I thought overall it was great. For once, there were very few pacing issues. All of the 4 leads have chemistry with each other and all of the supporting character work well too. I know a lot of folks want less of them, but I thought they were all used effectively and efficiently here. Obviously Colleen would get more play than Karen as Colleen knows the hand and knows how to fight. All of their levels of involvement felt natural.
My biggest enjoyment of the show in the first few episodes was that it felt like we were watching little mini episodes of each character's own show and I loved all the advancement in their storylines, especially daredevil. I thought Luke got out of jail too easily but I was fine with it to move the story along. Jessica's stuff was like seeing an old familiar friend. Enjoyably fun detective stuff. Iron Fist's material was much better too as when you get rid of the fat of his show(i.e. The Meechums who were almost bigger on that show than he was), he and Colleen work pretty well as a duo.
I liked Sigorney Weaver's character from the get go and I thought she did a magnificent job. I'm not the biggest fan of Elodie Yung as Elektra but she did a good job with what she had to work with. The action sequences are radically better than Iron Fist and at least on par with most of Daredevil and at times(especially in episode 3 and the final 2 episodes) substantially better. The four leads are fun to watch as a team and almost any combination of the characters worked wonders. Without getting into spoilers, I will say I love what has been setup for several of the characters going forward(especially Daredevil and Misty Knight of all people).
My only problema with the show is that like many, I too, am tired of hearing about the Hand. Although they worked better for me here than in Iron Fist and arguably better than in Daredevil, I'm still tired of them. They are to the Netflix heroes as Hydra is to Agents of Shield and to a lesser extent, the whole MCU. There needs to be a new threat and I think it will eventually be the Kingpin. I feel like by the time we get a second season of Defenders(and let's not kid ourselves, we will), he will have become such a threat that it will make sense for another teamup. I think it would've been nice to see the Punisher again. He was the only character missing that I felt like could've added something to it, at least for an episode or two. And finally, for all the talk Alexandra, Gao and the others had about Danny's usefulness and what was in the hole....there wasn't much to it.
Ranking the shows/seasons I would go like this at this juncture:
1. Daredevil season 1
2. Jessica Jones
3. The Defenders
4. Daredevil season 2/Luke Cage(tie)
5. Iron Fist
My list might change with time. Iron Fist, even when it was decent was too mediocre. DD2 and Luke Cage had amazing first halfs and then slowly got worse as the season went on. Defenders is awesome but a bit too popcorny and goofy at times. Jessica Jones and DD season 1 are just about perfect though.
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Spoiler: 
