Ask and you shall receive, I guess.
After something of an impressive turnaround thanks to the last two episodes, The Punisher series has finally snapped out of its shell shocked stupor and reached where it needs to be. It’s been a long road since we watched Frank Castle burn his skull emblazoned trademark flak jacket after seemingly finalising his revenge at the start of the season, but his journey back to wearing his insignia on his chest has proven to be exceptionally long.
Countless drawn out plot points have resulted in an action orientated show that’s decided to tread awfully slowly and bide it’s time to the point of frustration, however a much needed plot switch succeeded in belatedly pumping some nitrous into the tank. Out of nowhere, a show that’s been annoyingly dormant has suddenly exploded into life and all the promise that it once had is finally now being realised. Sometimes, you just have to let a man do his thing.
Returning back to his hideout bleeding, battered and wounded emotionally thanks to the reveal of Billy Russo’s betrayal, Frank is equally pissed at Micro for going behind his back and confessing all to Agent Madani. Drawing a line under their partnership, Castle’s patience for laying low is finally over and while an increasingly worried looking Lieberman frets, Frank gets to work spray painting a new skull onto his bullet proof vest. However, before he can once again bring the pain to his enemies as the Punisher, the ramifications of Lewis Wilson’s bombing spree continues to be felt by everyone.
Not only was Billy Russo’s true alliances revealed to Castle, but they were also discovered by his lover Madani who finds herself in the infuriating position of knowing full well that the smug fucker is responsible for killing her men in an earlier raid, but just can’t prove it. Obviously, Russo opts to protect himself by deploying a dazzle armoury of charming smiles, epic gaslighting and downright lies, but when Madani opts to play her most devestating hand, everything starts to crumble. Not only does the beleaguered Deputy Director of Homeland Security go over Russo’s head, she goes over his leash holder, Rawlins’ head too, clueing in his boss to come of the undesirable acts he’s performed in the name of keeping America safe.
The result sees Lieberman’s family abducted by faux police officers with only his daughter, Leo escaping with Micro and Frank managing to locate her via some technical hocus pocus. While the political higher ups do their deals and offer up scapegoats to get what they want; Frank waits for Russo to have Leo’s phone traced and prepares a trap for anyone dumb enough to come to Micro’s hideout to come looking. Because is won’t be Leo, Lieberman, or even Frank Castle they find… it’ll be the Punisher.
From the moment Jon Bernthal emerged onscreen during the second season of Daredevil, the promise of the character getting his own season was exceedingly high. Watching him butt heads both physically and morally with the Man Without Fear arguably gave us a Punisher that not only carried more emotional weight than his predecessors, but this was a Frank Castle who, while not fully part of the MCU, was finally fraternising with other heroes and villains of the Marvel universe. With the additional factor that Netflix obviously couldn’t give a shit about censoring the character’s more aggressive traits, it seemed that we were all set to enter a golden age of Punisher adaptions that wouldn’t be afraid to offer a counter argument to Frank’s lawles shenanigans while also indulging in them fully. However, after that promising first episode, the show, for whatever reason, had actually managed to pull away from many of the aspects that makes the character so important. Sure, we got the addition of Micro, but rather than having Castle put his awful final stamp on crime, we’ve had episode after episode of him tangled up in a political conspiracy that’s seen him mostly dry docked either in wait, or cozying up to Lieberman’s family. Simply put, matters have been decidedly un-Punisherlike.
And yet with Danger Close, we get such a splurge of comic-accurate, Punisher iconography, it’s everything I can do to stop me suddenly forgiving half of the season for being fairly dull. Attempting to build character, plot and intrige is obviously important, but sometimes all you should be doing is giving fans the sight of a man clad in black with a white skull on his chest, blazing away at bad guys with an automatic weapon.
Yup, after taking care of the rapidly tightening plot and laying some seeds for the remaining few episodes, the Punisher locks horns with more of Russo’s hapless Anvil employees and takes them apart in thrilling fashion. It doesn’t hold anything back either; when he isn’t delivering cold as ice headshots or tearing them apart with fire from a gigantic machine gun, he’s hanging them with snares or even going as far as decapitating them with his knife and throwing severed heads are the enemy to freak them the fuck out. It’s violent, it’s ferocious and when Bernthal bellows his pent up rage at his victims, it feels like some act of terrible catharsis for a season that’s been restraining itself needlessly for too long.
Smartly, the episode doesn’t just blow its runtime on mindless – if awesome – violence and remembers to keep the momentum going elsewhere. Yes, the kidnapping of Lieberman’s family may be an action trope so old it’s growing roots, but it gets the characters where they need to be emotionally in the shortest amount of time. Similarly, it allows Micro to start reintegrating with his family one member at a time when he’s forced to meet his imperiled daughter after Sarah and Zach are dragged off by Russo’s goons. Speaking of Russo, the fact that he’s sticking to his bullshit despite the fact that Madani knows he’s dirty proves to be quite the juicy detail and frankly is far more engrossing than when they were an item – in fact, is it weird that the thought of a Madani/Russo showdown I’d slightly more tantalising than a Castle/Russo one? Elsewhere, we find that Rawlins is also feeling the pinch as news of his heinous machinations has filtered up to his boss who demands that he clean his shit up (eg. Russo) before retiring and while all this would been all stretched out over a couple of episodes before, now that the show has remembered that it’s supposed to be of the action persuasion, everything’s moving with much more precision and confidence.
It’s taken absurdly long, but the minds behind The Punisher has finally gotten with the programme and, in a single sequence, managed to provide the frenzied visuals to go with the morally murky tone that the character has always carried with him. Is there a sense that I’m overcompensating a little with my rating because the show finally cut loose and gave me what I’d wanted from the start? Possibly. But if the series wants to truly have us saying “Welcome back, Frank” in hushed, awed tones, it’s going to have manage to deliver similarly hard-hitting thrills for the remainder of the season.
Get to it Frank. We’ve both waited long enough.
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