this is.... so bad

s1 was so fantastic and this is just awful

1. billy's facial scars are ridiculous. he's supposed to be disfigured, not "Ben Barnes, Sexiest Man Alive, with a bit of a scratch"

yes that was dumb

like, come on, guys. you could have at least tried a little bit

2. I am so, so, so, so tired of the "true believer religious fanatic who does evil things because it's God's Will". it's been done to death, no one has brought anything new to this trope in years, it's boring as hell, please stop this

and WTF does it have to do with Punisher, thematically, at all?

like, did this dude get lost on his way to the Daredevil set?

Is it?

disfigured but still sexy is this show's motto

and yuck on the predictable plot idea.

3. Billy's girlfriend/therapist is annoying and yet another shitty, boring character archetype playing out the same stock tropes that we've been watching on crappy TV dramas for the last thirty years. I swear I'm on my way to developing a pavlovian response of instantly bursting into tears of boredom every time she comes on screen

4. Madani is PISSING ME OFF

there are elements of the season that were interesting but could have been done Way Better and it was sort of all over the place
The therapist was one of those. I briefly had hope and then it was vanquished

That is boring, I can attest to that. I'm sick of the idea of the girlfriend or wife being the therapist/glue that keeps the man together.

the actress is so out of her depth here and her character has lost all nuance and narrative coherency

devillady: oh, it's worse, it's Harley Quinn syndrome

Part of me wondered if they were going for "every one of these characters is a Complete Mess" but didn't do it artfully enough to not just make the show a mess that could have been compelling

therapist falls in love with her so psycho!!! but so sexy!!! patient against all logic and professional ethics and proceeds to harbor him and support his illegal activities while periodically delivering earnest, wide-eyed speeches about how we have to believe that anyone can be redeemed!! the world is out to get him!! this is TRU LUV

it's just boring as fuck

it's like they ran out of ideas and just raided a closet full of cardboard cutouts from backstock

I was so hoping they'd do more with Beth :/

5. why the hell are we running two completely separate storylines. Billy and the Evil Evangelists have absolutely nothing to do with each other and the switching back and forth is super jarring and totally fucks with the tone and pacing

something like that could have been really cool if they wove it together progressively as the season went on but I'm 2/3 through and it still feels like I'm watching two different TV shows

6. not to promote the awful trope of "bad guy gets redemption even though he totally doesn't deserve it just because we cast a hot white dude and Hot Dudes Can't Be Evil", but

the evangelist fits in thematically better by the end, I think, but yeah they should've stuck to one storyline. split on two fronts narratively didn't work

literally the only concept engaging me this season is the moral, personal, and existential implications of the fact that Billy can't actually remember any of the bad shit he did

I would LOVE to see that go somewhere

UGH yes

and it's totally not going anywhere

Billy just screams a lot at his therapist girlfriend about how scared and sad he is and there's absolutely no exploration of the complexities of that idea

sealrat: and yeah, what the hell, Beth was awesome! but they dropped her like a barrel of nuclear waste, so there's something else nice that went fucking nowhere

7. another narrative pet peeve: STOP FUCKING LEAVING THE VILLAIN ALIVE BECAUSE "we'd be just like him if we killed him!" and "death would be too easy!"

no one cares about your shallow, manufactured moral dilemma!!

especially when we know you're just going to go back on it when the villain returns in the next season because you DIDN'T KILL THEM, and you're going to proceed to flip-flop on your decision every other episode to generate more milquetoast drama and draw out the plot when the writers run out of actual interesting narrative to drive the story!!

there are so, so many angles to take with why the main character would struggle with killing the main villain, please stop picking the most overused and least interesting one

especially when it doesn't even fit the character

since when has Frank fucking cared what's "good enough" for the bad guys? his superpower is VIGILANTE GUN MURDER, he does not give a SINGLE fuck about stupid-ass hand-wringing middle-school-ethics-class bullshit like that

why would you not have the main conflict be the fact that Frank fucking loves Billy??? the fact that they've been essentially brothers for, what, a decade?? all the characters like to tell us how Frank and Billy were inseparable, once-in-a-lifetime best friends, so maybe, like, use that?

cinnamon_anemone: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

NO NO NO NO

It can't be

Not THAT again

Oh god not that

If there's ONE trope I hate....

That would be it.

devillady right?? IT'S SO BAD

and okay continuing my previous point.... Billy did something unforgivable but that doesn't mean Frank's feelings for him just... stop? that's not how that works? the whole reason being betrayed by someone so close to you hurts so much is that you can't just instantly turn off all those years of emotional connection

could we not have had a couple scenes of Frank struggling with "jesus fuck he's a psychopath who killed my family but when I looked him in the eyes I couldn't pull the trigger because he was my best friend and I don't know how to get over that, how fucked up is that" ?

I'm not saying it's groundbreaking shit, but it's way more interesting and in-character than "death is too good for him"

every time I think they're gonna delve into that more it turns out to just be an off-hand couple lines of conversation and then back to the pew pew boom punch action

it's giving me narrative blue-balls

I will say, I DO like Frank's sidekick, whatever her name is

she's surprisingly entertaining and brings a fresh dynamic to the show that I really like

Amy is great

it's just a shame that she's locked into the Evil Evangelists storyline and just kind of sits around like a piece of furniture whenever the Billy storyline takes over

Curtis continues to be The Best

and I've actually been most enjoying the side-character cops

both the small-town sheriff and Madani's NYPD foil

that sheriff was amazing

I always really like seeing how everyday people are actually impacted by whatever Big Drama is going on with the main characters. it's a nice little window into the larger world and can add some great nuance and pathos

I think the side-characters really shine this season

too bad about all the crap overshadowing them

so, yeah

that's my general thoughts on this season

I mean, I'm gonna finish it, because I'm a slut for Ben Barnes, but what I've seen so far of the actual story has filled me with overwhelming feelings of not caring