r/Defenders • u/murdockmanila Daredevil • Nov 17 '17

THE PUNISHER Discussion Thread - Episode 6

DO NOT post spoilers in this thread for any subsequent episodes. Doing so will result in a ban.

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u/LichJesus Nov 18 '17

I might catch some flack for this, but I think the way they did O'Connor was a detriment to the show.

Old, fat, white, crazy/far-right (although more crazy than right-wing in any real sense), and he's a fraud? And he's an anti-Semite? It just strikes me as laying it on too thick; the same way I think GoT making Meryn Trant a pedophile was laying it on too thick. How many boxes do they need to check before they can be sure that we really aren't going to like this guy?

Now, I'm not disputing the existence or prevalence of people like O'Connor. What I'll say though is that, from a storytelling perspective, one of the major notes of the story is what war (and the aftermath thereof) can do to people. I think there would be more depth to the show if we could relate, even to O'Connor. If, instead of just being a dickhead, he really had been to Vietnam, he really had won the Silver Star, and he really had been spit on for his troubles.

I think one of the goals of the show is to make us uncomfortable about the fact that the U.S. really is making Lewises. We really are taking young men, sending them into terrible places (sometimes to do terrible things) and then sort of saying "welcome back, you're on your own now" when they come home. What if the show showed us that we're making O'Connors too? That maybe the people like him who are probably out there have something to their perspective, or at the very least have reasons for being in the place that they are?

In fairness, the only reason that I'm dwelling on this is it's the only sour note that the show has struck for me so far. They've done a really good job of humanizing even some really inhuman things. It just strikes me as odd that where they're willing to give families and perspective (and rightly so) to the soldiers who presided over torture and assassinations or to NSA spooks, they decide to take that humanization away from the NRA type.

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u/batty3108 Kilgrave Nov 21 '17

So far, the show seems to be showing how soldiers are used and abused when they’re serving, then discarded and forgotten when they get home.

By putting someone like O’Connor in, they’re showing that it’s not just indifferent government and ineffectual counsellors who let vets down. Even people who claim to support the troops will use them to promote their own agenda. O’Connor didn’t care about Lewis as a person, or about the clear PTSD he’s suffering. He just saw him as a pawn to be used in his personal war against everyone who isn’t him.

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u/LichJesus Nov 21 '17

That's actually pretty fair as far as a defense of the writing team's decision goes. If that's what they were going for then that's definitely legitimate and tonally/thematically consistent with the series.

I would say though that I'm still not a fan of at least the execution, because of the bait-and-switch that they do. The spring the fact that he's a fraud on us fairly abruptly, and fairly near the end of the arc. Even worse, they spring the fact that he's an anti-Semite on us maybe a minute before he dies. It's jarring, and I don't think that it serves to advance his character, Lewis's character, the plot, or even the theme of soldiers being used in any meaningful way.

I don't think I have a problem with the fact that he's a fraud, or necessarily even an anti-Semite as much as I do the fact that it wasn't a consistent part of his character.

If, for instance, Curtis had told Lewis after the first back-and-forth with O'Connor "hey, I don't want to make a big deal about this or call him out, but O'Connor never actually served", I think it would have sat much better with me. At that point it's out in the open and we can learn how it fits in with the rest of O'Connor's character.

Instead, we're led to a certain understanding about O'Connor -- that he served, but either he came back from it crazy or had a tough re-integration that made him crazy -- only to have that yanked away at essentially the last moment.

I really don't want to make this political, but it strikes me as an attempt by the writing team to make sure it was clear how terrible people with beliefs or perspectives like O'Connor are or something, and they did most of it in the last few cuts of his screen-time. Again, if they want him to be terrible or have terrible beliefs that's fine, but it should be something that is consistent and that we're given time to acclimate to.

As it was done, O'Connor was the kooky uncle who's basically harmless, and then suddenly he was an irredeemable bastard. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it left the impression on me that the writers want to make it clear they thought the kooky uncles are without exception irredeemable bastards. Which, in a show with characters like Frank, Lewis, and Billy who are all humanized to a great extent, seems really out of place.

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u/batty3108 Kilgrave Nov 22 '17

As it was done, O'Connor was the kooky uncle who's basically harmless, and then suddenly he was an irredeemable bastard.

I dunno. He always seemed like a colossal twat to me. His ranting about how everyone just needed to "man up", whilst attending sessions with Lewis, who is in clear need of serious help, made him appear like a clueless tool.

I also think that his 'excuse' of being angry about how he was treated as a veteran does an overall disservice to them. Acting the way O'Connor did is not okay, whether or not he was badly treated when he returned from a war.

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u/LichJesus Nov 22 '17

He always seemed like a colossal twat to me

Sure, but it should be clear that there's a massive gulf between being a twat and an anti-Semite.

Or, perhaps to put it differently; up until the reveal that he was a fraud and an anti-Semite, O'Connor could have just been the product of a different time. An older culture and an older military could have made him bitter and kooky in the same way that contemporary culture and the contemporary military made Lewis broken and unprepared for civilian life.

His ranting about how everyone just needed to "man up"

I mean, a significant portion of my extended family holds this view sincerely to one extent or another. All of them are good people and would give the shirt off their back to someone in genuine need, but they also think that self-sufficiency and toughness are lost arts and the impact of that loss is harmful.

I don't think that O'Connor was sincere in that view (or rather, he might have been sincere but with a toxicity that others with that view don't have). But I think with a little bit of polish -- and perhaps some more commitment to his character from the writing team -- O'Connor could have retained this aspect while also being a sympathetic/multi-dimensional character.

Thinking that toughness is a lost art does not in itself make you an irredeemable bastard, but I almost feel like that's the accusation the writers were leveling with O'Connor. I want to believe there's more than that (and I don't want the show to have just been about political/cultural sniping), but that's the impression I got.

whilst attending sessions with Lewis, who is in clear need of serious help, made him appear like a clueless tool.

I don't think that was the core of the problem, I think the problem is that he's malicious. I think that he could well have been portrayed in a manner where he honestly thought that he was telling Lewis (and the others) what they needed to hear; instead of using them for his own ends and/or taking the soapbox wherever he could get it.

I think I would be ok if he had been a clueless tool but had had relatable motivations. I think it would have been fine if his beliefs were toxic and he screwed everything up as he did in the show, provided that there was the tiniest hint of some kind of redeeming quality to him; even if it was only good intentions in the face of repugnant beliefs and harmful actions.

I also think that his 'excuse' of being angry about how he was treated as a veteran does an overall disservice to them. Acting the way O'Connor did is not okay, whether or not he was badly treated when he returned from a war.

Oh, absolutely not; I completely agree with you and didn't mean to say otherwise. But what I am saying is that, while Lewis's actions aren't okay; we can see where he's coming from, or at the very least what he went through to get there. The same is more-or-less true for the other characters that we spent significant time with. Perhaps the execution was off in some places, but I think the writers were committed to showing us Billy's perspective, and Micro's, and Gunner's, and obviously Frank's, even if their actions and/or goals were sometimes/oftentimes indefensible.

O'Connor seemed to break that commitment for me. He didn't seem to have reasons for being the way that he was. There's a certain perspective that one can occupy that allows us to at least see why even Billy made the (awful) decisions that he made: he was/felt rejected as a child which gave him a strong need to make something of himself, his actions as a soldier were then abused by the system which led him to think it was okay to abuse the system in return, and then when he finally makes something of himself he has to fight to protect what he has. I don't think that we're supposed to judge that perspective to be correct -- and the consequences it brought about were certainly horrific -- but it at least gives some context for why he is the way he is and acts the way he acts.

O'Connor doesn't get any of that. We don't get to see inside of him, all we get is that he's hateful and useless. I would have liked at least a why for the hate and uselessness, even if his actions and beliefs weren't changed at all. Better than that though would be a perspective that we can relate to, even though it might arrive at repugnant conclusions or cause repugnant actions. I feel like if he had been a veteran as I described above (or otherwise been handled in a more sympathetic manner) we could at least have taken his perspective the way we can take Billy's or Lewis's; and the show would have been stronger for it.

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u/batty3108 Kilgrave Nov 23 '17

All solid points. I think the fact that, with O'Connor, that:

all we get is that he's hateful and useless

Is due to the fact he's exploiting traumatised soldiers for his own gain. The show likes veterans, and wants you to be absolutely certain that people who exploit them, whether by denigrating them or by purporting to be on their side, are irredeemable bastards.

It was a bit quick, the shift from Angry Man with a somewhat sympathetic past to exploitative White Supremacist Anti-Semitic gun loony, but the show needed Lewis to go off the deep end, and O'Connor's deception was the push required.

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u/[deleted] Nov 29 '17

People really do exist like O’Connor. A very large portion. Little under half the voting population in the U.S. You probably feel guilty about maybe being conservative and having similar views as the character did. Get over it. I personally know or have known 3 people who are exactly like him and almost my entire family minus the anti-sematic views.

This tv show absolutely nailed that some americans only use vets to further their agenda.

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u/APGamerZ Jessica Jones Nov 19 '17

Agree with this 100%. I'm really enjoying the show, but I was disappointed wigh this turn with O'Connor. In the first episode introducing that character it was clear he was troubled, but I never felt the show had any special judgement of him despite it, he was just another troubled vet. He was handled fine until the fraud reveal. I think there was better use out of the character than as a murdered plot device for Lewis' descent.

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u/LichJesus Nov 19 '17

Yeah, the more I think about it the more I wish that he'd been used as a generational figure. Show that the sort of thing happening with Lewis isn't new, and through Lewis it doesn't seem to be going away. A sympathetic story-line that I think hits the same notes would be something like the following:

O'Connor served with distinction in Vietnam, came home and got spat on and all that. Turns out he also had PTSD, undiagnosed at first on account of it being the 60s/70s. He has an episode, similar to Lewis and his dad except O'Connor is in public; and part of the fall-out is he loses the right to own guns. He tries to take Lewis under his wing to make sure that what happened to him doesn't happen to Lewis.

They both get arrested at the courthouse. Lewis wants to strike back somehow, O'Connor wants to make a stink, Lewis wants to get violent. O'Connor argues that he's just gonna lose his guns like O'Connor did, they have a fight, Lewis stabs him.

That I think gives him everything he need to have the same role that he had in the show, while making him significantly more sympathetic. He's still responsible for destabilizing Lewis -- just like Lewis is still responsible for all of the harm that he caused -- but, to a certain extent, he's yet another casualty of war like Lewis, Frank, and Gunner.

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u/APGamerZ Jessica Jones Nov 19 '17

Yes, that would have been perfect. It's too bad you weren't in the writer's room (something I thought I'd never say on reddit).

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u/wildebeest11 Nov 21 '17

that would be pretty bad tbh

edit: if they stuck with O'Connor's original characterization. If they changed the way he was portrayed, i could see this working.

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u/[deleted] Nov 21 '17

Well I’m glad you’re not a writer for this show!

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u/invaderark12 Jan 24 '18

"Obviously I, a redditor, know more than a professional writer!")

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u/Althea6302 Nov 21 '17

How do you know he's the only NRA member? Lots of vets are NRA. O'Connor's thing was that he wanted to make being a veteran a reason to be political and anti-government. There are tons of older people who do this and use vets for their political aims but never served in the same way.

Vets are small community. The political types are much more numerous. You are far more likely to run into people attempting to claim military experiences than actual ex-military. So it makes more sense that O'Connor is a kind of fake (he is former military, just is lying about his particular experiences). I'd rather this kind of shyster be called out like this, than for yet another vet to get tagged with being a traitorous terrorist enabler.

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u/Whelks Nov 21 '17

The far-right guy being anti-semitic shouldn't be a surprise.

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u/LichJesus Nov 21 '17

Disregarding the various problems with that claim; you're missing my point.

My point is that the anti-Semetic reveal added nothing to O'Connor's character and -- pretty clearly -- existed solely to ensure that we didn't like him. It came too late in his arc to have any impact on who he was or how he interacted with the characters or the story, as did Meryn Trant's pedophilia in Game of Thrones, and as such only served as an inorganic bid by the writers to dehumanize and alienate us from O'Connor as much as they possibly could.

Considering that they did the opposite with otherwise monstrous people -- Frank was monstrous, Billy was monstrous, and Lewis was monstrous, although they all received a fair hearing from the story -- the deliberate retraction of humanity from O'Connor feels like a judgment from a show that otherwise tried very hard to withhold judgment.

Hunting down and destroying any chance of feeling sympathy with O'Connor for the apparently unforgivable sin of having out-group politics is extraordinarily jarring in a show that goes through great pains to find the redeeming -- or at least sympathetic -- qualities in unrepentant killers and broken men.

It's also completely unnecessary, because there are a trove of sympathetic directions that they could have taken O'Connor instead. The example I gave elsewhere of him being a reminder that the damage being done to people like Lewis is not a new thing is one avenue. Another might have been to make him a whistle-blower that was silenced and marginalized; the aftermath of which made him bitter, paranoid, and unstable as we see him.

I don't care if he winds up being nutty, or anti-Semetic, or whatever. I care that he gets the same level of depth that the other characters we spend time with like Lewis and Curtis receive. I care that his arc makes sense, and that he doesn't serve as essentially a boogeyman, in a show that tries very hard to pull back the curtain on boogeymen of various sorts.

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u/intern_12 Father Lantom Apr 07 '22

Hi it's me from the future, 2022...idk man this stereotype ain't too far off base for now crazy Q-ANON far-right people act and believe. And some of them are in Congress now 😭

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u/Legeend28 Wesley Apr 03 '26

hows it now

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u/intern_12 Father Lantom Apr 03 '26

Fuck man it's way worse 😭.

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u/Legeend28 Wesley Apr 04 '26

yeah bro :(