What I’m Watching: The Punisher

The Punisher: Season 1, Episode 7 “Crosshairs” (B)

I’m not sure why we’re spending so much time focused on Lewis. Obviously he has some serious issues that are turning him into an uncontrollable killer capable of going completely unnoticed by society, but it’s not clear how he’s going to tie in with the main plotline. Frank’s main mission is to take out the trash, to go up against those like Agent Orange who are evil because they know what they are doing is wrong, not because a switch has flipped and they’re unable to control what they do or why they do it. As dynamic as Lewis is in his creepiness, his father Clay, played by Tim Guinee, an actor I first came to dislike watching the awful “Revolution,” is completely bland and relatively personality-free. Fortunately, more of the hour was focused on Frank and David, and his family, who are becoming increasingly close to Frank as David starts to think about what it might be like to actually get to reveal that he’s alive to them, something that he doubts will go all that smoothly. It was not a good episode for Colonel Morty Bennett, who got caught in the middle of some sexual behavior that he probably wanted to keep quiet, was spared by Frank, and then killed anyway by a far from trustworthy Billy. The ending of the episode was quiet but appropriately intense, with Frank getting that perfect shot to the head while staring right at Agent Orange, only to discover that his walls were bulletproof and he now knows exactly how close Frank is to him.