The Punisher had so many moments where a brilliantly executed action/adventure show could be glimpsed, but then the writing got lazy and cliched. When focused on the Frank Castle, and his relentless pursuit of vengeance, this show shone. The Punisher, as the title implies, is what this show was supposed to be all about. However, the meager plot could not sustain 26 episodes stretched over two seasons, and so the writers resorted to filler characters grabbing more and more camera time. The storyline, which started off strong, soon begins to meander down all kinds of dead-end back alleys: Agent Medani, and her ludicrous obsession with some guy killed in the Middle East; a young, mentally deranged army vet going on a homicidal rampage; even Billy Russo, though initially a strong character full of potential, mires the show down in mushy scene after mushy scene with his clingy, infatuated shrink.
The writers were so desperate to keep this support characters alive, that time after time they return from certain death, severely stretching the bounds of credibility. Medani gets choked to death by Russo, only to gasp her way back to live in the next scene. Surely, a trained killer like Billy Russo, who had killed innumerable numbers of people, would know if someone was dead or had just passed out. Frank and Detective Mahoney plunge 30 feet off an overpass in an ambulance, and both are up and prancing around a short time later. In fact, other then a bandaid on Mahoney's forehead, he shows now other side effects of what would have been a certain bone-breaking impact with the ground. In what was by far the most unbelievable of these escapes from sudden death, the shrink, Krista Dumont, plunges out of a third story window and lands spreadeagled on a cement sidewalk, only to survive and, with both arms in traction, have one more completely useless scene in the hospital with Agent Medani.
As Season 2 drags on, the writing lets slip with more and more wtf moments. A good example of this was when Agent Medani showed up at the hospital to have her final chat with Krista Dumont, she was still wearing her blood-soaked white blouse. Yet Dumont had clearly already undergone surgery on both her arms, a procedure that would have taken not only hours in the operating room, but also deep sedation for even more hours, if not days. Yet there Dumont was, propped up in her bed, with both her arms wired together and suspended by metal traction bars, looking fresh as a daisy and showing no signs of still being on painkilling drugs, and Agent Medani still wearing her "fresh" bloody red blouse.
On the plus side, I really enjoyed much about this show. I thought Jon Bernthal gave a convincing performance as the Punisher, Jason R. Moore was strong in his role as Curtis, Ebon Moss-Bachrach played the role of computer geek, David Leiberman with panache in Season 1, and Georgia Whigham was a very pleasant surprise as Amy Bendix in Season 2.
Not all performances were quite so strong, however. Ben Barnes did well with his role as Billy Russo in Season 1, but painfully overacted his character in Season 2. At one point, if he had made more grab of his crewcut topped head, in order to show us how frustrated he was with his jumbled memories, I was ready to run screaming from the television. Amber Rose Revah was quite simply painful to watch as Homeland Security Agent Medani. This character was so poorly written, however, that maybe it is possible to cut Amber Rose some slack. For example, how does a fully trained HS Agent almost get her ass kicked by a psychotherapist? When the show wanted to show Medani was obsessing about Russo, the smudged black circles under her eyes, like some Japanese Horror movie.
Had this show kept to the action, and focused 80% of its screen time on The Punisher, instead of all these other soap opera'esque characters, it would have been a much more successful production. The final product, however, was, as a whole, just slightly better then mediocre.
