Ward, for his part, is willing to take the money and run. He has his own issues that need to be dealt with anyway. His murder of his father isn't as prevalent a plot point as you might think, but it clearly hasn't helped his mental state as he hallucinates quite frequently.
Joy, on the other hand, isn't too keen on throwing in the towel. This causes a schism, but it does fall flat as these were some of the less interesting characters. Yeah, the bond popped up now and then, but I don't think it was enough to back up the dialogue about how close the two are and/or were.
Even away from Rand, there isn't much goings on as a lot of the exchanges with Danny, Colleen, and Claire seem to be there just for the sake of being there.
It isn't helped by the fact that Danny's writing is all over the map. He starts off regretting picking a fight with the Hand, but then immediately decides to fly to China to confront them again in order to get answers that they may not even have. He talks about how he spent fifteen years training to control his emotions, but then fails to do that multiple times throughout the episode. At face value, Danny freaking out when their plane starts to experience turbulence makes sense, given what happened to him back when he was a kid. At the same time, you'd think he'd just take a deep breath, meditate, and mumble some prayer under his breath. It's another instance of Danny not living up to his own back story.
Other characters fall victim to this as well. Much is made about how Danny's plan sucks, but everyone immediately agrees to do it.
Thankfully, the episode's second half starts to pull itself from the rut. The scene with Ward and Joy in the park was really the turning point. That scene in itself was a highlight as the two showed more emotion than they usually do, we got to see Joy's dog again, and Jessica Jones got a nice little shout out.
From there, the interactions become more substantive and we get some nice fight sequences to help perk up the viewers who may have started nodding off from the episode's earlier scenes.
Both Danny and Colleen got to showcase their skills as they each took on a capable Hand agent. Colleen's sword fight was probably the stronger sequence, but I chalk part of that up to the fact that it is an instance where it actually feels like this is the same organization with which Matt contended.
Credit to Zhao Cheng, he does give Danny a solid fight, despite being inebriated. He gives Danny a tougher fight than all of the fighters that Danny dealt with back in episode 6 now that I think about it. You kind of figured that was going to be the case. There is a "drunken" style of martial arts combat and "Yu Yu Hakusho" had a similar bit going with one of their characters. It really isn't the big turnaround that you think it is
In addition to a worthy physical foe, it seemed like Cheng could have developed into a great foil for Danny. Alas, Danny pounds his face in. Of course, this is the Hand, he could come back.
Speaking of, the episode spends a lot of time debating whether or not Danny should fight with limits or go for the killing blow when dealing with Gao and the Hand in general. This is a dilemma that most superheroes face, but this circumstance is unique in that the victims come back. In fact, Claire knows that the Hand reanimates their members, so why is she so adamant that it's a problem? If anything, you'd think that they could fight with impunity as there seems to be no negative repercussions to going all out.
Ultimately, Danny chooses not to kill, even when he discovers that Gao and the Hand had orchestrated the plane crash. Instead, he chooses to take her into custody.
As one would expect, Gao does get some good lines in, but I'm not sure I buy her backing away when Danny starts charging up his chi. She never seemed too concerned before and she did nonchalantly toss him aside like it was nothing. I'm sure we're supposed to see it as a testament to the power of this particular living weapon, but it doesn't really make sense given what we had seen before.
This episode was uneven. Much like Danny's flight, it experienced a rather serious bout of turbulence, but it was able to smooth things out later on. Hopefully, that righting of the ship carries into the remaining episodes.
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