Banshee has been questioning whether having a badge and a fresh start is what Hood needed to become a better person, but a better question might be whether his path to normalcy will be through dragging everyone else down to his level. No one gets dropped lower tonight by Hood’s actions than Emmett, and it’s perhaps because we’ve seen so little of him thus far that the near-destruction of his life hits with such force. Though “Evil for Evil” predicates his involvement in the episode on a racial context in a way the show almost always has to, what it does differently this time is really dig into the themes of race and hatred that often just get reduced to shorthand of cultural groups and stereotypes designed to create conflict.
Last week, Sharpe and his neo-Nazi posse were just disposable skinheads, just as Emmett was a cliché cop who has to take routine prejudice like water off a duck’s back. “Evil for Evil” has to go to a dark place to blow up, and then dissect these old tropes, having Sharpe and two others attack Emmett’s pregnant wife, fatally traumatizing her fetus. The sequence is extremely hard to watch, and the episode knows it; Sharpe and his larger lackey are visibly shocked when their third kicks a pregnant woman in the stomach.
It’s a small detail to have the two express that even they have limits, but it’s so vital to reestablishing a kernel of human self-awareness to Sharpe, who was upgraded from “thug we’re ok seeing punched,” to outright monster just a moment earlier. When Emmett catches up with the three in their jail cells, an armory of confiscated weapons just within arms reach, the episode continues to humanize Sharpe, mostly dropping the epithets and name-calling, and directly addressing the hatred that dominates his life.
And it’s once we start to look at Sharpe as something more than a cutout thug that Emmett’s real struggle crystalizes. All the looks and insults he’s had to deal with his whole life, both as an officer and a man of color, come with an expectation of non-response. In a monologue that makes Demetrius Grosse’s small screentime thus far seem all the more criminal, Emmett recalls how his father put his faith in the legal system, even as it routinely disappointed him. It gives Emmett a fascinating core contradiction, as justice came to represent something he grew up questioning, but nonetheless chose to pursue when his dream of being a professional athlete ended. As his hospitalized wife puts it, they are being tested by this misfortune, just as Emmett has been tested every time he chose patience and forgiveness over action, but he’s finally reached his breaking point.
Mace in hand, Emmett brutally repays Sharpe and his gang for their attack on his wife, and it’s almost as hard to watch. Emmett enacts the kind of lawless revenge that’s so, so tempting, the kind a conceivably just world might provide, but there’s no joy in the act, no catharsis. Blinded by revenge, Emmett’s actions don’t even target the pipsqueak Nazi most responsible for his pain, instead giving the worst beating to Sharpe. Hood’s made peace with resorting to lawless violence because he’s never had much to lost by doing so. Emmett’s job, self-respect and soul were given up with this ultimate compromise of position and ethics. He doesn’t get his child back, or anything resembling peace: just a bloody, gurgling smile out of Sharpe.
The episode ends with the sobering image of Emmett handing in his badge and tag, and it’s to Banshee’s credit that I really can’t say whether this is the last we’ll see of him. His closing speech about the special kind of evil that haunts Banshee is an ironic warning to Hood, the man responsible for all the damage that has come to Emmett’s house. It was Hood’s pursuit of Kai that smoked out Sharpe to begin with, and it’s Hood’s recklessness that’s taken over Banshee like a fever. He may have locked up Kai Proctor, but Hood has made things more volatile than ever. He’s chosen to hack at the evil weeds that plague Banshee instead of pulling them up by their roots, and a weed not properly disposed of doesn’t go away, it spreads.
- Stray Thoughts
-Getting back to the love-fest: I’ve complained about the show’s use of parallel editing in the past, but tonight was the first time it felt purposeful, maybe because the stories themselves felt as such. I particularly liked hearing Hood give his grounds for a warrant for Kai’s house, as we watch him illegally invade it hours earlier.
-An unreliable cop narrator wasn’t the only coincidental crossover point with HBO’s True Detective this week: you might have recognized Lili Simmons on last week’s episode, who might as well have been playing Rebecca Proctor, and Detective Hartman and Emmett share vary similar tactics when dealing with imprisoned scumbags.
-Hood’s mad-on for Kai is so raging, he even finds time to strike up a plan involving Alex Longshadow. What are the odds the backup plan turns into a full-blown backfire?
-“Racine found Rabbit?” “Yes he did, he just didn’t know it. But I do.” “Kinda wish you didn’t.” You and me both Sugar. You and me both.