I liked the season overall. It wasn't as good as the first but there were some major highlights and Bernthal was born to play Castle. If it is the last season, though, it must be considered a disappointment.

Just finished it a day ago, and I feel like its on par with season 1. Franks relationship with Amy was honestly great and made up for the lack of Micro (who I wish was present in some capacity at least, not even a mention was a bit sad). My biggest complaint with S1 was the government conspiracy plot line and I'm glad that's not involve this time around and we get good ol' punisher vs organized crime. Without spoilers, I'm sure many will might think the ending of Russos plot line is a bit anti-climactic, but I personally felt it worked perfectly for a Punisher show. Wish we got more of Frank Vs Pilgrim as I really liked their relationship towards the end.

I'm sure they have their reasons (probably financial), but someone needs to lay a smackdown to the Netflix folks.

Pretty good season. Not as good as season 1 but still solid stuff.

Only major gripe: Jigsaw [frick]ing sucked. No need for him. Pilgrim was so good and Billy's story was so boring, you couldve kept him in a coma and had the season end with him waking up.

Shame because Billy was so good in season one.

Hotel fight and the bathroom fight were amazing.

Bernthal IS THE PUNISHER. Chills...

I'm 4 episodes in so far and I'm glad they haven't found a way to shoehorn in Claire or Karen.

Finally nice to have a Punisher article out. Lots to talk about, here are my 'negatives'.

The second season was good and enjoyable, but it was not as good as the very good first season. I rewatched season 1 the weekend prior, and season 2 was definitely a bit underwhelming overall compared to the first. And honestly, I finished the season a little disappointed about this because I was hoping season 2 would be as good as, if not better than season 1. The ingredients for an excellent season were all there, but ultimately it seemed like the show was running in place, never reaching what was at the end of the road. Season 2 for me is like an 8.8 or 8.9 out of 10.

This season had a lot of issues with pacing, they really stretched the story out for 13 episodes. At times it was a bit boring with not much going on; I think episode 4 was the weakest of the season. It was largely slow for the first 2/3 of the season. And the story in general was just not as interesting as season 1, and kind of retreaded at times what we had gone through during season 1. I found the writing and narrative in season 1 much stronger.

I really didn't like the therapist, her storyline was a major detraction from more interesting stuff going on; much less time should have been spent with her. I also didn't care for Madani much of the season, she became very one dimensional and I found her to be poorly written compared to her arc in season 1.

Billy Russo... I was kind of disappointed with his story. I expected them to explore his fractured mental state much more, to really show how crazy and damaged he was. From the promos and previews, it seemed like we were going to get a really damaged Russo, and that just never happened. Instead we ended up with someone who... thinks Curtis and Frank are his friends for a while. And I also didn't like that he never actually remembered what he did. At first he was struggling to remember, and that just kind of was tossed aside to focus on him screwing the therapist. And while it was apparent towards the end of the finale that he would die, I didn't quite expect Frank to just show up and kill him that quickly. I think it robbed us of a heartfelt apology from Billy. They honestly should have had Billy more of a background secondary character, and have set him up for a potential return in a third season (while also closing his story if the show were to not continue).

I think the absence of a military and/or government component also negatively affected the season. Frank is a soldier- you need to have a military presence like we had in season 1. And while the DHS office time got boring at times in season 1, this season we had absolutely none of that.

While Amy was a perfectly fine addition to the show and they did a pretty good job exploring and developing the relationship between her and Frank, and it was pretty heartfelt at times, especially when she and Frank say goodbye since he kind of became a surrogate father to her, she is no Micro. The absence of a Micro like character also had an impact.