Great show. Gritty. Not woke.

Season 1 Great, Season 2 Woke Trash

Season 1 had some mild woke but I don't remember anything over the top. Generally a great season. Season 2 throws it all out the window. Nothing about this is the Punisher. Terrible writing, the acting is all over the place, the dialogue is laugh out loud bad. Even the action scenes are so poorly shot and choreographed they can't save it. The Punisher is ex military, he plans out and hunts his targets with precision and without mercy. But here he is nothing more than a run of the mill thug who bumbles his way through and is mostly ineffective. In fact all of the male characters are basically over emotional man babies who spend all of there time whining and talking about there feelings and emotions while all the females are strong, smart and intelligent. In fact all white males other than Punisher and the gay son seem to be villains. Jigsaw is a joke and spends most of his screen time in a cry closet blathering to his therapist. And then there is the evil right wing Christian crime syndicate slaughtering at will to hide the fact there son is gay while attempting to take over the government. What a joke.

Mostly not

Overall a dedicated but damaged vigilante with a mission is not very woke to me. There are women in power but they're hardly perfect. Mostly gritty and entertaining.
Jon Bernthal does a fantastic job with a very conflicted character.

Smashing.

First series: fantastic writing, concise, meaningful dialogs, tight photography.
Found it superior to Daredevil. The Punisher is less super-hero, more gritty film noir.

Well, there's still Hollywood trauma recovery, and Hollywood balistic, which are somehow more jarring in a more realistic context.

I would say the purely action part is inferior to the Ennis run of the comic, as Castle can be something of a meathead, whereas Ennis' Punisher was a cold, calculated, tactical killing machine.

Characters are great, no effort skipped in developing even tertiary characters, and the acting is rock solid.

Still, white men can be good or bad, but all bad characters are white men. It's Hollywood, baby.




Second series, well, introduces a single mom love interest (young boy, sort of makes sense in Castle's case), and a sassy, mean, juvenile girl-boss. The kind to give lip when she's just been rescued from assassination, and is even further out of her depth than she is up her own arse.
In short, an unlikeable moron. An unfortunate choice for someone present in most scenes.
She does get better over time, but only marginally. Far less screen time, which is an improvement.
The female mercs start kicking less arse in the second half, because a 100 pounds disadvantage is one hell of a disadvantage.
Tactically speaking, everybody has a two-digits IQ; the "woods at night" scene is particularly egregious.

Honestly, it feels like they started to wokify the whole thing, and thought better of it halfway through.

The new actors are, well, probably less expensive. At least, Stewart is excellent. Photography still top-notch. Music's good. Alice In Chains, always nice. The writing is still decent. Sort of the Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Punisher style, with a side dish of Harley Quin (although Mr J is rather unconvincing).
Still excellent, but definitely a sophomore slump.