The Punisher S01E08 Review: Love Triangle Averted

The Punisher, Season 1, Episode 8: Cold Steel 

I really dislike the moments where the huge PTSD/war conspiracy/military stuff in the Punisher take a huge backseat and deal with Frank Castle going to meet Sarah Lieberman, all the while knowing that Micro is alive and watching through the hidden cameras, trying to be friendly and supportive while at the same time not hitting on his new friend's wife. It's definitely a requirement, narratively, to make Sarah and David's kids actual people as opposed to just plot devicess that have to be rescued, but on the other hand didn't we have enough humanizing of them in the season's slower first half? Did we need this whole love triangle bull shoved to us? The sole caveat is that Sarah's attraction to Frank is built up reasonably well so that when it happens it's not out of nowhere, but in the same vein it's a needless complication in the already slow-moving Punisher.

Thank god Micro and Punisher are adults enough to wave it away after a single drink, and after that they just get back to proper vigilantism. Thank god for that, show writers. It's a kiss done in passion, and instead of ratcheting it up for drama everyone deals with it like adults. 

I mean, not that Frank and David actually do much vigilantism this episode. There's a brief talk where Micro finally has the idea that they make Madani their ally, but it's brushed away and for the most part, after their discovery of Agent Orange's identity (oh god he's the head of CIA!) the two of them just kind of fool around with Sarah, and later on Frank goes to confront David's son, who's showing troubling violent tendencies of hanging around with a combat knife because he misses his daddy and is being bullied, or something along those lines. Frank kind of goes in to set the kid straight, and while the kid, in Sarah's words, "is an asshole", it's also clear that the kid's hurting a lot and it's hard not to sympathize with him. Frank's tough love, the violent charge with the knife, is controlled while at the same time scary enough to shock the kid into realizing how far he's gone. We've got a couple of great moments, with Frank playing football with the kid, and David showing up in tears on the curb going "he needs me" while Frank tries to calm him down because that's going to blow his cover... yeah, I'm not a big fan of the weird 'you kissed my wife!' bit, but definitely a big fan of Frank's interactions with David's son. We also get a neat bonding moment between Frank and David over drinks, talking about how they met their respective wives and how it all happens and stuff. Again, it would've been padding in a lesser show, but Bernthal and Moss-Bachrach perform their roles so well it's hard to really complain to see them act and bro it out. 

Definitely a fan of David's weird dick-dance. That's so surreal and out of nowhere and random and funny. 

We get a fair amount of moments with Billy Russo and Madani too. Billy has gone into full-blown villainy (which isn't particularly a bad thing, throwing in a bit of that comic book flair into an otherwise grounded series) with an American Psycho esque morning routine, and we get the revelation about his backstory. It's simple, perhaps, but it does put him in some context -- we learn that he became kind of fucked up thanks to how his mother essentially dropped him off at multiple foster homes, and he tracked down his mother, who's now in a hospital and he is being a dick and injecting his mother with drugs out of revenge... yeah, Billy's not a nice person. 

Billy and Agent Orange's motivations are a bit highlighted too in a conversation they have. Billy climbed up from the true dregs of society, from being an unwanted child in violent foster homes and climbing his way up the chain of military command into the leader of Anvil, whereas Agent Orange is born with a silver spoon in his mouth and, according to both Billy and David, never really saw any action in the field, with the only real 'battle damage' he got being Frank's punch to the eye (which he used to climb ranks nonetheless). In a sense, Billy and Agent Orange are easy parallels to the Punisher and Micro. 

Madani attempts to make a sting to draw out the rogue elements in the CIA bugging her office, which, of course, is Billy Russo and his band of mercenaries. Team Billy gets ambushed by Team Madani, and we get to see some cold shit as Billy kills some of his own men to leave no witnesses. Billy ends up being confronted by Stein, but ends up killing Stein via savage stabs into his neck with his Assassin's Creed hidden blade, and makes a clean getaway, Madani gets no witnesses alive to interrogate for her Kandahar case, and Stein dies in Madani's arms. It's a complete failure for Madani, who doesn't really have anything to show for her huge Kandahar conspiracy plot, but a dead friend and a lot of other dead agents. 

Completely and utterly shell-shocked by this failure, the last we see of Madani is her blood-stained in a bathtub, being bathed by Billy. It's perhaps a bit stupid of her to immediately run back to the waiting arms of a suspect in her current case, but as with most emotional trauma, the Punisher shows it well that while we know it's a stupid-ass move that Madani is doing, we understand just where her headspace is and we don't damn her that much. It's perhaps a bit of a shame that Madani and Billy's interactions don't feel as strong as the buildup between Frank and Sarah (and even that doesn't lead into anything but a kiss). I still wish the Punisher series featured more punishing, but shit, I'm getting a pretty well-written story about well-written characters with a strong emotional center, and I'm not super complaining.