Just when I'd about given up on Punisher, it got good again. The season two episode "One Bad Day" finally turned it around after three episodes that felt like cheap USA Network productions.
"One Bad Day" ditches the increasingly annoying teen sidekick and starts off focusing on Madani's lingering trauma from her experiences with Billy Russo.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio makes a welcome return as the CIA director, Marion James, and we get a flashback to her convincing Madani to go on the record that Billy used sex to manipulate her (Madani). The lingering sense of betrayal makes Madani a nice echo of Frank and his inability to stop mourning his wife and children. There's a nice confrontation between Madani and Frank in this episode that chews on the value of Frank's vigilantism.
And we see Billy has started a messed up sexual relationship with his psychotherapist. We finally learn that he has fractured memories of his life before Frank mutilated him, which somewhat explains the disconnect between how he's written this season and last season. It's an explanation that really ought to've come sooner. Parts of this second season of Punisher feel suspiciously like a modern Disney+ series.
I wonder if the Punisher's still coming back on the new season of Daredevil now that it's getting a revamp. Supposedly the series, which had been halfway through filming when Kevin Feige decided to junk nearly the whole thing and hire a new writing staff, had to do with cops imitating the Punisher. On the one hand, I like the boldness of incorporating such a touchy real world issue, but on the other, I have no faith in a Disney+ series handling it intelligently at this point. But then, if someone like Henry Gilroy were headwriter, I could see it being interesting.
The Punisher is available on Disney+.
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