Banshee is a crime drama on
Cinemax It premiered on January 11, 2013.
Antony Starr stars as a
No Name Given master thief who served 15 years in prison for stealing $10 million in diamonds. As soon as he is released he goes looking for Anna (Ivana Miličević), his lover and accomplice who was able to elude the police and got away with the diamonds. He seeks out Job (Hoon Lee) a drag queen who is a master hacker and provided Anna with a new identity. Job gives him an address in Banshee, Pennsylvania, a small town in Pennsylvania's Amish country. There Anna has become Carrie Hopewell, a respected real estate agent, mother of two and the wife of the District Attorney. Before he can confront Anna/Carrie, he witnesses a botched robbery when two toughs working for the local crime kingpin Kai Proctor (Ulrich Thomsen) try to rob a bar owned by Sugar Bates (Frankie Faison). He is forced to kill the two robbers but they fatally shoot Lucas Hood, the new sheriff of Banshee who just arrived in town from Oregon. He realizes that no one in town has actually seen Hood in person so he assumes Hood's identity and becomes the sheriff of Banshee.
Further complicating matters is that during the diamond heist "Lucas" double-crossed Mr. Rabbit (Ben Cross) a ruthless and much feared Ukrainian mob boss who also happens to be Anna's father. Mr. Rabbit's henchmen are now looking for him and Anna and all hell will break loose if they find out where they are.
The promotional materials for the series included a short
webcomic
that detailed the events leading up to the ill-fated diamond heist and a series of 13
webisodes that gave us a glimpse at the background of the various characters and the events that occurred during the 15 years that the protagonist was in prison.
This series provides examples of:
- Action Girl: Anna was an accomplished thief and martial artist but once she became Carrie she spent the next 15 years preparing and training for the time when Mr. Rabbit found her. She is Made of Iron and verges on One-Man Army levels of competence and lethality.
- Badass Bystander: Deva's friend temporarily incapacitates a hardcore killer.
- Berserk Button: Kai Proctor really hates it when people insult the Amish. He takes it really bad when one of the Amish being harassed is his father.
- Blatant Lies:
- When Lucas first confronts Anna/Carrie she tells him that Deva is 13 years old. He clearly does not believe her and easily confirms that Deva is in fact 15.
- In one of the webisodes, Lucas calls Job from prison to ask about Anna. Job tells him that he has not seen Anna in years. Lucas does not believe this but can't do anything about it. For added irony, at that moment Anna is actually sitting right across from Job.
- Blood Knight: Lucas seems to go out of his way to pick fights where he is outnumbered or outclassed. You can clearly see the joy on his face as steps up to give or receive a beating. It is implied that this is his way of dealing with all the anger and pain he accumulated during his 15 years in prison.
- Briefcase Full of Money: Proctor gives Sanchez's manager a satchel filled with thousands of dollars as payment for agreeing to have the championship fight in Banshee.
- The Cavalry: Carrie, Sugar, Job and the deputies go to rescue Lucas after he trades himself to Mr. Rabbit in exchange for Max.
- Combat Pragmatist: After spending 15 years in prison, Lucas does not fight fair. During his fight with Sanchez he bites his opponent to get out of a choke hold. Later he breaks the guy's finger and then snaps his wrist.
- Cowboy Cop: After witnessing his methods, people assume that Lucas is this type of police officer. Of course, the truth is that he has no training in proper police procedure whatsoever.
- Dating What Daddy Hates:
- Subverted. Mr. Rabbit loved Lucas like an adopted son but he still would not have approved of Lucas sleeping with his daughter.
- Rebecca's father would not have approved of her dating anyone outside the Amish community and would have disowned her if he found out that she was having sex with them. Kai Proctor, her uncle, is extremely angry when he finds out that one of the men Rebecca has slept with was the sheriff.
- Dead Person Impersonation: The core premise of the series. Lucas is able to pull it off because the real Lucas Hood is from a backwater town in Oregon and the only person in Banshee who knows what he looks like was the old sheriff who died recently. To maintain the ruse, Lucas has Job hack into any website or database where photos of Hood might be displayed.
- Depraved Homosexual: The Albino prisoner, to the point where he actually calls Lucas his "personal property."
- Dirty Cop:
- The mayor hires an outsider to be sheriff because all the previous local sheriffs have been paid off by Proctor. Ironically, it's implied that Proctor may have turned the real Hood before he even got to Banshee.
- Right after Lucas is sworn in as sheriff, he breaks into a pawn shop and steals a safe.
- Domestic Abuse: The webisodes reveal that Deputy Siobhan Kelly was an abused wife before she Took a Level in Badass, divorced her husband and became a no-nonsense deputy.
- The Dragon
- Clay Burton is Kai Proctor's right hand man and main enforcer. Proctor seems to be grooming Rebecca to be his representative in official settings since Burton is "limited" in these types of situations.
- Oleg serves as Mr. Rabbit's main enforcer.
- Dude Where Is My Respect: Deputy Brock is the longest serving member of the Banshee police department and everyone assumed that he would be promoted to sheriff when the old sheriff died of cancer. When he finds out that the town council hired and outsider instead, he is not happy.
Brock: You're making me look like a fool.
- Due to the Dead: Lucas feels that it is disrespectful to bury the real sheriff hood in the same grave as the scum who killed him so he digs him a separate grave.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Kai Proctor takes it really bad when the Moody brothers harass and insult Proctor's father.
- Evil Albino: In the webisodes we see an albino prisoner beating up Lucas.
- Fearless Fool:
- Lucas tends to walk right into a dangerous situation and confront dangerous, armed people face to face. One suspects that he might be a Death Seeker.
- The real Lucas Hood taunts and then attacks two armed robbers. It gets him killed.
- Fin Gore:
- A drug dealer sells tainted Ecstasy to local teenagers which kills the son of a state senator. He is brought to a very pissed off Kai Proctor who starts the conversation by cutting the man's finger off with a steak knife. Proctor then feeds the finger to his dog.
- During his fight with Sanchez, Lucas has no qualms about breaking Sanchez's finger
- Four Eyes, Zero Soul:
- Clay Burton, Proctor's assistant looks like a stereotypical bookkeeper but one quickly realizes that there is something very dark about the man. When he takes off his glasses, it's because he does not want to get blood on them.
- The leader of The Kindred motorcycle guy wears glasses and seems like a quiet intellectual guy. However, he is the most bloodthirsty of the lot and encourages one of his men to rape a woman.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: A literal case of this happens to a group of Ukrainian gangsters. They try to use a RPG to kill the good guys but the gangster carrying the rocket is killed and squeezes the trigger while the rocket is pointed the wrong way. The explosion kills the remaining gangsters.
- I Have No Son / I Have No Daughter:
- The Amish community has disowned Kai Proctor and when he tries to talk to his father, Proctor Sr refuses to acknowledge that his son is even there. His father and brother don't speak to him until the 7th episode. It doesn't go well for anyone.
- The Amish community and her family disown Rebecca in a similar way after she commits one too many trassgression against their way of life.
- Improvised Weapon: Lucas kills one opponent by shoving a sauce bottle down the guy's throat.
- It'd be quicker to list the things Anna didn't use in her fight in the sheriff's place.
- Like a Son to Me: Mr. Rabbit considered Lucas to be like the son he never had which is probably why he did not have Lucas killed in prison.
- Loophole Abuse: The sheriff position is elected but the town council knows that any local elected will be in Proctor's pocket so they use a provision in the town charter to appoint a 'ringer' from outside the community.
- Made of Iron:
- Lucas has taken beatings that should have crippled him for life but he seems to recover extremely quickly.
- Carrie takes a beating that almost kills her but she leaves the hospital a few hours later and has the strength to lead The Cavalry to rescue Lucas from Mr. Rabbit.
- Mr. Rabbit takes two bullets to the chest and is still able to get away through a sewer and elude a manhunt.
- Mafia Princess: Anna is the daughter of Mr. Rabbit, an Ukrainian mob boss. She herself was an accomplished thief and safe cracker before she went on the run and became Carrie.
- More Dakka: Mr. Rabbit's men are equipped with military grade assault rifles and even have an RPG.
- Native American Casino: The local Indian tribe operates a casino on the outskirts of town. Benjamin Longshadow, the tribe's elderly chief, wants to replace it with a modern hotel-casino and enlists Kai Proctor's help in making it happen.
- No-Holds-Barred Beatdown:
- Kai Proctor delivers one to Cole Moody after the Moody brothers harass and assault a group of Amish which included Proctor's father. He beats Cole's face and breaks numerous teeth. He then orders Cole to collect him broken teeth and put them back in his mouth.
- Sanchez delivers one to a waitress he is having sex with when she protests that he is too rough with her. Lucas does not approve of a MMA champion beating up a woman and delivers a beatdown of his own in return.
- Carrie and Oleg manage to deliver these to each other. They spent most of the episode beating on each other until they are both on the floor covered in blood and loosing consciousness. It almost ends up being a Mutual Kill.
- No Name Given: The pilot and the promotional prequel material never mentions what the main characters real name is. He becomes "Lucas Hood" after the real Hood is killed.
- Pet the Dog: When Kai Proctor sees the Moody brothers harass and assault a group of Amish loading lumber on a wagon, he calls the Moodys out for their behavior and then orders them to help the Amish load the wagon.
- Police Brutality: Lucas really does not care about the fact that as a police officer he is not supposed to beat up handcuffed prisoners.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Kai Proctor manufactures and sells $250,000 worth of Ecstacy a week. However, he makes sure that none of it is sold in Banshee or the surrounding area. Dealing drugs in his home county would attract too much attention from law enforcement.
Proctor: I don't shit where I sleep.
- Refuge in Audacity: Lucas's plan to become the sheriff of Banshee relies on the fact that it will not cross people's mind that anyone could be so brazen and thus by the time anyone decides to do a background check on him, Job will have hacked the necessary databases. Even Lucas can't believe that he is getting away with it and during his swearing in ceremony he has trouble maintaining a straight face.
- Revenge Before Reason: The Moody brothers are dead set on getting revenge on Lucas. They seem completely oblivious to the fact that murdering the sheriff is an extremely bad idea and that they would never get away with it.
- Safecracking: Anna is a master safe cracker.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Sanchez believes believes that he can get away with beating up and raping a woman because all the local bigwigs need the championship fight to to take place and will cover for him.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Sanchez's manager believes that whatever trouble Sanchez causes can be handled by paying off anyone that was hurt. Lucas disagrees.
- Serious Business: Raves in Banshee are a serious affair with a lot of illegal drugs changing hands. They are run by an organized, armed and dangerous group of crooks. When the local cops go out to break up a rave they bring a lot of firepower with them.
- Tattooed Crook:
- Kai Proctor has a crucifix tattooed on his back
- The Ukrainian gangsters have an assortment of tattoos visible on their necks and hands.
- Averted by Lucas who even after 15 years in prison does not seem to have any tattoos.
- Tempting Fate: This seems to be a central character trait of Lucas to the point where it seems like he is a Death Seeker. Most people who just got out of prison and have the Ukrainian mob looking for them would not go ahead and impersonate a dead sheriff. Most people who just killed a man would not insist on hanging around the man's wake, in plain sight of the dead man's angry, drunk and armed brothers.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- Two toughs try to rob Sugar Bates bar even though they know that Sugar and Kai Proctor are old friends and Proctor does not act kindly toward people who mistreat his friends and family. They then discover that one of the bar patrons is the new sheriff and decide to shoot it out.
- Cole Moody insults the Amish in Proctor's presence even after Proctor has just demonstrated that he does not approve of the Amish being mistreated. After Proctor gives him a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown, Cole tries to kill Proctor at a party surrounded by a hundred witnesses and all the members of the police department in attendance.
- Seems to run in the Moody family. Cole's brothers apparently believe it's a good idea to run a patrol car off the road, torture and kill the sheriff and pull all of Kai Proctor's teeth one by one before killing him. And on top of that leave the deputy alive and unbound because they have no beef with him. Brilliant plan guys.
- Took a Level in Badass:
- The webisodes reveal that before he went to prison Lucas was just a thief and the need to protect himself while in prison turned him into a ruthless Combat Pragmatist.
- Deputy Siobhan Kelly used to be an abused wife who drunk too much. A few years before the series started, she finally had the courage to divorce her husband and applied to become a sheriff's deputy.
- Deputy Brock gains a level in "A Mixture of Madness" where he leads The Cavalry to save Lucas from Mr. Rabbit. Things don't go according to plan but he still ends up saving the day
- Trapped by Gambling Debts: A local tough owes the Indian casino a lot of money so Alex Longshadow offers to forgive the debt in exchange for the man murdering Kai Proctor.
- The Pornomancer: Lucas sleeps with lots of hot women with very little effort, ranging from random waitresses to he widow of a guy he recently killed.
- Villainous Rescue: Lucas is saved by Kai Proctor when Mr. Rabbit's men try to kill him at the police station.
- “Well Done Son” Guy: Kai Proctor still deeply respects his father and wants his approval. However, the Amish shun Proctor due to his criminal life and his father refuses to even acknowledge that Kai is speaking to him.
- Young And In Charge: Mayor Kendall seems to be in his twenties and too young for his position.
Kendall : I know. I look young. But, that's just because I am.
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