Given
that both are men who the world at large believes to be dead, it makes sense
that Frank and Lieberman find their most significant relationships in The Punisher are with each other. With such heavy secrets to keep and dangerous
enemies to investigate, neither has many other places to turn, and even though
the two spend much of the season wishing for anyone else as a partner, they’re
mostly left with what they’ve got (spoilers.)
Since
faking his death to escape dirty government agents, Lieberman has been holed up
in high-tech hideaway, where he watches his family through hidden cameras and
uses the web as his information treasure trove.
As such, he’s not exactly socialized or well-adjusted when he discovers
that Frank Castle, a.k.a. the Punisher, is alive, and so he reaches out by
making creepy phone calls and sending him what for all intents and purposes are
incriminating tapes from Frank’s time in Kandahar. Is it any wonder they don’t get off on the
right foot?
Both guys
have been put, not just through the wringer, but through the wood-chipper by
the U.S. government, and it’s an understatement to say that both have serious
trust issues. Their early relationship
is largely a string of incidents of one getting the jump on the other, one
blackmailing the other, one imprisoning the other, one threatening the other,
and one head-tripping the other. Because
of the horrible things they’ve been through, both feel the need to have the
upper hand in the situation, and that means neither is willing to surrender any
ground to the other.
But there
are bigger things at play here, and ultimately, they have to cede at least a
small amount of trust to one another in order to work together to bring down
the corrupt soldiers and officials who destroyed their lives. Even though their partnership is plagued by
obvious issues, when they do work as
a unit, they’re a force to be reckoned with.
Lieberman’s tech prowess and intelligence-gathering skills are vital in
giving Frank the names and details he needs to go after the bad guys, where he
puts his own, very bloody skillset to use.
It’s
interesting to watch them work. They’re
capable of being so efficient together, but they’re also seriously dysfunctional. And
it’s not just their mutual, justified paranoia – both are also guys with strong
opinions who’ve gotten very used to going it alone, and when they clash over
mission tactics, they risk derailing what they’re trying to do because neither
wants to let the other be right. At the
same time, though, as the season goes on, both realize they really can’t lone-wolf it. Frank doesn’t have the technical skills
Lieberman does, and the higher-ups hide themselves too well for him to find
them through anything other than the most covert methods. And even if Lieberman had Frank’s hardcore
military training, he doesn’t have it in him to do what Frank does.
And so,
they’re kind of stuck with each other, warily working alongside each other as
they work toward the same goal for similar but not identical reasons. They give each other hell along the way,
side-eyeing one another and playing power games to try and convince themselves
that they feel safe, but if either of them has a hope of seeing this through to
the end, it has to be together.
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