The Punisher S01E06 Review: Plot Twist Dance

The Punisher, Season 1, Episode 6: The Judas Goat

Plot twist! Well, that's a decent way to end the episode. The Punisher has been so, so slow throughout the first six episodes. Painfully so. It's nowhere as bad as Iron Fist was, because at least Punisher's slowness is well-acted and well-directed instead of feeling like a confuddled mess, but we're in the show's sixth hour and I really think that it could definitely have been done and paced so much better. While I'm glad that it's not just a non-stop high-octane gun shot to the head all the time, it does really make me yearn for some Punisher brutality. 

There are many problems, really -- one of which is the fact that the side-characters' stories... aren't that interesting. The characters themselves are well-acted, but I'm not sure just why we're spending so much time with Madani, Stein, Lewis or Billy Russo (until the end of this episode, for Billy's case) in a show that promises to be about the Punisher. And none of them feel that interesting. Like, Madani and Stein's scenes are a long, long drag even though by rights the hero-antagonist agent trying to find the truth and unintentionally possibly going to get in Frank's way is interesting, it's just... not really.

And Lewis's storyline is definitely well acted, don't get me wrong. A soldier with PTSD, returning home and having no idea what to do with his life, struggling with so much emotional scars, tugged one way and the next by Billy and Curtis, and the douchebag fat asshat O'Conner who convinces him that he should fight for gun rights... it's a very emotional story, even if I'm not sure why I should care about Lewis when he doesn't have any real immediate impact to the Operation Cerberus conspiracy or Punisher's state at the moment, only tangentially involved with Curtis and Billy. Daniel Webber, the actor who plays Lewis, is an amazing actor and in this episode really shows the depth of mental damage the war's inflicted on him... but in the same vein, I'm not really sure just why O'Conner is egging him on beyond the fact that O'Conner is a gigantic douchefuck (who lies about going to Vietnam, even)... so there's nothing to do but for me to cheer as Lewis stabs O'Conner to death. Lewis's story is tragic and all, but I'm not sure why we need him as a character and all, and if his story as a traumatized PTSD soldier couldn't have been given to Frank, or a character more directly involved with Frank.  Everything about Lewis just feels disconnected, the way that Riot feels in Jessica Jones.

Also, the whole subplot about the Lieberman family is one whole lot of "I don't care, but it's well-acted" to me. 

Oh, and after a long 'gruesome medical'  montage (which isn't that gruesome, really), and a long speech from Micro to tell Frank to pick up Billy's call and meet up with him, we get the revelation that after Frank's passionate speech about how Billy Russo is his family, how Billy is confused about the fact that Madani's investigating Frank while at the same time fucking him, and all that... we get the revelation that he's apparently working alongside Agent Orange. It's a well-developed twist, as we see a lot of Billy throughout the first six episodes, and I totally bought his act that he's Frank's good friend, if a little smarmy. I'm not sure if this twist couldn't have been done earlier, to spice up one of the less-interesting episodes prior. 

The good news, though, is that this rather slow (not bad, just slow) episode does deliver one hell of a shocking plot twist in Billy's true allegiance, and this does mean that the plot will, hopefully, pick up the pace. We've spent way too much time setting up stuff, I really wish we get some payoff.