The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 3: Trouble the Water
This episode is... interesting? After the very slowly paced second episode, this one ends up still sort of mostly dawdling, with a good chunk of its screentime taken up by the assault of the Pilgrim's mysterious organization on the random small-town precinct. The action's sure a lot better than the previous episode, with there being some actual stakes (even if it's the question of whether random cop we've met two minutes ago lives or dies) and actually showcasing that our bad guys of the season have a bit more clout than just a stream of disposable random goons for Frank Castle to mow down.
After their capture by the cops in the previous episode and as the cops try and get the story out of Frank and Rachel, the Pilgrim also shows up with totally-legit-papers to extradite the two of them, while, again, continuing to quote the bible to a fellow God-fearing man. Pilgrim's gimmick does make him stand out, but I still really don't care all that much about him. He's a ball of competence with a singular bible-quoting gimmick, and I'm not sure if there's going to be a whole lot more about him beyond being a cool competent military man saying "Hosea eight, verse seven, reap the whirlwind" every now and then. We do get a bit more of his backstory fleshed out, though, he has a sick wife and the huge church he is part of is also part of the vaguely-defined Illuminati-style organization that's hunting Rachel, except everyone is obligated to misquote the bible. Okay, sure.
The cops in the police station are... they're all right, memorable enough to tell apart in the thick of the episode. There's the reasonable one, there's the skittish paranoid one, there's the dude who has a brother locked up in the jail, all that jazz. They're all likable enough to root for during the fight, but certainly not memorable enough for me to remember beyond this episode. It's very trope-y, but at the same time I won't say that it failed to work and it's certainly enjoyable setting up these likable secondary characters so that Frank has someone to talk to and bond with. Plus, around the halfway point we get the cops fully trusting Frank and then we start cheering for the Punisher violence as he shoots molotov cocktails mid-toss to burn a bunch of mooks and just go on a one-man army to wipe out the Pilgrim's little raiding party while the cops marvel at how Frank Castle is like "that old western movie when a stranger arrives in town and turns out he's death or the devil or something". It's neat superhero fun.
With the Pilgrim storyline being folded squarely into him finally getting Frank and Rachel's scent and hunting them down, it does mean that unlike the two previous episdoes we're not going to have three disconnected storylines. The Billy Russo stuff, though, still feels like it's really tacked onto these episodes. The concept of a supervillain who has amnesia and can't remember any of the horrible things he/she's done is one that I have never liked, and while Ben Barnes is a great actor, I definitely am not invested with the amnesiac Jigsaw's escape from the asylum or whatever. Is the psychiatrist doctor going to be important somewhere down the line? Again, I kind of get the whole 'put back your mind together like a jigsaw puzzle' theme going on, but I just find Billy's story to be so m'eh at this point that I am just waiting for the inevitable moment when he regains his memory and actually becomes relevant to the plot as an actual character. Because right now he's just confused, and exists as a way to motivate Agent Madani, who in turn gets motivated to bring Frank Castle and his bag of guns back to New York.
There's a couple of fun moments in this episode, like Frank asking for black tape for his cast, or the bit with the bag of guns, or Rachel's interactions with the cops interrogating her, and the fun cameo of Brett Mahooney. It's a pretty solid episode, even if it does feel like a relatively standalone pit-stop before we get to the actual meat and potatoes of the season.
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