Banshee "All The Wisdom I Got Left" Review: Until Nothing Else Remains
Banshee S03E08: "All the Wisdom I Got Left"
Before this week's episode, my expectations for another—and potentially final—showdown between Hood and Chayton were through the roof and hovering somewhere in the stratosphere. After a couple great match-ups last season, a wild robbery-shootout in the Season 3 premiere, an emotionally wrenching siege a few weeks ago, and then their intimate altercation in a tent, Banshee has skillfully presented these two powerful forces of nature as different but equally meaningful. It's unsurprising, then, that despite my high expectations and all the death and destruction that lingered between the pair, "All the Wisdom I Got Left" brought Banshee's long-running Hood-Chayton feud to a bloody, satisfying conclusion.
Heck, the episode managed to give us three distinct and significant scrums between the rivals, without limiting the impact of their final encounter or hampering anything else that took place over the course of the hour. One of the things I love about Banshee is that when the plot moves forward, it doesn't dawdle, and when characters say they're going to do something, they do it; there's never a delay because the show isn't close enough to the season finale or because an actor is only contracted for a set number of episodes. Last week, Hood and Brock decided to travel to New Orleans to hunt down Chayton. This week, they'd already made the trip and were working to accomplish that goal. The opening sequence was a fun if weightless way for the two of them to actually find Chayton, but once Hood and Brock made it to The Underground—a dingy fighting dungeon run by a Colonel Robert Parker cosplayer—and Hood locked eyes with Chayton (mid-fight, I might add), it was on. Less than 10 minutes into the episode, they were at each other's throats, tossing each other around, and trying to break each other's mind, body, and spirit. And again, that was just the appetizer.
While the fight choreography, direction, and editing were all expectedly superb, what I really appreciated about "All the Wisdom I Got Left" was that it told a succinct and complete story between Hood and Chayton. The history is the history, but from their early confrontation until the end, the episode illustrated how Hood's perseverance and resiliency surprised Chayton. Early on, Chayton mocked Siobhan's death, toyed with Hood, and basically dared Hood and Brock to make a major move in The Underground space. As their second clash unspooled in the second-level hotel room/apartment/whatever, they each did some pretty brutal damage to the other, but Chayton again eschewed any idea that Hood could actually defeat him. The, "You can't kill me, you're just a man and no man can kill me" line was one of the more badass things that Chayton has uttered, however pompous—and he's one of the biggest badasses in recent television history.
But we all knew how this would end, and that didn't make the actual conclusion any less satisfying. Hood chased a bloody and limping Chayton all around New Orleans, passing through a graveyard (which I thought was a fun little nod to last week's "you can't hide from the dead" line) and winding up at an abandoned-ish carnival. After watching him dismantle nearly everyone and everything Banshee has thrown at him over the past two seasons, we'd been conditioned to believe that Chayton was nearly indestructible. What we didn't quite understand was that Chayton had started to view himself in that same way. A couple weeks ago, he simply dared Amy and Hood to take him out, and last week, he mercilessly killed the woman who took him in; this week, he spent "All the Wisdom I Got Left" mocking Hood and Siobhan's death. For Chayton to finally acknowledge that he'd underestimated Hood in the face of certain death was a big moment for the character, even as he ridiculed Hood for his lack of understanding with regard to concepts like "purity," "true purpose," and a "spiritual calling."
That's when Hood blew his side off with a shotgun... before taking a few steps forward and pulling the trigger yet again, instantly eviscerating Chayton's face in what was one of the most impressively violent moments I have ever seen on television. It made Gus Fring's death on Breaking Bad look like a kid's cartoon. The best part, though? Hood's casual, "Hey," right before he took the second shot. That line was vintage Hood—an unfussy version of a traditional action-hero catchphrase.
While Chayton will be missed, Banshee did the character justice this season, and in "All the Wisdom I Got Left." Hood ultimately got to "win," but he didn't exactly walk away from their meeting unscathed. Twice during the episode, Brock noted that he didn't really know anything about Hood as a person, but was confident that Hood would do whatever was necessary to take out Chayton and Kai. However, by the end of the hour, Hood was just ready to pack it in. From everything that's happened with Rabbit and Carrie to falling in love with Siobhan and then having her ripped away from him by the Native American Hulk, there's only so much Hood can take. Chayton was right—he is only a man. While Hood's slivers of goodness and honor (or what Stowe referred to as weakness) mean that he'll surely return to Banshee with Brock and attempt to eliminate Kai (and Stowe), I can't imagine that he'll remain unaffected by these events. Chayton might be gone, but Hood will soon need something else—or someone else—to help make the pain go away.
Anyway, bravo to Antony Starr, Geno Segers, and the entire Banshee team for crafting such a wonderful Hood-Chayton rivalry on almost every level. The technical supremacy on display in each one of their fight sequences is generally unmatched, and both performers consistently raised their games as the characters' feud grew increasingly personal, violent, and ugly.
I briefly mentioned this above, but "All the Wisdom I Got Left" was also impressive in the sense that its spotlight on Hood and Chayton didn't disrupt or limit the impact of some of the episode's more minor story developments. I was especially fond of this week's rendition of Job and Sugar C-Plot Theatre, which saw Sugar giving a large chunk of the heist money to the son of a man he destroyed in a boxing ring several years ago. Banshee doesn't delve into Sugar's history as frequently as it should (there's only so much time in any given season, I suppose), so this was a welcome little detour.
Learning that the man Sugar beat to a pulp had died and that the son was simply conning Sugar for more money packed a nice punch, and Frankie Faison played that conflicted heartbreak very well. The characters in this world struggle to handle their emotions, and the idea that Sugar beat the guy almost to death simply because the woman he loved cared more for the dude than she did for Sugar was a great example of that overarching theme. Plus, who can complain about a brief sequence where Job throws down with a cocky boxer and wins his money back?
The perpetually deteriorating Proctor family saga also continued this week, with more lows than highs (for the characters, not Banshee). Rebecca's attempts to circumvent and yet support her uncle's businesses came to a screeching halt thanks to Burton's dogged stewardship of Kai's books... though I'm not sure I'm truly ready to talk about the scene where Rebecca tried to seduce Burton, only to realize that something is missing below the belt. That was one of those sufficiently creepy/weird moments that Banshee does very well. More importantly, Rebecca's attempted come-on might've knocked loose some of Burton's own concerns about Kai's relationship with Emily, meaning that he'll next have to deal with his own questions about loyalty, history, and what's "right" for the weird family's business.
Kai has other troubles, however. Fresh off being welcomed back into the Amish community (and the arms of his father), he was taken hostage by a group of men I presume to be Lennox's; they must've learned of Rebecca's shady side deals and are now ready to collect. (I'm guessing they don't know that Rebecca's the one who set up the other deals, but we'll see.) This development wasn't Kai's fault, per se, but he must wrestle with what he created, or what he failed to foster, with Rebecca. Did he leave her alone too often, or should he have empowered her more? Either way, Rebecca's actions have once again caused big problems for her uncle, and you have to assume that won't continue for too much longer.
And at the very end of "All the Wisdom I Got Left," the show's Villain in Waiting, Colonel Douglas Stowe, made a particularly discomforting reappearance at the diner. Unsurprisingly, Stowe is primed for war with whomever completed the raid on the vault—and by the looks of things, he's very aware that his former fling played a key role in ripping him off. Hood and Brock might be coming back to Banshee to deal with Kai, but chances are they'll have another significant obstacle to overcome before that happens. That Stowe was shot from behind like Chayton has been so many times was a telling little nod from the show and director Greg Yaitanes; one great Big Bad might be gone, but there's another one ready and willing to make sure that Hood can never, ever outrun the dead, or anything that he's done.
NOTES
– The first Underground fight featured people popping one another with baseball bats. No thanks. However, I'd totally watch a non-canonical web series about all of Banshee's characters battling one another in The Underground, Mortal Kombat-style.
– The brief flashback to Kai and Burton's first moments together was violent, disturbing, and a little bit touching—the classic Banshee package!
– In case you'd like to hear more Banshee-related thoughts from me, I joined Les Chappell and Sean Colletti on their Under the Hood podcast to discuss last week's episode.
– Let's all try to name our favorite Hood-Chayton encounters. I have a soft spot in my heart for the first one, way back in Season 2's "The Warrior Class," but everything that happened in "Tribal" is also still clanging around in my brain. How about you?
