Punishment Complete

I watched the last episode of season 2 of The Punisher and, with that, I've now watched every episode of all the Marvel Netflix series. Punisher turned out to be one of the strongest series, though season two was vastly inferior to the first season in terms of writing and budget.

The second to last episode, "Collision Course", which aired on January 18, 2019, was written by Dario Scardapane (who'd written three other episodes). Scardapane was recently announced as the replacement showrunner for the upcoming Daredevil: Born Again after Kevin Feige discovered the episodes that had been shot were too terrible. So people were fired and Scardapane was resurrected from the glory days of Marvel Television and put in a more traditional television role.

So I was watching "Collision Course" with extra scrutiny and I'm happy to say I think it was competently written. There were several episodes in season two that depended on people doing stupid things out of character in order for the plot to move forward but "Collision Course" wasn't one of them. I think it's entirely possible Scardapane will be a good showrunner.

The Punisher did turn out to be good, cathartic fun in between some nice character moments. I'm a little amused by the controversy around the character. I read about how U.S. armed forces and police have adopted the Punisher's skull symbol and the people at Marvel have chosen to be horrified by each and every one of them. Which is their right, even if one U.S. military sniper was honoured with a statue emblazoned with the Punisher symbol on his chest plate.

What has Marvel done in response to the widespread use of their symbol? They changed the Punisher's symbol to one resembling a Japanese Oni in 2022. Of all the empty gestures.

I enjoyed the series that aired on Netflix (and is now on Disney+--how the world has changed). It's fun fantasising about a world where you can take out your grief and rage on purely evil people. But such diversions also remind me that real life isn't like that. If Marvel writers really wanted to teach people a lesson about the Punisher, they should've tried to write more complex stories, stories where the Punisher killed people whose guilt really was more subjective. Maybe they have done that, I haven't read much of the Punisher comics, but the TV series certainly didn't do it.

Considering the upcoming Daredevil show was shaping up to be partly about cops inspired by the Punisher, maybe that was going to be the thing that did it. On the face of it, that sounds the wrong way to go about it. You don't persuade people by making strawman caricatures of them. The Amazon Prime series, The Boys, is based on a parody of The Punisher written by Garth Ennis, a former writer of Punisher comics. I don't know about the comic but, ironically, the Prime series presents an even more morally simplistic, polarised world, though it's far less enjoyable, at least for me. It is popular, though.

Anyway, now that I've seen all the Marvel Netflix shows, I may as well rank them. Instead of whole series, I think I'll go by season. That should make it a little more interesting.

1. Daredevil season one
2. Daredevil season three
3. Jessica Jones season one
4. Daredevil season two
5. Luke Cage season one
6. The Punisher season one
7. Luke Cage season two
8. The Punisher season two
9. Jessica Jones season three
10. Jessica Jones season two
11. The Defenders
12. Iron Fist season two
13. Iron Fist season one

X Sonnet #1786

Resources shrank to silly herbs and spice.
We built a dinner stack of salt and sage.
But peasants hid a sack of tasty rice.
With clouds of gin improvement comes with age.
Another ball is rolling pins through time.
A stolen car contained a cryptic note.
Where pies are baked, the dreams were sweet as rhyme.
Where sugar's sold, it's pastries win the vote.
A real McCoy was trading plums for bones.
Ferocious monsters crowd the logging road.
In darkness, riders cry in metal tones.
Another country caught the hidden code.
Siesta strikes the octopus and shrimp.
We know the inky ghost for print's a simp.

A Rewarding Punisher

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+.

The Punishing Punisher

The last mile is the hardest mile, they say. After watching through three seasons of Daredevil, three of Jessica Jones, two of Luke Cage and Iron Fist, and the Defenders miniseries, my greatest challenge seems to be Punisher season 2. And that's surprising because I actually really liked season 1. I'd say season one of Punisher is among the very best of Marvel television. But season two is like . . . the whole staff was lobotomised and their brains replaced with hamsters.

It's the same writing staff, mostly. Supposedly the same people who came up with the compelling story of Frank's bitter fight with former friend and marine, Billy, and the really effective tale of the intelligence expert forced into hiding, watching the wife and children who think he's dead like a stalker. These same people supposedly wrote this story about Frank with a pretty teenage sidekick who teaches him Three Card Monte, this story in which the FBI agent, Mardani, springs Frank from jail with helicopters so he can come back to New York to help her track down Billy Russo, only for her to get fed up with him living in her apartment and order him to leave the city because she's . . . annoyed.

It started out decently enough, with the locale moved to some midwestern town where Frank hooks up with a bartender. A mysterious bunch of oddly co-ed generic thugs show up trying to kill a girl hanging around the bar and Frank's forced to protect her, drawing him into a whole lot of trouble.

That was okay. But meanwhile, back in New York, Billy Russo is coming to and wearing a bizarre mask with no explanation. Later we're told it's a therapy tool and he drew designs on it to express himself or something. That's a pretty lame explanation but I guess it's something. It still doesn't explain how no-one notices him escaping the hospital wearing that thing.

And then we finally see his face, now reborn as the comic villain Jigsaw and it's . . .

Oh, come on. Frank was supposed to have messed up Billy's face so bad he had brain damage. He clearly broke his nose. These scars are the best they could do?

The episode I watched last night, the sixth episode, somehow went to new lows. Frank and the girl have found a new hideout in a motor home.

Whose motor home? Did Frank buy it? Did he steal it? Who decorated it? Where is it parked? None of these questions are answered! We don't even get an exterior shot and it seems to exist in a void. It's dreamlike. Is this a dream?

The episode begins with Frank and the girl shaking down a paedophile for information. This guy who apparently has a professional studio he exclusively rents out to paedophiles. He's like someone from a bad '50s exploitation film, like a guy who does lame made up crimes because the filmmakers or studio baulked at confronting a real issue. Ironically, I think the goal was just to get footage of the girl in a romper.

I will get through this. I will finish the Marvel Netflix shows. I've come this far. I will succeed.

The Punisher is available on Disney+.

Comic Retribution

So now I've started on The Punisher, the last of the Marvel Netflix series. The first season came out in 2017 and the second in 2019. I've seen the first three episodes, all written by Steve Lightfoot, and they're pretty good. Better than Iron Fist, though that's not saying much, and about on par with Luke Cage, though not quite up to Jessica Jones or Daredevil levels.

One of the demands of the writers in the current writers' strike I really don't like is the requirement for all shows to have a minimum writing staff of--I think the number was--six. So many of the best shows have had just one or two writers, or you wish they did. Twin Peaks being the great example. Lightfoot's scripts are smart, both in showing character motivation and in arranging plot. The music is great, both in terms of Tyler Bates' original score and the rock and blues songs. The first episode made very good use of Tom Waits' "Hell Broke Luce":

I suppose Frank Castle could've been better cast. I didn't really like Jon Bernthal on The Walking Dead (a show I stopped watching in season five or six, though I promised I'd go back to it when Negan gets killed off. Has he been killed off yet?). I thought he was a little one dimensional. But the Punisher is kind of a one note character so that kind of works. I kind of wish he was bulkier, though. One review complained he's not charismatic but I'm not sure he should be.

I didn't read much of the comics. I read a couple issues when I was kid, back in the '80s or early '90s. I remember a story about the Punisher fighting a giant robot or cyborg of some kind. It must have been at a low ebb of creativity on the series that the plot had strayed so far from the premise into something so generic. The premise of a vigilante killer you're meant to root for seems inspired by the vigilante films of the '70s, the most famous of which is the Death Wish series. I've never been a fan of those thought recently I read Quentin Tarantino's book, Cinema Speculation, which has deepened my appreciation a little. I've certainly always loved Taxi Driver.

Frank Castle is no Travis Bickle and you're clearly meant to just get good, clean catharsis watching him execute paper thin gangsters. That is fun in a relatively shallow way but it's balanced a bit with mood and reflection on war trauma which the show treats a lot more intelligently than Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

The Punisher is available on Disney+.

X Sonnet #1738

Required science dwindles down to zilch.
A savage sort responds to meaty meals.
Attending prom, the dancers sought to filch.
But savvy guards distract the dizzy heels.
It's turtle shells you see along the beach.
Don't question stones when absence proves a lie.
The slowest slug's beyond the Devil's reach.
But hands are cluttered birds across the sky.
A horse's pace announced a rapid doom.
At hand, a brace of noggins clattered loud.
As tempting shadow ghosts illume the room.
A knowing dame abides behind a shroud.
Replacement violence burns the linen night.
The oil burns the sense so Buicks fight.