Daredevil: Born Again S01E04 Review: Punishment and Therapy

Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 4: Sic Semper Systema

Was this how we expected the Punisher to return? It certainly wasn't how I expected the Punisher to return. But it's also absolutely fitting to both the character as we last saw him in the MCU, and to Jon Bernthal's take on the character -- which explores a lot more about the themes of trauma and soldiers being victims (as much as Frank himself refuses to be described by that 'pussy-ass word').

But we follow up on the swerving plot twist at the end of episode 3, with the surprise kick-the-dog death of White Tiger. After the huge legal victory from the previous episode, it all seemingly turns to be all for nothing as what Matt is rewarded with is the death of a man he respects, and the crying, angry family left behind. Angela Del Toro will show up a fair bit more in subsequent episodes, so this is a nice little introduction to her character, but it does sting quite a bit. 

We also get a sequence where Matt deals with the extremely uncooperative homeless person Leeroy Bradford, who gets arrested for shoplifting some caramel corn. The episode, I think, does a great job at initially showing Leeroy as being an obnoxious asshat that is not appreciative of Matt's efforts to give him the best he could get based on the system -- a reduced sentence. But Leeroy's subsequent tearful speech, pouring his heart out to Matt about how much the system has really fucked people like him? That's some surprisingly powerful stuff, and while it is a bit of a filler scene in the middle of this slower episode, it leads to Matt being more disillusioned with the system in general. 

All he needs is an additional push. And as Matt investigates the crime scene and manages to find the bullet emblazoned with a Punisher skull, he heads off to confront the Punisher -- who's hiding in some random warehouse filled with guns and paranoid survivalist equipment. The time-skip hasn't been particularly kind to Frank, as whatever light he might've found at the end of The Punisher season 2 has gone out of his eyes. He's spiralling deeper and deeper into his mission, and initially seems brusque and dickish about Matt's own problems. We do brush off the idea that Punisher is the one that killed Hector, though, which is nice. 

Except, just like the Leeroy scene a bit, Frank is actually playing therapy the best way he knows how -- by forcing Matt to admit the things he's been shutting away in his life and trying to run away from. As much as Matt wants to believe in the system, as much as Matt tries to convince himself that yes, he did the right thing by the book... his friend is dead. And it's not exactly Hector he's talking about -- as Frank astutely (if not politely) points out, it's Foggy that Matt misses so dearly, someone who is bright and good and nice in the world. Frank manages to force Matt to be a bit more honest with himself, as he strikes Frank at one point, and eventually breaks down. Frank notes that he himself always sees specters of his own family -- good, innocent people as well -- and especially his son, who keeps telling him to 'kill all the bad guys'. 

This leads to a damning sequence when Matt insists that Bullseye has been served the harshest sentence that the system could ever give him. He'll never be free again. "HE GOT LIFE!" Matt yells out loud... and Frank points out that the same can't be said about Foggy. A nice bit of wordplay, and a dark nod to just how far the system can go. It's an amazing debate, and interestingly an almost full 180 compared to the original confrontation between Daredevil and the Punisher in the second season of Daredevil -- where the Punisher tries to keep Daredevil in the light. 

I really do like this sequence. Matt has been great at dodging the questions directed at him in regards to Foggy's death and Bullseye's sentencing and him hanging up the devil horns. Whether it was Kirsten, Cherry, Heather or even Wilson Fisk, Matt has been dodging these hard emotions as easily as he dodges punches and bullets. But Frank doesn't give a shit. He barrels through Matt's verbal defenses to really strike home. At the end of the episode, we get a nice side-by-side montage as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk suits up and embraces the parts of them that they've been hiding for the past couple of episodes... Daredevil and Kingpin are back.

Speaking of Wilson Fisk... he's not finding the system particularly nice to him either. Despite his huge show last episode on fixing the road, turns out that everything else in the city really does require huge amounts of red tape. Not going in any particular order, Fisk ends up realizing that what he can do is vastly limited, and no amount of "I want to do this" gets him what he wants -- and I really do like the difference in attitude between the well-worn, traditional but very knowledgeable Sheila, versus the go-getter young man Daniel Blake. Sheila is a bit of a wet blanket in everything she says and does, but she brings in the safety and stability that Fisk needs for his mayoral term. 

While Fisk is going around attending meetings he doesn't give a shit about -- and his building frustration with how every single meeting has some choir singing "We Built This City On Rock & Roll" is darkly comedic. We also learn a couple of small nods from Buck Cashman, the only one on Fisk's mayoral team who knows about his ex-criminal career, who notes that the Five Families are getting restless without the Fisks to keep them in control. 

Throw in the fact that the young, upcoming yes-man Daniel Blake made a bit of a fuck-up by being a bit too drunk and spilling some bits of news to BB Urich (who's a lot less relevant than I thought she would be), causing even more trouble to land on Fisk's lap. Daniel actually owns up to his mistake and he really does seem like the naïve guy that's drinking all of Fisk's kool-aid. This leads to Fisk forgiving Daniel for now, though not without a rather terrifying-to-the-audience "don't fail me again" remark. 

The Fisk couple's marriage counseling isn't going the best either, as they finally land on the huge landmine that is Vanessa's affair with Adam. Therapy is already difficult to do with full and transparent honesty, but it's rather telling that Matt's informal session with a drunk-and-yelling Frank Castle is much better for him than the dodgy, euphemism-laden, cold-sniping spat between Wilson and Vanessa. Dr. Heather Glenn tries her best, yes, but it's hard to do a therapy session when the couple is both hiding the fact that they both ran a criminal empire, and one of the fates that could've landed upon Adam is much worse than "having words". 

This leads to a discussion over dinner as Vanessa and Wilson discuss how at one point Dr. Heather speaks to Vanessa alone to confirm if she 'felt safe' around Wilson. Wilson notes that he respects and understands the psychiatrist's intentions, and goes on a bit of a tangent about his own father -- his childhood tormentor and role model... but Wilson finds it hard and is still trying to learn about forgiveness. Their conversation ends in an ominous 'people change' conclusion that could really go either way for their relationship. 

Of course, as the episode winds down and we see on the Matt side of the story that he's re-practicing his locked-up costumed vigilante side, Wilson Fisk ends up going to a random underground bunker... where he shows that he's actually not changed at all, and still keeps 'Kingpin' active. Adam, Vanessa's lover, is kept chained up in a bunker like it's the middle ages or something, suffering and begging to be let out while Wilson dines on fancy meals. 

This wasn't a super-interesting episode when I first watched it (other than the explosive Matt/Frank debate), but sitting down and reviewing all of it really does make me appreciate the parallels in storytelling between Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk; their respective frustrations with 'the system'; their respective therapy sessions, and ultimately the two of them returning to who they are. And as these two giants get into position, the episode finally ends with a bit of a hint on a psychotic street-art-themed serial killer, Muse, but we'll talk more about him next episode! 

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• The Punisher, Frank Castle, returns after last being seen at the end of the second season of his TV show. 
• Angela Del Toro, niece to Hector Ayala, is the character who takes over her uncle's mantle as the second White Tiger in the comics. 
• Various references to the old Daredevil show include the reappearance of the 'Rabbit in a Snowstorm' painting, still stained with Kingpin's blood; Fisk using 'ill intent' as a metaphor; and him starting a story about his father with 'when I was a boy...'
• The episode confirms that Punisher has figured out that Matt Murdock, the lawyer who represented him, and Daredevil the superhero is the one and the same person, which was hinted at but not confirmed during their team-up in season 2 of Daredevil.
• One of the spare Daredevil suits that Matt has is the yellow one he wore in She-Hulk: Attorney at Law. His darker red-and-black suit that he wore in Daredevil season 2 can also be glimpsed. 

Movie Review: Punisher - War Zone

The Punisher: War Zone (2008)

I forgot to upload the review for this movie, despite watching it around the same time that I did the other two pre-MCU Punisher movies! And... and I think that's mostly because I really didn't really like this one as much as the previous two. 1989's The Punisher was somewhat forgivable due to how relatively old it was, and 2004's The Punisher is probably the best out of the non-MCU live-action adaptations. 

Punisher: War Zone, released in 2008 and explicitly noted to be yet another reboot, tries to go for a less 'origin story' vibe, tries to make it less about Frank Castle dismantling a criminal organization, and brings in several plot points from the comics to spice things up. Headlining the antagonistic side of things is Billy "Jigsaw" Russo, one of Punisher's comic-book nemeses, who gets his origin story here and is accompanied by his psychotic cannibal of a brother, "Loony Bin" Jim. Dominic West's utterly hammy performance as Billy Russo is easily the highlight of the movie, with the rather random sequence in the middle of the Russo brothers (heh) walking around giving a whole-ass speech to recruit the various ethnic criminal groups with what's essentially a modified US army recruitment speech. 

Another aspect that is actually rather mature is the effects of the Punisher's ruthless war against criminals, adapting an arc in Punisher MAX where Frank accidentally kills an undercover cop and has to deal with both the moral and emotional fallout. Both the dead policeman (and his family, which become recurring characters throughout the movie) as well as the fact that Punisher essentially created his own villain by torturing Billy Russo and not finishing the job, would be a nice little critique and exploration on the whole ultraviolent 'Punisher' vigilante. In fact, the Netflix show does a somewhat decent sorta-attempt at this. There's even a minor character, Carlos Cruz, who was a former gang member allied with the good guys that Frank has a visceral reaction to. There are many aspects that would've made this a nice exploration about morality and redemption, and when the Punisher method works or doesn't work.

But Punisher: War Zone is... it tries to explore these themes, but at the end of the day it just handwaves everything -- rather conveniently -- just in service of continuing the action. We get the angst built up, of course. Obviously the dead cop's wife is super-angry at Frank and no soulful puppy-dog-eyes or money is going to bring her husband back. But all of that is handwaved aside hard when terrorists like Jigsaw and his goons show up, kidnap and threaten to kill her and her daughter, meaning that Punisher's ultraviolence gets 'redeemed' by default.

The aforementioned gang member, Carlos? There's some headbutting with Frank, but that plot point ends up, again, kind of handwaved aside when Carlos gets tortured and brutally left to die by the Russo brothers. At least this one had some sort of a satisfying ending with Frank sharing one last manly-bro moment with him. The second act really does focus a lot on the Punisher wanting to hang up the proverbial cape after being traumatized by killing that undercover cop. 

And... at the end of the day, the movie is more about the action scene, first and foremost, and I unapologetically am entertained by the movie because of it. We get some hammy acting from the secondary characters (Billy's old boss, as well as Billy himself), and even if some of the over-the-top acting is a bit ridiculous... again, I'm here to enjoy the glorious over-the-top violence. It's just that it's a bit off whenever the movie tries its best to go to the deep discussion about the morals of vigilante justice and the redeemability of criminals... and then Frank casually murders one of the lesser antagonists just to get Colin Salmon's character to curse and I laugh at it. 

And... in a sense, I guess that's okay. The movie's focused more on the action and the gore, with some moments that are in rather stark contrast to some of the more hammy scenes like Jigsaw's recruiting moment, or everything about Loony Bin Jim. We get a fair amount of Punisher's allies killed (including some civilians who are absolutely sweet and did nothing wrong), there was the brutality of Billy Russo's origin story, and there's a nice stab at trying to have a rather thematic storyline...

But I do think that was where it falls short slightly because it really did feel like we're building up to something... and then the movie just goes into an action scene and a hostage scene and another action scene. Admittedly, the action is pretty dang fun, and I can't argue about that. It's just that I felt like I was promised more in the first act, and we really didn't get much of it. Frank and his remaining allies unleash some gangsters upon Jigsaw's army of gangsters, and then the Punisher has to face off a sadistic choice of saving his friend or the civilians. 

Which, I do think is where some of my biggest frustrations with this movie lies -- Ray Stevenson is a pretty good Punisher, and the script clearly had some ideas on where to go. You can have your cake and eat it; you can have all of this over-the-top comic book ultraviolence and still wrap up Punisher's angsty character arc. The comics do it all the time! But... but as a violent action movie, it was pretty enjoyable. And I think these merits are what Punisher: War Zone should really be judged for. It is just a shame that I really did feel like there's a huge, somewhat wasted potential here. 

Movie Review: The Punisher (2004)

The Punisher (2004)

I reviewed this movie a while back in 2021, but I rewatched the 'extended edition' recently in my slow attempt to catch up with a lot of older superhero material. And... my opinions have changed a fair bit that I decided to re-write and re-publish the review of The Punisher 2004. Having watched the 1989 adaptation starring Dolph Lundgren also helped for me to get some new perspectives. 

Right on the bat, I do feel like 2004's The Punisher, starring Thomas Jane as the titular Punisher, ends up being a bit more faithful to the comics compared to the 1989 movie. Jane's Punisher actually goes around wearing the skull vest (albeit only in his first and last outing), for one. And we also get the appearance of some of Punisher's minor supporting cast from the comics (such as assassins like The Russian or Harry Heck; or ones like Mickey Duka and Specker Dave). Arguably, the movie also acts as a nicer introduction to the Punisher, actually showing us Frank Castle's origin story in a more detailed manner instead of treating it as an afterthought. Having his origin story be tied to the first criminal syndicate that Punisher wipes out also gives us a more tangible crime for Frank to 'punish', although your mileage may vary on how effective it is as a proper adaptation of the Punisher. It's not the best, but we also get a lot more scenes focusing on Frank's turmoil and torment compared to the '89 movie, which had Frank more of a reactive character.

The movie isn't without its faults, though, and a huge chunk does lie with its first act. While I do praise the 2004 adaptation for actually drawing out the deaths of Frank's family, and tying it to the first criminals that Frank hunts down... it feels a bit too long and a bit too needlessly cruel?

We start off with Frank as an undercover cop that's about to retire and finally be there for his family. The final operation, however, results in the death of Bobby Saint, overeager son of the mafia boss Howard Saint. The initial scenes of the movie focuses on Howard Saint (a very entertaining John Travolta, who surprisingly doesn't chew the scenery as much as you think he would in a role like this) reacting to this death and trying to figure out and 'punish' the one responsible for Bobby's death. This leads to him sending a whole-ass hitman squad to hunt down Frank Castle's family. 

...And Frank Castle's family? Instead of just being his wife and kids being killed in the crossfire of crime, it's his entire extended family, including his parents and like around a dozen assorted cousins and nephews and nieces, that gets summarily hounded down and murdered by Saint's minions in an honestly gratuitously long scene that gets a bit uncomfortable to watch... but also... we kind of get it? You don't really need to show Maria Castle driving around on a car for so long, y'know, and I kind of wanted them to 'get on' with the plot. 

There is a nice little thematic tie-in of mutual revenge, where Howard Saint's entire deal is hunting for the man who killed his family, and Frank's motivation would later be similar. However, Howard's initial orders for only Frank to be killed ends up being amended to 'his whole family' by Howard's angry wife Livia. 

The extended edition restores around 15+ minutes of screentime that revolves around a subplot of Frank's traitorous partner James Weeks, who gets caught up in gambling debts during Howard Saint's investigation into the enigmatic arms dealer that resulted in the death of his son, and later on continues to appear throughout Frank's Punisher-ing as Frank mentally puts the pieces together in his head. This actually adds a nice little dynamic into Frank's world -- not just him wiping out a single mafia syndicate, but also him having to deal with a traitorous friend... a reason that actually makes a lot of the scenes with his wacky neighbours a lot more palatable now that there's an actual thematic thread. 

Speaking of which... yeah, I'm not the biggest fan of the transition from the death of the Castle family to Frank's return as the Punisher. He just survives being shot and blown up into the ocean, and gets saved by a random fisherman... just because? The movie gives us a bit of an origin to Frank's overpreparedness with guns by his whole ex-military backstory and his dad also being a gun nut; and we get the excuse handwave of Frank Junior buying the skull shirt for his dad... but otherwise, next we see Frank, he's basically in all-business mode, all Punisher mode. He's emotionless, he hates the cops and the law for not investigating his family's death, he says badass one liners, and he refuses to make friends and keeps every single friendship attempt at arm's length. 

And... we just kind of cut away to him hanging out in an apartment with the three wacky neighbours -- a guy with a lot of metal piercings, Spacker Dave; a fat guy, Bumpo; and pretty waitress with an abusive boyfriend Joan (played by Rebecca Romijn, a.k.a. Mystique from X-Men). And I'll cover these wacky neighbours very quickly in that... they do suck up a lot of time. I don't think they're as bad as many other comedic relief characters in these movies, and I get what they're trying to do. Joan and later on the two guys really try to get Frank to open up with dinners and constant insistence that they are fellow losers and family. The themes of Frank really refusing any kind of companionship is done rather well. And in the extended edition this is contrasted nicely against Frank's betrayal by Agent Weeks, but I really don't think the chemistry between Frank and the other neighbours are particularly convincing. Frank does end up beating up and chasing off Joan's abusive boyfriend, which is a nice, short scene. 

I do like that Frank doesn't immediately jump Joan's bones, especially since he's still in mourning after Maria Castle's death. Joan was really thirsty, though. 

Frank meanwhile continues his investigation into the Saints' operations, kidnapping and "torturing" the nebbish and non-threatening henchman Mickey Duka. There's a bit of a moment where I realize that Frank does this because he has been interacting with Mickey while undercover, and as such he knows Mickey is harmless... hence, the whole sequence where he gives a vivid description of the sensation of being tortured with a burning-hot iron being 'cold', and Frank pretending to torture Mickey while burning some steak (which makes the smell of burnt meat) and pressing a popsicle against Mickey's back. It's a scene lifted from Punisher MAX, and I thought this was a nice little way to show that Frank isn't too far gone. The movie doesn't immediately explain why Frank was nicer to Mickey and trusts him to be his man-on-the-inside on the Saints' operations, however, and Mickey himself also notably has no character resolution at the end of the movie after his plot relevance is over. 

Frank ends up doing a bit of an investigation into the Saint family, and ends up sketching up a plan to turn Howard Saint, Livia Saint, Howard's right-hand-man Quentin Glass, and their business partner the Toro Brothers against each other. And we do get a couple of cool scenes of Frank either investigating and making up elaborate plans, or just going full-on skull-shirt-and-shotguns and attacking Howard Saint's bank and tossing money to the public. The 'detective' scenes admittedly feels rather off, since ultimately Frank ends up doing some 5D-chess-mind-games stuff that involves him framing Quentin and Livia for having an affair, which later on leads to the over-possessive Howard being deathly jealous of his best friend and his wife. This also comes with the (unfortunate with modern values) scenes of Frank finding the scandal that Quentin is actually homosexual, and uses these pictures to blackmail Quentin Glass and make him move around where he wants. 

While this is all going on, Howard Saint gets more and more frustrated, and it is nice to see John Travolta's acting -- Travolta is easily the strongest actor in this movie (though that's not to Thomas Jane's fault; his direction requires him to be a bit more static) and it is pretty fun to see him slowly go off the hinges. 

The next part of the movie ends up being a bit campier and more comic-book-y than the rest of it, though, and perhaps not in a good way. Despite apparently knowing where Frank Castle lives, Howard Saint sends... three waves of assassins, each of whom arrive at different timings and acts separately? The first assassin, Harry Heck (played by musician Mark Collie) is perhaps the most memorable for showing up in a diner and playing a whole-ass country song about how he's going to kill Frank... and Frank does nothing. And instead of embracing some ridiculousness and doing something with the guitar, Harry Heck just attacks Frank by tailgating him and shooting his car a whole bunch. Frank kills Harry with a shootable pocket knife, and... yeah, okay. 

The next assassin, The Russian, is an unstoppable giant strongman that fights Frank in probably the most fun action scene in the movie, where he and Frank just bashes their way around the apartment complex. I do like the theme of this fight, where Frank actually lets his guard down after having some dinner with his wacky neighbours... but I'm unconvinced that half of the fight needed to take place with cutaways to the neighbours doing wacky singing. This fight was fun, though. 

And then, the third wave of assassins are just a bunch of gunmen who show up and torture Spacker Dave, ripping out all of his face piercings and demanding that they give up where Frank is hiding. And... this scene is kind of full of a bit of rather glaring plot holes. Why didn't the gunmen arrive with the Russian? Why don't they kill Dave and Bumpo? Why did Dave and Bumpo actually stay behind, wouldn't it be easier for them all to escape? The idea of the scene is solid, with the neighbours 'taking a bullet' for Frank, but it just makes the mafia look grossly incompetent. 

After Frank recovers from his injuries with the Russian, he implements his plan to frame Quentin Glass for sleeping with Livia. This one is a neat little sequence of scenes, and it does benefit a lot from John Travolta's Howard Saint slowly piecing together what he thinks is an affair in his head, growing increasingly more and more pissed off at his perceived betrayal. Howard Saint confronts Quentin Glass and murders the very confused and loyal man in his own house; and goes home and attacks Livia, tossing him from a bridge into the path of the incoming train. Unfortunate modern-day implications aside, this is actually surprisingly cruel on Frank Castle's part, and it does give a nice little mafia flair to the movie's plot as opposed to 'Frank shoots people up a lot'. 

Oh, speaking of Frank shooting people up, in the extended scene this is where Frank confronts Weeks after several brief meetings, and we get a pretty cool sequence of Frank pretending to leave his handgun (without bullets) unattended just to confirm if Weeks is really against him. And... the scene where he intimidates Weeks to basically kill himself is a bit dark, and I'm not sure if I really like it... but the theme of the movie is punishment, and all of these people getting royally fucked by Frank do deserve death. 

And then we get the final scene, where Frank dons a military vest with a skull spraypainted on it, pulls on a compound bow and arrow, and attacks Howard Saint's club and kills everyone inside. We get a nice gory scene where the blonde lead thug gets a knife graphically shoved up his lower jaw; and another cruel-and-unusual death as Howard's remaining son John is forced to hold a bomb that he will undoubtedly lose strength at some point. As Howard tries his best to get out of the building, Frank catches up, shoots him, and details in full detail that he killed his remaining son, and Quentin and Livia's deaths are all unfounded. Properly destroying Howard Saint's mind, Frank ties Howard to a moving car and sets it to auto-crash into a parking lot...

...at which point apparently Frank took the time to plant enough detonation charges that the explosion pattern looks like the Punisher logo. 

With his mission finished, we get a rather dark scene as Frank actually prepares to kill himself after the mission is done, really hammering home how broken a man like the Punisher is. He ends up not doing so after seeing a vision of his family, but he also leaves behind his newfound friends, and goes off to become the vigilante known as the Punisher. 

End credits. And... again, as with all adaptations of the Punisher, people's mileage varies a lot on whether this adaptation of the Punisher is 'too hard', 'too soft', misses the mark... and I feel that the movie does a decent job at both showing Frank as someone who has some degree of mercy (towards Mickey, towards Joan's abusive boyfriend, and how nice he is towards the neighbours) but also sometimes unnecessarily cruel (getting Howard to kill his closest friends, the way he kills John or Weeks). I do think the movie also has a lot of nice themes that it kind of doesn't follow up fully on -- I would've liked a more proper and definite answer on whether Frank 'finding a new family' is a good thing or not, and the movie really flip-flops about it in the final act. Ultimately, though, I did find this movie extremely enjoyable, and while I don't think it beats Jon Bernthal's Netflix Punisher, it's still a pretty fun watch regardless!

Movie Review: The Punisher (1989)

The Punisher (1989)

So in my bid to attempt to review all of Marvel's older comic-book movies, there was a series that kind of fell through the cracks. Before the Spider-Man and X-Men series, before the Blade trilogy, before Daredevil or Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four or Iron Man, there was... The Punisher, in 1989, starring one of the symbols of that era's action movies, Dolph Lundgren. And it's so interesting to realize that this is Marvel's first superhero movie. Sure, cartoons and low-budget TV shows have been made about other Marvel properties... but ol' Frank Castle is the very first Marvel comics superhero to grace the silver screen.

(It's also the same year that Tim Burton's Batman hit the theaters, making it very interesting that the other side of the coin went for a completely different direction with their superhero offering).

And... and I think one needs to really keep in mind when you watch this movie. It's less a movie that tries to tell Frank Castle's origin story, or an iconic arc in the comic books, or even to properly give a 'modernized' adaptation of the Punisher... it's just taking a comic-book IP and applying it to an action movie. And for better or for worse, the Punisher was one of the least 'superhero' of all the superheroes. He doesn't have spider powers or comes from space or has a deal with the devil or uses wacky gadgets or shoots laser beams out of his eyes or any of those stuff. Take away his skin-tight skull bodysuit (and take that away, they did) and the Punisher is just a psychotic, vengeance-driven man who's burned by the world and is trying to drive 'punishment' to the gangsters and criminals and the scum of the Earth that evade the law. 

And... and it's so interesting to note that so much of Frank Castle's comic-bookiness is glossed over and told to us briefly in the news reports leading up to the cold open, and a brief flashback and a very well-scripted monologue that Frank (buck-ass nude for some reason) has before the whole gangster storyline begins. There is some bit of the comic-book character that seeps through with Frank's interactions with children recalling his own, but it's very superficial. They even changed the origin story (I had to look up if the change originated from the comics) from being a Vietnam war veteran to an undercover cop whose family was killed in a car bomb meant for him. 

And I think it is intentional. The movie doesn't really go out of its way to identify any of these guys as superheroes, and the 'Punisher' is a moniker that actually feels like a nickname instead of a superhero pseudonym. The entire plot of the movie comes off like a regular action movie between several somewhat-colourful factions -- the mafia boss Franco and the incoming yakuza led by Lady Tanaka. Both have stereotypes associated with the portrayals of their respective criminal gangs in full display, but Tanaka gets to be a bit worse since she goes around kidnapping the children of these other mafia bosses, leading Punisher to go through his mid-movie character development where he realizes that his 'punishing' has led to some innocents getting caught in the crossfire, leading to him going on the reactive crusade to save the mafia kids from the yakuza. 

While all of this is going on, we've got a B-plot of Detective Jake Berkowitz, who was Frank's old partner, who goes around trying to solve the crimes and bring Frank back. Berkowitz works with a plucky new sidekick, but while I do praise the acting of Louis Gossett Jr, the entire subplot was kind of there just to give exposition to Frank's backstory more than anything; and to give the police a role in the movie. The movie kind of grinds into a halt any time the police are arguing about the Punisher and Frank Castle and whether he even exists -- which is a huge shame since this subplot really should be about Berkowitz either realizing that there are some criminals beyond the scope of the law (giving a morose justification to why the Punisher needs to exist) or something along those lines. 

Wrapping up the cast (aside from the annoying kids and wacky sub-boss enemies) is 'Shakes', probably the movie's most 'comic-book' character in that he's basically one of those sidekicks that has a single personality trait and says it over and over again. In Shakes' case, he's a wacky hobo that yells a lot of Shakespeare, and it really does get a bit old. 

And... the movie is fine. The plot is straightforward and is more of a vessel to deliver us some action as the Punisher guts and murders his way through the criminals. There's, of course, some bizarre sequences which I think has been meme'd around a lot, like how the Punisher, in this incarnation, inexplicably takes a page out of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and hides in the sewers, driving around in his pimped-out motorbike through the sewers as the reason why he's able to avoid the police for so long. There's the repeated scenes of the Punisher meditating, buck-ass nude, as he mentally recites the otherwise pretty cool comic-book narration. There's the scene where he uses a remote control to give Shakes a bottle was also rather bizarre. 

But I felt like the Punisher was more of a reactionary character for a good chunk of the movie, just ducking in and out of conflicts done by the Franco/Tanaka war until children gets kidnapped, Shakes yells at him a bit, and Frank Castle finally decides to storm the bad guys' base to save the kids, if nothing else. It's simple, and it gets a bit cheesy at times with the action scenes, but there was some reasonable effort put into this even if it does feel like they're perhaps trying a bit too hard to make this a 'serious' movie. 

The climax is, I think, pretty all right. There wasn't too much buildup into it and the child actor that plays Franco's child isn't the most compelling one, but after teaming up with Franco to fight against Lady Tanaka and wipe out her forces, Franco ends up pulling his gun on the Punisher and the two of them fight until Punisher has to kill Franco in front of his own kid... and gets the kid to hold the gun towards his head in a cool -- if utterly psychotic -- move. 

Ultimately, I did enjoy this movie for what it was... a 80's action movie with Dolph Lundgren in it, working off as best as it could with a 'we're doing an adaptation but not really but kinda'. It's hardly essential watching, but I did enjoy the one and a half hours I spent watching it. 

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. 

The Punisher S02E10-11 Review: Billy's Reckoning

The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 10: The Dark Hearts of Men; Episode 11: The Abyss

Episode 10: The Dark Hearts of Men
As we go through the final four episodes of The Punisher, we go into a pretty fun episode in "The Dark Hearts of Men". I have complained in length about the sheer amount of inconsistency in many characters' motivations, and I have praised the acting of the actors involved. And that's really what's been carrying this very inconsistent season on its back.

Still, if nothing else, while the season's really kind of messy in terms of building up believable motivations or well-paced storylines, what we can count is for solid individual episodes and pretty great action set-pieces as the Punisher and Curtis basically set up a raid on Billy's Valhalla warehouse base, and the framing scenes are, as much as we've seen those sort of scenes before in other shows, pretty effective. The episode opens up with Frank and Billy in their army days doing some macho-man bonding exercise or hazing or whatever as they sort of get playfully beat up by their soldier buddies, and we get a similar scene later on with Frank getting beaten up by Billy's Valhalla goons. There's also some attempt to try and make this thematically relevant by highlighting the sort of violence and brotherhood that is considered good and bad, and how eerily similar the hoo-ha attitude of Frank and Billy's army unit is to Billy basically building a cult around his charismatic self. As creepy as it is, that scene where Billy convinces the Valhalla boys that fighting Frank Castle is basically going to lead to the cohesion of a group and family that will fight and die for each other is amazingly cult-like and very well done.

Again, there's really not a whole ton of depth here. Frank and Curtis decide that Billy Russo needs to be put down for good, and Billy has basically re-embraced what's essentially his crazy supervillain self from the end of season one, and while it does kind of make a lot of the "rebuild the jigsaw, I need my memory back" stuff feel extra redundant since we really didn't explore anything particularly interesting with the amnesia, a confident and cock-sure Billy Russo is a very entertaining Billy Russo.

Frank Castle is the goddamn Punisher, though, so we get to see a lot of cool things. Sure, the bit where the Valhalla soldiers use a combination of strobe lights and the power of outnumbering Frank to get the drop of him and lead to a painful-looking beatdown is pretty brutal, but since it's the Punisher he immediately turns the tables on the goons and we get a glorious, fun slaughter-murder scene that we all tune in to a show like the Punisher for. And then the huge bomb drops at the end when Frank Castle unleashes machinegun hell onto an office, and when he arrives... he finds the bullet-ridden corpse of three civilian women, and Frank Castle, who has a code of only killing those that needs to be punished just breaks down at the thought of killing innocents. And it's... it's definitely something that's going to break Frank Castle, particularly Frank who, as the season keeps reminding us, is at the cusp of not being as brutally punishing as he used to be, sparing a couple of less-evil villains thanks to the influence of Amy.

And as we learn while the episode is going on? All of this is thanks to Dr. Dumont. Dumont has been a very bland and uninteresting character, who basically exists just to be a romantic interest and someone for Billy to talk to, but she has a pretty great actress and as unfortunately bland as she's been written, actress Floriana Lima manages to really convey the role of her trying to fish for information about Frank Castle from Madani as they have some 'girl time'. Having the excuse of patching up after the shared history of both lurking over Billy Russo in the hospital, as well as having the go-to handwave of "oh, forgive me for being inquisitive, shrink habits, y'know". It's from this conversation that Dumont ends up finding out about Frank Castle's Code of Superheroism(tm) and while a properly written character might have doubts about what's right and wrong, Dumont's just so all-in about being 110% about Billy, and that's kind of a flat character... but in terms of this episode, she does work pretty well.

There's also Curtis, who gets a pretty great scene of being a badass sniper before maiming some young soldier and ending up patching him up. Curtis is a great character, and he gets a lot of great scenes. I really do enjoy Curtis a lot.

There's a bland B-plot of the Pilgrim being violent and being crazy and wiping out his old gang and shit, but at this point... I really don't care about the Pilgrim, just waiting for him to be relevant to the overall plot. I guess there's meant to be a thematic significance with how, like Punisher, Pilgrim's lost his code or something? But where Punisher gets a very cool moment where he apparently murders civilians, the Pilgrim just steals a bunch of hookers from the dude next to him in the cheap hotel, and that doesn't quite have the same amount of significance.
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Episode 11: The Abyss
...of course, there's the 'easy way out', because turns out that, hey, Frank didn't actually kill those women. Surprise! It was Billy Russo and Dumont all along, who killed them and staged the whole sequence to make Frank think that he killed the civilians. And it's kind of a shame, because exploring the fact that Frank could've very well done so in his Punisher crusade would've been so much more interesting than a typical "damn you, vile villain, you tricked me". But we need to have the Punisher be technically squeaky-clean and never murder any non-villain. That's part of the IP, I suppose, and there really is no point to Billy explicitly pre-killing the civilians other than to make Frank's hands technically clean. Billy and Dumont could've just as easily tied up the women in that room and Frank would've actually killed them even though he didn't mean to.

And, to the show's credit, Jon Bernthal does an amazing job portraying a completely defeated Frank Castle, who realizes he fucked up. He plays a great Frank Castle if Frank Castle had actually killed a civilian, and the response that he would take is to hand himself over and let the law do with him what they will, since he no longer is the Punisher, he's the punished. But after wallowing in this self-pity (and, mind you, those are great self-pity scenes) Frank finds out that he's framed after all and goes back to Punisher mode almost instantaneously. I would've thought that this would've actually left a bigger impact on Frank, though, like... okay, sure, this time it's a Billy Russo trick, but what if it actually happened for real? There's really no introspection, which is kind of a shame considering it could've been worked in so easily.

Anyway, "The Abyss" basically puts Frank Castle in the hospital for the most part while three women in his life end up trying to break him out, finding out that Frank doesn't want to be broken out, and deciding to prove that Frank maybe doesn't kill the women... even though, again, Billy could've very easily left the women in that room alive. Still, it does allow Madani, Amy and guest star Karen Page a lot of great scenes together and with Frank. It's just such a shame that the Frank/Karen stuff fell so flat for me -- they were great together in Daredevil and the first season of Punisher, but here poor Karen ends up finding herself kind of devolved into a star-crossed love interest and the shipping hammer is heavy in this scene, and that's really unfortunate because it really ends up distracting and being such a wild and bizarre jump from the Frank/Karen dynamics of their previous encounters.

Karen and Madani end up meeting up with a weirdo of a morgue worker and there's this very uncomfortable joke about the morgue worker wanting 'something, hint hint' from Karen and turns out it's nothing overtly sexual or creepy, it's just her shoes, but the joke itself really doesn't land. They figure out that the women were killed from close range, and they arrive just to help Amy rescue Frank from a police officer who tries to collect the bounty on Frank. I do like that scene, where Frank just basically gives in and allows the bounty hunter to kill him, and he doesn't even protest until the corrupt cop attacks Amy.

And we've got a bunch of other B-plots that don't necessarily work either, mostly because they involve the Pilgrim and Dr. Dumont, two of the most consistently problematic characters in the show in that we're almost done and we're only starting to explore their characters and their motivations. Dr. Dumont shares to Billy (and the audience) about her oh-so-tragic backstory, about how her dad is a mentally ill person who very nearly killed her during divorce talks, jumping out of a window with a young Dumont with if "if I can't have you, no one will" mentality. On paper, it's a tragic backstory, sure, and it explains the fear of heights, but I still really don't care at all, and most importantly it doesn't really properly explain just why Dumont is so devoted and in love with Billy. The Billy/Dumont scenes... again, they're well-acted, but it's hard to say I really care.

Oh, and the Pilgrim's sick wife died, right when he's going around getting blowjobs from prostitutes he appropriated from someone else, and there was a weird vision and everything and Pilgrim's sad that his devotion to his assassination work caused him to be unable to be there for his wife when she died and all, but then his boss Eliza Schultz shows up and basically gives him one of those "for a greater purpose" speeches to get him hyped up to murder Frank Castle and Amy Bendix. Sure, Pilgrim, whatever you say, gotta build you up for the final fight.

Anyway, the episode ends with Karen Page going off because the studio can only get Deborah Ann Woll for a single episode, Madani tries to sneak Frank out of the hospital, and good ol' Officer Mahoney gets clued in to what's going on and arrests Frank in an ambulance. I do like Mahoney being basically a cop that wants to do the right thing and is a decent man.

This two-parter really highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the season as a whole. The actors and the individual angsty scenes are fantastic. The action scenes are great. But taken as a whole, the story doesn't quite work as well as many of the huge story beats or themes just aren't adequately explored.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Karen Page makes another appearance, after being a supporting character to Frank Castle in Daredevil's second season and parts of the first season of Punisher. 

The Punisher S02E08-09 Review: Never Billy's Fault

The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 8: My Brother's Keeper; Episode 9: Flustercluck

Episode 8: My Brother's Keeper
Okay, a bit of a confession. After finishing episode 7, I ended up accidentally skipping episode 8 and going straight into episode 9 thanks to a mis-click, and watched almost the entirety of episode 9 before I realized that I skipped an episode. I just sort of thought that we skipped the conclusion of the huge fight between the Punisher and Billy after the robbery and that it's just resolved off-screen. Which is to say... episode 8 is probably not the most super-engaging episode of The Punisher, all things considered, if I can still follow the show of a supposedly binge-this-while-watching show while skipping the episode.

One thing that I do feel like Punisher's second season doesn't do as well as its fantastic first season is that things are just... scattered all over the place. Theoretically there are three huge plotlines -- Frank and Amy's 'badass and a cute kid' relationship; the Pilgrim and the photography conspiracy; and Billy Russo's return, with Madani's story sort of weaving in and out of the three storylines. But so much of the focus is placed on the Billy Russo part while the Pilgrim basically gets a brief scene every episode of him doing ker-azy fanatical-religion-assassin-nut stuff without much explanation, while the Frank/Amy relationship doesn't quite work that well with Amy spending huge chunks of various episodes sidelined and basically left at home while Frank goes out punishing. And while we do get decent scenes -- like Frank teaching Amy to use a gun, and in this episode, Frank flipping out on Amy when she 'plays' with Frank using an empty gun after a day of intense shooting -- but I don't feel like the episode really ended up exploring Frank and Amy's relationship as well as it could, and when it does, the scenes are great because Jon Bernthal is a great actor, but the pacing and storytelling is kind of uneven.

The episode basically spends a chunk of its first half with action scenes, where Frank and Billy and Curtis shoot at each other and Billy goes even more crazy with shooting people with that insane assault rifle of his, before his buddies drag him away to their hideout. And then a good chunk of this episode is spent around Billy, as he's starting to question why the fuck would his closer-than-brothers buddy, Frank, be the Punisher and the skull he sees in his nightmares. Interestingly, this means that Billy Russo himself ends up trying to figure out what makes Frank hate him so much, and, again, why Billy himself is so vile of a villain in the first season. He flips out and kills the two members of his little Valhalla* Army that questions him, before running off on his own. And Ben Barnes is a fantastic actor, but a lot of his scenes basically have him bounce off the terribly uninteresting Dr. Dumont.

*As a side-note, considering that the show takes place in the MCU and Valhalla certainly exists there with Thor and all, I'm going to assume Billy Russo just really likes Thor. 

I guess Dumont is apparently super-duper in love with Billy or something, but after Billy basically rampages through her house and even triggers her fear of heights by pushing her next to a window, Dumont seems to still be super-devoted to Billy, which... yeah, I don't really care for her, she is so inconsistently written and I'm genuinely just sort of tired of her at this point. She's playing devil's advocate, trying to paint it so that it's Frank's fault for scarring Billy's face instead of killing him, but I genuinely do feel that the amnesiac Billy Russo questioning his own past actions and morality and then jumping straight into "fuck you, Frank" is clunkily handled. And, again, while Ben Barnes is a great actor, it really does make me be kind of baffled why they even bothered with an amnesia storyline for seven episodes if they're not going to actually milk the interesting paths that will raise.

Frank himself just sort of goes around, sort of angsting it in the rain next to the gravestone of his wife after flipping out on Amy (and Curtis, to a lesser extent), but ultimately the episode is mostly there to give us an action scene and focus mainly on Billy. There's a bit of a subplot with Officer Mahoney getting involved in all this madness, and by the end of the episode the Punisher Support Squad of Curtis, Madani and Amy are assembled in the trailer, but ultimately, well, the episode doesn't really offer as much as I would've expected from a full hour of television. Really wished they made Billy's turn to confused-amnesiac into crazy-brotherhood-of-ex-soldiers cult leader be a lot smoother, too.
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Episode 9: Flustercluck
That's kind of an appropriate episode title to describe the storytelling this season. And honestly, I don't want to be so down on this -- there are a lot of great moments this season, a lot of great action scenes, a lot of great individual acting moments (particularly for Ben Barnes and Jon Bernthal) and anything involving Curtis Hoyle is always fantastic, but the season so far has been pretty inconsistent and kind of messy in juggling its various plot threads. I'm still enjoying this, but every Punisher episode I watch this season is just a reminder for the far better-plotted and far more satisfying first season, and that's a hard specter to shake off.

But while I'm not the biggest fan of how fast Billy went from "existential crisis" to "crazy vengeful villain" in the previous episode, at least there's a lot of decent acting and some focus, y'know? "Flustercluck" is just... it's just moving characters into what the plot needs them to be, but not in a particularly satisfying way. We're way past the mid-season mark, and while Billy Russo is still the far more prominent (and interesting) villain, we still have the whole Pilgrim business to take care of, and that ties into the Amy stuff, and neither of them are barely built up. We are told what the Amy stuff is all about, but it doesn't quite land because it's a case of 'tell don't show', and the Pilgrim is honestly just a one-dimensional bag of religious crazy mixed with a random scattering of quasi-tragic backstory... which, again, is something that's more of an informed quality considering how paper-thing of a personality Pilgrim actually has.

Meanwhile, as mentioned before, the transition of Billy Russo deciding to ignore any sort of culpability in his actions in causing the death of the Castle family gets brushed aside for a simple "it's never my fault" mentality, saying that Frank is super-cruel for (slightly) scarring his face as revenge for killing his family or whatever. Dumont sort of edges Billy to accept the victim role last episode, and while both actors are decent with what they're given, it's... it's very clunky, and even rewatching the Billy scenes in episode 8 and 9 after my little mix-up really doesn't make it as organic as the show was hoping it to be. And after eight episodes... is this all we have to show for the amnesia? Don't get me wrong, Ben Barnes's acting is A-star, but the writing isn't the best, because what would've been interesting -- Billy trying to wrestle with the knowledge of the heinous crime he did against Frank but without the memory, and maybe an attempt to reach out to Frank -- is glossed over within two sentences.

Speaking of odd character developments, though, while Billy has been convinced that Frank is the one wrong and Billy Russo is always having injustices heaped upon him, I... don't get Dr. Dumont's motivations at all. She went from maybe a little lovesick and a doctor that believes in the best in his patient to... basically planning to be Billy's criminal accomplice? What? Okay? Sure?

Meanwhile, Amy has spent most of the season basically being put on the backburner. She's constantly put in either a motel room or Madani's apartment or the trailer-base (which is a responsible move for Psycho-Papa Frank, in-universe, for sure), but it ends up leaving Amy with not a whole lot of screentime to really bond with Frank. Episode 8 gives us a nice scene, and there are a couple of scattered nice scenes between episode 3 and 7, but ultimately I don't think that's quite enough to make Frank basically accept Amy as what's essentially his surrogate daughter. That said, though, when Amy's friend sells her out and Frank has to come and murder the ever-loving shit out of the bounty hunters, it's a great moment. Best of all, of course, is Amy using the gun-stealing trick that Frank taught her, and then immediately opens fire on the fucker who pointed the gun at her. The fact that Frank goes up and comforts Amy, telling her that she didn't kill the dude (before promptly shooting the dying dude in the head to end him) is the sort of fun, heartwarming-yet-clearly-psychotic scenes we signed up for. I just wished that the show earns this moment a bit better.

John Pilgrim, meanwhile, gets to finally shine beyond being a vague backstory mixed with enigmatic bosses and a love for flagellation and quoting scripture, and we learn that his reluctance to come to New York is that because... he was part of a gang there, and an attempt to put a 5-million-bounty on the Punisher and Amy Bendix ends up with Pilgrim's old gang coming back to talk to him. Okay? This might be interesting, but at this point, nine episodes in, and I really wish that the Pilgrim was actually more of an interesting character than a list of traits. It's really hard to care about a character when he has no real personality to speak of.  Like, the gangsters call him by his name "Robbie" or something and I really don't care considering how little of an identity we even attach to Pilgrim.

The Schutlzes get a scene here when Papa Schultz talks to Gay Senator Schultz, but other than telling us what we already know (David's a nice guy; his parents are psychotic and homophobic) the show doesn't really make me care about them beyond them being one-dimensional dudes. I sometimes complain about shows like Jessica Jones or Luke Cage over-developing their secondary cast, but at least when Jeri Hogarth or Bobby Fish or Joy Meachum does something, they're actual characters at that point, y'know? Like, take the singular scene where Curtis gathers the rest of his ex-soldier support group and talks to them. I actually care about Curtis even in this small, brief scene, and while I'm not sure if it's going to amount to much other than maybe giving Team Punisher a clue next episode, but Curtis being a supporting figure in his community and actually feeling like a person makes me automatically more invested in his scenes than anything that the flat, one-dimensional Schtultzes are.

Again, the episode itself isn't necessarily bad at all. It's just that structurally the season as a whole is messy, and while most of the actors are very much competent and the action scenes are nice, the season as a whole looks to be, to quote the episode title, a flustercluck.

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.
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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.

The Punisher S02E04-05 Review: The Return of Turk Barrett

The Punisher, Season 2, Episode 4: Scar Tissue; Episode 5: One-Eyed Jacks

Episode 4: Scar Tissue
It's been a while since I did a Punisher episode review, but that's what happens when I take a while to catch up to a show, I guess. Punisher is a great show, don't get me wrong. Sure, this second season is nowhere as solid as the first one, being a bit more questionable in its pacing, but recent events and the generally heavier tone of the series does end up with me not really wanting to watch the show for a while. I did, however, watch all the way up to episode 7 in a single sitting -- these Netflix shows do work pretty well watched in batches of episodes at once with a good drink.

That said, though, "Scar Tissue" picks up with Billy Russo and his supposedly mangled face... and it's basically just Ben Barnes with like the most minimal-effort line-shaped scars you could think up of. And it's not that noticeable until the next couple of episodes where Billy yells about how fucked up his face is and... y'know, I'm not expecting Aaron Eckheart Two-Face levels of gory makeup, but this is just very underwhelming, yeah?

That said, though, after a rather disappointing couple of episodes of Billy "Jigsaw" Russo dicking around in a hospital with amnesia, the show quickly reminds us why Billy (and his actor Ben Barnes) is such an effective villain in his debut season, and, indeed, how Ben Barnes's acting at least salvages this otherwise blase amnesiac-villain plotline. And, sure, Billy basically spends the whole episode confused and trying to figure out what is wrong, ironically (as other characters will point out to Frank) the exact opposite of what Frank wanted him to be, which is letting him live and stew in his own sins. He spends a good chunk of episode four sort of just trying to discover himself, going to a baseball stadium that he used to hang out with Frank (that flashback was unnecessary and random, though), going to look for the help of some old dude called Arthur Walsh (who apparently tried to molest Billy as a kid) and ended up killing Arthur with a well-deserved stick through the heart. It's pretty interesting how we're portraying Billy, building him up with a lot of sympathy. Sure, he's capable of great harm due to that hyper-competent soldier instinct, killing Arthur Walsh no problem and also presumably killing that random bus asshole, but he's also not unsympathetic, as he's haunted by the sins of the past -- that he can't even remember doing. And the fact that one of the most prominent things he remembers turns out to unfortunately be the address of his childhood molester is just another in a series of "the world is a dick to an amnesiac Billy Russo". He ends up at the doorstep of Dr. Dumont, which is basically what is expected.

There's also Rachel (whose real name is Amy), who's slowly growing a bit more likable now that the show has decided to let her grow past her whole 'bratty brat' phase and have her grow into the 'lovable asshole teen' phase. Amy also spent a good chunk of the episode sneaking out and researching who the fuck "Frank Castle" is, finding out that he's the legendary vigilante Punisher, and also finding out about his backstory, realizing that they share a similar pain in losing everyone they loved and stuff. Granted, Amy's transition from a bit of a hanger-on into a proper character I like is a bit of an awkward transition, but we'll pretend that any misgivings she has towards Frank has been successfully cured after the police station shootout and the brief argument they have in Madani's apartment in this one. I would argue that the whole "the Punisher bonds with a teenage girl" is a great thing to explore -- many shows (Mandalorian and The Witcher, in recent memory) do a great job with the formula of a hardcore badass being humanized by having them taking care of a young charge, but the chemistry between Frank and Amy didn't really work out as organically as it could. The themes of sharing trauma is at least decent, though, and I absolutely love the bit where Frank tells her to drink coffee to calm down and Amy being incredulous at the notion of caffeine calming her down.

Frank himself doesn't do a whole ton of punishing in this episode, and it's a much-needed moment of down-time between the huge action-packed episode 3 and episode 5. The brief argument with Madani in her apartment about Billy Russo, as well as the later much less emotionally-charged conversation with Curtis ends up with both of them encouraging Frank to be a bit more ruthless and 'end' Billy Russo permanently. Madani out of her trauma and spite, and Curtis more out of a mercy kill. And then Frank basically ends up convincing Amy to stop running away from the people hunting her and stay and fight and stuff.

Oh, and officer Mahoney ends up seemingly being a bigger player than I expected in this season. Him getting shot (right in the bulletproof vest, thankfully) by Madani was a bit of dark comedy, but it seems that the good officer is going to butt heads with Madani regarding just how they're going to handle this Billy Russo manhunt, and if nothing else, I do like Mahoney.

Episode four was mostly slow, though I don't mind it as much as the first two episodes of this season. The ball is rolling, revelations are happening that push the characters onwards, and while it's not the attention-gripper that I felt the first season of Punisher was, "Scar Tissue" was pretty decent watch.
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Episode 5: One-Eyed Jacks
Episode five, "One-Eyed Jacks" is one that's a bit more action-packed. In an attempt to figure out what Amy's deal and the mysterious event that led to her friends being massacred by mafia hitmen, Frank ends up recruiting an unexpected ally in the always-enjoyable lovable-rogue Turk Barrett, getting him to strike a deal with a bunch of Russian gangsters and eventually leading to Turk being held hostage and forced to sell Frank out... and, eventually, leading to Frank beating the shit out of a bunch of mafioso with gym equipment, which is a scene that just has the right balance of the Netflix/Punisher quota of gratuitous violence, while also being fun enough of a setting to feel comic-book-y. Drill-toe-torture, this ain't. And while for some viewers this slightly more choreographed fight might take you out of the "realistic" tone of The Punisher, I'm all for action scenes that aren't just samey beatdowns or dark shooting.

And I do like this part of the episode, as formulaic as it is. Frank being a badass and threatening (and later sweet-talking Turk), Frank being a smart cookie and monitoring Turk's meting with the gym Russians to predict them forcing Turk to sell him out, and the eventual springing of the trap. Best of all was the blase way that Frank returns to the apartment, drenched in blood and gore, and just giving a straight-faced two-thumbs-up to Amy. That's glorious. The plotline is basically what you expect from one of these Netflix-Marvel middle-of-the-road episodes. Main character follows a lead, gets into an action scene with a minor villain, who leads him to another minor villain we'll explore next episode.

Also, while I still find it a bit jarring to go from episode four's "Frank and Amy start to bond over trauma and open up to each other" to episode five's super-happy fun-time card trick discussion, it's a character development that I do find necessary even if the show certainly could've done a lot better of a job in building up the character development and the relationship between the two. It's awkwardly done, really.

(Also, poor Amy completely fucked over Madani's credit card. Say what you want about Madani being a bit of a jerk to Frank and Amy, she didn't deserve that. That was a dick move, Amy)

The rest of the episode is still moving things forward. Madani takes Frank's place from season one as a character that's constantly plagued by nightmarish flashbacks, and gets into some decent therapy when she stumbles into Curtis's PTSD therapy session. She also ends up being angry that Frank isn't chomping at the bit to end Billy Russo and is more preoccupied with dealing with Amy's pursuers... and, well, I guess this show's exploring a saner Frank who's still a dangerous killer, but not one obsessed with his past anymore?

Billy spends the episode mostly with Dr. Dumont where they talk about his trauma and how Dr. Dumont is totally aware of how dangerous Billy is but also wants to fix him or something. Dumont's a bit of an enigma at this point, and I do hope at the end of the day there's more to her character than just to provide someone for Billy to talk to and to have unresolved sexual tension with. Billy ends the episode going off and stalking another one of Dumont's patients and sort of befriending them, bonding under the banner of veteran soldiers that the country doesn't properly take care of. Okay? It's a way for Billy to basically gather a bunch of people under him as a cult of personality.

Meanwhile, the Pilgrim continues to be a pretty one-dimensional character, going full-on ham on his perverted over-the-top Christianity parody bit and flogging himself for an unomfortably long scene, before being sent off to New York to deal with whatever his cult wants him to do, which, apparently, is to kill Kazan and the other dudes in the gym that Frank beat up earlier in the episode. Also oh no he's got a sick wife and everything in perhaps the cheapest attempt to 'humanize' him. He's honestly so bland and so divorced from everything that's going on, and I do really hope he gets better down the road. Pilgrim aside, though, another relatively solid, if slow, episode.

Marvel Easter Eggs Corner:

• Turk Barrett was last seen in... Luke Cage season two, I want to say? He sure wasn't in Daredevil's final season. 
• Frank mentions how Turk used to work with the Russian brothers that was part of Kingpin's organization all the way back in Daredevil's first season.