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I finished this Thursday. It was amazing. I watched the Emergency Awesome review on it in which he said, "You'll either love this because you love the Punisher or you'll hate it because it makes you feel like crap." Shit is HEAVY.
He's half right. I don't necessarily love the Punisher, but I'm not afraid of violent, dark television. There just isn't much in it that's happy. Like, at all. It handled a tremendous amount of violence, especially in an environment of fear caused by mass shootings, very well. I don't know how the critics are handling it, but I thought it's approach to PTSD and the helplessness felt by combat vets very smartly. It also felt very real. Daredevil is pretty gritty, but you're still watching a blind guy fight criminals. Punisher is a military guy fighting other military guys, and it FEELS real.
Bernthal is great. Dude is very nuanced. There is essentially 3 different versions of Castle that Bernthal executes brilliantly: 1. Soldier mode Castle - laser focused and lethal, 2. undercover Castle - very charming and disarming, 3. normal Castle - broken, can't make eye contact, stutters some. It is really a brilliant performance. I still say the Daredevil S2 cemetary scene is one of the best (essentially) monologues in Television. But every time he talks about his family it is just incredible. He also makes it feel very real with little nuanced mannerisms. Like when he's in the diner and the waitress tells him not to take too long and he mumbles "yeah, right." under his breath. That is really hard to pull off without sounding like a douchenozzle. His performance is full of nuanced little mannerisms like that. I can't say enough about Bernthal's performance. He's so ****ing good.
Initially I didn't really like Madani, Stein, or even Micro. But a few episodes in, I was hooked. I'm not sure if their performances got better or if I just warmed up to them and their roles in the story had real impact for me.
The only thing I could nitpick at all was they overdid the whole "women make emotional decisions." bit. You don't get to where Madani is by being an emotional wreck that can't get shit done because she's too busy being emtional and doing stupid shit. Same for Karen. Also Karen's story didn't really have any resolution, but looking back, most of Rosario Dawson's story lines are just kind of there too. More of a tool than a character arc. But those nitpicks are super minute. The show was really really good.
I can't say enough about how much I love this show. As heavy as it is.
I can't have everything I watch be that heavy, but this is so good.
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