role, it takes time for him to move on or off screen, which almost kills the pacing. (His leisurely delivery doesn't help matters.)

Unfortunate Events also seems to struggle with tone - Neil Patrick Harris is unreservedly great as Count Olaf, but the constant switching between careful enunciation and off-the-cuff banter feels less like a deliberate directorial choice than a mistake. That no other character does this only highlights the disconnect.

I also find myself wondering how many of the distracting touches are references for book fans; Mr. Poe's cough adds little to the character, and most of the stuff with the theatre troupe feels like padding.

I'm willing to see how Unfortunate Events finds its feet - only two episodes in, there's a lot to like and the little I know about the series' structure has me intrigued. But the promise (warning?) of no happy ending is a bit offputting. It's hard to see how it could reach a satisfying conclusion with the Baudelaires failing to ever find happiness.

Of course, Pushing Daisies never had a classically romantic ending on the cards for Ned and Chuck. Then again, as TV executives are wont to do with Bryan Fuller shows, an ending was never really on the cards for them at all.