Armies of One

Watching this series for the third time now in over two years. I've come back to it with fresh eyes and I realized this episode encapsulates the show's most prominent theme in one line of dialogue from none other than our protagonist.

Hood: You only get one second chance.

Jason got another chance. Hood got another chance. Carrie got another chance. Job after having blown up his business in New York and moving to Banshee. Rebecca leaving the farm and moving in with Proctor. Longshadow making amends with Proctor so that he can remain chief. This is a story of second chances.

However let's not detract from the shows main theme put perfectly by Siobhan Kelly.

Hood: Do you think we can change?

Kelly: I don't know that we change. But we can evolve.

Hood: You think we can evolve?

Kelly: That's what we're trying to do, right? Become better versions of ourselves.

Second chances and evolving. Outstanding episode.

This episode captured everything that the show is trying to tell you. It's brutal, depressing and full of sex. It lures you in with a false sense of security multiple times before ripping your heart out and proving what you knew all along, no one in this show is going to make it.

The dialogue is perfectly written and every single moment is another twist that throws you for a loop. Truly expect the unexpected when watching this episode because you truly don't get the whole picture until the last second.

Burtons backstory flashback was the icing on the cake as we finally get to see what has made him the man that kills.

OK, before you start emailing, let me say that I KNOW the actor was not Jason Statham.

But you have to admit that was the point.

I mean, after the (now famous) episode where Hood is forced to give a tuneup to an MMA star (looking twice his size) who wanders into Dodge (ooops I meant Banshee), you have to concede that the logline for this script (eyes only, not for public consumption) probably read "HOOD MEETS STATHAM" and they just took it from there.

My reviews of individual episodes already suggest that I believe this could be the most significant show of its generation, and that is a mighty bold statement.

But I do watch a lot of TV (so much so that Neilson people once took me down with a tranquilizer dart, tagged me with an RFID chip, and then released me back into the wild) and I am going with instincts here.

This is indeed my pick for most consistently "best" show on the box, and the reason is not merely what the producers (who, according to their IMDb bios, seemed to have appeared as if from nowhere) have already done with the series, but rather in the way they are never content to rest on past laurels, they just keep testing the envelope.

The first 5 minutes here, the setup, was more fun than ENTIRE MOVIES recently done by Segal and Van Damme, And it just gets better and crazier as it goes.

When I compare this to shows like Person of Interest, I think of David and Goliath. POI is very polished, is like Microsoft. Big names both in front of the camera and behind. Committee think. Endless resources.

But this little gem came out of nowhere, it seems, and just won't stop raising the bar.