Carefully constructed lies and identities come crashing down to Earth in ‘We Shall Live Forever’, a Banshee episode that moves at such a breakneck pace, it’s almost hard to absorb everything. Constructed around a brutal, exposition-packed fight scene, ‘We Shall Live Forever’ firmly puts its foot on the gas pedal heading into what look to be an explosive end to the season.
A lot of Ana’s origin story is fairly common dramatic material: mother died during child birth, felt smothered by her father, had a brother-like figure who was in love with her – information all revealed during her long, drag-out fight with Olek, a big, bloody info dump for a very mysterious character. Although she loves and wants to protect her family, Lucas points out the obvious to her: Carrie Hopewell is a hiding place, a massive fantasy world Ana’s built for herself, where she doesn’t have to think about the realities of what she’s done.
I wish there was a little more definition given for Ana’s actions – the sexcapade that closed ‘Behold a Pale Rider’ opens ‘We Shall Live Forever’, defined by Ana as her way of “saying goodbye.” Lines like that are a little frustrating – even as the walls are closing in around her, Ana’s inexplicably clinging to the belief that they aren’t. She’s essentially a woman surrounded by threats of different men: Rabbit who wants to kill her, Gordon who knows something’s up, and Lucas, who’s willing to put everything in danger to be with Ana again (in the episode’s sappiest moment, a still-naked Lucas says “nothing in the world makes sense if there’s no us”).
It makes for an odd gender dynamic – Ana’s told (and shown) that she’s disloyal by every man around her, including those that profess their love for her throughout the episode. It’s as if characters are saying “You’re a piece of work… but you’re hot… I love you!”. It’s one thing to have a complex, layered female character, but the way her decisions are viewed by other characters doesn’t quite give off this feeling. It goes for the male characters as well: from Olek’s comments about her strength to Lucas’s blindness to her clear desire to want a different life, the males on the show are very domineering, attempting to fit the females in the show into these neat little boxes and conception of a woman.
There are a few scenes hinting at trouble with the casino (introducing Alex’s sister Nola, another rejected daughter character) with the death of Benjamin, the local tribe leader. But the chunk of the time not spent with Olec and Ana beating the living shit out of each other is spent drawing Kai and Rebecca closer together. Some of it suggests they might take this in a bad direction (there are moments where there are hints of incest in Kai’s behavior), but there’s a common thread pulled between Kai, Rebecca and Ana as three people who have no home, escaped and shunned by those who raised and loved them, swimming through the world without family.
This leads to the biggest theme of the show: identity. Everyone on Banshee is broken in some way: Sugar as a failed boxer, Rebecca and Kai banished from the Amish, and Ana running away from every family and love she’s ever had. The psychological part of this is somewhat understated – a concession that comes about simply because there’s so much material to run through. Ana’s mother, Lucas knowing he’s Deva’s father, Alex Longshadow making angry faces… and to top it off, the FBI launching a formal investigation into the school shooting from ‘Behold a Pale Rider’, with Dean Xavier poking around the walls put up every time he looks into Lucas’s identity.
‘We Shall Live Forever’ suffers a bit being the 8th of 10 episodes – had this been 8 of 13, there would’ve been more time to slowly accelerate things, and find other ways to define Ana’s character in deeper fashion. It’s a little too stuffed for its own good, but ‘We Shall Live Forever’ fills in some necessary blanks, a solid first act to the end of the first season
Grade: B
Other thoughts/observations:
– a little odd that nobody (Sugar, Job) heard the commotion in Lucas’s apartment, no?
– Kai: “I wasn’t built for contrition.”
– Lucas: “English, please.” Olek: “Fuck you.” Lucas: “That’s better.”
– I can’t imagine how difficult the Olek/Ana fight scene was to film. The two pull it off quite well, thanks to Greg Yaitanes’s use of handheld, which balances the close-up shots with framed angles, that capture the intricacy and brutality without becoming disorienting.
– Kai’s God complex comes to the forefront when visits the Amish farm, cursing and screaming at his parents and the community that banished him.
– Gordon doesn’t say much – just wakes up and starts trashing things when he wakes up and Ana isn’t there.
– Lucas hasn’t learned much about politics, which makes the words “election cycle” furrow his brow.
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