1x05 Under Leaf Pluck Lotus

[5.4/10] Romance on TV is hard. If you get two actors with chemistry, you can write them all the awful lines in the world and they can make it work. If you have two characters without it, you can write all the most romantic dialogue in the world and it’ll still come off flat. And if you have neither actors with chemistry nor any facility with writing romantic dialogue, you get an interminable stretch of nothing every time you try to play a scene off for the lurve of it all.

That is “Under Leaf Pluck Lotus,” an episode where we spend a great deal of time trying to underline a romantic connection between Danny and Colleen that, contrary to everything the script is trying to hell us, just does not work.

For one thing, Danny comes off as a total creep. There’s a fine line between a romantic gesture and one that makes you come off like a stalker. Bringing “take out” to Colleen’s dojo unannounced walks the line a bit, as it’s weird how he proceeds despite her objections and takes over her space in the middle of a lesson, but you can kind of chalk it up to him not really knowing how to conduct himself after a lifetime with monks. Still, Colleen wanting Claire(!) to participate so that she doesn’t have to be alone with Danny is an indication that Colleen isn’t really comfortable with this, and it makes it uncomfortable for the viewer as well.

And then Danny buys her damn building. It crosses the line from “he’s trying to be charming and doesn’t know how” to “I have money and power and I’m going to be in your life whether you want me to or not.” They at least show Colleen as resistant and mildly disdainful of that, but the show seems to want you to find it charming rather than kind of disturbing.

Then, we get an interminable set up with them doing some odd-looking, unengaging thing that is probably supposed to be flirting. Their dueling demonstrations with the weapons from Colleen’s toybox is cringe-worthy. For one thing, the allegedly flirty atmosphere between them feels super-forced. For another, the “moves” they pull off are pretty terrible looking. Colleen’s grand action with her sword is to kind of flail it around a bit, in a way that doesn’t inspire much confidence or awe. And god help me, Danny spinning those nunchucks around in his dress shirt is one of the goofiest “this is supposed to be cool” scenes I’ve watched in a while.

Credit where credit is due -- in an episode with a fair amount of underwhelming action like that, Danny’s fight with the goon in the big rig was actually pretty cool. The enclosed space and hostage nearby created a claustrophobic atmosphere and made the back and forth between Danny and the henchman seem much more fraught. It wasn’t perfect, but there was an immediacy and improvisational tone to it that has been missing from several of the other fights.

The problem is that it was preceded by a seemingly endless set of scene of Danny and Colleen surveilling the pier. It leads to one of the most cliché, uninspiring bits imaginable when dodging a security guard leads them to dart into an enclosed space and have a brief moment of “tension” when they have to be close to one another. The alleged chemistry goes over like a lead balloon. The rest of the scene is filled with stolid exchanges between the pair, and very little happening while they exchange banalities and go through the motions of the usual “the bad guys are getting a shipment in” shtick.

But hey! Claire makes her legally mandate appearance in the fourth Marvel Netflix series, so that’s something to be excited about! Rosario Dawson has more charisma than 90% of this show’s cast put together, so her presence is a welcome one, even if she’s kind of shoehorned in to some of the proceedings. It, of course, just so happens that Danny and Colleen need the help of a nurse in the same episode where she appears, and Claire gets a cheesy line about her mother is always telling her that she meets these people. She’s not used to her highest or best abilities here, but more Claire is still a greater-making quality.

And there’s plenty of other stuff going on in the episode. The development of a synthetic heroin product that may soon flood the streets is the sort of cheesy plot The Simpsons made fun of in its McBain parodies. The notion that The Hand is behind it doesn’t inspire much more hope or intrigue, but the sequence at the beginning with the equivalent of pharma reps pitching the product at least had more panache than the show can usually muster.

We also have Joy and Ward bristling against the demands of their company and, directly and indirectly, their father. The whole bit with Joy feeling her heartstrings tugged by the people who were contaminated by their plant emissions is more stock corporate bad guy stuff. It ties into a theme in the episode that sometimes the law doesn’t do enough, or help the people that need to be helped, but other parts of the Marvel Netflix subuniverse have kind of beat that to death by now.

Ward also continues the downward spiral that has him turning to chemical relief to deal with the stress of his father’s expectations. There’s something to the idea of him rebelling, flipping the entire room the bird, getting paranoid, but also feeling like he’s never alone or truly independent. It’s not executed in the best fashion imaginable, but at least there’s something there.

The same can’t be said for the romance that takes up much of this episode. Danny and Colleen are just not a pairing that works, and I imagine that’s going to be a big difficulty for the show going forward since it seems so committed to their relationship. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the two actors will find the right notes to play, but I won’t be holding my breath.

Everybody trashes on the dinner scene, but I think it was really good and funny. Danny's awkward gesture because he doesn't know ho to live nor understands that he likes her. Colleen is acting like a teenager that doesn't know what to do when her crush talks to her. She's so badass and still so cute and helpless there. Claire, that is obviously the only one that understands what's happening, hesitating between "oh, a hot eligible bachelor" and flirting a bit, clearly wanting to stay for having fun at Colleen's expanses and also to help get things started. And Rosario Dawson being able to channel this subtle mix.

This, plus her training, plus the credit card hack and her handling of the Hand reveal, Claire is definitely the main character of this episode.

It was clear for a while that Ward was gonna take the heroin. And that is very weird. Yes he's been popping pills, has a lot of stress due to business, the Danny situation, his father, etc. But he has access to anything, and even if it was just there, heroin is clearly a 100% I give up situation, and not a step the character would take now. Proof is what we've been given until now are several scenes of him taking pills and watching the heroin, to prepare us to him taking it, instead of scenes pushing the character to a situation where he would use it.

Then the Hand is this super huge evil organization and they are... smuggling drugs... wow. I hope there is something more behind, because synthetic heroin that does not make you an addict is actually a better thing than regular heroin, so...Also killing a guard because he couldn't, single-handedly and unprepared, defeat the Iron Fist seems excessive ? Aren't we past the villains kill their subordinates to look evil trope yet ?