Banshee’s characters start to circle each other but slowly lose their centre as the final series turns towards the hunt for a satanic serial-killer…
If last episode didn’t make clear that Veronica (Eliza Dushku) wasn’t the kind of complex, typically fractured personality that Banshee seemed to attract (and, frankly, wouldn’t be found functioning upright elsewhere), then the opening sequence with she and Hood discussing – or not discussing – exactly that (and her subsequent crack-fuelled visit to an underground club), quickly followed by Proctor casually burning down Hood’s home to make a point that he should never have laid hands on Rebecca (hypocrisy, surely?) pretty much starts to give us a rogue’s gallery of our ensemble characters and the way that they orbit each other on the verge of going nuclear or merely pressing the self-destruct button on whatever hope they have left.
Like all good counterparts, Hood and Proctor circle each other without ever having that final confrontation, recognising – with distaste – that they each serve a useful purpose in a lawless environment. But we do see Proctor’s hold start to unravel as he faces down his Amish heritage in public, clearly creating a PR disaster and then taking it to the next level by burning down part of the community that shunned he and Rebecca. (Though we should be glad that manservant Clay Burton didn’t do more damage than merely freeing a horse from its reins with that chainsaw!).
The cult behind Rebecca’s death continues to plot, watching Brock’s deliberate press conference to provoke them…. it doesn’t seem to phase them much.
There’s more casual brutality on the show this week – the series seemingly wanting to push the envelope in horrible deaths before its own demise – this time it’s Nazi leader Watts (fresh from jail) forcing his son-in-law into using a vehicle to pull of a man’s legs while he’s tied to the tree. Even for a mid-level white supremacist that’s not a particularly nice way to go and even ‘subtle’ camera-work doesn’t hide the carnage.
Job is such a changed character this year that it must have been something of a pleasure for actor Hoon Lee to play him again, despite the torture that the character goes through and is traumatised by. From the snarky, effeminate hacker, Lee now gives us a fractured man who may not be broken but is forever damaged by his experience. He and Hood manage to come to an understanding, both realising that each of them suffered on the other’s watch and that they need to move forward. But this episode does give him some humour…. with Carrie letting him stay, she hands him a list of chores so he can be ‘useful’, much to his convalescing annoyance. He petulantly shouts after her that he ‘doesn’t do windows!’
Truthfully, there are a few too many supporting characters being introduced this season – some that seem somewhat superfluous to requirements. Proctor’s spy in the force Nina Cruz (Ana Ayora) has regular scenes but little development and Carrie’s psychiatrist (Dexter‘s Eric King) feels as if it’s a thread that could probably have been played out without bringing in a new character. Equally, while it’s been believable that Banshee attracts the dregs of humanity to its borders and conflicting agendas, it’s always been based on a gritty if OTT reality. But now it feels more like an X-rated version of Criminal Minds, a place where Nazis, devil-worshippers, gangsters, the Amish, the police and crack-addicts circle the drain. It just seems a few grotesques too many.
Suddenly Banshee feels less like a dangerous, backwater town and more like the Mos Eisley cantina scrawled large. While our familiar characters remain interesting and the cinematography is as reliable as ever, it does feel like a little like overkill: grand guignol spectacle over actual style.
But still watchable.
7/10
