The Return of The Punisher


This show interested me from the subtle title, and when I found out we had The Punisher himself, Thomas Jane, in the starring role, I was a goner, so to speak. After watching the pilot and the first official episode, I would most assuredly say to anyone who would listen: count me in for the duration of this bad boy.

Here we have a great premise - Divorced-with-kids basketball coach whose life is financially on the skids seeks a second income. In the brilliantly and meticulously detailed set-up (aka the pilot), it slowly dawns on our hero's consciousness that his tool is, in actuality, the tool he needs to hopefully drill him out of his financial problem.

With the help of a friend, Tanya (Jane Adams, also perfectly cast), Ray takes the baby steps required to bring his idea to fruition. (She has already sampled his wares and has been extreeeemely impressed.) In the first episode past the pilot, he enlists her help (as his pimp) in getting him some clientele. She comes up with a killer merchandising plan, very involved and thought out, and she has a friend who is a 'professional shopper' for older women, to boot. She suggests she enlist this friend, in the hopes that her shopping clients also need to get laid. There's a hilarious scene where Tanya coaches the coach in the finer points of female seduction, involving more attention to foreplay, compliments and yer basic overall studly conduct while in the field.

Although I loved this scene for the wit of it, I thought it was predictable in the way Tanya's character was saying all women needed tons of foreplay, compliments, blah blah blah, in order to get in the mood. In my experience, all women are hardly like that, and I was thinking the show was leaning toward a far more conventional turn than I wanted. This, however, was thrown out of the game in the next scene, where our SIT (Stud In Training) shows up at the client's door and she turns out to be anything but yer basic conventional female, commanding him from the get-go to do away with the tedious foreplay and compliments and get down to business, which she seemingly does, in every position known to man and the canine world as well.

Thomas Jane is more than up to his challenge here; he comes across as a 'normal guy' thrust into a situation he's not quite comfortable with, and that's the charm at the heart of this brilliantly conceived show. My only hope is that they can - pardon the pun, but it's almost obligatory - keep it up.