Clayton
Well-Known Member
What is really frustrating is that there are some really interesting things in the script but its way too padded with boring....crap...for lack of a better word.Overall it was uneven for me.
Good
1. Jon Bernthal is awesome. He seems born to play the role and gives a great effort. He will forever be the character for all time. He gave the best by far acting effort of anyone tackling that character.
2. The smaller supporting characters were great actors as well.
3. There are Fun Action Sequences
4. It ambitiously tackled a mature issue in dealing with PTDS and the morality of War
5. Did I mention Great Acting? It deserves a second mention. It was well acted.
Bad
1. Too many episodes. It comes to crawl at times. The story could have happened in 8 episodes.
2. The Female Lead is written poorly. She comes off as a stupid fuckwit who gets by on blind luck. They tried to make her some smart swaggering intelligent tough woman, but the exact opposite unfolds. Worse still, any scene with her puts you to sleep because she commits the cardinal sin of TELLING the audience instead of SHOWING the audience. The actor was not horrible, but the writers were awful with her character.
3. The plot is simple but it becomes boring when stretched out too far. Even the slowly building "twists" are telegraphed from about 1000 miles away so that any 8 year old could tell it was coming. More bad writing overall. A simple plot doesn't need endless filler to make it a great plot. Simple is often the best. The writers panicked and thought it needed to drawn out because it wasnt complex.
72/100 score
Bernthal deserves a better script. He made a below average script into something decent.
With a good script, he could make this character an all-time TV great.
I just got done with episode 12 which is basically the episode where all of the big soap opera moments and action moments come to a finale and....it....sucks. Soap Opera is the exact term I would use to describe the padding. It straight up mixes Days of Our Lives plot lines in with military PTSD, realistic action scenes and unrealistic action scenes.
It spends so much time building up certain plot points and then just wastes them. Bill as a character just bothers me. He is basically the most interesting character in the whole show and they just got it all wrong. He is too evil, they never do a good job of showing him as a reliable friend to Frank and Anvil is too ridiculous just being the red shirts that give the show enough bodies so it can resemble the Punisher.
Bernthal is different as the Punisher but in some areas I agree that he is fantastic. Especially as the show goes along he really brings out the Punisher personality perfectly and almost seems to mix in Deniro for good measure. There are about 4 fantastic episodes where he really takes over and the show really works and then there is the rest of the show which is just a waste of time.
I even think a 72 might be too high. They could've cut out about half of the season and it would've been notably better.