Well, that was interesting.
I've complained enough about how they write Kate as essentially inviting herself to the party (nothing to do with addressing an actual problem, even, it's just meeting Clint and bam she's a partner-level hero in her mind). They do the lots-of-bungling intro, two episodes later he tells her to leave because things have gotten complicated by a Widow joining, and now it's "you're my partner" suddenly. They don't even really get into how this clashes with Clint's obvious post-Endgame grief/Ronin guilt and heroing weariness, just touching on it lightly in their movie-marathon talk. That was a great scene, but could've done more in that direction.
It was bad in "Batman Forever", it was bad with Tim Drake in "Titans" (but then I expect bad writing from "Titans"), and it's the least endearing thing about her here. Fortunately, when they're talking about and working on other stuff, it's very enjoyable. Their banter and chemistry is much more real and fun to watch than Sam's/Bucky's. I also liked that she and Lucky The Pizza Dog joined the Barton family for Christmas, although Yelena should really have also dropped by for her first American Christmas.
But more irksome was that this was a tiny six episodes, and so much had to be drawn out to heighten the impact of the Yelena guest spot (which paid off big and which they did a lot with in at least ep5 -- Florence elevates everything Marvel she's in) and the Kingpin reveal (which was not enough to offset how it undermined the narrative). The initial mystery was fairly thin, heightened only by the steadfast refusal to say anything more indicative about who they were dealing with, which began to grate after an episode, two at most. The substance and benefit is mostly meta, rather than really enriching the story itself. Him taking the primary villain spot, and taking so damn long to enter the story to do so, also results in Vera Farmiga's character being made even less interesting (the last thing she says is the saddest attempt at a Kareny guilt-trip. "Do heroes have their mothers arrested on Christmas", ugh.)
And here he finally is, still an impressive actor with great control over his instrument (I will always love his subtly escalating facial twitches), but feeling like he's lost some of his shine. The choices of having him hold court in person, in a chintzy office, and in a what-are-you-wearing (yes, it's from the comics, so?) ensemble, all wear away at the above-it-all, untouchable facade that sold him in early "Daredevil". It's not a good position to put him in -- first full appearance in the very last episode, in which he has to ultimately get beaten for story's sake (although he does no-sell a fair bit, including getting yeeted by a car, and manages to present a legitimately scary threat).
And honestly, the first-responder LARPers who [1] have no problem with straight-up evidence tampering and [2] seemingly can't be good first responders when not in costume... eh.
A lot of this show feels like someone took notes on what made other Marvel shows get reactions, and then tried to hit those beats and those beats only. Banter and occasional out-of-context comedy (Yelena's "hiiii" was the one thing that didn't land for me), headstrong lead, set up mystery/ies and/or have a meta casting/character reveal, some goofy supporting characters.
I was really looking forward to this for a lot of reasons, and it was... okay. THIS I'd like to see a nice second season to, anchored by Kate with a big guest role from Yelena, and a smaller guest role from Clint, perhaps having largely retired from the role as he seems to have left her the Hawkeye name at the end.
So far, it's WandaVision at the top, a tie between Hawkeye and Loki, and then TFATWS. (What If is more of an anthology to me and so I don't count it the same way.)