You won’t find much in the way of monumental upheaval as season two begins, which is a little surprising, given the blistering speed with which last season’s finale blew the lid off a lot of the show’s long-simmering plot points. And while “Little Fish” disappointingly appears to back away from a number of potential game changers (the real Lucas Hood’s body that was found by Special agent Xavier? Don’t worry about it. In fact, you can probably stop worrying about Xavier entirely, assuming you ever did), it does do a good job of bringing back some loose ends from the first season that were left by the wayside once Rabbit came to town. The premiere’s big setpiece showstopper puts into motion a caper teased last year, and it’s just as audacious and ridiculous as you could have hoped.
The same blend of missteps and progress can be found in those elements the show has chosen to jettison between seasons, chief among the latter being the definitive end to any plot involving Mayor Kendall, who Banshee never found a place for last year, but sent off in style during the finale. The aftermath of Kendall’s explosive exit is played for a few beats during the premiere, but the show’s willingness to mercilessly drop a nonstarter plot is encouraging. Shame the same decisiveness wasn’t applied to the ongoing tribulations of Ana’s fake family, who barely made an impression last year, not that you could really blame them: when the A-stories of the show sometimes involve dudes getting blow-up point blank with RPGs, Dava dabbling in shoplifting(!) during the premiere seems like pretty small potatoes.
As usual, the material is frustrating in the moment, but is often not too far off from, or directly responsible for, the next moment of pure anarchy. Like a lot of Banshee plotlines, the domestic saga of the Hopewell family only works about half the time, either on a dramatic, or plot level. Similar can be said of the fallout from the finale’s (hugely illegal) team-up between the deputies and Hood’s merry men, which mostly gets swept under the rug. The one holding the broom is FBI agent Jim Racine (Zeljko Ivanek), an antagonistic and acerbic wild card sent to Banshee to investigate Hood and his bunch, but whose eyes are set on a bigger fish. The degree to which he handwaves most of the ramifications from last year’s bombastic shootout is absurd, but “Little Fish” integrates Racine into the cast well, and gives a just plausible enough (by the show’s standards) reason why he’s interested in keeping Hood and company in play.
It’s a classic Banshee 6-step: one forward, two back, one back, two forward. On the one hand, Racine’s reasoning is born out of the continued presence of a certain character that has remarkably survived into season two, a twist which, while heavily hinted at during last year’s finale, still feels like it pushes the upper limits of that character’s usefulness. On the other hand, that same character opens up an intriguing new criminal faction for Racine to draw into Banshee, and if one episode is anything to go by, whatever screentime the show can find for Ivanek chain-smoking and cursing while on the warpath, it should give to him.
Banshee’s narrative highs and lows continue to mostly cancel one another out, which is all the more reason it’s the pyrotechnics and hookups that matter most. And while the premiere is a little too weighed down by table clearing and setting to deliver the show’s usual volume of titillation and fireworks, what is present provides a good reminder of what it is that Banshee does best. While I’m still holding out hope the show will shed a few more of its bad habits, and make the countdown to the explosions as interesting as the booms themselves, 10 weeks of literal and metaphorical balls-out action isn’t a terrible way to kick off the 2014 TV season.
- Stray Thoughts
-Welcome to Banshee Season 2 coverage! I’ll be reviewing each episode through at least the first half of the season. Fingers crossed the rest of the screeners someday find their way to my mailbox.
-Be sure to stick around through the credits! It was embarrassingly late into the first season that I realized each episode has a tag at the end. Usually silent, but occasionally plot relevant, they make for nice little epilogues to each week’s adventure. The premiere’s is definitely on the more superfluous side of things, but is still worth a chuckle.
–Banshee’s writing style in a nutshell: after a thrilling escape, Sugar makes a hacky, easy pop culture reference, one that nevertheless cracked me up.