The Punisher, Season 1, Episode 1: 3 A.M.
I've actually finished watching a good chunk of The Punisher from a while back, but never got the time to review it. Which is partially due to my own schedule kind of just... piling up with so many other things to review. So anyway, here it is -- my review of the first episode of Netflix's Punisher TV series, spun off from the character's amazing, amazing introduction in Daredevil's second season. Daredevil's second season was somewhat problematic, but I don't think many people would argue if I said that Punisher is the best part of that season.
Like The Gifted, I'm not going to do any 'Marvel Easter Eggs' corner or whatever since I know jack shit about Punisher lore and only know what the TV show tells me, so hopefully these reviews can be cranked out a lot faster.
And, well, the first episode of Punisher... starts off very slow. It's nowhere as bad as Iron Fist's first episode, where we literally spend the entire episode in a mental hospital going 'oooooh is this dude really the Iron Fist?' but the only real action scenes we get is the first few montage of Punisher killing some dude through a sniper rifle across the American/Mexican border, as well as some dude in a bathroom, the last of the cartels and gangsters from Daredevil who caused the deaths of his family.
The majority of the episode just has Punisher wander around with a beard, being an antisocial construction worker who everyone thinks is autistic, and spends most of his time smashing walls. He gets befriended by chatty young kid Donny (definitely a likeable, if slighly cliched, secondary character), who ends up getting caught up by a bunch of doucheholes (who spends most of the episode mocking Frank, who they think is autistic) in a scheme to rob a high-stakes poker game. The robbery goes south, Donny nearly gets himself killed, until, of course, Frank Castle decides to get back punishing. Whacking the douchebag, murdering fools with his sledgehammer and dumping them all in a cement vat, he then proceeds to gun down the Gnucchi gangsters that are planning to stamp out witnesses.
There are some sub-plots and minor characters introduced -- like this dude Curtis that knows Frank's secret, working as a PTSD support group leader (and also is a nice buddy to Frank as well); as well as Dinah and Stein a pair of FBI agents or something that are trying to rise up their racist, sexist, cover-up-evil boss, but other than the fact that they exist, I don't really think there's much that this first episode does to make them feel interesting. And to be fair -- I do approve of this choice. Just giving us enough screentime to tell us they exist, but focusing mostly on Punisher's conflict at the construction site is definitely the right way to go.
As a rule, I'm far more of a fan of superheroes who inspire hope and justice. I like my Spider-Mans and Supermans to be real beacons of hope and justice to the community, I like my Captain Americas and Wonder Womans to inspire and be beacons of an ideal, and I rage when the DCEU showed Batman murdering dozens of people with the Batmobile. But there's definitely a place for the 'HELL YEAH' wanton brutality that the Punisher inflicts on his victims, because he, well, punishes them. This first episode doesn't really offer much in terms of a greater storyline, and the only real hints we got are from the FBI agent point-of-view, as well as the mysterious dude observing Frank through a computer... but as a re-introduction to the Punisher it's definitely a great way, acting as a neat sequel to his character in Daredevil while at the same time remaining fresh for anyone who started off with this show, with all the context clues from the conversation with Curtis or Frank's own flashbacks allowing you to fill the holes about what happened in Frank's past.
So yeah. Definitely a strong, if very slow, start. But it's worth it, because Jon Bernthal is a pretty fucking badass Punisher.
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