I'm about halfway through Iron Fist and, although I'm enjoying it more than Luke Cage, I just can't get over the sloppy execution.
80% of the actors are mediocre or outright bad. Characterization of several of the main characters is extremely clumsy, both due to poor writing as well as poor acting (this is esp. true of Danny and Colleen--see eg. Colleen's ridiculous and out-of-character smiles and giggles). Jessica Stroup's acting reminds me of Kristen Stewart and Keanu Reeves but lacks their range and depth and sincerity. As with JJ and LC, the secondary antagonists are far more compelling than the protagonists. Both Ward and "Frank" make the most of their occasionally comically villainous dialogue. Even minor characters like the people at Birch, Joy's assistant, Frank's computer-guy etc. outdo eg. Danny and Joy. I enjoyed seeing Hogarth again. Claire, not so much.
Danny starts off being exactly as annoying as you'd expect a home-schooled, bullied, idealistic 15-y-o kid to be after years of abuse, thousands of concussions and the guidance of others who've suffered thousands of concussions. I was kinda okay with that, the homeless hipster thing sorta worked. I could even stomach the extremely lazy writing during the boardroom scenes. Like everything else in the show it was a bit on the nose, but it felt like a comic book thing. What I'm having a lot more difficulty with is that, behind Danny's character, I'm sensing the wish-fulfillment of an army of dumb millennial slackers with motivational problems and "unrealized potential". Or perhaps the very noticeable self-insertion of just one such dummy. This may partly be due to his dumb face. His character lacks cohesion. The weird clueless adolescent hipster monk schtick works for him. When he's the 15-y-o traumatized and abused orphan trying to connect, it works. But then they try to make him intense, mysterious, sexy, smart, dangerous, funny, righteous and every other conceivable awesome or cool adjective known to man and it turns into a mess. Every time they have him acting superior to eg. Colleen or Joy it makes me retch.
I've been kinda disappointed with the fight-scenes so far. Movements are slow and strikes don't seem to connect properly. The choreography is uninteresting. There's no real tension in Danny's fights, several of which look and feel like watching amateur interpretive dance with wires, or the shameful kung-fu training re-enactments of a teenage boy, performed in secret in his room in front of a mirror. Compared to DD and Arrow, these scenes are embarrassing, and I hope they improve as the show progresses.
With all that said, I've actually been positively surprised by the show so far. I didn't expect to be able to get through the first episode, but I've found every episode reasonably compelling. There isn't as much filler or quite as many scenes as in LC that you just want to skip. They really should have embraced the martial arts genre as well as added more humor--it would have made some of the show's greatest deficiencies less noticeable. Anyway, er, you should totally watch it.