Let me be what I’m meant to be
It’s only been a little more than a year since Netflix released new episodes of the series The Punisher, yet somehow it feels much longer.
When we last left Frank Castle/The Punisher (Jon Bernthal) in the first season, he had gotten vengeance on those who had killed his family and had gotten a sort of free pass from the authorities on everything he’d done since he’d taken out some very bad people. The second season starts a year or two later with Frank traveling the country and ending up in Michigan where he finds a connection with Beth Quinn (Alexa Davalos) a bartender. But because The Punisher is, well, The Punisher things go bad one night and Frank winds up taking on a half-dozen or so trained killers out to kidnap a girl named Amy Bendix (Giorgia Whigham). Beth takes a bullet in the melee and Frank and Amy go on the run since Frank isn’t about to leave her vulnerable and alone and that’s pretty much the first episode.
There’s been quite a few attempts at “cracking” the character of the Punisher outside of the comics the last few decades, none of which we even able to get at the core of the character nor were too successful. It’s ironic, then, that the one place that was finally able to deliver a Punisher I’d recognize from the comics was Netflix rather than the big screen. Always before Netflix he was too broadly drawn or the story was too far removed from what made him work in the comics, but other than updating a few things here and there the Punisher on Netflix is pretty much the Punisher from the comics.
With one exception.
Usually, the comic version of the Punisher is like the Energize Bunny, he keeps going and going. He never quits and there’s always one more bad guy out there he needs to confront in the next issue. What was so interesting with the Netflix Punisher was that at the end of the first season his job is complete, the people who killed his family are dead so his job was finished. This Punisher had a focused set of goals, and when they were done his job was done.
So what was next? Well, ex-Marine/ex-Punisher Frank like a lot of vets wasn’t sure. After all he’s been through what’s he supposed to do? Get a job at the grocery? Go work at a factory? Instead, Frank chose to travel the US, but rather than on the back of a Harley like so many people do he chose to see the country via a van. While you can stay ahead of your problems for a while when you roam like that, your problems are always there as Frank discovers.
Here, it’s not so much there are still people out to get him since most of them are either dead or under the impression that he’s dead, Frank’s problem is that he can’t keep out of a fight no matter what the consequences. And the consequence here are that Frank loses the one chance he has at happiness since the death of his family to be with Beth.
Which is what I’d kind’a expect in a series called The Punisher. We don’t tune in to see Frank Castle happy and content. We tune in to see him brooding, and going after the bad people.
Side note — I was very happy to see Bernthal reunited with Davalos here. They played star-crossed lovers too in the mostly unseen TNT Mob City series of a few years back. That show by Frank Darabont had Bernthal as 1950s LA police detective Joe Teague with Davalos playing Teague’s vampy girlfriend Jasmine Fontaine.
