Or not. As I said last time, Frank
is pretty badly mangled, and his status as Number One most wanted man in New
York pretty much makes it impossible for the good guys to bring him to a
hospital. But, thankfully, Agent Madani knows a guy. Her father, Dr. Madani.
While thoroughly freaked out by their daughter bring a bloodied, 3/4’s dead man
to their apartment, Dr. and Mrs. Madani do help to get Frank stabilized.
 |
| I... don't think Russo is getting his security deposit back. |
Meanwhile, Russo treats his own
wounds and then tries to make a break for it. He gathers a go bag and starts
emptying out his all safe when Homeland Agents enter his home. He kills the two
that made it to his floor, and then mows down DHS Agents all the way to the
ground level. He firebombs the building for good measure as he walks away. Don’t
think he’s going to get his security deposit back on that place…
At the Madani’s, David does his
best to pay his friend back for all he’s done. Literally. Micro gathered some funds
from a few disreputable individuals and gave all that money to Frank as
payback. Frank isn’t sure if he wants it, but David insists that he take it and
run. Madani seconds that idea, promising Frank that she will hunt him down if
they ever meet again. Frank leaves, with a smile on his busted-up face.
Back at DHS headquarters, CIA D.D.
James and DHS Director Ramirez grill Madani about what happened. Everybody
knows she helped Castle escape, but she won’t fess up to it. They eventually
agree it’s best to let this sleeping dog lie, and they dismiss Madani to fill
out her reports.
Sometime later, Curt is visited by
Russo. His old Marine buddy wants to know where Frank is. Curt is able to distract
Russo almost long enough for Frank, who was watching from across the street, to
snipe him. But, Russo got wise and dodged at the last moment. Frank calls Curt
and gets passed over to Russo. Frank agrees to let Russo go if he let’s Curt
go, and then to meet him somewhere for them to finish this. Russo agrees, and
chooses to meet at Midnight, at he Carousel that Frank’s family died at. Sick weirdo.
A few hours later, Russo kidnaps a
few concession store employees at the Carousel and uses them as hostages for
Frank. At Midnight, Frank comes in with guns at the ready. He also texts Madani
his GPS location, for back up. What follows is a fully automatic blood bath as
the two friend-turned-enemies do their damnedest to kill each other. Bullet’s
fired, wounds delivered, blood spilled, and chaos everywhere. Madani shows up
towards the fight’s climax and takes a bullet for Frank so that he can get to
Russo. Frank ultimately get’s Russo in the gut with a chunk of glass, and then puts
a knife to his neck, prepared to finish him off. But, instead, Frank decides to
go with a crueler method. He takes Russo’s already injured face, smashes it and
rubs It against broken glass for a bit, but leaves him former friend alive.
Why? So, he can know the pain of waking up every morning and having to relive
anew the sense of loss. Just like Frank does. Afterwards, he sits with Madani until
the police arrive.
 |
| Frank is ready to move forward in a way that DOESN'T involve shooting people. I'm as surprised as you. |
After things calms down, three days
later, Frank is brought in to see Madani. She survived a bullet to the head.
What are the odds? Rather then crunch the math on that, we’ll just say
unlikely. But, even more shockingly, James and Ramirez inform Frank that they’re
letting him go. As ‘Thanks’ for his service and to partially make up for this poop
storm, they’ve reworked the narrative of events, making Russo and Rawlins the
real baddies, and officially killing Frank Castle. On paper. Peter Castiglione
is free to go. They swapped out all of his finger prints and DNA with a dead
man in their databases, so that it’ll be impossible to track him. Russo, as it turns out, is still alive but is
in a sort of coma. They aren’t sure when, or if, he may wake up. Ach-sequel bait-oo.
Sorry about that. Frank sees David is returned home, and then goes to Curt’s support
group, as he’s ready to move forward.
Overall, this was a good series. I
liked following Castle’s journey from broken man to… well, a broken man with a
chance at being fixed. Not completely, but enough to be a functional human
being again. There was plenty of blood, bullets and character moments to fill
any Punisher fans dreams. If you’re wondering why it took me so long to get
through it, if I liked it, the short answer is I needed to do this in bursts.
The Punisher story is inherently incredibly depressing, I needed to go over it slowly
so as not to bum me out. Hmm… what else to say? I guess that the one thing I
question is the bit about Frank letting Russo live. I mean, it makes sense in a
lot of ways, make him suffer like Frank has suffered and all that, but it’s not
a very Punisher thing to do. Frank kills people. He’ll occasionally wound, or
maim, but his first choice for targets is to kill them. I know that this was to
set up Billy Russo as his Jigsaw persona. Jigsaw is, to my knowledge, one of
only a handful of Punisher’s regularly recurring antagonists. In most
incarnations he’s a gangster that got his face mashed up by Frank in a
confrontation. So, very true to form in that regard. But, here’s the thing, Frank
thought he killed him in the incarnations I’ve seen previously, the bugger just
refused to die right away and ended up with a mangled face. I think that Punisher: Warzone did it slightly
better, having Frank shove Russo into a machine recycling glass and leaving him
for dead. But that’s just me. I did enjoy Russo overall, and how they somewhat
more subtly showed his motivations. Let’s compare him to say… Diamondback. The TV
version of Diamondback is looking to kill his half-brother Luke Cage as he felt
his sibling got their father’s love/respect as Luke was his legitimate child. He
loudly proclaimed this often after he’s introduced, showing off his hatred for
Luke and his love of their shared parent, in a matter, by quoting bible verses.
Russo, we know, is about the money. But this is shown by his actions, going to
fancy restaurants, dating gorgeous women, driving fast cars, running a successful
company, and all that. We see WHY he’s so into this with the visit to his
mother a few episodes back. She never wanted him, so he proves his worth by
literally being worth a lot. Sure, he shouts about his love of money during the
final confrontation, but it doesn’t come up much before. Just saying. So yeah,
in the end I’m glad I watched it, and would be interested in seeing a second
season. Woo!
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/19780476
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment