The Punisher-- Marvel/Netflix

The Marvel shows were the reason my wife and I joined Netflix. The Marvel contract must be too costly. I suspect the number of viewers is very high on the Marvel shows (they are always on the trending/popular lists), but that's not how Netflix makes its money. I'm probably out once the last new Marvel show airs. I spend more time on the TrekBBS than on Netflix, anyway.

 

No, it's reportedly because of the competition from the Disney+ streaming service. Having MCU shows on Netflix when there are other MCU shows and movies on Disney+ would essentially be advertising for a direct competitor, and the profit (i.e. increased number of subscribers) they get from the Marvel shows isn't high enough to offset that loss. So this is a domino effect from Disney starting its own proprietary streaming service.

This has happened before -- corporate maneuvers killing good Marvel shows. The animated series The Spectacular Spider-Man was cancelled after two seasons because of a contract deal where Marvel got control of the Spider-Man TV rights in exchange for Sony keeping the movie rights, or something like that, and Marvel ended SSM (which was from an outside production company) so they could make their own in-house Spidey cartoon, the vastly inferior Ultimate Spider-Man. (Although that's recently given way to a new show called just Marvel's Spider-Man that's much better -- and ironically has Spidey's arch-foe Norman Osborn played by the same actor who was Spidey on SSM.)

Right. It's a subscription service, so the key issue is how many subscribers come just for the Marvel shows. Their research found that most of the viewers for those shows were already Netflix subscribers, so the presence or absence of those shows on Netflix wouldn't make a massive difference to their subscription numbers.

 

Did anyone watch the second season, besides me?

I was disappointed. They should have wrapped that shit up after about 6 or 7 episodes and went with what was happening in the very last scene for the rest of the series.

Biggest surprise that I enjoyed is Detective Mahoney was in it a lot. The episode Karen was in was good and I was happy she showed up as well. Madani was good and Curt was great. None of the other characters were really anything worth mentioning, the police chief in Ohio was cool, that 's about it. Lots of not very much happening and stupid side tracks. Bernthal was as good as ever but he was in a story that didn't really go anywhere.

 

I also watched it and enjoyed it a lot, though I did think season 1 was stronger.

 

I'm struggling to get through it.

 

I didn't bother. I wasn't a big fan of the first season and I needed to see glowing reviews to convince me to give it a try, which I haven't seen. There are far better shows for me to watch.

 

I think, for me, two had the slight edge.