The Punisher (Netflix)

This turned out to be really good, start to finish!

I put this right up with Daredevil for quality. Very good cast with Bernthal leading the way. Also credit to them not shying away at all with who the Punisher is, especially those last 3 episodes. Just brutal.

What a great series! So looking forward to season 2!

I hope they find a good excuse for Micro to stay involved. I really enjoyed the actor and the character’s relationship with Frank.

I actually found the character of Micro probably exactly as grating and frustrating as Frank did throughout which, hey, props to the guy playing him, but his twerpy quirkiness kinda wore out its welcome near the end for me. Maybe removing some of his Nerdly Pathos makes him interesting again.

In rather not-so-shocking news…

Grand news!

Sweet, now they need to put him into The Defenders. Would be a great wildcard to an already oddball group.

Or at least CG him into all of Iron Fist and have him kill everyone.

Why the hell didn’t you guys make me walk away at this point — this series was laughably terrible. Had worse lows than even Iron Fist, but had at least a few decent parts as well, including Bernthal’s performance…at least for a while - then even that gets absurd and silly, and his hammy voice was really making me cringe by the end. The only thing that elevated the truly dreadful, naive, material was Micro-- he was much better than the show deserved.

Everything else was terrible - it just seemed like an 11 year old’s perspective on everything from office politics, federal workplaces, police procedures, PTSD, the military, family dynamics, sexual relationships, sex, teen angst, cowardly lying racist gun nuts, evil military conspiracies and torture, the role of the CIA, the role of Senators, the required qualifications for any of the meaningful jobs depicted, espionage, combat tactics and weaponry, how many times someone can be shot and stabbed in the same right shoulder. The ability of people to spit out teeth. It was all just colossally infantile and ridiculous.

…and more importantly, not entertaining. Poor action choreography, terribly paced - the last 2 episodes and the showdown were huge missteps, as were the interlaced memories of matrimonial sex while being bashed in the head repeatedly, ridiculous changes in tone, shifts to ghoulish levels of violence that is neither realistic nor over-the-top for cartoonish humor or cathartic satisfaction: it’s just gross.

in addition, it has the problems that all these Marvel Netflix shows have produced: inadequate editing, sketchy acting from non-leads and occasionally even key characters, filler side plots that just being far too thin to justify the 13 episode season - every one of these series would be better as 10 episodes, and most would be even stronger with just 8. Except the Defenders, which would have been better at 4. I’m so leery on Netflix Marvel now that I’m going to defer Jessica Jones S2 and anything else other than Daredevil S3 barring overwhelmingly positive word of mouth.

Rating: 2/10.

I haven’t watched any of the Netflix shows yet, but man, you should watch Agents of SHIELD if you haven’t.

At what point does it get better? I remember watching at first and being annoyed with the “mad scientist of the week theme” so dropped off at some point, resumed after the Hydra deal in Winter Soldier, but still found it boring. However, been reading recently about how good it gets, so naturally I’m wandering when exactly does it happen.

The Hydra reveal is a big point, yes. It doesn’t immediately go fully and consistently excellent there, but it’s a much better starting point if you don’t enjoy slogging through a dozen episodes of ABC trying to pretend that Slab McBulkhead is a charismatic male lead…

YOU SHUT UP ABOUT BRETT DALTON HE IS A TREASURE

Look I’m just saying you knew exactly who I was talking about from the insult description…

Agents of Shield is good every other season or so, depending entirely on the quality of the villain. The core cast isn’t good enough to carry the show (Mac excepted, maybe, but he’s about the least core of the Agents) but they don’t quite sink it either, so when there’s an entertaining villain it can be pretty decent.

Idk how much I’d recommend it to @Desslock though. It’s pretty Whedony.

Umm ok. Note to self. Never take Desslocks opinion on anything seriously ever again…

Wow… I totally disagree about the cast. The people on that show are phenomenal, including Brett Dalton, who evolved in incredible ways throughout his run as he was asked to be all sorts of different things. But the main cast… go back and watch where those people started and where they have taken those characters to now? Wow. I think they have had some of the most amazing character arcs and while their personalities have always been what they are, the way they carry themselves today is completely different while maintaining the personality through excellent acting. I mean, they’ve been through hell on that show, and the way they play it, you can totally see it on screen weekly!

Clark Gregg impresses me more every week. Ming Na-Wen didn’t need this show to prove anything to me, but she’s been amazing. Chloe Bennet has grown immeasurably and man, the transformation of Fitz as played by Iain De Caestecker… I mean, jeez…

I adore the show. I think from about the time the Winter Soldier stuff hit until now was when it really started to improve from the start it had, but especially season two is where it really starts to blow up with the addition of Mack, Mockingbird and Lance Hunter. Nick Blood’s Lance Hunter is one of my favorite characters and it’s a damn shame that their spinoff never got made because that sounded awesome. I just love that character and I was really glad we got to see him briefly in Season 5.

But again, it’s kind of all held together by Brett Dalton’s Ward who I think has one of the best character arcs in any of these genre shows.

There are some great fights on this show in the last few seasons, but this may be my favorite TV fight of all time…

The pool cue flip gets me every time! It was even better in the context of the show. What a badass…

Which one? He has like 5 different ones in the series.

Occasionally some of them with the same body!

Why are there spoilers for Agents of SHIELD in the Punisher thread?