‘The Punisher’ Episode 7 Recap: Ready, Aim…

“Crosshairs,” the seventh episode of The Punisher’s first season, is aptly titled. Its two key sequences use the targeting mechanisms of the show’s ubiquitous guns as key visual signifiers — first in a smoke-grenade-shrouded cat-and-mouse game between Frank Castle, attempting to get information from the corrupt Col. Morty Bennett, and a security team led by his frenemy Billy Russo, then in the climactic scene where he finally pulls the trigger on Agent Orange…only to discover the man’s been protected by bulletproof glass.

They’re both tense, exciting sequences, in which the red light beams piercing the fog and the painstaking procedure of taking aim at a distance give us a memorable means by which to track Frank’s progress. They bookend yet another inversion of the classic Marvel/Netflix hallway fight, in which the Punisher encounters a lone sentry in an enormous tunnel and tries to talk his way past him rather than engage in an Oldboy-style slugfest with a couple dozen assailants.

But it’s character and conversation I’m most interested in here, for several reasons. First and foremost, this is frequently the point where Marvel/Netflix shows run out of both story and steam. Both the woefully overrated Jessica Jones and the enjoyable but bloated Luke Cage made the mistake of dispatching their antagonists early (successfully imprisoning the telepathic rapist Kilgrave in episode 9 of the former, killing off the charismatic ganglord Cottonmouth in episode 7 of the latter), forcing them to generate preposterous plot twists (prison breaks, long-lost brothers, etc.) to run out the time for the rest of the season. Daredevil Season 2 did something similar by wrapping up its initial Punisher storyline by episode 4 before introducing secondary antagonist/love interest Elektra and eventually making the inert ninja master Nobu the season’s big bad, but since Castle never fully went away and Elektra was an entertaining substitute in her own right, it weathered things well enough. Of the shows from this corner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe I’ve seen (life’s too short for Iron Fist and The Defenders), only the first season of Daredevil felt like it had a beginning, middle, and end that justified its length, rather than the other way around, and honestly even that could have been tightened up.

So I’m pleasantly surprised to see how engaged I remain in the questions and storylines remaining at this point in The Punisher. I fully expected Frank to successfully plug Agent Orange, a la Jessica locking up Kilgrave or Cottonmouth getting beaten to death by his cousin Mariah. But thanks to bulletproof glass, Frank blew it, and now I’m intrigued to see how he and Micro can overcome the obstacle of a target who sees them coming.

I like the relationship between Castle and Lieberman in general, honestly. The show makes time for little details that would be ignored by a more utilitarian production, such as David making homemade sauce for a pasta dinner they eat as they plan their raid on the military compound, and those details really make the characters and their relationship breathe. I found myself genuinely interested in the way they hashed out their hopes and fears about the future after the Punisher finally kills their mutual enemies; they sounded like seniors in college, both excited and scared of what lies ahead. Not a vibe you’d expect, but it works.

Less central characters are afforded similar nuance. Madani and Stein really feel like partners as they search for the bug she’s suddenly realized must be in her office; the way they convert their sotto voce discussion of the bug into a “can you believe this shit?” griping session about sexual harassment when other agents pass by is clever, funny, and all too relevant.

When he’s not covering up a murder, coming close to suicide, or building a bomb, traumatized veteran Lewis shares some more powerful moments with his loving and concerned father; the older man’s attempt to use any available means to reach his son, from sharing prescription sleeping pills he got when his wife died to attempting to use Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope strategy against George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle as a life lesson in how to readjust to civilian life, is painfully real. Again, I think this material is strong enough to sustain its own series; that it’s included in a show about a character who appears in Lego video games is nothing short of astonishing to me.

The villains, too, have some compelling conversations with one another, though that’s less of a surprise; though I like some (Wilson Fisk, his assistant Wesley, Cottonmouth, Mariah Dillard, the Punisher himself during Daredevil Season 2) better than others (Kilgrave is a scenery-chewing caricature who’s as relevant to my personal experiences as an abuse victim as Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster), villains have always been treated as integral to these shows, serving almost as co-protagonists. Ben Barnes’s Billy Russo remains charming in that handsome Wall Street guy way, and while he’s contemptible himself, he nevertheless shares our own contempt for his co-conspirators Orange and Bennett. In particular he really has Orange’s number, accusing him of getting off on torture sexually. Actor Paul Schulze reacts to the insult the same way he reacts to Frank’s failed assassination — with a face of stone, like he’s so emotionally cauterized he’s incapable of taking offense or being surprised.

Even ill-fated Col. Morty Bennett is given his moments in the sun: first crowing to his “date” about how hard it is to be powerful, then groveling at her feet by licking up the wine she spilled.

Power dynamics, baby, gotta love ‘em!

Actor Andrew Polk gives this minor, now-murdered character the affect of an aggrieved regional manager, making the point that empires like America run as much on officious functionaries as they do on cold-blooded killers like Russo (who kills both Bennett and the sex worker they’d hired to keep tabs on him) and Orange. The Punisher is up against the whole architecture of American power. Hard to fit that in your crosshairs.

Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about TV for Rolling Stone, Vulture, the Observer, and anyplace that will have him, really. He and his family live on Long Island.

Stream Marvel's The Punisher on Netflix