Remember when I opened up about my collection of Lance Reddick body pillows? I saw that as a fun way of connecting with my audience (and removing the stigma from gettin’ snuggly with Lance). What was the harm?

Resident Evil was the harm.

See, if I’m going to be able to show my face at LanceCon ’22, I gotta keep up with our guy’s filmic[1] output. Maybe he’d hit us with a short set in the world of John Wick? Or record an audiobook?

Or maybe he’d get kidnapped by the higher-ups at Netflix and forced to star in an execrable “adaptation” of the legendary survival horror franchise?

I made it through approximately half an episode of this steaming pile of dogshit before fleeing the field like Napoleon at Waterloo.[2] You ain’t got time for this. I ain’t got time for this. We’re all going to die in a fucking fire[3] and I’d rather spend my precious hours engaging with things that are interesting and enjoyable.

…so let’s talk about Banshee, which aired on Cinemax over four seasons from 2013 to 2016. That’s right, motherfuckers! You came here for a Resident Evil review and I’m hitting you with an article about a show that ended six years ago!

Here’s a summary of the show that I lifted word-for-word from Wikipedia:[4] Set in the small town of Banshee in Pennsylvania Amish country, the series’ main character is an enigmatic ex-con who assumes the identity of Lucas Hood, the town’s murdered sheriff, to hide from [a] powerful crime lord…Hood attempts to reconcile with his former lover Ana, who has herself adopted an assumed identity, married, and raised a family during Hood’s incarceration. Hood struggles to maintain his new identity while still embracing crime alongside his partners Job and Sugar and coming into conflict with local kingpin Kai Proctor.

This summation does a good job of making an excellent piece of television sound, to put it politely, really fucking boring. Seriously, there’s an episode where the main character has a life-or-death brawl with a gigantic, serial-killing Amish schoolteacher – and, even more impressively, the world the show establishes has you looking at something like that and saying, “Huh, that’s reasonable.” The way it gradually escalates the absurdity of its plots is a marvel of screenwriting, and makes for a real treat of a binge-watch.

It also has enough T&A to make Johnny Sins blush (especially in the first two seasons). Not that the later installments are bad – far from it. Rather, I think the show settled into its groove a little bit and knew that it could rely on its characters and stories to keep viewers engaged without propping things up with more gratuitous nudity than the Kennedy White House.

Not that I’m complaining about the gratuitous nudity. My middle name is “gratuitous.”[5] I still wanted to give you a heads up so you know what you’re in for when you fire this bad boy up. Seriously: sometimes it feels like you took it to the ‘hub[6] by accident.

Don’t worry, there’s plenty of graphic violence, substance abuse and adult language on offer as well. This show is the television equivalent of that time your dad made you drink Everclear, dip two tins of Grizzly and then shoot a man, just so that you’d “get some hair on your goddamn ballsack.”

Let’s set the adult content, delightful as it is, aside for a moment, and take a look at the less-scandalous aspects of Banshee.

The town of Banshee is home to Amish ganglords, neo-Nazis, Native American gangs, and more ne’er-do-wells – but it’s also stuffed to the brim with borderline-good people trying to escape their pasts. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that “can people truly change?” is a question the show returns to several times. In Season 3, it even provides a possible answer, and it’s more nuanced than you’d think! The cast of characters is big, but not huge – I never had any trouble following the various plot threads, even with so many different organizations (the aforementioned Amish, neo-Nazis, and Native Americans, alongside the Russian Mob, the local police, and others) clawing for supremacy in the pressure-cooker environment the show establishes.

And what an environment it is: Banshee itself plays as large a role as many members of the cast. From a visual standpoint, the vivid, oversaturated greens of the town’s bucolic[7] surroundings contrast beautifully with the woodsmoke-tinged grit of Sugar’s bar, the bloody industry of Proctor’s slaughterhouse, and the somber refinement of the Kinaho Tribe’s casino offices (among other standout locations). Remember how Breaking Bad always used that piss-colored filter for scenes that were set “south of the border”? Banshee’s outdoor scenes are like a better version of that, primarily because it doesn’t look like your TV just took a golden shower.

Banshee’s writers do a commendable job of presenting shorter story arcs with satisfying payoffs while weaving together season-length plotlines that percolate in the background until exploding onto the screen. Not that this happens with the predictability of, say, Game of Thrones’ ninth-episode bloodbaths (see: the Battle of the Blackwater, the Red Wedding, the Battle of the Bastards): confrontations and character deaths come at surprising – dare I say shocking – times, with well-established characters getting Road House’d[8] in, say, a season’s third episode.

Besides the main ex-con-impersonating-the-sheriff story, Banshee spends its time with various criminal plots and investigations, small-town government skullduggery, and the evolution – and occasional collapse – of the main players’ interpersonal relationships. It’s hard to say which of these aspects is the show’s strongest, but – gun to my head – I’d say it’s the character interactions. The cast (particularly Antony Starr) are incredibly skilled at their craft, and it’s a treat to watch them bring these over-the-top characters to life on screen in a way that makes them feel real.

Hop on over to HBO and give Banshee a viewing; you won’t regret it. Now, am I ever going to watch all 8 episodes of Resident Evil? Fuck no. I will, however, wait for the supercut of Lance Reddick scenes to hit YouTube – once they get back from the dry cleaners, maybe I can prop up one of my body pillows to snuggle with while I watch.

---

[1] I didn’t think this was a word, but Microsoft Office seems to, and I would have kept it anyway. It’s not easy being an iconoclast.

[2] If you ever want to hear a really boring rant, ask me what I think of Marshal Ney’s cavalry tactics. Hint: they were not good. Still, it’s funny that the horse guy’s last name sounds like “neigh.”

[3] Not, like, the same fire. It’s a general thing, you know?

[4] Always cite your sources, kids. Otherwise you’ll burn in eternal hellfire.

[5] My parents have odd senses of humor.

[6] Shoutout Coolio. RIP to a real one.

[7] I was informed by a good friend that maybe I didn’t need to use the word “bucolic” here, because it makes me sound like an asshole. I ignored his advice.

[8] As in, they get their esophaguses (esophagi?) removed. By hand.