An insidious new drug hits New York. Danny recruits Colleen for the fight, and Claire discovers that credit cards have many uses.

It’s Danny Randovich as Rand Corporation is poisoning the people and Danny Rand comes to the rescue! The series is diving into the average person versus the evil corporation story that has existed in previous Marvel live action series, but never quite like this. It’s a story that has been done before and done better. While the storyline is a nice change from previous series, it’s again a “paint by numbers” plot giving us nothing new and nothing all that interesting.

Finn Jones as Danny Rand shows off some personality though with his interaction with Jessica Henwick‘s Colleen Wing. That could be helped with the introduction of Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple to the series. There’s some personality given off by Jones and his interaction with the two. It’s almost a boy scout vibe about it and as the series goes on its becoming clearer that its a choice and not Jones’ acting itself. He lets his guard down a little bit showing off his swagger a bit more and opening up. But, it’s still bland overall and boring. I think that gets really noticeable around Dawson and Henwick where Jones’ tone and style shifts a little bit as he becomes more comfortable.

Much of the episode is laying out more of what the “villain” of it all is. But, the series seems to be in a “say” sort of focus instead of a “show.” We get Danny explaining things to Colleen or Claire explains things to the two. Instead of letting us figure things out through visual storytelling we’re presented with the situation in a blunt manner. It’s spelled out for us. There’s an almost lack of visual confidence in the series.

By the end of this episode we have a better sense of where things are going, or at least why they’re going the way they are. The plot is laid out clearly here after four episodes of build up, but that also brings up the biggest problem that has plagued Marvel’s Netflix shows in that sticking to 13 episode they’re drawn out where at times they could benefit from being condensed. These first five episodes are a prime example of that.

Overall Rating: 5.65