Banshee: Even God Doesn’t Know What to Make of You Review

Spoilers ahead for Banshee‘s latest and greatest, “Even God Doesn’t Know What to Make of You.”

You may think with Chayton Littlestone gone that all of Hood’s problems would be solved, that his heart would finally be unburdened. Well, if you thought that, you’d be half right. Sheriff Hood is no longer haunted by visions of Siobhan. She’s truly gone now, banished to the grey realm of slowly fading memories. Hood has returned to Banshee, despite his better judgment. But he’s not really present. With Chayton dead, Siobhan buried, and the Camp Genoa heist a seeming success, Hood is listless, a man without a purpose, without ambition, without a real identity. It’s this addled state of second-hand reality that makes for a true noir antihero. Hood is grappling with problems in the abstract, with the kind of soul-sucking void that no amount of bullets or money could ever fill. 

At this point, not only has Hood lost a sense of purpose, he’s losing Job, his one true friend. But this is because Job knows Hood better than Hood knows himself. No amount of “I told you so’s” can mend the damage done by a heist that nearly went sideways. They’ve known each other a long time, (at least 15 years, judging by the Twin Towers gracing the NYC skyline in a flashback that harkens back to their first meeting). But sometimes simply knowing someone, sharing a turbulent past with them, is not enough to sustain a friendship. Job says it best when he tells Hood, “We got a lot of history, you and me. Maybe that’s all it should be—history.”

Carrie and Gordon provide a nice counterbalance to the bridges being burned between old friends. They are old flames, the Hopewells, and maybe there’s a way to rekindle what they had from the embers of their failed marriage. Legal papers in hand, the two entertain real doubts about making their divorce official. Gordon has come out of his funk and Carrie is truly remorseful for the damage she’s caused her family. Plus, Deva needs real guidance before she goes completely off the rails.

Enter Deputy Billy Raven, who seems none the worse for wear after Chayton’s deadly siege of the Cadi. Billy’s just doing his job when he busts a group of dope-smoking teens in an abandoned park. (And what an apt visual this is, Deva languishing in a neglected, overgrown playground.) That she’s the mayor’s daughter doesn’t matter to Billy, who takes her back to the station and throws her in a cell. Even Gordon understands that his daughter is overdue for a reality check (as if seeing your estranged parents come together to beat down a bunch of delinquents wouldn’t be enough to grab a wayward teen’s attention).

All of this being said, tonight’s episode really belongs to Proctor. Like Hood, Proctor has a real nose for trouble. He also has no problem biting off another man’s nose to spite his face. Bound, beaten, and still reeling from the loss of his mother, Kai is a man without faith, a former believer who resides in a world where God does not exist. But the peril he finds himself in is not by his own doing—at least, not directly so. As we’ve seen throughout the season, Rebecca has been dabbling in her uncle’s business, getting in over her head as she makes side deals with rival crime syndicates, in this case, the Salvadorans. This doesn’t sit well with the Black Beards, a Philly crime syndicate with long ties to Proctor. But just like Hood and Job, history can only get you so far when one party feels they have been grievously wronged. So it is with Frazier, the Black Beards’ blind crime lord and Kai’s one-time friend. But no more. Thanks to Rebecca, Uncle Kai is about to pay the price for her hubris. 

Or so it would seem. Like many of the characters on Banshee, Kai Proctor not only has a preternatural ability to withstand breathtaking brutality, he is able to dish it out in kind. After seeing how easily he dispatches Frazier’s goons (while still bound to a chair no less), it’s easy to understand how Proctor earned such a fearsome reputation. Hood and Brock certainly understand the threat he poses to everyone in Banshee. The only person who isn’t fazed or intimidated is Emily. At this point I’d be very surprised if she survives to see season four.

Of course, the bigger threat to Hood’s well-being isn’t Proctor (for now); no, it’s Stowe. The colonel is no one’s fool. Slowly but surely, he’s been piecing together the clues left behind in the wake of the heist. The weak link here proves to be Sugar, whose identity is easily discovered by Stowe’s own master hacker. And thus begins the slow round-up of suspects, starting with Sugar. Indeed, the only person who is still a mystery to Stowe is the man he grappled with in the tunnels. With only one episode left this season, we’ll finally get a true showdown between Hood and Stowe. I only hope there won’t be any more collateral damage. This being Banshee, I’m sure we’ll be saying goodbye to another beloved character.

Some closing thoughts:

Let’s get something straight: Brock Lotus is not a coward—not by a long shot. Calling him that immediately makes Emily a very unsympathetic character. Brock may be jealous, yes, but were it not for him, she might have died in that dilapidated gymnasium.

Bunker works out his demons by working over his brother’s white supremacist friends. They made Bunker who he is—or at least the hate-filled man he used to be. His skin is marked with the symbols of intolerance, but Bunker no longer wants to be a book judged solely by its cover. If that means going after his brother, so be it.

I like the idea of Job being a mythical super hacker replete with fawning fanboys. It suits him well, this adoration from afar. That his fans unwittingly refer to him as “Job” is a nice touch.

Like Burton removing his specs, someone is due for a world of hurt when Stowe turns that class ring around.