The Punisher, Season 1, Episode 10: Virtue of the Vicious
A Rashomon-narrative-style episode is definitely not what I was expecting in an episode within the Netflix series, and I was definitely pleased by it. One thing that I was rather sad that Netflix series couldn't do is to not make all their episodes into just chapters of a super-long movie, and I'm genuinely surprised to see that after a bit of 'wait, did I skip an episode?', this episode of the Punisher delivers a neat climax to the Lewis Wilson arc and helps to shake the status quo enough before we lead into the final three episodes. I've gone on record in saying that the very slow pace of Punisher's first... oh, six or so episodes hurt it more than help it, but it does built up nicely to a string of explosive climaxes that'll deal with Lewis, Agent Orange and Billy Russo all at once.
But let's discuss about 'Virtue of the Vicious'. We're introduced immediately to the aftermath of what appears to be an assassination attempt on Senator Stan Ori's life, where Billy Russo, Agent Madani, Lewis and the Punisher all do battle with each other and fucked up a building, and Karen is somewhere in the middle of it all. Arriving for a single episode all the way from Daredevil is Officer Brett Mahoney, who tries to piece together everything by interviewing Madani, Billy, Karen and the senator.
And it's a clever way that reinvigorates what would be a simple action sequence of the Punisher and Lewis shooting each other up with Billy's Anvil minions and Madani thrown into the whole loop. Not that just watching Frank Castle blow some fools isn't entertaining, but I did love how the episode starts to fill in the holes of what happens as Brett interviews Madani. It's perhaps not the most inventive usage of the trope as, unlike Rashomon, it's not a bunch of conflicting stories that the audience (and the officer) needs to draw out the conclusion from, but rather just the characters filling in the blanks as to the disastrous event that has happened.
The actual action scenes themselves are pretty cool. Lewis shows up to kill Senator Ori, kills a lot of Billy Russo's Anvil minions, and Frank Castle shows up to stop him after calling Billy to warn him. Lewis takes Karen hostage, Frank shows up to talk him down, but Lewis escapes with Karen into the kitchen, while Frank has a very tense standoff with Madani and Billy, where Billy's treachery is eventually figured out by both Madani and Frank. The stand-off is interrupted by a bunch of soldiers coming in, allowing Frank to charge into the kitchen, have Karen shoot Lewis in the foot and grapple with Lewis. Lewis blows himself up in a cold storage room, Karen poses as a hostage to allow Frank to get away.
It's a neat little variation to what would otherwise be a simple episode, and while I think there's a bit of a missed opportunity in actually having each character paint the Punisher and Lewis in different lights (as the Punisher's reputation is already pretty muddled in the public image) but eh. We get a lot of cool scenes from Frank as he goes on full Terminator to save Karen, and shows a lot of great scenes like hiding behind that door (that is hilarious) or using a firehose as a grapple line to jump down a stairwell, and his quick transformation to bargaining and distracting when he actually confronts Lewis holding Karen hostage... again, it's best when the Punisher actually shows some restraint in his punishing due to the fact that hostages are involved.
Frank and Karen's relationship is also done well (and I'm particularly happy that, unlike Claire Temple, the writers don't fall into the temptation into making Karen into a straight-up love interest for Frank) and the way that they overcome Lewis and how Karen poses as his prisoner (and their collapse in the elevator) is well done. Karen also gets to continue her gun control debate from the previous episode, and we get slightly more nuance in this one before Lewis shows up with bombs to interrupt the whole thing.
Lewis himself is the weak link in the episode, where he's on full-on crazy terrorist mode. I'm not sure if the season really needed to spend all that time developing Lewis, though. He's a cool villain, and the history behind his downfall is very interesting, but once the downfall happens he's just kind of a flat villain (amazing performance from the actor, though), and there's a huge missed opportunity behind that, I think. Perhaps one of the biggest problems with Lewis is that they only really interact in the previous episode and this one, making him feel more of a stumbling block for Frank's quest to kill Agent Orange and Billy. Add that to the fact that his father and Curtis are completely absent in Lewis' final outing and I really feel that there's a huge missed opportunity here.
Madani's storyline is also pretty weak, with her realization that Billy Russo killed Stein being rather abrupt, and while her actress does a pretty good job at what she's asked to do, the show still tends to lose its steam whenever we return to Madani. Particularly because her "I'm pouting because no one wants to help me, but I refuse to work with anyone else" shtick is just so goddamned annoying. Her hot-headed insistence to reveal information to Billy and going "I KNOW YOU ARE EEEVIL!" is also pretty dumb.
Billy does devolve a bit into comic-book villainy in this episode, although unlike Madani he knows how to keep his cards close to his chest. His little talk to Brett about how he's a soldier, and soldiers view success based on 'mission accomplished' and not how many people died, which is a neat little insight into Billy (and Frank's?) state of mind.
Overall, a pretty well-executed episode, in my opinion. Now that the Lewis subplot and the Karen stuff is done, perhaps we can get all the remaining subplots to tie together into an explosive climax? This is definitely a turn from the normal Netflix formula where it's the final stretch that feels particularly well-done instead of being slow and meandering (looking at you, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and Daredevil).
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