Kris Wall reviews the fourth episode of Banshee season 4…
We’re at the halfway point of Banshee’s final run now, and I’ll be honest I’m getting a little worried. While I have nothing but faith in this creative team, the pace of these final episodes has been so relentless that nothing is being given time to settle in or breathe, big things are being set up one week and quickly resolved the next, which is probably an effect of only having eight episodes this season rather than the previous ten. This weeks episode was packed to the rafters, chiefly introducing a third set of villains along with the arrival of a new major character in Eliza Dushku’s special agent Dawson. It was still a very good episode that was unmistakably Banshee, but there was a hell of a lot being set up here, with some of it even feeling a bit contrived in order to speed events up, and there’s only four episodes left to resolve it all in a satisfying conclusion.
This week opened in true Hannibal fashion as we watched characters we had never seen before preparing a fine meal that would have made Dr. Lecter himself proud, or reasonably so, perhaps it lacked a little of his style and flair. Moments later we were in the basement where a wall slid back to reveal the lady who was kidnapped at the end of last weeks episode, and the male removed his hat and shirt to reveal ridged implants across his forehead and anti religious tattoos on his body, this was Banshee’s serial killer revealed, and it went full on Red Dragon with it.
It’s interesting to reveal such a big new character into the story, so close to the end of the show, but then again, Banshee is nothing if not surprising. Many people seemed to believe that Burton may have been the serial killer (despite the frame of the killer being shown last week resembling nothing like Burton’s imposing presence) but that wasn’t to be the case. Even more so, the killer isn’t acting alone, along with his partner he was part of a whole religious cult, sacrificing women by cutting out their hearts to appease a deity, that I can only assume they believe lives within the body of the killer at this point. I’m concerned that all of this cult stuff has just come a bit too late into the story and as a result, feels almost entirely separate and extraneous to everything else that’s going on at the moment.
Eliza Dushku finally arrived in Banshee as Special Agent Veronica Dawson, with the killings having been escalated to her division now. It’s a shame to see Eliza Dushku show up so late into this show, she’s such a natural fit for this cast and her character, just as broken as everyone else here, was tailor-made for this world. I would have loved to see her introduced closer to the start of this season, or even further back, just so we would have more time to see her character develop and interact with the others.
Anyhow, she showed up just in time to resolve what could have been a critical flashpoint at the precinct. Poor Brock had been interrogating Lucas over the murder, Brock clearly knows Lucas is innocent, but he’s desperate and has nothing else to go on. Meanwhile Proctor storms into the precinct, having posted Lucas’ bail, clearly fueled by anger that Lucas might be involved in Rebecca’s death, and it looked for a moment that these two were about to have yet another almighty smackdown, when Brock ends up drawing his gun on Proctor, and luckily Agent Dawson intervenes to cool things down.
Dawson also interrogated Lucas with her profiling skills and quickly worked out what Brock, and the rest of us, already knew that Lucas is innocent. A situation helped greatly when the body of the kidnapped woman is found discarded in the woods surrounding Banshee. On the run up to this though, we had the curtains drawn back on a darker side of Agent Dawson when she clears out a drug den and then proceeds to get high herself before being drawn back to the case.
This week also featured another huge game changer with Carrie destroying Proctor’s drug factory that The Brotherhood were running. Bunker leaked another file to Carrie containing the location, but started to backpedal when Carrie revealed the labs ties to his former brothers, but Carrie had already made her mind up to destroy it. It was a bit disappointing to see how carelessly Bunker and Carrie met up in public to hand over the file, right where Deputy Cruz could see them, and later taking a phone call from Carrie within her earshot, which gives her more than enough leeway to suspect that Carrie is the vigilante she is looking for. It just felt a bit contrived and unnatural to see the characters do something that serious so openly, which left it feeling like the situation was being forced so the show could wrap things up quicker and not drag out Cruz’s investigation.
Job tagged along with Carrie on the mission, not wanting to be apart from her, but clearly dealing with some very heavy effects of PTSD from his time in captivity. Job is a completely broken man now which made him quite the dangerous liability for Carrie to have with her. Carrie went full on Frank Castle this week as she tooled up with a giant flamethrower and began burning Proctor’s facility to the ground, taking out members of The Brotherhood as she went. This was probably Carrie’s biggest action scene so far and it was thrilling to watch. There was a slight doubt she may have gotten in over her head as she got trapped and Job was too freaked out to save her, but she came out on top and ended the scene with a delightfully cheesy slow motion run towards the camera, straight out of an 80’s action movie !
The fallout from this move though is going to be absolutely massive, with potentially devastating ramifications for Proctor, Kurt and Calvin, with Proctor’s deadly deal to meet The Cartel’s demands almost certain to fall through now, Proctor will certainly be looking for retribution on Calvin and The Brotherhood, and The Brotherhood will be converging on Kurt for releasing the files in the first place, which I’m guessing will happen once Cruz puts the pieces together. I think that this was the game changing event that will set all of the characters off on their violent collision courses across the final few episodes, as the plot threads begin to converge around this event.
On top of all of this happening, Calvin had decided that it was time to ‘remove’ the leader of The Brotherhood from power. In a twist that I should have seen coming but completely missed, the leader, Randall (Chance Kelly) also turned out to be Calvin’s father in-law, the man that Calvin’s wife, Maggie (Casey LaBow) was warning Kurt about during their affair last week. To make matters worse for just about everyone in town, Proctor worked to have him released from prison, despite being refused parole 8 times previously for generally being an awful human being. The scene where he shows up at Calvin’s home was tense and nerve-wracking, with both Calvin and Maggie looking visibly shaken and unnerved to see him freed. Then there was the especially creepy scene where he’s singing a Nazi song to their son while he was asleep, just a horribly uncomfortable scene. Calvin is now seriously on the backfoot here with this and the factory being taken out, so he” need to move fast if he wants to come out on top.
And can we all just take a moment to appreciate just how creepy it was seeing Burton eating that ice cream cone outside the prison. Just wow, my brain is still struggling to process that image, well played to Matthew Rauch for making my skin crawl with that one, what a great character he’s created.
Only four more episodes to go. There’s a hell of a lot going on now in such a small town. Can Banshee hold it all together and go out on a high? I can’t wait to find out.
Kris Wall – Follow me on Twitter
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