The end is in sight, the guns are almost empty and I’m fairly certain that the makeup department is running dangerously low on purple makeup due to how much bruising they’ve been putting on the actors – but we’re now at the penultimate episode of The Punisher’s second season. To be fair, it’s been something of a bumpy ride as the promise of the first half gave way to rather damaging writing choices that’s manage to chip away at the potential the first few episodes had, and if I’m being honest, things are only likely to get messier from here. But with the end in sight it’s now seemingly all about crossing the finishing line, tying off all those loose ends and not giving a crap whether it makes sense or not – so prepare yourself for a bumpy ride as The Punisher takes care of its lingering business Netflix style! That means letting plots drag out too long and then hastily wrapping them up with only an episode to go, in case you were wondering.
Despite only escaping from police custory only an episode ago, once again Frank Castle finds himself in the grip of the long arms of the law after the increasingly obsessive Detective Mahoney catches him in the midst of creeping out of hospital wearing a police uniform. To be fair, he’s also caught Madani red handed as she aids him out, but he’s so determined to get the vigilante to the precinct himself, the cop hurtles away in a commandeered ambulance with Frank handcuffed in the back. However, while Mahoney thinks that he’s finally caught Castle once and for all, a battered, mad-with-grief John Pilgrim roars up in a sten cop car and starts peppering them with machine gun fire but after a brief chase, Madani manages to show up and fend him off while Frank rescues his would-be captor from a fiery demise, finally giving Mahoney some insight into the complex man the Punisher truly is.
From there, things start to move incredibly quickly. Pilgrim’s counter strike sees him discovering the hideout that shelters both Curtis and Amy, but after the former is savagely beaten unconscious, Amy manages to stow away in the hitman’s car and discovers where he’s licking his wounds. Meanwhile, in an eager attempt to end things, Frank kidnaps the only lead he has left – Senator Schultz who has no idea what horrors his parents have perpetrated in order to keep wraps on his homosexuality. As realisation dawns on the hapless politician, Castle finally discovers who’s been pulling the strings behind almost everything that that’s occured since rescuing Amy from that bar fight at the start of the season.
“And what of Billy Russo?” I hear you cry. Well, it seems that he’s suddenly moved on from hating Frank, so he’s disbanded his gang, got new identities for everyone and plans to escape New York with his psychotherapist/lover, Dumont. However, a dark cloud is moving against these deranged love birds in the form of Agent Madani who has figured out their game and confronts Dumont with fatal results.
I will often wonder what this season could have been if the creative teams involved had figured out how to balance it’s plot lines in a far better and organic way than just simply tagging in and out between them and letting their momentum die. Everytime the season made Russo the main villain, it meant that all the stuff concerning Amy, Pilgrim and the Schultz’s pretty much all but disappeared for episodes at a time. Conversely, every time the show shifted the threat levels back to Pilgrim, it succeeded in making the fact that Russo created an army and dated his messed up therapist seem rushed and awkwardly plotted. Still, standing strong in the midst of it all was Jon Bernthal’s performance as Frank Castle, which somehow anchored a good many of these issues and in some cases, even made them sing. However, to quote Stephen Strange: we’re in the endgame now and we get to watch the writers scurry in a panic to finish everything off in the wake of Netflix rapidly cancelling all their Marvel shows.
So, as per usual, Collision Course gives us a steady stream of action sequences and crowbarred-in plot twists to rudely shove us in the direction they want the show to go in and while it’s all still watchable, the choices tend to land somewhere between pretty good and confoundingly bad. For a start, the ambulance chase/shootout is fun and finally gives Frank and Mahoney the moment that’s been denied them ever since Daredevil season 2 as the cop gets first hand experience that Castle isn’t quite the mad-dog killer he’s been painted as.
Elsewhere, Madani finally seems to be catching up with everyone else despite having her cop car stolen by Pilgrim at the start of the episode (D’oh!) when she finally figures out Dumont has had a hand in keeping Billy Russo save. I mean, she figures it out chiefly because Dumount apparently can’t keep her poker face even when she’s on the phone, but it ends in a vicious brawl that sees the psychotherapist launched out of a window to suffer an ironic end due to her childhood trauma of her suicidal father doing the same. However it’s here that the seams on the episode are really starting to show as not only does Dumont give herself away in a way that’s laughably bad, but we find that suddenly Billy is ready to give up his quest for vengeance on the drop of a dime and live happily ever after. In fact, the shift is so jarring, if it wasn’t for the ambulance chase I would have thought I’d actually skipped an episode. Similarly, having the relatively smart Amy think it’s a good idea to track the man who’s being trying to kill her by climbing into his car boot is jaw droppingly lazy, but I suppose it moves things along.
I’m also kind of surprised that Frank’s waited this long to actually find out who’s behind siccing Pilgrim on them in the first place considering that he’s had the means for ages, but continuing the climate of shoving the plot along as quick as the writers can allow, it finally opens up the Schultzes to get some future one on one time with big Frank. However, by this point in season one, the show had long since figured out it’s narrative problems and was offering up some of the best Punisher sequences I’ve ever seen, so to see season 2 still floundering with only a single episode to go is something of a genuine disappointment.
Still, we’ll always have Bernthal and while the season has slowly wilted as it went on, he’s always been guaranteeing that the grit and gravitas is still there with every bellow, every scoff and every angry shrug as he’s somehow managed to deliver a completely human Frank Castle that operates entirely in shades of grey, even when he’s seeing red… So, what can we expect from the last episode standing; well a couple of standoffs are guaranteed, but I have to say I’m not entirely sure who they’re going to be between. It looks like Russo’s big showdown with Frank will be metaphorically rained off in favour of settling the score with Madani which presumably mean that Pilgrim will finally get the opportunity to trade blows with Frank. However it ends, I’m sure it won’t be pretty, both physically or narratively speaking.
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