If you watched The Walking Dead, you know Jon Bernthal, who played Shane. Bernthal’s wheelhouse appears to be raging out and stealing the show, which he did so effectively during Season 2 of Daredevil that he got a spinoff Marvel show solely devoted to his character, The Punisher. The emotional, psychological trajectory of the series was satisfying, but I learned a lot about what and why I like certain shows more than others even when the overall quality is better than other shows.
While I could appreciate elements of The Punisher, overall I don’t think that the series is for me. I like vigilante series. I like vengeance or revenge movies. I don’t like when the two are combined because the revenge becomes too diffuse and scattered, which makes rooting for the titular character difficult when you should be rooting for him to get therapy. Frank Castle even expresses conflict that he does not want to hurt people who are like him and signed up to serve their country, but are deceived about what they are actually doing; however he goes on to sever heads of vets who are just like them, but who work for a private security company. Sure they are mercenaries, but many of them don’t know that they are actually engaging in illegal acts. Do I enjoy Frank as an army of one cleverly overcoming a ridiculous number of men? Sure, but I can’t fully enjoy it unless he is avenging his family or protecting others. He eventually accomplishes that, but it is a long road and maybe thirteen episodes were too much for his first solo act.
Unlike the other Netflix Marvel shows, The Punisher felt repetitive during the first few episodes because we already heard about what happened in Daredevil’s second season, but it finally gets depicted in this series. This series had the worst episode beginnings. I noticed that many HBO shows will begin without any back story because the series creators treat it like life with the viewer arriving as a fly on the wall, but later on, you retroactively catch up and appreciate the hard earned knowledge because it adds texture to the experience. It feels like a reward for attentiveness as opposed to purposely obfuscating the narrative, which is how the second episode of The Punisher felt like. While I eventually made the leap to how the main character got connected to the eventual main supporting character, it felt like I must have missed something in the first episode or as if I accidentally skipped an episode.
Episode 10 was a dreadful example of the how we got here trope. Initially it was unclear that it would be that kind of show, and though the overall episode worked well, it took awhile to establish that the episode was toggling between two separate storylines and taking a Rashomon approach. Curtis needed to be more evenly distributed throughout the entire season or not exist at all. The Lewis storyline could have been an interesting foil to Frank, but because of the placement of his denouement, it felt like an unnecessary diversion from the resolution of the overall plot and a flimsy excuse for the main supporting character to disrupt his alliance. I was never invested in what happened to Lewis because overall The Punisher never surprised me in terms of plot twists and was quite predictable. When one person appears on the scene, I was never fooled and knew that he would turn out to be the villain. If I could get Netflix Marvel TV shows to stop using one plot device forever, it would be the cops mistakenly accusing the titular character of a crime when there is an available witness that clearly says that another person did it. It is unearned, dumb tension.
If you watch The Punisher, you watch it for Bernthal’s performance. He nailed his character perfectly—a “scary, beautiful man.” He brings more to the character than is probably written on the page, and I would not be surprised if many of his most memorable moments were actually improvised. He has such an easy, gentle, casual manner in every day situations, particularly with women and children, but if you stare too long at the picture, the suppressed rage and insanity begin to emerge. He is never not riveting even when he is reading. Who else can angrily be wheeled around a room because he is incapacitated? I laughed and thought, “Oh Frank,” whenever he would try to be encouraging or thoughtful because in the end, he would devolve into cursing out the person, threatening them or encouraging them to kill him or themselves. Do not let this man go into a caring profession. I thought it was accidentally hilarious in the best way possible. He honestly seemed as if he couldn’t help it.
I like violent movies and TV shows, and while it was not gory per se (even when we see a man’s eyes getting gouged out or a man being beaten to a bloody pulp, we don’t really see it, just the blood splatter), it is overtly brutal, which is probably why we know that someone deserves The Punisher’s mercy when he mentions a family member, bonus if it is a grandmother. He also really appreciates it if you make food for him. I am disappointed that we never revisit anyone introduced in the first episode.
The Punisher deserves kudos for trying to tackle difficult issues such as PTSD and toxic masculinity by depicting the negative effects on relationships and daily life—“bringing the war home.” Men don’t get enough media examples of friendship that doesn’t involve behaving badly. Fatherhood and being a husband are explored heavily. It is a given that the characters love their children and wives, but we explore the failures from the other side of the tapestry, the father’s point of view, which is an interesting and rare perspective of what it feels like to fail when it is not rooted in bad character. We are so used to seeing bad fathers in media, but not good fathers who fail anyway. Frank is the most extreme example as he gradually has to struggle with when that failure began—was it when his family got murdered or earlier because he was never psychologically with them. “You can adjust to pretty much anything just as long as there is a routine. Routine. Human mind, it needs it. Craves it. But if you take that away, that’s when you start to lose your shit.” The central problem for all the characters is how will they live once the war is over if it is still inside of them.
I wonder if one of the villains in The Punisher was actually a dig at Presidon’t. While I was initially excited at the prospect of a brown woman as a supporting character, her performance seemed lacking. Houshanf Touzie and Shohreh Aghdashloo are actually married in real life, and I am convinced that it is because they both have velvet voices. I’m disappointed that we never found out Sam Stein’s backstory. Ugh, Karen-can we get Trish instead?
While I think that The Punisher was a well-made show with a redundant storyline, I ultimately think that I prefer a show with a grander, more selfless mission statement whereas this show is more personal and fraught with fighting the evil within. Also I don’t understand how Frank is functioning and alive with no superpowers. It just isn’t my cup of tea.