StokerScoreTV: Not the best, not the worst
Marvel and Netflix have brought some interesting shows to the our small screens, with all of the ambition that the MCU is showing on the big screen. The Netflix shows are much more gritty, using the production company's position to show hightened levels of violence, and are quite unlike the shows that air on Fox and the CW which due to their target audience are coerced into the teen-angsty dramas that crowd out shows like The Gifted and the mess that is Marvel's Inhumans.
The Punisher offers the chance to show a character who initially wasn't planned to get his own show. Yet such was the response to the character's appearance in Season Two of Daredevil, that the
companies bowed to the pressure and gave the vigilante his own 13-episode arc.
Jon Berenthal is pretty good as the title character, all physicality and punch first, ask questions later...well, he'd ask the questions if he could articulate them. Frank Castle, the Punisher's alter ego, is not supposed to be a philosopher, rather he is a force of nature who will not stop until he has righted perceived wrongs.
But this is where 13 episodes maybe isn't the best format for the character. There's only so much bone-breaking and gun play that audiences will watch before getting bored, so the show surrounds Frank with people who can help us to understand the demons he has inside. This, then, requires Frank to start philosophising but the nasal grunt that he calls a voice, coupled with the violent acts that he has carried out in the name of CIA black ops missions, stopped me from really liking and empathisng
with him over the deaths of his wife and children. I understand the issues behind PTSD but we're left with a show about an at-times monosylabic revenge machine who responds to conversations with glowering stares, if not complete silence but who can also eloquently discuss the events that he's witnessed when called upon to do so by the script.
The character has no super powers in the way that Daredevil, Iron Fist, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones do, however his powers of recovery are on an unbelievable level. One character who is beaten within an inch of his life with his own prosthetic leg, is shown with a puffed up face and a closed eye, yet a similar beating given to Frank shows him being able to still summon enough energy to hand out a beating of his own, sure losing a couple of teeth is shown, but which teeth as his smile later suggests a full compliment of pearly whites. |
| #whereisMoonKnight? |
The show, for me, was too long and would have been netter covering an eight-episode arc similar to the Defenders. Other than Karen Page, no other super-friends are around (possibly because this is also post Defenders and Matt Murdoch is recuperating in the convent) but it doesn't even try to introduce any new characters which I find a bit of a shame, especially as there was a lot of buzz around the character Moon Knight making his debut.
I binge-watched the whole thirteen episodes in a day, as I really did want to see how it ended. Having got to the predicatble finale I think that Frank is better as a guest appearance in other shows rather than the star of his own.
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