Kicking off with a murder from Lewis Wilson, Punisher episode 10 gives us mixed around timelines and conflicting accounts of a bombing involving Lewis' attempting bombing of Senator Ori.
The episode starts us with Lewis killing veteran Isaac Lange, who had been attending Curtis' meetings, and enters his home. Noticing a pair of pet birds, Wilson moves their cage in an attempt to let them go free out the window, but they refuse to move. This moment works in a subtle but effective way to symbolize Lewis' beliefs, as he sees the country as being run by completely corrupt officials who are keeping the citizens caged. To Lewis, the citizens and the birds just don't understand what he is trying to do for them, despite his belief he is on a mission to serve them. To the people and the birds, however, Lewis is just someone who barged in, caused destruction, and is trying to uproot them from the life they know and are comfortable with. We soon move to the building where Karen Page was set to interview Senator Ori on the issue of gun control, finding an overturned room and Russo talking to Detective Brett Mahoney. Hours earlier, Russo was preparing for Karen's interview with Ori, inviting her in and conversing about the ironic situation of a gun-carrying reporter talking to a senator advocating gun control while he is protected by Anvil, a military security company. One detail that Russo fails to share is that Frank calls him soon after, saying that Lewis is coming and he wants Russo to protect Ori and leave Lewis to him. Mahoney also speaks with Ori, who claims that Lewis, after blowing a hole in the room, entered and killed the Anvil guards, before Frank entered behind him as backup. In this version of the story, Ori heroically picks up a gun and shoots back, then flees the scene to get help, narrowly avoiding shots from Frank. When Mahoney shares the story with Karen, she is disgusted, explaining that Ori cowered in fear the minute Lewis entered, and asserted that Frank intervened, saving their lives. In Karen's description, Ori hid behind a couch as Lewis killed the guards and found him, and she left her hiding spot to convince him not to hurt Ori. As Lewis prepared to shoot them, Frank barreled into the room and dove in Lewis' way, taking his shots with a bulletproof vest. Ori then ran away, in Karen's opinion shoving her into Lewis, who then held her captive to keep Frank at bay, and escaped both Frank and guards by showing a bomb he was strapped with an entering an elevator. Once in the elevator, the guards turned their attention to Frank, who ran to a stairwell, shielding himself with a guard's corpse. Back in the present, Mahoney talks with Madani, and the two go over Sam Stein's death before Mahoney asks why Madani was present during the bombing. We see that prior to the bombing, Madani, confronted by Rafael Hernandez, gives the full details on her botched sting operation and the bug she discovered in her office. Relenting, Hernandez gives Madani the case files for each of Russo's men from the sting, and she notes they were all affiliated with Anvil. Back to the bombing incident, Madani is downstairs as Lewis arrives in the building dressed as an Anvil guard, and waits for Russo. Russo comes down, and though he wants to head back up soon to protect Ori, Madani questions him about the men and if he thinks he could figure out who escaped and killed Stein. Now on the defense, Russo brushes the men off as former employees who took their own path, and though feigning being offended, he agrees to ask around if anyone might know who it was. As their conversation gets more heated, the bomb goes off upstairs, and Russo rushes back up as Madani heads for the stairwell, where she encounters Frank. Though Madani demands that Frank hand himself over or be shot, he says she won't do anything and moves close, only for Russo to enter an upstairs door and graze his head with a shot. Frank seems to stunned at what Russo has done, but Madani, now in a standoff with Russo, comes to the realization he killed Stein. Before anyone can move, police swarm the stairwell, forcing the three to lower all weapons and stand still. Madani and Russo are led away, but Frank grabs a fire hose and leaps down the stairwell, landing on a floor after the hose jerks to a stop, injuring his shoulder. Now covered in multiple injuries, Frank enters a downstairs area, where Lewis is struggling to stay calm and Karen is trying to talk him down. In a moment of calm openness, Lewis explains that a mantra he was just repeating, which says if you're surrounded with no chance, you should kill yourself, was drilled into his head overseas. As Frank enters, Lewis again takes hold of Karen, forcing Frank to quickly determine a way to safely get them apart as the episode comes to a peak. The choice to have the story told from the future was interesting, as it is the first to be done this way, rather than having a straightforward, linear progression. It is reminiscent of the Japanese film "Rashomon," in which multiple people tell their version of what happened when a samurai and his wife were attacked by a bandit. Each person't account is drastically different from the others, with the bandit claiming the he bested the samurai honorably and the wife, despite saying she'd leave with him, ran away. The woman says she was a poor bystander and the bandit raped her, then she went unconscious essentially from shame, waking to find him dead. The samurai, speaking through a medium, says the bandit raped his wife, who asked to go with him if he would kill her husband, then ran away when the bandit asked the samurai if he should kill her, so he freed the samurai, who killed himself. A woodcutter explaining the story says he was there, and that in reality both men were cowards when fighting, and the wife was chastising them both, until the bandit got lucky in killing the samurai, and the wife fled. Though a listening commoner realizes the woodcutter stole a dagger from the crime scene and therefore he is also a liar, his story is often believed as the truth. Director Akira Kurosawa, however, has said the point of the film is to explore multiple possibilities, rather than giving a definitive truth. In the end, the woodcutter's story could, at most, likely only be considered the least biased, while stilling not giving us the right details. Later stories to use the "Rashomon Effect" often reveal the actual occurrence of an event at the end, and it is possible that is what happened here. Karen is the last one to share what happened, as she was involved with the Frank/Lewis standoff. Due to what we know about Ori, and more obviously, Frank, his story cannot be believed because he is protecting his pride and we know Frank dislikes Lewis. Karen obviously knows Frank the best, and we know from her work as a journalist that she is a strong advocate for the full truth. One small detail that suggests the truth of her account is how Frank handles situations with Lewis, repeatedly shushing him. We have seen Frank do this in previous episodes, in attempts to calm another person, in particular when Lewis has meltdowns. However, Karen could easily be attempting to make Frank seem more classically heroic than he might have been, in an attempt to make him look good. Really, this isn't a typical "Rashomon" moment, as we only get two differing accounts, since Russo and Madani talk about separate things. However, we do know that each person's story could be slightly untrue, and they don't always reveal the full truth to Mahoney. In Russo's account, he, of course, fails to mention Frank's call, and Madani just says Russo interrupted her capture of a suspect, rather than what she is after Frank for. This, along with the realization Karen even admits to helping Frank escape, does make her story be what we go from. With Madani realizing the truth about Russo, she finds herself in a bad position, because there isn't much she can do. At the moment, Madani has no proof Russo has done anything, as Stein was the only witness to Russo's involvement and she can only say the men used to work for him. This is not evidence enough to prove that Russo was involved, and he has enough power that her attempts to do anything could easily cause problems. Now that Frank and Lewis have come head to head, and Madani has figured out Russo was deceiving her, things are bound to get more complicated in coming episodes.
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