Happy Big Wednesday, rail riders! This is the evening where more pussies are done from the caboose than on any other night of the calendar year. Forget NYE, forget Halloween, forget St. Patty’s Day – Big Wednesday is the night when people are getting their fuck on. Young thundacats are home from Thanksgiving, young professionals are in their hometowns and having dick measuring contests galore, and old heads like myself want to go out and lay that real man game on the line. It’s glorious. How is your boy PBM going to be spending Big Wednesday? Probably watching “The Punisher.” Since my current love interest (aka Parker Swayze) is a bit younger and still on that club scene, I’ll probably go out to dinner with Momma Dukes and curl up to watch my Jon Bernthal put on a tour de force as Frank Castle. I watched the first two and a half episodes last night, and I have zero hesitation saying it’s in the top three Marvel Netflix seasons thus far. As it stands, I have my power ranks as:

1. Luke Cage Season One
2. Daredevil Season One
3. Punisher Season One
4. Daredevil Season Two
5. The Defenders Season One

Now, it will be very hard for Bernthal as Castle to defeat DD season one (because D’Onofrio as Kingpin is simply beautiful) and Luke Cage’s first season had EVERY EPISODE NAMED AFTER A GANG STARR TRACK. THAT SHOW IS GAWD. But, if certain things break right, this show could pull off the impossible and dethrone Cage. Here are the reasons why:

1. The bar for “The Punisher” was so low that fanboys like myself were clamoring for an halfway decent representation of Frank Castle’s struggle.

Castle is one of the original anti-heroes, and we live in a day and age were anti-heroes dominate the content cycle. Which is kind of perfect for me, because anti-heroes are my true heroes, and more and often than not, I prefer villainous ones or just villains in general. Heroes are fucking boring. Bad guys have a history. Frank Castle is not a good guy – he’s a ruthless, calculating, torturous, murderous bastard. The guy who wrangles the Mako sharks in “Deep Blue Sea” can’t play that role.

That trailer might be deceiving, but if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I’m saying. It’s so, so bad. It’s nausea inducing. Jon Bernthal induces no nausea as Castle. He’s FUCKING AWESOME. I love him in pretty much everything, and I when I found out they cast him in the role, I did a jig.

He carried “The Walking Dead” when it was good. He carried “Fury.” He was the only redeeming piece of “Baby Driver.” He was insanely awesome in a bit part in “Sicario” + “Wind River.” I love the guy. He’s now laying waste to all former Frank Castle’s. He IS The Punisher.

2. The MCU doesn’t feel forced on you at all.

If you watch a ton of comic book shows and comic book movies, this can sometimes feel like it is all too much the case. ATrain and I touched on it in our “Thor: Ragnarcock” review. A lot of the times it feels like Marvel is throwing comic book characters into a screenwriter’s room blender and making a crappy smoothie with words – hold the bee pollen. This show isn’t doing that. There is one major crossover thus far, and it’s limited. This is essentially Castle’s show, and that’s the way it should be. The aforementioned smoothie technique took “The Defenders” from 5 stars down to 3.5.

3. The build up to the villain reveal is going to be worth the wait. And the villains of “Punisher” past stunk, so standards are low.

If you aren’t familiar with “The Punisher,” he tangles with some pretty sadistic villains – Jigsaw and Barracuda being my favorite. After 2.5 eps, I’m still not sure who that villain is going to be, and it’s ok. For the layman, they teased that Mircochip would be the villain. That’s Castle’s boy, family. Quick tangent – my only beef with the show so far is Mircochip. They should have just let Wayne Knight play the role again. He was in the shitty Ray Stevenson “Punisher” movie. More on that shortly. He’s Nedry doing his thing.

Now, it you watched that clip, you saw McNulty doing a horrendous Jigsaw. The worst performance of his career, I’d be willing to say. It’s an abomination. Just look at him!

Amazingly enough, he wasn’t even the worst “Punisher” villain. That honor goes to none other than John Travolta in the piece of shit Thomas Jane “Punisher.” He looked like this:

He played a guy named Howard Saint. No one knew who the fuck Howard Saint was. He was a made up villain. And Travolta most definitely needs some help getting into villainous roles if he isn’t working with Tarantino or John Woo. He, shall we say, struggles with the part. Now, for this Netflix series, I’m not going to spoil the reveal. I’m just a nerd who knows villains and their human names. But if you have any inklings as to who the main villain might be, you might want to hold off. The reveal is looking like it is going to be incredible.

So that’s my take on “The Punisher.” It’s really dope. Current score is a perfect five out of five pussies from the caboose. Get loose this weekend and watch it, family. You won’t be disappointed.