The Punisher S02E06-07 Review: Daddy Punisher

The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 6: Nakazat; Episode 7: One Bad Day

So episode 6 of The Punisher moves the plot along even further, and it's... it's interesting? The episode starts off with a bit of a non-sequitur where Frank and Amy basically pretend to be, like, making pedophile porn or something in order to gain access to a pedophile photo-booth so that Frank can beat up the pedophile photographer while Amy gets a bunch of photos developed. It's supposedly so that they can get the incriminating photos that is involved with this whole conspiracy developed, but on the other hand it's such a roundabout and out-of-nowhere bit that the whole point seems to just be there for the single moment where Frank is about to execute the pedo-porn distributor/photographer dude and Amy ends up talking Frank down to merely burning the dude's house. Which leads to the ever-present question regarding a person like Frank Castle, which is whether he should stop killing or not, a question raised by Karen Page in the first season, and now it seems it's Amy's turn to do so. The difference, of course, is that season two Frank Castle is a person whose vendetta and rage have mostly been spent.


Far more effective, of course, is Frank sparing Nikolai Poloznev, the next-level Russian mobster lord that takes up a significant portion of Frank's storyline. While Amy brings up memories of Lisa and basically convinces Frank to not bury the memory of his dead daughter and, like, imagine her alive and stuff (which, coincidentally, Frank himself is feeling really parental towards Amy in this episode), he gets to see that his target in this episode, Poloznev, has a teenage daughter that he brings for breakfast every morning and she plays the violin and everything. And while Amy laughs it off as sappy sentiment, it clearly touches Frank enough to make him look visibly conflicted underneath the veneer of badass bloodthirsty vigilante, and it takes Poloznev to say in all calmness, requesting that Frank doesn't shotgun him in the face because he'd want his family to at least be able to recognize his corps. This ends up touching Frank enough to spare Poloznev, leaving him with basically a slap on the wrist and telling him to fuck off from America, because of Poloznev's teenage daughter. An extremely effective scene, one that genuinely works amazingly well due to some great acting on Jon Bernthal's part. It's just kind of a pity that Poloznev gets executed at the end of the episode by John Pilgrim anyway, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The lead-up to Poloznev's confrontation with Frank is fun, too, with Amy's fun bit of exchanging her costume from waitress to student uniform, which is a bit at odds with what we know about Amy earlier in the season (where both Frank and the police officers are able to call her bullshit quickly), but whatever, it's cool. We also learn that Amy's group are basically a bunch of grifters or something that ended up being caught up in a larger conspiracy -- the photographs are of Senator David Schutlz being a homosexual, and he's being groomed by his super-powerful-Illuminati-people parents and their Russian friends to be the next president. And the gay photographs are incriminating enough for someone that's about to become president, and thus the Schultz parents have hired the crazy gimmick-villain assassin John Pilgrim to go around killing everyone who knows. Presumably the Schultz parents are the guys we see giving Pilgrim his assignments. Okay? It's kind of convoluted, but no sillier than most of the plotlines of these superhero shows.

We also get a great scene of Frank and Amy bonding over teaching the kid how to disarm someone with a gun, but, of course, Frank also drills in the fact that Amy needs to fucking shoot anyone who would aim a gun at her. It's pretty neat-o, and it's just kind of a shame that it took nearly halfway through the season that Frank and Amy's chemistry finally ends up working.

Billy Russo, meanwhile, continues to go on his own storyline. His conversations with Dr. Dumont is basically a whole lot of analysis about Billy regaining control or whatever, and also Dr. Dumont is scared of heights or something? And also Dumont seems to have therapy notes that compare Billy Russo to a previous patient of hers, so there might be some kind of unresolved tension between Dumont and her patients or whatever. Billy ends up confronting Curtis, but is clearly torn about his loyalties, realizing that he did something terrible, knowing, intellectually, that he shot Curtis, but having his last memory of Curtis being brothers with him and stuff. I did say that I didn't like the concept of amnesia, and I still kinda don't, but man the writers are milking the drama for all it's worth. Helps a lot that Ben Barnes is a great actor in this scene, and it's just such a shame that his dramatic unmask of "look at this face, isn't it punishment enough?" is hilariously underwhelming considering the rather minimal scar makeup.

Billy ends up recruiting a bunch of disenchanted veterans to form his, like, personal army or something? They start off with Billy and his Jigsaw mask beating up a bunch of people that are trying to tow away Jimbo's car-house (Jimbo's a character that I think only started showing up in Curtis's soup kitchen/support center this episode) which is pretty effective in making them feel like they're just venting the frustrations of being veterans that aren't cared by the country... and then Billy goes straight into "let's rob a fucking bank", which... I'm not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, it feels like it's supposed to be this huge, big moment of Billy finding his identity or succumbing to his desire of control or whatever, but on the other hand robbing a bank is such a hilariously mundane thing for a supervillain to do. (Also, Billy and Dumont get into an argument about control which turns into a sexytimes kiss. )

Also, kudos to Curtis for being great throughout the couple of short scenes in this episode. From the scene where he's clearly worried with his girlfriend in a hotel room, to the bit where he helps out Jimbo with the glasses in the soup kitchen. We also get a B-plot of Madani meeting with Mahoney and discussing all the chaos that's going on, and also Madani very briefly meeting the Pilgrim, but the Madani bits really only feel like they're there to edge the rest of the stuff onwards, to build up towards this big confrontation between all parties. This all culminates in Curtis calling for a sit-down between himself, Frank and Madani, and despite the argument between the latter two, they decide to deal with Billy Russo before he goes out of control, which, of course, is the plotline for episode 7 and is what's basically the mid-season climax.
___________________________________________

So this episode is a bit of an interesting one, mostly centered around the Anti-Jigsaw Squadron racing against time against Billy's own bank heist, with the Amy and Pilgrim storylines being put in the backburner. Billy basically ends up going through his bad guy plan, although not before a Netflix sex scene between him and Dumont that apparently is so great that it cures both Dumont's acrophobia and Billy's skull-o-phobia, and leads to some pain/pleasure post-coitus talk. But Billy refuses to be controlled by Dumont and buggers off to continue training his small army to rob a bank, causing Dumont to get all scared of heights again and stuff? I'm really not sure where this Billy/Dumont storyline is going, and if all Dumont is for is to give Billy a love interest, it's going to be irritating.

Billy ends up training his ex-soldier buddies to rob a bank and drilling into them a sense of redundancy and how they all need to be able to take over each other's job. And this ends up to a bunch of scenes of Billy rehearsing his huge heist plan, which I do appreciate. It does feel redundant, but the scenes do feel cool and do really help to show off Billy as someone that's a bit more cunning beyond just a generic bank thief.

Meanwhile, on the good guys' side, we get a bit more of a focus on Madani, with the episode starting off with a scene that takes place after season one, where Madani, after being wounded, is convinced by her superior officer Marion James to basically spin the story that the CIA wants her to tell, which does exonerate some of the villains of season one (I don't fully remember the details) but pins all the blame on Billy, and exonerates both Madani's career and allow Frank Castle to disappear in peace. This jumps into a more recent conversation between Madani and Marion, and Marion just shrugs off the chance that maybe the Punisher and Billy Russo will just take each other out and keep their hands clean with the least amount of effort, and throughout it all Madani's... just having this huge moral crisis, y'know?

And as someone who didn't care at all about Madani in The Punisher's first season, these couple of scenes certainly did a decent job (if not a perfect one) at illustrating the conflict Madani is feeling, and explaining why, during Frank's brutal torture of Jake (one of Billy's minions that Frank and Curtis caught while looking for meth), Madani decides to stop it before Frank goes to far. Of course, they still got the information they want thanks to some great good cop routine from Curtis, but Madani's second-guessing and moral angst, while a bit annoying from the audience's standpoint of "god, stop interrupting the badass anti-hero plan!", is one that I can understand. It is interesting that out of the Billy-killer trio, Madani was originally easily the most vengeful out of the three, but now she's the one advocating for them to bring in the NYPD and Sergeant Mahoney to take down Billy. The execution could've been done better and I really wished that Madani's scenes in the previous episodes had been structured a bit better, but that seems to be my running complaint throughout The Punisher's second season.

Frank, meanwhile, despite his earlier reluctance, is basically on a hyper-focused drive right now, which Curtis lampshades during their stakeout -- when he's stoked, Frank Castle really wants it to be action all the time, and is pretty dang antsy about his showdown with Billy Russo. And we do get a rather extended scene of Billy and his small army of luchador-masked bank robbers attempting to rob a bank, with Billy being defied by the no-nonsense bank manager Lilian -- which I felt went on for a bit too long, but was a great scene, so I didn't really mind it that much. The heist went without any bloodshed, and, hey, at least Billy Russo's showing restraint, yeah?

The tension and action between the interrogation, the training scenes and Frank and Curtis driving off to stop Billy is well-paced, leading up to the final confrontation as Frank starts gunning down some of Billy's mooks, before pulling off his mask and coat dramatically to reveal his face and the blood-stained Punisher chestplate that ends up freezing poor Billy Russo to the spot. The episode ends mid-action-scene, with Billy being grabbed and dragged off by his people while Frank is still doing his whole Punisher thing. Ultimately, a pretty great episode, with a pretty great ending action scene. Punisher's second season might be a lot weaker as a whole, pacing-wise and character development wise, but the individual episodes are very much solid.