As Lucas Hood continues to struggle to maintain his criminal rep while somehow doing right by the people of Banshee, it was inevitable that eventually those two sides of his personality would start to rub up against each other and cause some friction. And it was probably inevitable that he would run headlong into the criminal world of Kai Proctor. It just took until this week’s episode for that to finally happen.
What finally set Hood off was learning of Jason’s disappearance. It took Hood very little time to figure out that the kid didn’t just split town after finding the stash of money hidden away in the hotel room. And he quickly connected the thread back to Proctor after finding out that the last person to see Jason alive was Rebecca. So, in his split mind, the logical next step was to take Proctor down, at first with the help of his fellow cops and then with his criminal cronies.
The trouble was that Proctor is smart enough to keep himself one step removed from all of his operations. So even if Hood were to bust up the strip club and its backroom prostitution ring, there would be no way to stick a charge on its owner with all the girls insisting they were acting alone. And when the cops find out that Proctor is running an ecstasy operation on the outskirts of town, they quickly run into a dead end as the building that housed the drug operation turns out to be owned by a dummy corporation. Enter Sugar and Job and a whole lot of explosives to send the warehouse up in flames.
The procedural aspects of this week’s episode were by far the most compelling material, as both subplots—Anna deciding to get back into the criminal game to help pay for expensive asthma medication for her son, and Alex Longshadow retaining his position as tribal chief after the council members were threatened by Proctor—were dispensed with quickly and relatively quietly. Until Hood arrives either in the periphery or barging into the center of these stories, does anyone really care?
It’s nice to see Banshee setting the table for what are likely going to be some tense episodes ahead. Let’s just hope they can stay the course for the last three weeks of the season and give fans something to chew on until season three rolls around.
Robert Ham is a Portland-based freelance writer and regular contributor to Paste. You can follow him on Twitter.