[For Banshee’s “The Rave” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
Amazon Summary:
The Rave. An underling of Kai Proctor decides to hold a rave, selling homemade E pills to Banshee youth–including Carrie’s daughter. Catching wind of the plan, Lucas and his team orchestrate a raid, but the effects of a tainted batch of pills leads to trouble.
Welcome back to our recap / Power Rankings mashup of the made-for-Cinemax celebration of sex, violence, and authority that is Banshee. In case you missed last week’s first recap, you can check it out here or explore any and all things Banshee on Fetchland.
At the time of this writing I’ve actually seen nine of the ten first season episodes of Banshee. I wanted to get a little context and perspective before jumping into tv recaps with both feet. But my reaction having seen most of them is the same as the initial reaction I had watching “The Rave” the first time last week… I don’t understand how they ran this as the second episode of the first season. The first episode was like the surface of the sun: a bazillion nuclear explosions all detonating simultaneously, every single second. Forget about how tv pilots work in general (introduction of all the main characters, the setting, the conflicts)… It set our expectations with an over-the-top car chase that would have been perfectly satisfying in a summer action flick: Not something you see on television.
“The Rave” was a precipitous letdown by comparison. The scale of the conflict essentially deflated, and characters who were doing super cool things one episode earlier, um, suddenly weren’t.
I actually don’t mean this to be a negative, or at least not too negative. Even a show with all hits has a worst episode… I just don’t know why, coming off of that great pilot, you would position your worst episode second. If you’re a new viewer don’t get too down: Banshee bounces back quickly.
Power Rankings for “The Rave”:
Up!
Previous Ranking: N/A
Previous Best Ranking: N/A
Wow this dog. Just wow. For a “character” with so little screen time, Preacher really made an impression. The slice-and-dice setup by Kai and the yum yum rapport with this beast would make the famous hunting pair Drizzt Do’Urden and Guenhwyvar positively jelly.
Neutral
Previous Ranking: 2
Previous Best Ranking: 2
While clashing with Brock might have been ill-advised, the de facto alliance made with Hopewell over the rescue of Deva more than makes up for it. Plus, Hood cashed in on his usual trifecta of [anonymous] sex, rave-ravaging violence, and pilfered police authority through the second episode.
Neutral
Previous Ranking: 1
Previous Best Ranking: 1
Kai moved with seemingly impossible speed in his final encounter with Hanson. “Sixty seconds”? Jeez. You really get the feeling that, between how quickly he lopped a guy’s finger off, tossed it to calibrate a taste in his ravenous murder-mutt, and had him out the door that this is not the first time Kai has dealt thusly with an out-of-line employee. Alongside the episode’s post-credits scene at the meat packing plant… You’ve really got to wonder what kind of wares Proctor is packing / purveying at the meat factory.
Ah fiction: The Venn diagram overlap of “greedy” and “stupid” crooks just never fails, does it?
LOVE
MIKE
