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
A Shot Of Banshee 