‘The Punisher’ Season 2 Premiere Recap: The Man in the Frank Castle

Have we—as a nation, a society, a people—done enough for Jon Bernthal? No, that’s not even the right thing to ask. What viewers of The Punisher, and all other media, must do is take a fearless personal inventory on the Jon Bernthal Question: What have I, personally, done to show respect and gratitude to this great man? If nothing else, The Punisher Season 2 will give all of us the opportunity to look inward and see if we’ve done right by the Last Action Hunk. You hear that, America? Fix your hearts or die.

I’m sorry to start things off on such an uncomfortably ebullient note, but that’s just how I feel after (and while) watching the season premiere of the two last Marvel/Netflix shows standing (the other being Jessica Jones). And not standing for long, I suspect, since it now seems obvious the plug was pulled on Daredevil, Luke Cage and even Iron Fist not because of tepid ratings or user interaction or however the streaming monoculture merchant measures these things, but rather because Disney is setting up a competing service and a full-fledged turf war has broken out.

More’s the pity. More’s the tragedy. Even for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a franchise that gets by primarily on the strength of its handsome and charismatic lead actors, Bernthal’s Frank Castle is something very special.

I like Mike Colter’s Luke Cage. I really like Charlie Cox’s Matt Murdock. I understand what people see in the films’ Trinity of Chrises. And let’s be frank here (sorry): Without Robert Downey Jr. getting cast as Tony Stark (and Hugh Jackman filling in after a last-minute scheduling debacle as Wolverine), the superhero movie genre as world-bestriding colossus that we know today wouldn’t even exist.

But could any of those guys truly pull off what Bernthal manages here? Take a look at what he accomplishes as Frank in this episode. He’s a charismatic drifter who looks at home in an outlaw-country road house (the episode is in fact called “Roadhouse Blues”), but not so at home there as to prevent the hard-nosed bartender, Beth (Alexa Davalos), from taking a near-instant romantic interest in him. He’s sexy, and sexual, enough to hold down a Don’t Look Now–style sex scene that cross-cuts back and forth between the act and the afterglow, like he’s a blue-collar Donald Sutherland. He has the haunted eyes of a man who’s lost everything he ever cared about, and the warm eyes of a man who wants nothing more than to have a second chance, and the trustworthy eyes of a man with the courage to see it through. He can joke with Beth’s skeptical eight-year-old son about their favorite hockey teams’ rivalry and instantly win him over with a pancake breakfast. And later that night, he can murder half a dozen men and women who are trained murderers themselves, in the process of attempting to save the lives of two very different people—Beth on the one hand, and a shifty and twitchy young woman (played by Giorgia Whigham) whom those trained murderers were sent to kill.

It’s no accident that describing what Bernthal is tasked with as an actor doubles as a plot summary for this episode. Aside from a couple of scenes in which this season’s apparent Big Bad acts cold and creepy while on the hunt and a brief aside showing Agent Dinah Madani (Amber Rose Revah), last season’s de rigeur Marvel/Netflix Good Cop, taunting the hospitalized sociopath Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) through his creepy facial cast, the whole thing rests on Bernthal’s shoulders. He makes it look as easy as anyone since the last heyday of genuine rough-and-tumble action hunks, the time of Kurt Russell/John Carpenter collabs and a youngish Sylvester Stallone creating entire character-based mythologies out of his own strange politics and body-image issues.

Unsurprisingly given its position in the Marvel/Netflix franchise, he does his best work while fighting in close quarters. No hallway this time: just a ladies’ room, where he finds himself locked in life-or-death combat with two women assailants, and a goddamn barfight that escalates from slobberknocker to stabbing incident to mass shooting before you can say Jack Robinson. It’s amazing to watch Bernthal’s transformation during these scenes. Earlier in the episode, when the young lady he’ll eventually rescue and a horny barfly who’s been creepily hitting on Beth try to pick fights with him, he reacts with a private “can you believe this shit? These pishers think they could take me, a serial killer hand-crafted by the US of A?” He has enough control to turn that side of himself off. But when it switches on, dear god. He’s so efficient and so brutal. He growls like a goddamn animal and talks like a man possessed, like the person Christian Bale’s Batman has anxiety dreams about in which it’s finals week in college and he forgot to take his Scary Crimefighter Voice class all semester long.

He’s amazing, is what I’m saying. Standing around looking cool, being adorable with kids, kissing beautiful women, transmuting PTSD into lethal force, spraying multiple cars full of mercenaries who look like everyday civilians with gunfire the thoughtless and automatic way you might water your plants—he is the perfect Punisher, just in a class all by himself right now. We won’t get to see much more of him anytime soon, I’m afraid. Savor the punishment while it lasts.

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

Watch The Punisher Season 2 Episode 1 ("Roadhouse Blues") on Netflix