When I first started watching Banshee, I thought this was kind of a crappy-but-fun show. Full of raw violence, bordering-on-pornography sex scenes, ridiculously outlandish storyline, silly comic book-y vilains… Yeah, that would be fun for a couple of episodes, and then I’d move on. Well, Banshee is all that, for sure. There is no sugar coating it: it’s trashy, and it’s certainly not for everyone. But it’s also so much more! It’s not the best show ever produced, but it is a bloody damn excellent one.

I could get into all the reasons why I think it’s so great: visceral action (some of the best fight scenes I’ve ever seen, TV and cinema included), excellent acting (not only do most of the performances make these outlandish characters believable, they also make you feel for them – before you realize they’re deeply troubled and twisted people, the lot of them!), outstanding writing (more happens in half a season than in two seasons of any other show; there’s no stretching things out forever just to milk a story; finish the story with a bang – or ten – and then make another story, even more satisfyingly eye popping than the first!), and so much more. The “easy things” in this show (sex and violence) are augmented by realized characters and incredible writing and production values, in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen before (at least not for something “trashy”). So I could spend 30 minutes telling you about everything that’s cool about this show, but instead I’ll focus on one thing: Job, wonderfully portrayed by Hoon Lee.

Job is, without a doubt, one of the most awesome characters on TV right now. In my book, he’s the coolest, period. A side character in the core group, he’s kind of the most unexpected character one could think of: a cross dressing super hacker who’s also an incredible badass.

But the really cool thing is that we really don’t care about any of this; we just like (love) the character as a whole. We don’t really care that he’s (most probably) gay. He cross dresses sometimes (every other episode or so), but the other characters barely even pay attention most of the time. He is somewhat effeminate (ok, very effeminate), but the show never focuses on his sexuality, and to be honest we’re not even sure he’s gay. He appears heavily made up here and there, but he will also totally kick everyone’s ass in the most satisfying way, just like all the other characters in the show do.

Here’s a scene that I believe embodies the character. If you watch it though, keep in mind that this is just one aspect of the guy, one that shows how he deals with disrespect (and just like everything else in the show, the answer is violence, which everyone knows solves everything. 🙂 ) Most of the time though, he’s just sitting at a bar giving shit to the bartender.

In short, he’s just a super cool character that happens to be an outrageous cross dresser.

The focus being: he’s just a super cool character.

(Photo credit: BansheeTVshow.com)