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Iron Fist thoughts on Ward and his assistant in Season 2
I posted this over on Tumblr last night, but figured I'd also post it here.
”It’s been a bad day in a bad week.”
One of my favorite underrated scenes in season 2 is this one in 2x02 with Ward and his S2-era assistant, Katie.
She appears in only one scene and is briefly mentioned in another episode. And yet, I feel that for having such a tiny amount of screentime in the show, there’s a lot of presence packed into those few minutes of canon.
I feel like that scene with her and Ward is really significant for him (and both of them, really) because one of Ward’s big things this season is learning to be less self-absorbed, but for the most part this takes place through his relationships with various people who are important enough to him to make him break out of his patterns of (mis)behavior because he doesn’t want to lose them. But the thing about Katie is, she’s not that important in a close-personal-ties kind of way. She’s not his sibling or his lover or even a friend-of-family the way Misty is.
So that scene where he apologizes to her and walks back from his mistreatment of her is really meaningful in his character development. It’s the only time this season and maybe the only time ever that we see him going out of his way and making the conscious decision to intentionally not be a dick when he doesn’t have to. (I’m not saying he’s always a dick otherwise. Actually, season 1 Ward is usually fairly polite to people when he’s not otherwise angry/annoyed. I don’t think he goes out of his way to be a jerk to people – it’s just that he doesn’t care enough not to be, and in season 2, we don’t see much of his interaction with people outside his immediate circle of family and his NA group.)
But the thing about that scene with Katie is that he realizes what he’s doing – taking out his emotional upset/anger/pain with the Joy situation on her – and walks it back and apologizes, and then goes out of his way to let her know that he respects and values her opinion. And that’s important!
And the other thing I like about that scene is that she really seems to like him – which is especially significant later on, the other time in the season when she’s mentioned, in the episode where he gets drunk in the bar, because it’s Katie who figures out that something’s wrong and calls Bethany … which means Katie a) knows he’s a recovering addict, b) knows how to get in touch with his sponsor, and c) cares enough to do it even though he’s probably not going to like it and she could get in trouble for it.
Ward needs more people in his life that he’s friendly with on a casual basis. People who like him, and who he likes, without actually being extremely close or emotionally tangled up in the way he is with Joy or Danny or Bethany.
(… also, the fact that Ward’s assistant has a business degree and is clearly a full-fledged professional in her own right in season 2 makes me feel even worse for poor put-upon Megan in season 1, because presumably she was too, unless Rand was such a total clusterfuck at that point that their professional standards have come up by season 2. (Entirely possible.) Still, I hope Megan got a glowing recommendation and is currently having a very nice life somewhere that Ward is not.)
”It’s been a bad day in a bad week.”
One of my favorite underrated scenes in season 2 is this one in 2x02 with Ward and his S2-era assistant, Katie.
She appears in only one scene and is briefly mentioned in another episode. And yet, I feel that for having such a tiny amount of screentime in the show, there’s a lot of presence packed into those few minutes of canon.
I feel like that scene with her and Ward is really significant for him (and both of them, really) because one of Ward’s big things this season is learning to be less self-absorbed, but for the most part this takes place through his relationships with various people who are important enough to him to make him break out of his patterns of (mis)behavior because he doesn’t want to lose them. But the thing about Katie is, she’s not that important in a close-personal-ties kind of way. She’s not his sibling or his lover or even a friend-of-family the way Misty is.
So that scene where he apologizes to her and walks back from his mistreatment of her is really meaningful in his character development. It’s the only time this season and maybe the only time ever that we see him going out of his way and making the conscious decision to intentionally not be a dick when he doesn’t have to. (I’m not saying he’s always a dick otherwise. Actually, season 1 Ward is usually fairly polite to people when he’s not otherwise angry/annoyed. I don’t think he goes out of his way to be a jerk to people – it’s just that he doesn’t care enough not to be, and in season 2, we don’t see much of his interaction with people outside his immediate circle of family and his NA group.)
But the thing about that scene with Katie is that he realizes what he’s doing – taking out his emotional upset/anger/pain with the Joy situation on her – and walks it back and apologizes, and then goes out of his way to let her know that he respects and values her opinion. And that’s important!
And the other thing I like about that scene is that she really seems to like him – which is especially significant later on, the other time in the season when she’s mentioned, in the episode where he gets drunk in the bar, because it’s Katie who figures out that something’s wrong and calls Bethany … which means Katie a) knows he’s a recovering addict, b) knows how to get in touch with his sponsor, and c) cares enough to do it even though he’s probably not going to like it and she could get in trouble for it.
Ward needs more people in his life that he’s friendly with on a casual basis. People who like him, and who he likes, without actually being extremely close or emotionally tangled up in the way he is with Joy or Danny or Bethany.
(… also, the fact that Ward’s assistant has a business degree and is clearly a full-fledged professional in her own right in season 2 makes me feel even worse for poor put-upon Megan in season 1, because presumably she was too, unless Rand was such a total clusterfuck at that point that their professional standards have come up by season 2. (Entirely possible.) Still, I hope Megan got a glowing recommendation and is currently having a very nice life somewhere that Ward is not.)
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And Davos, that cinder-red as rage. I would have been interested to see what became of him in future seasons, too: he's not dead and Danny still thinks of him as family, however damaged and dangerous. I don't know if he could ever become an ally outside of absolute necessity, but the show gave him sympathetic reasons, just terrible solutions. The abusive parenting angle made me think the writers paralleled him somewhat with Ward.
The one-off character I really wish we'd seen more of was Zhou Cheng, the sardonic Drunken Fist master whom Danny pummeled bloody in Anzhou, mid-Season 1. He was confirmed as not in a good way but not dead, which in comic book metaphysics means someone can reappear just easily as if they were confirmed dead. I suppose with the collapse of the Hand he'd have had to find a new job, but.
I have no idea if they actually planned this from the beginning (as the magic 8 ball would say, "signs point to no" is my guess) but it works so well; it makes the entire two-season arc of the show click into place, in a way that just having Danny get the Iron Fist back wouldn't have.
It looks like it's mostly different writers, which supports the seat-of-the-pants theory, but if so they weren't just shoehorning: they were picking up on elements maybe intended for different ends, but channeling perfectly toward this one.
but I think the gangster's widow, whose name I can't currently remember (Mrs. Yang?) really struck me because of the particular kind of political power she wields and her antagonistic-but-respectful dynamic with Colleen by the end, that sort of ambiguous-frenemies thing that again is something you don't get with female characters all that often.
Yes! It is Mrs. Yang; she's a great character and I loved everything you mention about her plot, including that after the crisis is over she doesn't relinquish power. By the end of it she's admitting openly that her husband is dead and she's still running the Hatchets. I expect her never to give it up, until she's assassinated herself or successfully makes peace and retires.
The show doesn't revolve around Danny at the expense of the other characters; you can easily imagine Colleen having a fully developed vigilante-hero existence back in New York without him, with her own network of allies and enemies apart from the connections she has through Danny.
Very much so. She's got some of that by the second season already with Sam and the community center. And even the people they met while they were a couple weren't tied just to Danny—she has her own friendships with Claire and Misty, another aspect of this show I really enjoyed. It could have been so dude-heavy with Harold, Bakuto, and Davos as major antagonists along with Madame Gao, and it's just not.
Does Colleen interact much with Jeri beyond the bit at the end of the first season when they've been framed by Harold? I feel the two of them would really get along.
(With an extra heart-stab because it's very Ward to make a joke about how his dad used to beat the shit out of him. Good lord.)
It is very Ward. I'm pretty sure that despite his oft-demonstrated ability to insult people just by opening his mouth and saying the first thing that enters it, most of his jokes (with people he trusts enough not to lead with asshole) are at his own expense; it feels like his style of defense mechanism.
I would have dearly LOVED to see this onscreen.
I won't stop you from writing it.
Not at all, I'm thoroughly delighted you're reading it! I hope you continue to enjoy it.
I am! I try to remember to leave kudos.