The Punisher

Sure, I should have maybe tried to finish all of Marvel’s The Punisher before meeting Jon Bernthal, but I didn’t. And besides, Small Engine Repair was still the only thing I was going to talk about with him and it’ll probably be the number one work I reference in conversation so it doesn’t even matter. Anyways, I finally finished the first season of the well-received comic show.

Even though some funny and badass stuff started happening right away in this series, the first two episodes didn’t give me a lot of hope. I found myself drifting and also getting a little lost with all the military talk. What I was able to establish right off the bat was that Frank Castle, aka The Punisher, is a dead man walking. Literally. People all assume he’s dead. Having not watched Daredevil where the Frank Castle character first appeared, I have no clue if that dead status has anything to do with his storyline there. Regardless, he’s keeping a low profile and is done doing his vigilante killings. That is, until a man who calls himself Micro snatches Castle up and takes him to a pretty junky looking basement lair.

Micro is a super computer nerd and needs Castle’s help to take down some bad guys so he can also stop pretending to be dead and get back to his family. His real name is David Lieberman and he used to be an NSA agent who came into possession of a video where an old team Frank was on is seen to be torturing and then killing homeland security agent Dinah Mandani’s former partner. While Frank gets the upper hand quickly and instead tortures Lieberman until he decides to trust him, is also after this secret unit he was a part of. He’s starting to connect that this mission is why his family was killed.

Mandani only wants justice for her partner, and will stop at nothing to do it. Despite everyone thinking Castle is dead, she believes and is eventually proved right, that he is still alive. While she’s angry at him for being a part of the slaying of her partner, she also knows he’s now ready to take the remaining team down. In her quest to find Castle, she starts a relationship with Castle’s old war buddy and longtime friend, Billy Russo. The running gag is that he’s a womanizing pretty boy who’s seemed to come out of war relatively unscathed. He’s got his own contracting company, but Billy’s secrets run deep, and the betrayals he commits are gut-wrenching to a lot of people.

There are several other sub-plots running through this show, but politics are a main bloodline for all the action. Some of the stuff fictionalized in this show I’m sure actually happens in the real world, which is horrible, but our nation’s intelligence agencies will likely do whatever it takes to keep quiet. Regardless of all of that, I really did end up enjoying the first season of The Punisher quite a bit. Jon Bernthal is a machine and I think delivers a pretty solid performance. What I liked most from this show was his teaming up with Lieberman because they have such an opposing dynamic that ends up working out really well in a lot of situations. I’d say if Marvel is your jam, then this is a nice change of pace from the normal offerings, and you’ll still end up satisfied with the story. Check it out all you Disney+ people!