The Punisher S02E12-13 Review: Reap the Whirlwind

The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 12: Collision Course; Episode 13: The Whirlwind

Episode 12: Collision Course
We've finally finished the second season of The Punisher and hoo boy, what an uneven season this has been. Regardless, though, it's testament to the strength of the first season, of the individual episode directors and the actors in general that I actually still find this season to be pretty dang entertaining. Or maybe I just don't have the heart to be mean to the season now that all of the Netflix shows are cancelled.

Episode 12, "Collision Course", basically is the huge set-up episode, since everything has to be wrapped up in the finale, and for the most part we basically have to deal with the secondary villains, because episode 13's going to largely just deal with Billy Russo, the Pilgrim, and the Pilgrim's forgettable bosses. So in this episode, we get the huge revelation that Billy, I guess, still feels empty inside after his revenge in a clear attempt by the writers to parallel Frank? Billy disbands Valhalla, and despite all the hoo-ha about brotherhood and putting their lives down for Billy Russo, all of the surviving Valhalla ex-soldiers just... they just sort of accept their pay and let Billy go? Really? You'd think that a fanatical group that prides themselves on brotherhood wouldn't actually let Billy do so, and it feels kind of random. Okay, sure. Billy then kind of spends the rest of the episode almost being a normal person, grinning like an idiot when he buys flowers home for his beloved Dr. Dumont. It's just a shame that their romance and relationship never really worked in any believable manner -- I wouldn't mind if it's a fucked-up relationship, since that's clearly what they're going for, but honestly, the scenes between Billy and Dumont have been so widely inconsistent that I just don't really buy their romance. I buy that Dumont's head-over-heels in love with Billy, but, uh, when did the reverse really happen? I dunno. Ben Barnes sells the shit out of his inconsistently-written character, though, great kudos to him.

For the most part, though, it's Dumont that ends up taking center stage in the Billy/Dumont duo, with Agent Madani finally figuring out that Dumont's questions were suspiciously identical to what ended up being the huge greatest psychological weakness trap for the Punisher, and realized that, hey, the shifty, ever-confident psychiatrist who clearly refused to see that the psychopathic murderer is actually really psychopathic and suddenly became friendly to you for some reason... is actually someone who has ulterior motives! Shock and horror! And while I clearly don't think much about this revelation, I do really like the scene when Madani and Dumont confront each other, with the two of them basically kind of playing it coy and going "do you know what I know but do I know that you know" sort of game. It's a scene that's actually very awesomely done.

Less awesomely done is the fight scene between the two, mostly that it went on for as long as it did. I'm all for action scenes, of course, that's why we watch a good chunk of the superhero shows that we do and certainly why the Netflix shows have been so successful... but really? Madani is a goddamn secret agent. Dr. Dumont is a psychiatrist. Sure, she caught Madani by surprise and all, but is there a Martial Arts 101 class that psychiatrists are supposed to take? Whatever the case, the fight ends up with Madani accidentally pushing the rabid dr. Dumont out of the window and smashing her dead (or so it looks) onto the pavement.

Meanwhile, the start of the episode resolves the cliffhanger of the previous one by having John Pilgrim engage in an actually awesome little car chase against Officer Mahoney and his appropriated ambulance. I don't think superhero TV shows in general have much budget for automobile action scenes, and it's been a good long while since I last saw one of these. The heavy rock music blaring in the background doesn't hurt either. But it basically serves mostly to ingratiate the fact that, hey, the Punisher's actually a swell guy who wouldn't just kill innocents to Officer Mahoney, the only good person in the cast who's doubting Frank at all. It's bound to happen at some point, I guess.

John Pilgrim, meanwhile, eventually tracks down the mobile home that Curtis and Amy are hanging out in, and they engage in a scuffle at which point Amy manages to escape. It's all scary and tense because Amy is a teenager that's likable and the audience likes her and John Pilgrim is a fucking lunatic, but I am kind of sad that the Frank/Amy interaction really didn't develop as well as it could've been. It's the nature of the season, I suppose, where it wouldn't look heroic or responsible for Frank to bring Amy into any of the action scenes, and since Frank spends so much of the middle portion of the season in action scenes, it means that Frank and Amy don't really get a whole ton of great meaningful interaction beyond a snarky scene here and a rescue sequence there. I suppose that rescue episode with Frank helping Amy deal with shooting a dude is The Big Scene that we're going to get out of this. Fair enough, I suppose. Amy ends up hiding in the Pilgrim's trunk and follow him to his cheap motel hideout. Again, kinda wished that this was a scene with a bit more oomph, but it's all right.

Frank, meanwhile, goes off straight to beat the ever-loving crap out of gay Senator David Schultz and kidnap him, and flies off the handle when he finds out that Amy may or may not have been kidnapped by the Pilgrim. She's actually hiding and duping all of the adults, but a lack of real communication between her and either Frank or Curtis makes our heroes very pissed off. Frank's interrogation of David is... pretty neat, I guess, in a narrative sense? Not that he's beating up a completely innocent man, though, that bit's intentionally uncomfortable to watch, but after the season kind of bending over backwards to show how every morally ambiguous thing Frank has done ends up being on the right side, even if he's pulling his punches on David it's perhaps one of the few "do a terrible thing for arguably a better good" moments. I really am not invested in the Schultzes at all, although Papa Schultz does get a couple of great acting scenes when he's panicking at the sight of his son being beaten up by a blood-soaked lunatic vigilante. It's just that, well, the dynamic between the Schultzes and the rest of the world of The Punisher just really feels to be so detached and what we learn here is basically identical to what we learned during the big exposition scene in episode five or six or something.

Anyway, "Collision Course" ends up with some neat setup while handwaving others away. Officer Mahoney liking Frank is presumably the end of the cops bothering Frank for the remainder of the season; Dr. Dumont's basically dead; Valhalla is disbanded (???) and all that's left to do is for the Billy-vs-Madani fight and Frank dealing with the whole Pilgrim-and-Schultzes situation.
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Episode 13: The Whirlwind
...And so ends the final season of The Punisher, which, I feel, ends up with kind of a waste of a fantastic cast. That's a complaint I keep having throughout the season and something that doesn't change at the end of it. Honestly, despite a lot of great cast members and a lot of interesting directions they could've taken the plot and other aspects of it, the finale and the season as a whole ends up feeling super messy in general. I wonder if all of this could've been better if they left half the season solely for the Billy plot and another half solely for the Pilgrim plot, instead of trying to awkwardly have the two be interwoven like this all the way to the final episode when I really don't give two shits about John Pilgrim or the Schultzes as actual antagonists, while Billy's plan is kind of small-scale and detached from the larger conspiracy thing that Amy is embroiled in. There's genuinely the makings of another repeat of Punisher's fantastic first season, but there's also too much meandering around in this season that it ends up feeling pretty messy by the time we reach the end, and I wonder if exorcising aspects of this season wouldn't have felt a lot better. Maybe the entire "Billy gets amnesia" bit? We really didn't get too much mileage out of the "rebuilding the Jigsaw", really.

Of course, we're also not entirely sure just how much the show was rewritten after the news came that the Netflix Marvel shows are going to be cancelled -- I suspect that bizarrely gratuitously brutal final shot of the Punisher being the Punisher and gunning down a bunch of gang-bangers is one of those studio mandates to make sure the Punisher ends his show as, y'know, the Punisher from the comics instead of what would've been more organic -- Frank trying to put aside all this violent murdering spree stuff before the inevitable next crisis pulls him in. Maybe either Billy or Pilgrim was supposed to survive to the next season? We'll never know, I guess.

And, well, after being essentially sidelined throughout the entire season, the final season finally ends up making Billy Russo the undoubtedly minor villain in this episode as opposed to the Pilgrim/Schultzes storyline, which... I dunno, the shift genuinely feels abrupt, and at this point the show doesn't really make me care all that much about Pilgrim beyond like the two or three character traits we're told of him, and the Schultzes are, well, just kind of there. It's kind of a shame, really, because all things considered the show never spends quite as much time with them that it honestly feels more like an afterthought, but the way the episode ends up presenting Frank dealing with the Schultzes makes it feel like he's finally reached the big bad nemesis.

That said, the Billy Russo stuff is, as always, pretty great. Ben Barnes gives a great performance as always, and I'm genuinely surprised that neither he nor Madani actually end up killing each other in that short but brutal apartment brawl. Madani gets knocked out and Billy sort of crawls off with a couple of bullets in him. Turns out that Billy Russo trying to scare people with his macho soldier boy attitude ends up with the random back-alley doctor he meets dumping him in a literal dumpster (ha!) and he ends up crawling and asking Curtis for help and solace because he doesn't want to be alone. And in that moment, Billy Russo ends up looking so scared and vulnerable and all of his bluster is gone... and then you're reminded of all the shit he's done and Curtis's expression of wanting to just be done with everything is understandable.

I do like that Frank basically takes a detour from the huge John Pilgrim huntdown showdown to deal with this one unfinished business. He really didn't have to, but the fact that he shows up just to mercy-kill this one rat that refuses to die and has been giving him grief all his life. The best part of it has to be the callous way that Frank interrupts Billy's attempt to make this whole scene a grandiose sequence that's all about him and his long-running vendetta with Frank, and Frank just refuses to let Billy have that satisfaction and murders the shit out of him. I do like the poetic execution of this scene, as much as I do have a problem with the rest of the season's storytelling structure -- Billy ends up being presented as a lesser threat, as a side-quest Frank has to get through in-between his main mission, and that's kind of poetic justice in its own way. Frank doesn't even say a single word throughout his whole encounter, which is extra-cold. No acknowledgement of their brotherhood, no acknowledgement of Billy as a persistent nemesis... just boom, headshot, in the middle of a monologue. And kudos to the show for having the balls to end Billy Russo with what's essentially an anti-climactic end, where he dies a sad lonely man caught up in his delusions of grandeur with nothing to his name.

That said... it's such a shame that the main mission itself is so bland. John Pilgrim himself is more of a physical antagonist than a character-driven one, like one of those super-persistent henchmen in a Bond movie, and while the show tries to tell us that, no, he has this super-tragic backstory and everything, I mostly care about Pilgrim more as a physical threat to the Punisher. And credit where credit's due, both of the confrontations that the Punisher and the Pilgrim had is genuinely entertaining to watch, both the one in the hotel room and the junkyard. And action-scene wise, the show really doesn't disappoint.

It's just that the sort of progression about the characters sort of bouncing around that's a bit less than satisfying. Pilgrim kidnaps Amy during the hotel shootout, lets Amy go during the junkyard shootout, and at some point between all this Curtis takes pity on Senator David Schultz and brings him to Officer Mahoney and they sort of disappear from the plot. Curtis and Madani also do a bit of a cover up that makes it look like Frank isn't involved in putting down Billy Russo, which is cute. At some point during the fight with the Pilgrim, Frank also realizes that the Pilgrim is doing this because his children is essentially being held hostage by the Schultzes... which... I kind of call bullshit? Sure, John Pilgrim is sort of presented as a "Dark Punisher" of sorts, working to preserve his family instead of avenge them, but I really do think that we're missing a scene where the Schultzes really threaten Pilgrim's family, y'know? It's not like he hasn't been going around murdering gangsters and kids throughout the season. The Pilgrim storyline ends with Pilgrim leading Frank and Amy to the Schultz mansion, and then Frank letting Pilgrim walk off with his two sons because he's a dad and therefore dads to younger children aren't allowed to be killed or something? I dunno, I feel like this is a distinctly different tone we're playing compared to the mobster with the violinist daughter that Frank spared earlier this season. It's a moment that bothers me a fair bit, but eh, it's a conclusion to the character, I suppose.

And as much as I haven't cared for the Schultzes, they do make for a satisfying takedown for Frank. The Schultzes spend so much of the season and even the previous episode promising rain and vengeance down upon Frank Castle and all that he loves for daring to fuck with them, and they are so sure in their superiority that when Amy strolls in and starts to talk to them about the incriminating video that they have from the Facetime sequence that Frank has with them, the Schultzes are more dismissive and going "move that gun away, little girl". And then Frank comes in and murders the shit out of Mama Schultz, before giving Papa Schultz the uncharacteristically sadistic option of either killing himself or letting his name be destroyed. Satisfying, I guess, but ultimately I genuinely do think that we don't see enough of the Schultzes for this moment to really land, y'know?

Anyway, Billy's dead, the Schultzes are dead, John Pilgrim's let go, the police don't hate Frank Castle, and what's left is to wrap up the loose ends, and... and okay, Frank and Amy's scene at the bus stop is pretty heartwarming. It still could've been better, but at least the show tries to build up the Frank/Amy relationship better than it does the Schultzes as villains, so there's a neat sense of 'd'aww, papa Frank' moment there. Madani arrives to mock Dumont, who's somehow alive, wrapped up in the hospital and is so convinced that his Prince Billy will arrive to rescue her. Okay? Did we really need that? And, of course, the final scene is Frank turning down to join Madani's CIA-sanctioned not-Suicide-Squad in exchange for him gunning down a bunch of gangsters. Okay, sure.

It's really a shame. For all my grumblings with the season, I do really enjoyed my time watching The Punisher's second season, and while for the most part all the second-season Netflix Marvel shows tend to be duds, I feel like The Punisher's extremely well-received first season has set a huge bar that this second one fails to reach, and the fact that this is goodbye for Jon Bernthal's fantastic Punisher is another sting in the gut. Oh well.

What's next for me? I'll slowly catch up to DC's CW shows as they come out, maybe do bi-weekly episode reviews because this format has been really working well for me, I feel. The DC CW stuff are apparently being cut short or something? I haven't been following the news. Out of the other superhero shows that I haven't watched, I've actually been watching the third and final season of Runaways on and off, and that might be our next binge-watch this month. Titans's second season is also something that I intend to do at some point down the road, and maybe after all that, we'll approach the final chapter of Marvel-Netflix, Jessica Jones season three? There's also Doom Patrol's first season which I have barely scratched the surface of, as well as Legion's third season, but while I'll certainly watch those episodes, I'm not sure if I'm in the right mindset to review those more... mind-fuck shows. Oh well. We'll see.