Let’s bypass the witty opening that, to be honest, may have you clicking out before any content is actually consumed. I’m just a boy, asking an internet skittle if they … Continue reading Buffa’s 5 Things: Rest in peace, “LouDog”
Tag: television
Attention, HBO Max Subscribers: Show some self-respect and binge ‘Banshee’
You can wait on some shows. The ones that are good, but not great enough to watch in your worst enemy’s living room. “Banshee” is great enough. Soon enough, all … Continue reading Attention, HBO Max Subscribers: Show some self-respect and binge ‘Banshee’
Dear DirecTV: Show some self-respect and give us the final season of ‘Kingdom’
Dear DirecTV, Or is it AT&T Originals. Or Endemol Studios. Audience Network. Whatever. I have a simple question for you. When are we getting the last season of Kingdom, that … Continue reading Dear DirecTV: Show some self-respect and give us the final season of ‘Kingdom’
Banshee’s final season trailer: And hell burned with him
January 29th, 2016. The final season of Cinemax’s wonderfully pulp smash hit, Banshee, fires up its fourth and final season. Like a steak getting thrown on a grill, this final season has many flavors that the creators and cast hope to contain before the episodes unfold. For now, all fans can do is sit at their computer screen and watch this brand new trailer(which debuted at New York’s Comic Con this past week) about 57 times and smolder in anticipation. The best shows leave just enough juice dripping next to their audiences outstretched hands. Here’s what I got from the 72 second clip.
*Job’s captor has been found, captured and punched. The clip opens with Lucas, Carrie, and Sugar overlooking Stowe’s techie dude who drugged and snatched the lovable Job at the end of Season 3’s climatic shootout. Will he tell them where Job is? Does he even know? Is Dalton involved? Does anyone know where Jimmy Hoffa is while we are on the subject? I kid, I kid. The location of Hoon Lee’s irreplaceable(yeah you can replace Spider Man and Batman 30 times but you CAN NOT replace Job) hacker is the centerpiece of Season 4’s beginning.
“Let’s finish it.” A sense of finality overwhelms this trailer and truly informs the viewer these worlds are colliding fast and ending with brute force.
*Carrie’s loading up with guns. Why not? She wants to know where Job is and for good reason. Ever since he judged her outfit that first night in the club before the jewel heist, he has been family to our beloved safecracker. Job got Ana a new life and a way out way back when before Lucas(or Gary?) got out of prison and brought hell with him. She lost Gordon at the end of Season 3 and is pissed. She still has her kids, but I feel like this Carrie has more edge and spice to her than ever. And Ivana Milicevic is a badass. She needs to be in more movies. In black leather. Kicking, punching and shooting devilish stares at people. The world may spin properly.
*Hey, Lucas has hair! What the heck? Who hid the razor!?! I actually like the new look on our rugged sinner with a heart of gold, Mr. Hood. Lawmen have to look tidy and sharp, and Lucas is a badge no more. Why is Lucas Hood so invigorating to watch? Well, Antony Starr spends 365 days a year figuring out new ways to be awesome at this role that millions adore and the work shows in every scene. The way he looks at the camera in front of the police photo booth. The way he can stare at someone and seem to be mentally kicking their butt. Our scrappy Rocky with a chip on his shoulder won’t stop fighting until he feels like everyone in his life is safe. In Banshee, that’s scheduled for sometime in 2025. Good luck, Lucas. It’s a good thing we like watching him take a punch. He doesn’t know how to quit wrecking lives and the audience doesn’t know how to stop watching him do it. Wish the marriage could go on but the world isn’t supposed to be perfect so….
“I won’t give it(Banshee) up without a fight.” The soulful and much needed presence of Matt Servitto’s Brock Lotus seems to be talking to Lucas here about a final plea to defend his town, Banshee. There seems to be a mysterious character in a hoodie that shows up to make Brock’s life a living hell here. The crutch of the show’s immorality and violence is Brock and his desire to not just partake in the madness but try to understand it. The way he asked Lucas in New Orleans about WHY they do what they do and go after the revenge. The bridge between justice and revenge…how small or long is it? At the heart of that question is Servitto’s cop who desperately clings to the goodness left in him.
*Hello Eliza Dushku. She enters the picture as Special Agent Veronica Dawson. She specializes in violent crimes, which means she showed up to Banshee 30 hours late. She is going to be a thorn in Brock, Lucas, Kai Proctor and pretty much anyone who harms another this season. I haven’t seen enough of this talented actress lately but I am glad she is in town bleeding and fighting with the rest. It isn’t like she is beautiful or anything to boot.
*What’s happening with the Proctor clan tripod? What are Matthew Rauch’s Clay Burton and Lili Simmons’ Rebecca Bowman doing behind Proctor’s back that makes her worry? Are they dealing drugs behind his back? Is there is a breakdown in the deal with the Armenians? As always, strange dealings there.
*I don’t care if they left Season 3 sitting next to each other on a piece of lumber without the need to punch each other. Lucas and Kai are going to clash. The three seasons have danced around them like a devil around a fire and they will lock horns. Lucas just doesn’t have to worry about the badge getting in the way but, as we see him being hauled in by Brock, maybe he finds himself back in a cage for the first time since he left prison. Agent Dawson is right. There is more criminal than cop in Lucas and that is why she should be worried about him the most.
It’s always the evil side of humans that sneaks up on people. Especially between men and women. What an interesting dance of feels. Everybody has a choice to be good or bad, but the cruelness of humans always cuts deeper at first sight. Write that down, Agent Dawson.
“Power comes from being willing to do whatever it takes.” You are right Mr. Chris Coy, coming back at Kurt Bunker’s evil brother who left a smoky stamp on the deputy’s chest at the end of season 3. He may be a bad man, but he knows what it takes to stand on top. You have to refuse to see the harm you are doing because you believe that it is the right path to ride out.
What else?
*Proctor talking to Carrie for the first time, reminding her that kids’ futures are at stake.
*Carrie rocking a torch. Yeah, there’s nothing Milicevic(get her name right or she’ll knock you out) can’t do.
*Burton breaks out the chainsaw because…well, Burton likes chainsaws. Not sure why it took the bosses three years to make Matty Rauch a regular. He’s a much needed batch of mystery! For anyone who may get the opportunity to talk to Rauch in real life, he’s a prince!
“So what happens now?
“Revenge.”
The best dishes on television are indeed served cold my friends. Creator Jonathan Tropper, producer/director O.C. Madsen and producer/writer Adam Targum aren’t going to let us off easily. Whatever happens to Job, Brock or Carrie, Lucas and company will avenge it. The signature concoction of Banshee is imperfect people waging war against others and within themselves. He can do a lot of bad things and make a terrible decision every episode, but at the heart of Lucas Hood’s madness is a guy wanting to protect what he loves, no matter what. His final fight with his enemies and himself will be one for the record books. On January 29th, it all starts. I’d start preparing now.
Watch the trailer for yourself.
Thanks for reading.
-DLB
Sex&Drugs&Rock&Roll is “Diet” Denis Leary
When I heard about Denis Leary writing, creating, directing and starring in a FX television about an old rock n’roll band getting a fresh coat of paint, I was excited. After all, Leary cemented his status as a TV genius with his heralded 9/11 series, Rescue Me. A show that blended comedy, drama and was a classy ode to fallen firefighters for many seasons. That bought him a do whatever you want license from FX, and he chose to sink his teeth into an old rock lion trying to make a comeback. The idea couldn’t miss, but it did. Here’s why.
Unlike Rescue Me, Leary never punched the audience in the gut with a vigorous speech or a moment that made you step back and go, “wow”. There were five of those during the first six episodes of Rescue Me. I know the shows are drastically different, but Leary doesn’t pull any punches in any genre so I was disappointed when the final episode of SDRR aired last week and fizzled. It came and went. It was mundane. Ordinary. Punchless. Weak. Those are words I don’t associate with Leary entertainment.
Leary’s Johnny Rock had some direction, and even a few juicy one liners and jokes about real bands. The supporting cast of John Corbett, Robert Kelly, Elizabeth Gilles, and Elaine Hendrix. The first few episodes set up a cool story line about Rock’s daughter(Gilles) coming back to enliven the separated band, The Heathens. Corbett’s Flash had some good moments with Leary but it was far too “networky”. By that, it reeked of network television drool, something FX has largely avoided with most of its series. With only 10 episodes to tell its season story, the show never locked down a tone. It went in dramatic directions and always tried to give everything a light touch. Sometimes, a little edge was needed and left out of scenes. This was Diet Leary. Something I hoped I’d never taste on television.
Is it terrible? No. Some of the episodes worked but the story fizzled overall and does not leave me wanting more. FX let the final episodes air without announcing an end or a future. That only tells me their thoughts on the series don’t fall too far from mine.
I am sure Leary can fire another gem up for FX. He’s got a unique storytelling ability and can do most of the work himself. Would this show have worked on HBO or Showtime? No. A dirtier edgier network wouldn’t have given this show a touch of greatness.
In the end, SDRR just fell short of expectations, lacking the usual bite and punch one has come to expect with Leary entertainment.
Banshee’s Fourth Season to be its last
The time has come, Banshee addicts. The gritty landscape that has paved the way for the most entertaining and fulfilling show in the past three years could be closing its doors. According to TVLine.com, the Cinemax gem will end its run with 2016’s fourth season. Sadness doesn’t begin to explain the way I feel right now. Punching something sounds better. Maybe a punching bag perhaps. Something to ease the pain.
Excuse me while I step out of proud professional writer mode and into a passionate fan’s skin. This is sad on so many levels but the signs were there earlier this year as I interviewed the producers, writers and directors. Writer/producer Jonathan Tropper hinted at it in our chat. Former showrunner/producer/director Greg Yaitanes and director/producer Loni Peristere all referenced making every episode as great as the last one as if the swan song was one punch, bullet hole or explosion away.
The best shows don’t save the goods for last. They make sure every single moment is worth keeping people home on a Friday night. That’s right. Thank God It’s Friday became Thank God it’s Banshee Day…..
Banshee was the first show I loved that also gave me a real reason to not go out on Friday night. While everybody else partied, I stayed at home and reveled in the land of flawed men, tough women and bad decisions.
Who needed a shot of whiskey when characters like ex-con turned sheriff turned doom maker Lucas Hood(Antony Starr) drank enough for six death row prison guards? Who needed action outside your house when Hood got into more fights in one episode than a Goon did in an entire hockey season? Banshee is cinematic television, churning out movie styled hours of couch fantasy binge blasting than 98 percent of other premium cable networks.
Instead of taking a season off after critics respected the second season, Banshee cut the deepest with its third round. It added mph to its fastball instead of throwing softer. Beloved characters fell, unpredictable learned a new name and vengeance grew a pair of legs inside a few bodies that fateful night back in March.
The reason the departure cuts extra deep has nothing to do with the best stunts on television, the most passionate sex scenes ever filmed and the most brutally menacing people you’ll find on any plasma screen. The actors, such as Ivana Milicevic and Hoon Lee, interacted with the viewers every Friday night. They logged in on Twitter and traded with people watching their creations do the most outrageous of things. It doesn’t get any better than Milicevic describing her parents reaction to the violence and sex on the show. Lee and Starr trading hits created great humor while the one and the only Matt Servitto brought the wittiest drops of flavor on a weekly basis.
The personal touch provided by these people started something. Look around. Showtime’s Ray Donovan is doing cast twitter work. Other shows are catching on. Banshee started something and it all began with Yaitanes years ago. Thanks Greg for starting a fire that won’t be put out for years. One day I will watch with my son and tell him why characters like The Albino and Rabbit aren’t just bad guys. They are men with a different purpose.
More so than any show on television(I watch a lot of TV), Banshee didn’t drew a single line between good and bad people. They drew about 49 lines and they shifted every week. You could call Ulrich Thomson’s Kai Proctor a bad man until you saw how he treated his mother. You could call Geno Segers’ Chayton a monster before you saw his upbringing. You could be scared out of your shoes by Matthew Rauch’s Clay Burton but once you know his backstory, it fit like a glove. Lili Simmons’ beautiful yet deadly Rebecca Bowman coming onto her uncle could be a little off putting at first, but after you took a look around the set, it kind of fit. You could call Kurt Bunker a tattooed beast until you saw Tom Pelphrey deliver the speech of the year at the end of the finale in March. I’ll miss these misfit square pegs forever trying to fit into round holes.
I’ll miss Starr’s badlands version of a Bruce Willis anti-hero the most. Starr combined shades Colin Farrell, Sylvester Stallone, Willis and a dose of Steve McQueen to create this good man stuck in a violent body twisting a piece of aluminum foil that was the good life. From the moment he stepped outside that prison gate in the pilot, viewers fell hard for this ex-con gone wrong and more wrong. He was human but a fighter to the core. A thief turned hardened prison turned tortured lover turned wrongful lawman turned crimefighter.
Hood saw his world fall apart in Season 3 and by the end, was ready to walk down a road possibly with a man who he had sworn to kill hours earlier. That’s Banshee. Once you think you know what’s going on and your hands drop, the writers slug you with an uppercut you never saw coming. That’s great television. It endures and never leaves your mind days later.
I suggest watching or revisiting the first three seasons. If you don’t have Cinemax, make a friend or neighbor that does and buy them beer to watch their cable. Show some self respect and take a trip through this unusual town. The women may cut you with their good looks but they will knock you out with their actions. Just wait for a bloodied Rebecca to step over a man she just killed and say, “I have all the thunder I need.” The men won’t allow you to look away for too long either. They are battleships on dry land.
As Banshee’s fourth season wraps up this summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and its final eight hour set launches into action early next year, I will sit back and remember the great times I’ve had with this show, behind the scenes and in front of the tube. I’ll remember being humbled by its creators and blown away by its actors. I’ll remember feeling alive after every episode.
Friday nights after March, 2016, will never the same again. We have eight months to prepare for that feeling. I suggest buying a punching bag immediately.
Banshee: The Boldest TV Show You Haven’t Seen Yet
Find the time and give this show a set of eyes and ears because it’s primal rage entertainment and truly badass. Banshee season 2 premieres on January 10th. This is my third write up on it. Read up. This is my 300th post on WordPress, and it couldn’t come about a better subject. I posted this piece a week ago on Film-Addict and it’s already got over 500 hits. If you need a show to watch this month, check out Banshee. Here it is.
I was a fan of Banshee long before it graced large billboards in California and New York and before it crawled up on people’s top 10 list of TV shows of 2013. When it premiered in January, no one had any clue what to think would come of this collaboration from the minds behind True Blood and House.
A year later, more than a handful of people know that Executive Producer Alan Ball and Creator/Executive Producer/Director Greg Yaitanes have crafted a genuine thrill ride of a television series, and one that could run for a long time on Cinemax if they know what good television is.
From the minute I watched the first episode of this wildly addictive show, I knew something special was brewing and that the entire world (not just entertainment fans) needed to be told about it. This is my third Banshee spotlight piece. There is a pretty clear fascination going on here. Let me break it down for you why it is so good and why you should donate 10 hours to its story right away.
This show doesn’t need awards to vindicate its greatness. This isn’t 30 Rock or The Good Wife. It breeds fanaticism and a devout cult following of fans straight from its skill at hooking viewers to a network without a big television series background and a story that is easy to digest yet impossible to ignore. There isn’t another show on TV that I have spent re watching this past summer, fall and winter more than Banshee. It isn’t a series that weighs you down with plot twists and a long list of complicated characters. It is smooth digestible chaos.
You have a man who gets out of prison, goes to this small town in Pennsylvania because something or someone is there that he wants. Without it, he is incomplete. Through a series of events, this man becomes the sheriff of this small town, Banshee. His name is Lucas Hood. He finds a woman from his past living under disguise there. He quickly pisses off local Amish gangsters and lures in mysterious beautiful women to his bed. He befriends a local bartender who used to box and has a few secrets of his own. He has a long trusted sidekick telling him to get out of dodge. Lucas isn’t’t going anywhere and we are thankful for that.
If people made sane logical decisions on Banshee, the entertainment value would drop in a heartbeat. In Yaitanes and writer Jonathon Trooper’s world, there are tons of secrets and mystery but that just makes for years of energetically deep storytelling. Their writing fuels the actors and actresses who bring this hypnotic blend of crazy to life.
Antony Starr’s soulful and brutal Lucas is the rock at the center of the show and the previously unknown New Zealand actor surprises you with his depth and emotional storage of feeling and resolve. Ivana Milecevic’s(learn that name and scream it) dual faces of sexy ex con Ana and the new wife and mother Ana show Ivana’s ability to be a romantic and a physical force to reckon with. Need proof, watch the video below of her epic fight with Christos Vasilopoulos’s Olek from Season 1.
Ulrich Thomsen’s Kai Procter, a man who looks like a villain on the surface but carries as much pain around as anyone. Hoon Lee’s comedic and assured work as Job, the brain behind Lucas’ madness. Frankie Faisen’s Sugar, the old puncher feeling new blood stream through his veins with Lucas in town. Trieste Kelly Dunn’s fierce cop, seeing her past and future collide with deadly force. Demetrius Grosse’s larger than life officer sharing some hidden abilities and power of his own. Rus Blackwell’s conflicted lawyer, trying to maintain his marriage, his thirst for justice and his sanity at the same time with new revelations walking through his door.
Lili Simmons’ Rebecca, torn between her past and her uncertain future as an Amish lady with a wild side. Ryann Shane’s young woman, unaware that her father could be this sheriff who keeps showing up in her life. Matt Servitto’s seasoned lawman dealing with this guy who is causing a tornado of change in an already unstable town. Matthew Rauch’s deadly henchman for Procter. I could go on but some things are better left discovering. Let’s just say the incoming presence of Lucas throws the entire town for a loop, in good, bad and ugly ways.
The characters on Banshee are comic book fueled creations with a real heart and soul that don’t fall on the clean cut sides of good or bad. There is only one man who could create this kind of madness and that man is Yaitanes, who has directed a handful of the episodes, executive produced the show and put his neck on the line for the show. Trooper’s dialogue and stories hit you over the head like a blunt instrument.
The people on this show are a special breed of deadly and we are privy to their actions on a weekly basis. Banshee is entertainment at its finest. Full of bad intentions and an ambition to top one ridiculously over the top scene with something even more outrageous. Banshee doesn’t need your sympathy but demands your attention.
Now is the time to jump in. Catch up before the second season begins. Grab a blanket, a bottle of whiskey, a knife and cozy up on the couch for a night full of anti-heroic actions, visceral action, red hot sex, violent tendencies and a cinematic blend of television that is so rare these days. You are either in or you are out. Put down the smart phone, kindle, book and tell the spouse to shoot up.
Pay attention to this show. There is a quiet emotional storm of drama streaming right beneath the bloody action and nudity. There is more than meets the eye at all times.
The second season of Banshee starts on January 10th, 2014. I own the Blu Ray/DVD and would invite anyone to come watch it with me. The first season is on demand via U-Verse and Charter. It’s available via Max Go. Go to a friend’s house and watch it. Politely ask a stranger if they can lend you their television for the evening. Find the time and give this show a set of eyes and ears because it’s primal rage entertainment and truly badass.
-Dan Buffa is the co-creator, administrator and writer for the movie website, film-addict.com. He also writes for the local blog United Cardinal Bloggers in addition to Arch City Sports and also writes for his personal blog, http://www.doseofbuffa.com. He is a STL born and raised writer with a need to inform and the ability to pound out 1,000-1,500 word pieces with ease. When he isn’t writing or drinking coffee, he is spending time with his wife and son in South City. Follow him at @buffa82 on Twitter and reach him for thoughts, comments and general feedback at buffa82@gmail.com.
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