If there’s a common complaint about the various superhero shows that emerged from the union between Netflix and Marvel is that no matter who the character was, be it Luke Cage to Matt Murdock, an episode count of thirteen always seemed to be around two or three episodes too long for the stories being told. As a result, there always is sense that the back third of the season tends to drag no matter what superpowered criminal threat is brewing. However, I’m getting something of a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that The Punisher is experiencing that drag factor earlier than usual as the third episode continues to build the world of Frank Castle one painstaking brick at a time.
While I’ve never been scared of a good slow burn, the fact that we’re now on the third episode and the pace is practically crawling across the floor and while forging the relationship between Frank and his future guy in the chair requires a slower touch, speeding through Castle’s defining tour in Kandahar is next to unforgivable.
After after outwitting David “Micro” Lieberman and infiltrating his secret hideout, Frank Castle immediately proves himself to be something of a shitty houseguest by knocking his host unconscious and submitting him to forms of torture such as sleep deprivation and the occasional sock to the jaw. But while Micro insists that he and Frank have a lot in common due to their lives being destroyed by corrupt government agents and hopes that the two could work together to bring them down, Castle is far to stubborn to listen and sticks to his violent guns.
It seems that the thing that unites both men is that disc of Castle murdering a man in Kandahar who ultimately ended up being a cop. Frank’s involvement is obvious as it ties back to the shit that occurred under the command of the late Ray Schoonover, but it turns out that it was Lieberman who was tasked with analysing the disc during his NSA days. Listening to his conscience, David opted to not give up the recording to his superiors (eg. Carson Wolf) who would no doubt bury it and instead sent it to Agent Dinah Madani. The result was David catching a bullet for his efforts and subsequently faking his death and while Frank mulls this over, we also see the fateful evens that lead to a rapidly disillusioned Castle sent into an ambush in Kandahar thanks to the ruthless Agent William Rawlins. After slaughtering his way out like a maniac, Frank all but seals the fate of himself and his family by losing his shit with Rawlins’ cold attitude to the mission and beats the shit out of the commanding officer.
Back on the present, Micro manages to get the upper hand on his captor by drugging him, thus proving to Frank that he needs Lieberman’s particular set of skills to help hone his abilities and hunt down those responsible for their various predicaments.
To once again delve into the fact that I once read a sizable amount of Punisher stories in my younger years, there’s a lot that goes on in “Kandahar” that proves to be especially important to the overall mythos of Frank Castle. For a start, the bulk of the episode deals with the stand off the two have that starts with a torture session and ends in a union with a character who, in the books, would kind of be his Q to Frank’s James Bond. Of course, Frank and Micro(chip) had a very different relationship in the pages of the Punisher’s various arcs, but the introduction of Lieberman is vital when it comes from turning Castle from a haphazardly tossed grenade to a laser guided missile. Elsewhere, we also get to lay eyes on the wartime trauma that sets Castle on the road to being a bellowing vigilante and while it obviously no longer concerns the jungle hellscape of the Vietnam War for obvious reasons, witnessing the harrowing firefight in Afghanistan we’d only previous heard about in Daredevil is yet another important part of the jigsaw (pun intended) that makes up who the Punisher is. So you can imagine that I was a little disappointed to discover that the majority of the former is stretched out to be a slow paced waiting game between the two future partners and the later is raced through despite it being an incredibly formative moment in the character’s development.
Oh it’s cool watching Frank in his military days go absolutely batshit and brutalise an entire building full of enemies in a deranged killing spree and it’s even cooler having Clancy Brown return as Castle’s corrupt superior officer. However, I feel that the whole Kandahar flashback could have been better served if it was the whole episode instead of having to share space with Madani’s rise up the ranks or the drawn out confrontation between Castle and Lieberman. Again, I have to wonder if the episode count was smaller, there maybe not only would have been more money to visualise Kandahar in a more epic fashion and the season (still only three episodes old at this point) would be far tighter.
The actors are all doing their part to get their characters and their flaws across, but it all seems to be causing the show to drag everything out. Billy Russo gets more screen time and the flashbacks reveal him to be a genuinely close friend of Frank; Madani’s taking of Carson Wolf’s job means that she’s now suddenly in a rare position to pursue the cases her crooked, former boss was so eager to squash and, or course the paranoia-off between Frank and Micro allow their two performers to do solid work – but I just can’t shake the feeling that all the show is doing is treading water. At least Daredevil gave Matt Murdock the fallback system of Foggy and Karen to bounce off during the moments where the crime fighter is off-duty – but because Castle is usually such a solitary animal by design, any chemistry Jon Bernthal gets to have with Ebon Moss-Bachrach won’t get a chance to fully kick until the next episode.
Simply put, The Punisher needs to pull his military issue socks up if he’s going to compete with the best of the other Netflix shows and while the installment touches on legitimately important issues such as the effect warfare and amoral government spook work has on eroding the sanity, anyone wanting any actual punishing may have to continue to wait patiently. Maybe I’ll be proved defiantly wrong and once the set up has been well and truly established, we’ll get a faster pace and a Punisher closer to what we saw in Daredevil. Then bullets will fly, Frank will lose himself little by little in the monster he’s created and the real plot can finally dig its heels in – but if my worries bear fruit, we’ve got a long season ahead of us as important moments in the Punisher’s formative years are dulled.
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