After five episodes, we find that Netflix’s version of the Punisher still struggling to find its baseline as the political conspiracy plot continues to rumble ever onward. However, as the various strands of the story still continue to take their sweet time to knit together, Gunner marks that the show’s getting ever closer to find that elusive balance between delivering what Punisher fans want and offering them something other than just yet another vigilante causing maximum damage to the crime in New York.
Now, while I’ve previously stated that having Frank Castle take a more complex journey has so far come with plenty of pros and cons (sometimes the Punisher’s just gotta punish, y’know), it would have been nice if the various aspects of the sprawling plot could be coming together at a fast rate. Still, with Gunner, more things start to connect such as Madani’s case, a proper introduction to the main villain and a call back to his Kandahar days in the form of a reclusive old army buddy who may have some vital info.
After her run in with the Frank Castle (and the truck driven by Micro), Agent Madani isn’t about to sit out the rest of her investigation due to some really nasty bruising. After all, despite the fact that her consciousness was understandably fluctuating, she did manage to get a good look at Frank as he saved her life and dragged her from her ruined car. This is relevant for two major reasons, 1) Frank is the entire cornerstone to her investigation of the murder of a colleague back in Kandahar, and 2) until that very moment, she was convinced that Castle was dead. With A huge part of her case suddenly now opened up, she opts to once again dive headlong into her work while keeping her recent revelation a secret from her superiors.
Meanwhile, we are now officially introduced to Willam Rawlins, the man formally known as Agent Orange who had his eye roundly busted by Castle when that Kandahar mission went roundly tit’s up. Not only is he getting a medal for his clandestine efforts, but he’s gotten an offer from the Deputy Director of the CIA serve as her deputy when she’s promoted; but he finds that his morally questionable life’s work is in danger of being compromised thanks to the work current work of Frank and Micro.
After watching the video of Frank executing Zubair, the two theories that the video was actually taken by Castle’s teammate, Gunner Henderson, who must have been undergoing a crisis of conscience. Seeking out Gunner, who now lives as a recluse in his cabin out in the wilderness, Frank gets a rather unfriendly welcome in the form of an arrow thudding into his shoulder. However, once the two reconnect and Frank gets the information he needs, they find that Rawlins, in an attempt to sever all connections to his previous escapades, has sent a team of soldiers to clear up his mess. Bullets fly and men die – but after Castle is wounded even further, can he count on Micro to save his bacon?
There is a definite feeling that the Punisher is finally shifting up the gears when it comes to having a clearer sense of direction and pace. Paul Schulze’s vaguely reptilian Agent Orange now officially has an identity, which means that the show now has an actual face for its villain which instantly gives it some much needed focus. Similarly, the fact that a battered Agent Madani now knows that the man who can unlock her entire case is still alive after faking his demise means that a good section of the show’s characters now actually have a sense of purpose – which, as you’d expect, is vastly useful when you’re watching a political thriller. Even the animosity between Frank and Micro doesn’t overly dominate proceeding even though Frank continues to mentally put the boot in by insisting on continuously visiting Micro’s “widow” and have having in-depth conversations with his daughter about a reading of the themes in The Life Of Pi.
Yes, the majority of the episode is mainly reheating stuff we’ve gone over multiple times before (Madani doubles down on her toughness, Rawlins looks creepy, Russo and Madani’s relationship continues to advance), but with the return of Gunner Henderson, there’s a sense that the preamble of the thus far season is thankfully about to come to an end.
However – maybe it isn’t. You see the Netflix shows always have a habit of delivering a sizable action sequence, having the main character get wounded and then using the entire next episode to apply some pressure to the brakes to slow everything down. But if the showrunners were to do this here after after three episodes of galacially paced spy work, The Punisher wouldn’t so much slow down as come to a dead stop. Lo and behold, by the time the credits run on this episode, Frank indeed has taken an arrow to the shoulder and a bullet to the side and has to be carted away by Micro. However, while this doesn’t exactly bode well for the pace of the next episode, at least we get a pretty sweet action sequence for our troubles.
Essentially, with trained soldiers hunting Castle and Gunner through the woods, the fact that the latter has protected his land with the odd booby trap means that there’s more than a whiff of First Blood about it – which is utterly fitting when you consider that the movie was about a war vet going off the deep end. Gunner drills a few of their pursuers with arrows and when his ammo runs out, Frank resorts to using a knife while Rawlins watches on via the camera’s on the person of his doomed squad, but the best moment of all comes when Micro gets involved from a distance and uses a drone as a much needed eye in the sky. This essentially sees both Castle and Micro finally working together on the same page and we get a neat hint of what the two could accomplish is Frank just stops baiting the guy about his wife.
Just in time for the plot to start to come together is not only a return for Deborah Anne Woll’s Karen Page to once again link some pieces together and once again have a bit of a cry about how shit Frank’s life is, but we get the added bonus of Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as the Deputy Director of the CIA who is eagerly willing to give Rawlins the keys to her kingdom while being clueless to the shady shit he’s guilty of, such as smuggling drugs back into the States in the hollowed out bodies of dead American soldiers and other such atrocities. If I’m being honest, I’m still not really feeling Medani and Billy Russo’s characters yet as the former seems like the standard, driven, female Agent we see in virtually ever spy show nowadays and the latter simply still doesn’t have anything to do. But here’s hoping that episode 5 is the turning point where the show starts picking up momentum.
Yet another utterly acceptable episode that delivers plot and action, Gunner, still has the strange sense about it that the show as a whole is still holding back. While I happily once again concede that we couldn’t just have Jon Bernthal shooting gangsters for thirteen straight episodes, I was still hoping for something more high octane than this. Fingers crossed that the change happens sooner rather than later, but maybe the moment has come to double time it and break from a trudge into a run.
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