A Snapshot Review of "The Punisher" Season Two

This isn't a habit I'm hoping to fall into and by habit, I mean reviewing things that are bad, and that's not to say this season was bad bad...but...it wasn't good either. Netflix is really doing this character a disservice and after his explosive entrance in Marvel best (now canceled) series "Daredevil," we all had hope for Jon Bernthal's Punisher series. The 1st Season was good as his first solo outing but this...naw...and let me explain. Let's dive in.

The 1st Season of "The Punisher" was a decent outing, it focused on Frank Castle as a soldier, he still wasn't quite The Punisher we all know and love and by that I mean the hard badass driving from town to town blowing away human garbage (and in some cases since this series is based in realism I doubt he will be) but it nonetheless showed us that Frank Castle was the ultimate badass in unstoppable savagery and gave us some cool side characters like Curtis (who I'm okay with being a good guy), Micro (whose slim here) and introducing us to a different Billy Russo who isn't mob-connected and instead was Frank's brother in arms.

To be honest "Daredevil" established Frank Castle as a character and showcased just how skilled he was in beating and matching Matt Murdock in hand-to-hand combat (a feat not many can achieve). But in that series, Frank spent time killing The Kitchen Irish and the Cartel who murdered his family, his solo series just expanded on that story thread with Frank finding the real culprits, and in the end Frank drove off into the sunset...and by that I mean he sat in a meeting with Curtis and admitted he didn't know what to do with a war. Decent ending enough considering by the end of the series Billy Russo was well on his way to being Jigsaw, so great way to leave the series open.

This season finds Frank in Michigan (my home state) getting caught up in a conspiracy that's so...eyeball rolling it's amazing that someone allowed the writers to write it. So Frank gets caught up with a girl named Amy because she took a photo of a gay senator making out with his boyfriend and his wealthy parents didn't like that and sent what has to be the most wasted character after her to retrieve the photos and make her pay. The photos were going to be used by The Russians to blackmail David Schultz when/if he becomes President. Let's skip the obvious in saying that in this day and age an openly gay senator would be applauded and would easily become one the most powerful politicians in the world and jump to the part where we're supposed to gasp and clutch for my pearls because that didn't happen.

All this because he's gay?

Now I understand, The Schultzes are a powerful and "Christian" (we'll get into that later) family and they'd probably lose influence and endorsements if their high society friends found out their son liked to smoke sausage, but even for a well connected rich family this is stupid and could be easily solved. Let's talk about Jon Pilgrim, and to be honest I like Josh Stewart (ever since I saw him in "No Ordinary Family") and I liked Jon Pilgrim but GOOD GRAVY WHAT A WASTE WAS HE?! The season set him up as this calm collected badass who was meek and mild, soft-spoken but NOT the guy you wanna piss off and under the right circumstances, he was probably just as lethal as Frank. After all, you always fear the man with his hands in his pockets in the middle of a warzone. But with finding out he's merely a puppet from a The Schultzes really cut his character off at the knees and the series didn't do him any favors.

Although the blowjob didn't hurt.

Despite Amy and Frank's story being the launch pad, Billy Russo's return consumes the majority of this season and to be honest that should have been the main focus as Jon Pilgrim got showed way into the background to the point where he became an afterthought. And that's really the problem. The writers really didn't know what to do with Pilgrim, his beef with Castle was impersonal (he said as much himself) and his beef with Amy was impersonal and he had the option to walk away (which is what he did anyway) and that's the real injustice, had Amy had photos of David doing something nefarious like being caught in a hotel with a dead male hooker, but a picture of him making out with a dude...naw, not worth it. And maybe that's the point but that's really lame.

If I can spoil an episode of "Black Mirror" real quick, I'm talking about the episode "Shut Up & Dance" go watch it, I'll wait. Did you? Good. So when Kenny got blackmailed into doing the bidding of anonymous I knew it had to have been more than just a video of him jerking it to porn, enough people jerk it to porn that that's not really worth the panic, I knew it had to be something worse. This should have been something worse but instead, it's just he's gay. and if David would have come out, yeah he would have lost support but he'd have gained some as well. If it has a simple solution it can't be a problem. Furthermore, it's not like Anderson forbid David from coming out or anything, there was a brief discussion about it but nothing that implied David wasn't able to tell anyone. So if Kenny jerked it to porn, yeah it sucks but the solution is come clean (hell, even I've mentioned my on again off again addiction to pornography) but admitting you jerk it to kiddie porn is a hell of a lot harder, in the same way for David admitting he's gay is simple, admitting why he was in a hotel room with a dead gay hooker is another.

Russo's transformation into Jigsaw should have been the main focus on the season, which Russo becoming so obsessed with "The Skull" that he wears a skull mask and basically shoots up the mobs and gangs and amasses power that way with Frank trying to stop him. Because you see we already did The Punisher as a soldier, we need to see The Punisher as a vigilante, and this season we basically got Punisher The Escort Mission, and that's not worthy of The Punisher's talents. The ending of this season should have been the opening, with Frank essentially cleaning up the city because he felt like it, or maybe because he saw an innocent person get blown away. Something better than a rich family tries to cover up their son being gay.

Easily one of the best scenes

The early rumblings about this season said that the main villain was going to be some alt-right Christian...and it wasn't. The Schultzes mention God constantly but by their actions they're hypocrites, same goes for Pilgrim but out of all of them he seems to be the only person most dedicated to wanting to turn over a new leaf, hell he USED to be a racist and admits he's over that and spoke to two Black characters politely and with (as much as the situation would warrant it) respect. So I don't really see what those rumors were about, Pilgrim quoted The Bible often but so what...anyone can do that. But I digress. This season was massively underwhelming and a waste of Frank Castle. Next season (if there is a next season) there needs to be a villain that'll establish The Punisher as a vigilante and I think Hood would be a good person to get the ol' Netflix treatment. Anyways those are my thoughts on this Season of "The Punisher" let me know what you think.