I watched Iron Fist. It's alright.
For starters, let me say I loved the first season of Daredevil and Jessica Jones, due in no small part to their strong villains that drove the plot forward. Even with these though, I still felt the season could be brought down from 13 episodes down to 10, perhaps even 8, to streamline the story better.
The Netflix shows took a dip in quality starting with DD S2. I forgive that particular series because it was suffering from Iron Man 2 syndrome. It was pulling triple duty: it had to be a continuation to S1, it had to set up The Defenders, and it had to set up a future Punisher show. I wish it wasn't like that, but it turned out as good as it could've given the circunstances. As a result it had 4 different villains and the narrative felt very disjointed jumping from one to the other, which for a show that already could've used a little bit of streamlining, was a big issue. Luke Cage didn't have to do all that, I hoped it would go back to the quality of the first seasons of the previous solo series, unfortunetely it too had 4 villains, and its plot suffered for it. Now Iron Fist comes around and it has 3 villains, dragging it down.
The writing in Iron Fist is its biggest issue. Some of the conflicts feel contrived, and a lot of the dialogue can be quite cheesy and hokey, in a way that can be difficult for the actors to sell it. The issue however goes to the heart of the series. Daredevil S1 and at least parts of S2 were about justice vs. vigilantism, and Jessica Jones was one big abuse allegory, but Iron Fist is kind of about nothing. It sort of plays around with the question of "Who am I? Danny Rand or Iron Fist?", but by the end of it the character and the show never take a hard stance and make a choice, leaving with a wishy-washy feeling of trying to have its cake and eat it too. The show is also very indecisive on what direction to take its main character. They lean a bit on the arrested development side of him, and I know that with a childlike temperment can come also childish anger, but here it doesn't feel like two sides of the same personality, rather it comes across more as them not being sure if he should be naïve and childlike, enlightened platitude-spewing monk, brooding and angsty. It never congeals into a cohesive character.
The performances are all around pretty good, with a couple of stand outs. As I've mentioned, they couldn't always sell the hokey dialogue, but they succeeded more often than not and were all pretty fun to watch on screen. The one caveat being the lead actor, although in that case I can't blame him when the writing team didn't give him a consistent character to work with. For what it's worth I tought he did a great job with the naïve and childlike aspect of Danny Rand.
In the end, the show is alright. Most of it is competent enough, with some things rising above that and others sinking below, but none of it to the point of damning or elevating the show. The fights aren't as good as in Daredevil, granted here they can't cheat by sticking a stuntman in the costume and have him film most of it, but the action is far better than anything in Jessica Jones or Luke Cage. None of the villains are as good as those in DD, JJ or the best villain in Luke Cage, Cottonmouth, but on the other hand none of them are bad per se, neither are they as bad as the worst villain in Luke Cage, Diamondback. It doesn't have the escalating tension of DD and JJ, but the pacing is never the slog that Luke Cage became in its second half.
I recommend it for a lazy Saturday afternoon if you have any interest in the upcoming Defenders crossover, or if you just want to watch something cheesy with people punching and kicking each other.