BANSHEE Gets Season 3 Pickup

BANSHEE will be back for a third round of action in 2015!   It’s always great news for a television show to get a season pickup in the middle of its current season.   Cinemax bosses aren’t waiting any longer than three weeks into this 2nd season of brutally brilliant action.

Critics can say what they want, but fans speak louder than the writers when it comes to shows like Banshee.   It knows exactly what it is and wants to be and as creator Greg Yaitanes points out, they treat every season as if it’s the last one. That’s a balls to the wall approach and one that serves an action drama like this series.   Coming from the producer behind Six Feet Under and True Blood(Alan Ball), Banshee’s depiction of an upper Northeast town’s madness is addicting and a dish that is so hard to put down.

Banshee isn’t just loved once a week.  Hardcore “Fanshees” like myself take in every episode at least twice, reveling in the glory of violence, sex, and story threads firing like pistons in a mustang.  You can’t just take this ride once.  It has to be re-watched and loved over and over again.  It’s like a candy bar.  You always want more than one and don’t mind licking your fingers clean.

The show is under-appreciated in the story department, with the many threads reaching a tale of two lovers in horrible conditions, An Amish community battling an Indian Tribe and the outside forces(Russian Mob, FBI, District Attorneys) closing in.   There aren’t good and bad guys and girls on this show.  There are bad ass people and anti-heroes spiced up with hot oil and brutally honest rage.

Get caught up now.  The first two episodes of Season 1 and 2 are on Youtube and the season is available on demand and in stores.  Trust me, it’s worth it.  As Yaitanes told Hollywood Reporter this month, “There’s Nothing Like It On Television Right Now.”

Pack your bags for Banshee folks right now!

Warrior Class Recap

Here are a few takeaways from last night’s episode of Banshee, where punches were thrown, strong women made an appearance and legendary entrances were made.

*NO ONE on television plays inner rage and dialogue less emotion better than Antony Starr.   There were certain moments in this hour of television that struck me as special work from the New Zealand actor.  The moment where Carrie says thanks for visiting her in jail during his 30 day stretch even though she never came to see him in his 15 year hike.  A long stretch that has left our hero with a decent amount of post traumatic stress since he gets a little short on air supply during his visits there.  I love the flashbacks to the moment this show kicked off, the first image of Hood with that “let me out of here look on his face”.   Great work from Starr this episode.  The women carry a lot of weight on this show but Starr is the soul of the show.

*A little Law and Order action opens up this week in Banshee.   The death of an Indian girl sets the war with the Amish on fire and this will only get worse.  Casualties hit the Indian tribe first when Proctor goes Al Capone on a couple invading dummies.  The assault includes two testicle smashes, a handoff to Burton and a smile from the silent henchman.  Banshee doesn’t forget about well placed tongue in cheek humor and I can’t wait to see more Matty Rauch this season.

*Greetings Chayton Littlestone.  I had a chance to talk to Geno Segers, the actor who brings this very big man to life, on Twitter this week.  I asked him how excited we should be for the clash between his Chayton and Lucas and his response was pretty much to the punch.

“TWO TONS, bout ta BUST, can’t WAIT a min MORE, bring IT on, waste no MORE time kinda excited. #Feelme?”-Segers

When asked about the hazard coming to Hood and what we can expect from his baddie his season, Segers said the guy isn’t going anywhere.

“He’ll be fine, without him there is no chayton. That said he still proves to be a real issue for the Banshee PoPo.”-Segers

His entrance topped the arrival of the Albino last season and that’s no offense to Joe Gatt.   When Hood and the deputies descended upon the Kinaho reservation for a little chat, we all knew nothing little would be happening.   Watching the reckless Rocky Balboa like Hood strut into action, I remember a line from FX’s Justified.  Lucas Hood is the kind of guy who would touch a stove even if you told him it was hot.  That is who he is and he isn’t changing for a big man named Chayton.

The fight was epic.  The rest of the Deputies going against the rest of the house occupants while Chayton seemed to have his way with Hood.  Segers reminds me of Tiny Lister, because both men are huge and have the most terrifying voice to go with the broken bone treatment.  This is why Banshee rocks the most out of their fight scenes. Every clash is treated like a knockdown all out bashing session but we never forget what is going on.  The camera doesn’t move quicker than our minds can react.   Chayton tossing Lucas threw a room that really lacked solid carpentry was awesome and we didn’t forget their place.

I have been told Hood takes too much of a beating on this show and it wouldn’t be realistic and that is where I pick up a brick and smash it over their head.  THIS IS A TV SHOW.  Make Believe!  It isn’t supposed to be realistic and makes no real claims to be.   I can buy Lucas taking this beating from Chayton because for once he isn’t having a knife plunged in the side of his stomach.  He’s tough and eventually, with the help of Siobhan, gets Chayton in a sleep hold and the big guy goes night night.

*The new District Attorney is sharp and blunt but why do I have a feeling she will be sleeping with Hood soon?   An unbias soul doesn’t promise a complete dish of justice in this town.

*One thing leads to another on this show as well.  Rebecca once again found herself in the middle of a forest alone, basically screaming “come assault me”.   All this ends with Lucas getting a shovel to the head and finding himself in the comfort of his lovely deputy, Siobhan.

For die hard fans of Ana/Lucas, this may have seemed like a disappointment but there was a part of me cheering for these two.  Obviously the sex scene is shown in conjunction with Carrie failing to get a hold of Gordon, who is busy downing drugs and getting a lap dance.  What I see here is a potential future where Carrie stays Carrie and fixes her second family and Lucas finds a new home with Siobhan….but this is Banshee and happy endings aren’t coming any time soon.   This little relationship between Lucas and Siobhan that started with the night of her birthday and her house getting burned down, continued with a hot kiss last week and culminated in a sleep over last night won’t end well.

The true greatness of Banshee is the amount of directions the story could go each week.   So many juicy characters and that includes the arrival of Hood’s son, Jason.  He isn’t the most loving son in the world and wants a Job fresh start before he forgets his dads name now belongs to a criminal playing sheriff.  With Sugar giving him the proper address and a deal seemingly being cut, something tells me this won’t end well either.

And that’s okay.  Part of a television show’s job is to wet our lips, piss us off by placing characters in danger and staying true to their roots all at the same time.  This isn’t Law and Order: SVU where the plot and story will conveniently run together smooth inside an hour’s time.  On Banshee, things just get hotter and more hazardous every week.  Without that setup, the show loses a little bit of luster and appeal.

That’s all for this week.  Next week, we see more investigation into the murder and the Amish family playing more of a role this season.   Chayton making his way out of the police car and flipping it over in the process.   Lucas looking mad as hell as usual while Rebecca seduces Jason and Carrie potentially coming back into her family’s life.   Bright and shiny coupled with the darkness Gordon mentioned in episode 11.   Get ready for more blood.

Thanks for reading and tell me your thoughts on Banshee Episode #13 in the comments section below.

-D.Buffa

Reasons Why Banshee is Awesome

Let’s light up the stove tonight in anticipation of the most enjoyable show on television right now.  Cinemax’s Banshee.

The people have spoken and this show has officially become the cult favorite of the small screen and presents its third hour of the second season tonight.   In honor of that occasion, I present to you a list of reasons this show is awesome.

*The lead character is a classic anti-hero and cool as shit.  Carrying flavors of Steve McQueen, Wyatt Earp and Tyler Durden, Lucas Hood is a criminal in disguise as a sheriff while trying to recapture the heart his lost love.  Total comic book noir material.  He isn’t perfect because perfect good guys don’t exist.  Antony Starr is as soulful as he is violently blunt.

*The female characters aren’t leaden and one note written roles.   The women, in more ways than one, are as strong as the male characters on the show and play a heavy part in the outcome.   Carrie/Ana is brought to vicious life by Ivana Milicevic.  Equal parts brutal and tender, Ivana kicks serious ass.   Same for Trieste Kelly Dunn, the abused deputy settling some scores while keeping in check her attraction to Lucas.  Then you have Lili Simmons’ Rebecca, a woman torn between her Amish past and her future, currently covered in murder, violence and bad decisions.   Rebecca is the kind of girl who has slept with the sheriff and has naughty thoughts about her Uncle Kai yet it doesn’t make us squeamish.   That is because on this show anything is possible and nothing is too far fetched.  And did I mention all these women are gorgeous and are fearless when it comes to baring their bodies?

*The show is deliciously over the top and doesn’t make any promises about plausibility.  You have suspend any realistic belief going into the first episode.  This is cinematic television so why would everything have to make sense?  How would a criminal impersonate a cop for over 1 season without getting caught?  How would he be able to take the most vicious beatings and keep coming back?  Come on.  This is make believe and it’s supposed to be fun.  Banshee isn’t a quiet town and we wouldn’t want it any other way.  Leave the real matters to Downtown Abbey.

*There are larger than life villains on this show.   In the first season, we had the Albino, played with vicious glee by Joe Gatt.  This season, Geno Segers delivers the monstrous presence of Chayton Littlestone.   You know the rule.  Every large badass on television has to have “Little or Tiny” in their name.   Chayton is going to smash some skulls before leaving this small town.

*The bad guys aren’t completely evil.  The creators and writers pay enough attention and develop bad guys instead of simply making them one sided slices of evil.   Kai Procter isn’t a good guy and is definitely a creator of bad things, but he has a past that we get to see and the reasons behind his actions.  This fantasy doesn’t forget about character development.

*The quiet moments are fantastic and well placed.  The Ana-Lucas romantic flashbacks and the current dialogue free moments between them are special.  The Gordon speech at the Mayor’s memorial.   Emmitt and his wife on the football field.   In a series full of action and sex, the small dramatic moments rock us the most.

*Ben Cross plays a character named Rabbit who has an episode’s worth of time yet hangs over the entire series.   Brilliant.

*You get the feeling watching the show that the best is yet to come.  That what we have seen, the carnage and fireworks, is only the scratching of the surface.  That was on fine display in The Thunder Man.  The action, story development and wild set pieces informed us to be on the lookout for awesome sauce later on(that phrase was coined by Milicevic herself).

*The comic relief is always present with Hoon Lee’s Job complaining or extending caution our fellow anti-heroes.  Lee has a gift for snapping off one liners laced with profanity and punctuating it with a look.

*The fight scenes are long, extended, and don’t require a lot of special effects or sound effects.   There’s a deadly silence to them that makes them haunt the following scenes.   The punches, kicks, bites and kinetic action never fail to thrill and it’s all minimal production.   In a nutshell, they seem real and don’t give you a headache.

*Did I mention there is a lot of sex on this show?  That never hurts a Cinemax show that plays after dark.  I am not sure this show works without the fearless nudity?  Difference between this sex and softcore porn is you care about these people.

*Tonight’s episode features a large man named Chayton.   Since he is two times the size of Hood, I felt it was worth mentioning twice.

Have fun tonight and come back tomorrow for the weekly recap of events.

-Dan Buffa

“The Thunder Man” Recap

Well, well, well, this week’s episode of Cinemax’s Banshee didn’t just kick our ass, make us reach for a smoke and a shot of bourbon but left us asking the question.  How much better can this show get every week?   I wonder if creators Greg Yaitanes, Jonathan Tropper and David Schickler sit in their trailers and ask themselves “how much harder can we bring it every week?”   After a solid opening hour that recapped the finale of Season 1 and set the pawns in motion, this week’s dose of Banshee rocketed the story lines forward.  And there are still 8 hours to go.  The Thunder Man got so much done, provided so much story development and entertainment and had us wanting more.   Watching this show requires a steam bath, broken glass and a raw anger found only in anti-heroes, gangsters and men who never fully smile or kiss their mothers any more.  As the keyboard I am currently punching senseless begins to make my knuckles bleed, let’s recap week 2.

A fine female voice sings a slow building bluesy rocker as Lucas hangs over a shower in Nola Longshadow’s exit, Carrie stares into space at her motel, Procter bangs around on the Bruce Lee martial arts stand(love the blood stains), and Rebecca..well has a little girl time.  There is something hypnotic about Lili Simmons’ beauty and it’s part innocence, part sexual predator and part fantastic.  As she rolls around on the bed in just enough clothing to make cave men chisel on walls, naughty thoughts ranging from Lucas to her uncle, Rebecca is the biggest wild card on this show.  She is the Dame of Banshee and she knows it.  She has true curves and a beauty few women can match.  Any episode that starts out with her swinging what she’s got is due to stay with you for awhile(True Detective serves up a dose of Simmons this month too).  Rock on Ms. Simmons.

Shout out to Methodic Doubt and their score on the show.  The hard rock opening credits to go with the slower moves of what I like to call “The Ballad of Lucas and Carrie” that popped up during this episode.  I listened to their music on previous shows but Banshee seems to provide them with a showcase.   The upcoming release of the soundtrack, full of bluesy rockers and other fine selections, will be an easy purchase.  The right music always supports a work of art.  Adds something to the scenes and elevates the material.

Deputy Brock Lotus(the always reliable Matt Servitto, who used to help out Tony Soprano as a Fed) gets another whiff of Procter’s secret menace when he talks to him at the club about a pair of corpses who had Kai’s work written all over them.  Stare down led to little at the moment but more down the road.  I have a feeling Lotus is doomed this season but hopefully I’m wrong.

This episode will more than anything be the rise of Trieste Kelly Dunn as Siobhan gets a fully developed character and her past(briefly seen on Origins) comes to light.  Her abusive ex is back in town asking for redemption via work order and the lift of a restraining order. We all know this only means bad things because this is Banshee and no man is full of good intentions.   The nickname squirrel is thrown around throughout the hour and we are left to wonder what it truly means and how the deputy got it.

Let me just say that Demetrius Grosse is one large man and will hopefully get more key moments on this show.

Carrie gets her 30 days in prison and gets 3 days to feel even worse about it.  Before this show, Ivana Milecevic wasn’t given much to work with in the world of film but she can do so much with a lonely look and a wave of the eyes.  A powerful actress with fire in her heart and the eyes to prove it.

I told you Rus Blackwell was going to get more wicked as the season went on and his small bit this hour had him testing himself against the man he will never truly live up to.   One straight right and a slap to Lucas’ jaw earned Gordon an arm twist and a mouth full of wall with a warming notice to never fucking do it again attached to it.   Ladies and gentlemen, this is your first official dick measuring contest between the soul Carrie/Ana fighters.  Lucas-1  Gordon-0

Hoon Lee, everyone!  His Job walks in the room and instantly lights up the screen.  There aren’t many actors who could make that outfit work while appearing self-assured in it.  For this character, it isn’t a costume.  His normal look is.  What Lee does on screen doesn’t end with mere comedy or a few flickers of the eyes.  There is a genuine care for his comrades in that body and it shows every time he is on screen.

Alex Longshadow is surely going to die at the hand of Kai Procter.  I just know it.  This hour saw the two exchange blows like two boxers in a ring.    Alex blows up a truck of cows.  Nola kidnaps Rebecca.   Kai and Burton(the restrained menace of Matthew Rauch) repay the man with cow guts, severed heads and limbs in the middle of his hot mess Jacuzzi.   Back and forth will end with only one man standing at the end of this season.

Then there’s a weird Catwoman like sequence from Odette Annable, whose Nola apparently can leap and bound around a car and disable 3 Marines with ease before drugging Rebecca and hauling her off to Alex’s lair.  Which happens to be an EMPTY STAINLESS STEEL POOL that doesn’t see any fighting in it this hour.

Lucas and Procter meet again upon Rebecca’s absence, causing a mild standoff that starts with a Kai proclamation and ends with Hood repaying a debt by going all Rocky  like on about 7 casino guards.    Starr plays these scenes so well.   With his usual blend of fearless arrogance, Hood goes at every guy with everything and breaks his wrist in the process(or badly sprains it, a real injury on set).  No man takes a beating better than this guy.   The man is so exhausted that he has nothing left for Nola but outsmarts the Longshadows into giving up Rebecca because it wouldn’t end well.   You see, the Indians are simply doomed.  Nice to look at but doomed.

Side note.  I love the fight scenes on this show because they aren’t sped up too fast to where we can’t see what’s going on and played just slow enough to hear every bone crunch.  The punches don’t carry extra sound effects or far fetched blood splatter.   It’s in your face and perfectly blunt.  Well done stunt team.

Then we have the wonderful advice for Rebecca from Lucas.  Don’t stay with bad men.   Sure, she will do exactly anything but that.

Lucas and Procter play that mind game where one man knows what the other has done(Lucas robbed the Indians casino, not Kai) and neither have to say it.

Longshadow gets his delivery of meat with Ulrich Thomsen leaning in and clearly saying “We are going to fight soon and I am going to win.”

Then…..Burton smiles deviously.  One of the the best moments of the episode.

The delivery of Carrie to jail was my favorite part simply due to the undeniable chemistry between Starr and Milicevic.  The two stars radiate dirty romance when on screen together and easily make up the foundation of the show.   These two are the heart and soul of the story, the two reasons why there is chaos in this town outside of the Procter/Longshadow standoff.  Every time they come into frame together, a certain magic appears.   That silence as the score’s slower poetic moments kicked up with Carrie’s head on his shoulder was so well filmed.

We then get a wonderful Frankie Faison moment and the theme of the season.  “At some point or another, there is only one question worth asking yourself.  What are you going to do now?”

The flashbacks to Lucas’ entrance into prison is well played as well and this is where Starr thrives.   Understated dialogue less performing.   A man becoming claustrophobic at the thought of the love of his life doing hard time.   He has done enough for both of them and it shows in Starr’s acting.

The oxygen deprived drives back to town only to find out Siobhan missed her overnight shift.  That is because the unlawful ex has decided to invade her house and make dinner.  I guess this woman doesn’t believe in locking her doors.   One thing leads to another.  We find out how she got the scar on her neck.   Pushing.  Shoving.  Lucas shows up.  Siobhan is calm and cool.   Gives her sheriff the wrong location.  Gets into a monstrous showdown in a hotel room with her ex and beats him with religion(bloody bible shot another classic Banshee shot).

Lucas shows up, acts like a proud asskicker papa and gives the deputy a pass.  Across town, pain pill popping Gordon is getting treated to a different kind of medicine from a hooker in his car.   Everybody(including myself) can say everything was fine before Lucas showed up in Banshee.  I differ.  Siobhan was still living down the dark years of abuse.  Procter wasn’t put in his place.  Carrie was living a lie.  Dava had no idea there was another father out there.  Rabbit was still going to pounce eventually.  All this fill in sheriff did was accelerate the plot a little….or a lot.  In this town, few people stand in front of their real name.  We don’t know Lucas’ real name.  Ana insists on keeping Carrie Hopeful well alive.  Rebecca is still shredding her Amish past.  We have no idea what Job’s real name is.  On television, mysterious anti-heroes and villains that aren’t necessarily evil give the series more horsepower.  Banshee has so many directions to go and hopefully Cinemax provides the seasons.

The end.  The Thunder Man delivered in ways few show can these days.   With every hour, this show moves, acts, and breathes like a pulpy graphic novel dripping with noir.   Sugar’s question makes me prompt my own.  What will this show do next?

Thanks for reading and come back for next week’s recap of The Warrior Class.  We get our first look at Charlie Littlestone’s monstrous Indian who may give Lucas more than he can handle.  All I can say is there will be blood.

This Town Is Something Else

Hello fellow fanshees.  Lovers of this mad and intoxicating addictive TV show we were introduced to in January last year.  In 10 hours of wildly comic entertainment, Banshee became a premium cult favorite and something to look forward to on Friday night.   Crack open a cold one, sit down, and watch 60 minutes of Greg Yaitanes and Jonathan Tropper’s tale about lost love, bad choices, wild action, and a lot of sex.  Characters known as Sugar, Rabbit, The Albino, Hood, Ana, Kai and Job became souls we would all know as weekly allies in the war against crappy television.   Some shows take a few seasons to become our friends.   This show had me at the bad guy’s head hitting the stump in Sugar’s bar in the pilot.  

Last season, I made periodic recaps on my other main blog, Dose of Buffa, and wrote a total of three spotlight articles for my movie site, Film-Addict.   I felt restrained there.  A certain portion of my readers either didn’t know about the show, were too busy to care or just plain crazy not to try a slice of banshee cake.  It’s awkward writing to people who usually look to you for sports and film analysis and you start ranting about a TV show.  A lot.  I did talk about it a lot.   It was hard not to.  Great TV does that because you can DVR it and rewatch the hell out of it.  Addictions are primal.  Anyway, what I am doing here is writing weekly recaps of Banshee as well as other random insights about the show.  Readers will be welcome and feedback will be appreciated, but just think of this place as your Banshee Pharmacy.  I am here to help.

So let’s roll with the Season 2, Episode 1 recap of Little Fish.  

The hour started out with the shot of a rehabbing Lucas Hood.  Fresh off of a few deep stab wounds from The Rabbit and generally trying to do his normal morning kickboxing, Lucas isn’t 100 percent, as he would note later in the episode.  Hood is haunted by the gangster, and sees his face everywhere.   When Ana walks into the room begging to return to the woman formerly known as Carrie, Lucas draws a gun on her.   This is the predicament the guy has put himself in.   Ever since he stepped foot in this town, people have died, houses have been broken and the future changed.  I like to refer to Lucas the traveling tornado, because wherever he goes things get sucked inside of him and spit out destroyed.

Lucas is like so many lead characters on recent television shows.  An anti-hero with a heart who constantly circles around on bad decisions and gets into trouble.   Put this guy into a room with Tony Soprano and Walter White and Hood has them beat.   Main reason.  His name isn’t really Hood and he basically neutered an MMA fighter once.  Antony Starr is so good at playing Hood.  Understated emotions and facial rage every other scene, the New Zealand actor is pure coiled rage.

Ivana Milicevic matches him too.   A physical actress with beauty to make cavemen chisel on walls, she can kick the teeth right out of your mouth and break your heart in back to back scenes.  She is the first of three people to tell Lucas to get out of dodge in this episode and the first one he denies.

Next we see Rebecca standing at the crossroads of two different prisons, one a little more free than the other.   She can either go with Kai or she can go back to the Amish family who generally despises her and will talk behind her back until she marries and produces 3 kids.  Lili Simmons may be hotter than a cherry red mustang, but she has emotional wells behind those beautiful eyes.   She made the right decision in leaving with Uncle Kai.  She may end up dead, but if she stayed on the farm the death would be a long epic lingering kind.

We get to see the young Deva show some of the criminal flair of her blood line when she steals a pair of earrings.   This young woman has no idea the hardship that awaits her but she handles it like a pro.  Well done Ryann Shane.

The new thorn in the side of our main characters this season will be Agent Racine, played by the brilliant character actor Zaljko Ivanek, a Bureau dust bowl who seems to want nothing to do with the sheriff’s department yet is hiding a few things from his fellow agent.   Isn’t everyone on this show hiding something?

Racine lets everyone off easy, except Carrie/Ana.   She will be prosecuted and forced into uncomfortable encounters with her husband Gordon, a character gaining traction and becoming something worth keeping an eye on the rest of the season.

Before we know it, Job, Lucas and Hood are robbing an armored car from the Casino and everything goes smooth until a faceless ninja like character on a bike forces them off the road and without a heavy portion of their winnings.   When the helmet comes off, we see that this is Nola Longshadow, a deadly character we only got a sliver of in season 1.   Later, she wastes no time in jumping on the Hood Lady Train in a rollicking sex scene that is sure to cause a little friction with the other ladies and result in a probably Carrie-Nola standoff in the 8th or 9th hour.  Odette Annable isn’t going out without a bang this season.

There wasn’t much action with Procter this week, other than Rebecca catching him having rough sex in the house.  The creepiness between an uncle and his niece grows but it seems to fit in this crazy town.   Emmitt wasn’t given too much time either, except giving his testimony of the shootout rescue mission.    Siobhan was moved in by Lucas in another quietly erotic encounter that almost assures the two will end up in bed together.   What woman doesn’t fall for this guy?  It’s inevitable.

We get the mandatory older Indian push on the young Alex Longshadow, who gets word that the rest of his father’s counsel thinks he is too young to lead the family business.  Well, the mayor was very young and he was blown up so we will see.  Alex and Nola aren’t going away easily.  I suggest some young blood to take over the tribe soon enough and there still is a large man called Littlestone who is bound to show up and break bones.

Of course the episode closes with Agent Racine walking into the church of Rabbit’s brother, played by Julian Sands with icy vague evil where the two share talk that provides us with a few pages of the Agent’s playbook.   The relationship between Racine and the brothers is something that will be developed.  His plan to catch the Rabbit may temper on the obsessive but this town needs a person to keep the more notable characters on their toes.  Racine is Mr. Unpredictable and with Ivanek at the helm of the madness, I have no idea what to expect but I can tell you this Agent isn’t noble.  A demon chasing demons.

Other little things-

*MVP of the episode was Rus Blackwell as Gordon.   A pretty simple character from the pilot has continued to evolve with each scene.  His character is one of the most underrated on the show, because he is a victim of circumstance but carries a little devil himself.   The drug addiction, the shoulder pain, the heat in his eyes will all add up to some explosion.  Blackwell’s speech at the Mayor’s wake was perfectly played and powerful.   He is the one character on this show who deserves all the care he receives.

*NO ONE says “Fuck” like Hoon Lee.  Even when Job is in duress, he brings a comic flair to the proceedings that grounds the wild action.

*Sugar looking at the picture of him and a woman may show that he has more in common with Lucas than we know.  Him telling the younger man to run may have some experience behind it that still hurts.

*Rabbit killing a squirrel?  I’ll take it.  What role will the great Ben Cross play this season?  His Ukrainian accent can haunt a man’s dreams.

Future scenes and Origin tales show Hood in Racine’s custody that looks like it was after the diamond heist, which is probably why Racine did know him from before.  Or is it from a future heist and arrest and being disguised as a thing of the past?  This show does a wonderful job of hiding just the right amount of cards.

Episode 2 promises Rebecca trouble, Longshadow-Procter battles and Siobhan firing her weapon with intensity.  Oh and there’s Ana breaking Hood’s rules of not engaging while in prison.  More bloody fun!  As Ulrich Thomsen, who plays Procter, tweeted tonight, “If you liked Season 1, you’ll be madly in love with 2. More drama.”  Just the way we like it.

Come back next week for your next Shot of Banshee.  Until then, rewatch the show and try to start figuring out the combination details.  62-7-30-9.

Thanks for reading.

___

Dan Buffa is the co-creator, administrator and writer for the movie website, film-addict.com. He also contributes to United Cardinal Bloggers, Arch City Sports, Aaron Miles Fastball, Voicesfilm.com and writes for his personal blog, www.doseofbuffa.com.  He is also a published writer for the Yahoo Contributor Network.   Dan is a St. Louis, Missouri born and raised writer with a need to inform and the ability to pound out 1,000-1,500 word pieces with ease.  When he isn’t writing or drinking coffee, he is spending time with his wife and son in South City.  Follow him at @buffa82 on Twitter and reach him for thoughts, comments and general feedback at buffa82@gmail.com.