Let’s enjoy another round of The Punisher before Netflix inevitably cancels it
TV Lists What's On Tonight
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Friday, January 18 and Saturday, January 19. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Marvel’s The Punisher (Netflix, Friday): Poor Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) thought that after spending all of season one avenging his family’s murder, his work would finally be done. He thought he could wipe the blood from his brow, hang up his weapons, and attend support group meetings in peace. But sadly for Frank, this show is called The Punisher, and it won’t let him rest until there are no wrongdoers left to be punished—or, more likely, until Netflix inevitably cancels the show a few days from now. (If Daredevil can’t survive Netflix’s Disney cleanse, what can?)
As enemies old and new (including a very angry Billy, who’s looking barely cut-up enough to merit the name Jigsaw) drag Frank back into a life of satisfyingly righteous bloodshed, he’ll be confronted with a difficult choice: yield to his softer side, or learn to embrace the antihero role he was destined to fill. You can read Alex McLevy’s pre-air review, and look out for Caroline Siede’s episode reviews. In the meantime, please enjoy this trailer that, like Frank himself, really seems to revel in the violence.
Regular coverage
Rupaul’s Drag Race All Stars (VH1, Friday, 8 p.m.)
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (The CW, Friday, 9 p.m.)
Wild card
Grace And Frankie (Netflix, Friday): Just three days after Netflix gave us the happy news that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin’s odd-couple dramedy would be back for a sixth season, Grace and Frankie are golf cart-crashing their way back to Netflix for season five, blow torch in hand. After the entrepreneurial women bust out of the retirement home their adult kids had exiled them to only to discover their house had been sold, the friends are determined to defy the idea that they’re incompetent or in need of saving. They will do this, apparently, by taking edibles, downing burritos, camping out in beach chairs at the house they no longer own, and saying “fuck it” to their grown children’s—and the world’s—limiting expectations of them. Meanwhile, Robert and Sol confront the tall, handsome, very naked elephant in the room.
This season will guest-star the likes of RuPaul as Benjamin Le Day (whose approval Grace and Frankie inexplicably crave despite his immediate disdain for them) and Nicole Richie as a pop star named Kareena G.
16 Comments
Politics Corner understands why the shutdown is crowding out all the other news. It’s a massive story. And the Russia stuff has gotten even crazier. But it deeply disturbs me that it took us this long to realize that breaking up families seeking asylum was so widespread before we found out about it, and apparently there were a couple thousand kids taken from their parents before then, and our government only made a real effort to reunite the children who were stripped away after it became a story we heard about. Many more are still separated. Today.We can’t ignore this. We are supposed to be better than that. The lies that buried this terrible program should be thoroughly investigated by the House, and the perpetrators should be held to account. But even more important, we should be trying to make the families we shattered as whole as possible. Irreparable harm is happening every day. https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjIioaqzvbfAhWq44MKHXNcDK8QzPwBegQIARAC&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fopinion%2Fenterthefray%2Fla-ol-trump-migrant-children-separations-20190117-story.html&psig=AOvVaw2LKt3BJhP46AXDH0TPhy5X&ust=1547876200679227
As cliche as it is to bring Nazis into discussions like this, our government is herding people into camps and deceiving the public about the reasons, scope, treatment, and purpose of detention at the border…
“As early as December 1943 SS officials in the Office for Jewish Emigration in Prague, an affiliate of the Reich Main Office for Security, decided to make a film about the camp. Much of it taken during the summer after the Red Cross visit, the footage depicts ghetto prisoners going to concerts, playing soccer, working in family gardens, and relaxing in the barracks and outside in the sunshine. The SS forced inmates to serve as writers, actors, set designers, editors, and composers. Many children participated in the film in return for food, including milk and sweets, which they normally did not receive.”
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/deceiving-the-public
The people of the Anti-Defamation League and DCs Holocaust Museum have both been careful about saying part of the reason they exist is to draw parallels to the ways innocent people are dehumanized and abused today. They’re very careful about explicit comparisons to Naziism. For good reason. But they stand up for the rights of refugees and families seeking asylum, and are willing to draw on the lessons from the past.Our government has broken so many innocent families apart, and we all share some responsibility. It’s being done in our name. We remain a democracy. We have to be better than this. And the ADL, and others who live their lives fighting against bigotry, understand that.
Sorry to say, but your government doesn’t seem to have a plan, while the Nazis did. One of the most vile and evil plans in history, but they had leadership that cared about vile and evil results.
Trump’s playing leader and doesn’t care what happens to the people in his camps. Whether his indifference is worse than being evil, history will judge.
Trump definitely has a plan. He’s going to demonize people crossing the border because it’s all he really has to fall back on. Also, remember that ultimately the evil of Nazi Germany was carried out mostly by people who weren’t zealots. They were mostly people doing their jobs without really thinking about what they were doing it or questioning it. Evil isn’t always a proactive force, it’s usually driven by apathy and banality. These families are being separated by border patrol and INS agents who are just following orders and just doing their job, probably mostly without any active malice on their part.
The plan is exactly the same: dehumanize and destroy Others, legitimize violence and racism, consolidate power, control. The only difference is the utter incompetence of the Trump regime. If they had half a clue we’d all be goose stepping by now.
Guess it depends how you define “plan”. The Nazis had an endgame: world domination. Trump’s team just seem to be hurting everyone, even themselves, and Trump himself doesn’t care. Plans require forethought, and calling this a plan gives it too much weight. Seems more like just spreading the stupidity.
They have plans, they have endgame. They’re all idiots doing it, and their goals aren’t as ambitious as world domination. They want to get re-elected, they want money, they’re racists who hate brown people and want to make it easier to avoid them where possible.
You don’t need to want to conquer the world for white-supremacist ideologies to cause harm. Gate-keeping Nazism is a fucking weird thing to do.
I’m certainly not endorsing/admiring/gate-keeping Nazis. I hope my posts made that clear and if they didn’t I hope this does. This is a discussion started by a comparison, so let’s discuss and compare.
My point is I wouldn’t ascribe planning to Trump, and he and his team seem to do things that hurt their chances to get re-elected and get money. They’re impulsive, reactive and uncaring. These are not traits associated with organised planning to me.
It seems like Trump’s team are just throwing ideas at the wall (pun intended) every week (sometimes everyday) and seeing what sticks to cause the most confusion, most distraction, rallies their base and makes them money. That’s what it seems like to me and you can call that a plan if you like, but that seems like giving them more credit than they deserve.
And ICE held a decorated combat veteran with PTSD for THREE DAYS before they realized he was an American citizen.
I read about that. They were trying to figure out how to deport him, because he damaged a hospital fire alarm. He is a citizen, born in Michigan, and a decorated veteran damaged by our wars. On the other hand, he is a latino suffering from mental illness, so lets deport first and ask questions never. If it makes us feel better about the race thing, plenty of white American veterans suffering from mental illness are also abused and ignored by the system, but we only deport them to our streets. That isn’t a talking point for me, it’s part of my job. (Helping them. Not abusing them.)I don’t know all the details of this case, but I imagine the deportation stalled when they couldn’t figure out where to deport him to and somebody who cared about him spoke up.
There’s a whole site devoted nearly entirely to talking about it.It’s called Splinter.Head there.
HOT TAKE: Disney has no use for a PG-13 Punisher. Netflix gets to keep the show.
I don’t think you understand the market forces at play here. The Netflix Marvel properties aren’t being cancelled to pave the way for Disney to take them over.
Honest question: then why are they being cancelled?
Couldn’t tell you for certain, but I do know that the economics behind “OTT” video are very different than those of traditional broadcast television.