Banshee "Tribal" Review: Blood for Blood
Shows do "major" episodes in the middle of the season all the time. Whether it's a significant death during a sweeps period, a big-budget post-Super Bowl episode, or a cliffhanger-driven "fall finale," we've been trained to understand and anticipate the ebbs and flows of the television season. So, even though Banshee has been operating on another level early in Season 3, I took the cast and crew's assertions that this week's "Tribal" would bring finale-level action at the season's midpoint with a small grain of salt.
I don't think I'll ever doubt them again; "Tribal" was everything they promised and so much more, not to mention one of the most intense and relentless episodes of television I've ever seen, period. That it occurred at this juncture of the season simply added another layer to what was already an impressive feat of storytelling. Everyone—the cast, the writers, director OC Madsen, the production team—deserves credit for this one, which grabbed me by the throat at the very beginning, kept pummeling me in the gut for the duration, and ultimately left me in a messy ball of emotions in my living room. This is what great television looks like.
One of the great things about "Tribal" is that there were no half measures or temporary periods of relief, something that's also generally true about Banshee as a whole. At the end of last week's ever-satisfying "Real Life Is the Nightmare," we were left to ponder what exactly would happen once Chayton and the Redbones started firing on the Banshee Sheriff's Department. Lesser shows might've restricted the Redbones' attack to only a later part of the episode, or managed to let Hood resourcefully find a way to be the hero he's shown the potential to be. But Banshee jumped right into the shootout and simply never let up until the very end of the hour, and while Hood certainly had his moments (the way that dude avoids gunfire is superhuman), he, much like myself, was left in a ball of emotions by the end of it all. He didn't win. He barely survived. And as is always the case on Banshee, he suffered significant consequences for his interference in the Proctor-Redbones feud.
Of course, those consequences were what I'm sure many of us feared the instant that Siobhan learned the truth about (some of) Hood's past, as Chayton finally hit Hood where it hurt the most by snapping Siobhan's neck. Her death was undoubtedly the most momentous of the show's run, and perhaps its most powerful individual moment as well.
There were so many great things about that final sequence to celebrate, but it was the pacing of the entire hour that made it even more compelling and effective. Although the action-y stuff was great, and I'll talk a bit more about that in a second, I loved how "Tribal" created numerous opportunities for characters to deal with their interpersonal conflicts and tensions amid the hail of bullets. The flow back and forth between all the LOUD AND VIOLENT shooting and stabbing and grenading and then the quiet, out-of-breath arguments and confessions raised the emotional stakes to the same level as the apparent physical danger facing everyone trapped within the Cadi.
Thus, it wasn't just that Chayton killed Siobhan despite Hood's extremely emotional and vulnerable protests, or that Siobhan "had" to die because she knew his secret; "Tribal" gave us plenty of smaller scenes that made Siobhan's death even more of a gut punch. She began the episode unwilling to trust Hood, even in such a horrible situation, to the point where she wouldn't let him help her start the emergency generation. Then, as things progressed and she watched him try to save as many people as possible, put himself on the line, etc., she started to remember that he's a hero, however unorthodox. That led to the tremendous scene about three quarters of the way way through the episode, where Hood assured her that their relationship was legit, asking her to leave Banshee with him, and even apparently telling her his real name—which you just knew was the nail in the proverbial coffin. Those aren't necessarily "little" developments because that's how you build a story, but I don't think the show or the actors could've pulled it off any better. Antony Starr and Trieste Kelly Dunn were as good as they've ever been, particularly in that last long scene together before all hell broke loose one last time. And Starr's ugly, raw sobbing as Hood responded to Siobhan's death was the kind of crying you don't really see on TV that often; it made an already impactful sequence somehow more difficult to get through.
Losing Siobhan and Dunn hurts where it counts, but that's the point, isn't it? The Hood–Siobhan relationship has been a core element of Banshee, and as the beginning of "Tribal" illustrated, it was part of a larger exploration of whether or not Hood could become a different person in this town, in this job, and with this woman. While he's made strides in certain areas, other aspects of this episode proved (as the show always does) that his violent—if oftentimes noble—tendencies typically result in grave repercussions for those around him. Siobhan was kind of his ticket out of that world, but Hood still clearly struggled with not being the guy he's seemingly always been.
Meanwhile, even though we had to say goodbye to Siobhan, Banshee also served up some wonderful exchanges between Hood and Brock, where the latter simply couldn't deal with the former's "unorthodox" approach to police work any longer. Brock has seen his world turned upside-down by this dude, and now he's lost the deputies he worked with for an extended interval of time. Both of those deaths can be pinned on Hood pretty clearly, and he and Brock have to live with that. We can only assume that Hood is going to cope by trying to kill Chayton, every surviving member of the Redbones, and anyone else who gets in his way. But what Brock does will be just as interesting.
On top of all that, I haven't even mentioned that Hood and Proctor forged a temporary truce to try to survive Chayton's assault, resulting in a couple of amusingly fun and bloody sequences wherein they took out a bunch of Redbones together. Or that Billy Raven was willing to valiantly surrender to Chayton as part of a tribal blood-for-blood agreement and took an arrow to the chest for his troubles. Or that the reformed Neo-Nazi Bunker turned out to be both extremely fascinating and heroic in his own right, or that Siobhan got to save Billy and take out one of the Redbones in one last great bit of badassery. Every single character who appeared in this episode (sorry to the Hopewell family) had at least one awesome character moment, action-y move, or rousing piece of dialogue.
And of course, we can't neglect the visual, design, and choreography feats on display in "Tribal." Each one of the Redbones' attacks played differently from the one before, which allowed the episode to produce a sense of escalation as it moved along. Given the circumstances, there were some turbulent moments of bullet mania, but it never really felt like you couldn't follow the action. While it was absolutely overwhelming, it was purposefully and effectively so. I loved the use of the basement hallway to create an additional—and further claustrophobic—space, and I really, really liked the way the conversations between Hood and Chayton on both sides of the emergency doors were framed; they weren't quite medium shots, or low-angle shots, but they gave both men real stature (as if Chayton needed it anyway).
I could go on and on about the excellence of "Tribal," I really could. But I guess the best way to put it is that "Tribal" not only lived up to the hype and delivered a real emotional bludgeoning, it also felt a culmination of the story that Banshee has building this season, and a summation of all the great things the show can do. You could call it a "season finale in the middle of the season," or "the essential Banshee episode," and you'd be right. But it was ultimately a mission statement for a series that will almost certainly top itself again in the near future. Think about that as you try to collect your emotions this weekend.
NOTES
– I can't emphasize enough how much I enjoyed the portion of the episode where Hood and Proctor joined forces. They're great rivals, no doubt, but they make an amazing duo as well. And shout-out to Proctor for calling the cops like he promised.
– Speaking of the Proctor family, his mother took a real turn for the worse here, and apparently Rebecca had a sort of vision of the old lady telling her to run far away. Or at least I think it was a vision; I could be wrong. We'll see how that plays out in the next few episodes, I guess.
– Bunker's story to Alison about why he became a Neo-Nazi was the kind of exposition that works okay in conditions like the ones in this episode, when the audience needs a second to breathe. Tom Pelphrey is the real deal, I'm looking forward to having him and Bunker around more often.
– Hey, if you're still grieving about Siobhan's death and Trieste Kelly Dunn's departure from the series, check out my interview with her where we discuss this episode, when she found out Siobhan was being killed off, and the lovely response her character has received from you great fans.
What did you think of "Tribal"? How are you holding up in the wake of Siobhan's death?
