It’s easy to look at the promos for The Bastard Executioner and assume that it will be Game of Thrones by way of Sons of Anarchy – that is, none of the mysticism or subtlety of the former, but all of the brutality and gratuity of the latter. After Kurt Sutter’s motorcycle soap opera ended after seven seasons, audiences had a reasonably accurate idea of what to expect from Bastard. And those assumptions are…well, partially correct. Don’t get me wrong, there are parts of the two-part pilot that are vintage Sutter, the quintessence of Sutter, but so much of Bastard is played weirdly straightforward that it’s easy to lose the depraved voice at its center.
The Bastard Executioner – great title, by the way, leagues better than the original, which was The Head in the Basket – follows Wilkin Brattle, a former soldier who has left his war making ways behind him after a visit from an angelic child while he was bleeding on the battlefield. Wilkin is played by Lee Jones, who does fine work but doesn’t make much of an impression. He also looks like a long-lost Hemsworth brother, because evidently every Australian male is chiseled out of fucking marble. Anyway, Wilkin lives an idyllic life with his expectant wife Petra, and the way director Paris Barclay (a Sons of Anarchy vet as well as an executive producer on Bastard) shoots these early scenes makes it abundantly clear that some bad shit is about to go down. Remember the first twenty minutes of A History of Violence? The same principle applies here.
The pilot – and the episode description – is meant to emphasize how unwilling Wilkin is to live a violent life again, something that the episode itself forgets as soon as is narratively convenient. Some of Wilkin’s buddies convince him, like, right away to go with them to straight-up murder a group of tax collectors for a local baron. Wilkin agrees, and off they go a-murdering. It’s an impressively brutal scene, especially since the hooded men slitting throats are our protagonists. Say what you will about Sutter, but the man knows violence. The Baron Ventris hits back hard, burning down Wilkin’s village and killing everyone who lives there. It’s at this point that Bastard kicks into Sutter overdrive, as Ventris’s victims are all children, women, and the elderly. Wilkin’s wife gets stabbed – in the pregnant belly no less – as a brutal reminder that we’re back in Kurt Sutter territory.
Sutter really lets his SoA flag fly when Wilkins gets revenge; he and his men, aided by a group of gruff rebels (including one played by The Americans‘ Matthew Rhys!) butcher the shit out of the baron’s men, with the baron himself taking a dagger to the back of the head, in what was a genuinely surprising moment. RIP the bad guy, right? Well, not necessarily, as this move allows True Blood‘s Stephen Moyer, as Milus, to pick up the slack. Also, Milus is into boys and doesn’t care who knows it, another example of Sutter being strangely sexually progressive.
Look, I’m not going to rehash the plot. This was two hours of television with about a dozen locations, that would take me all goddamn night. “Pilot” was an inasupicious, but somewhat promising debut. The show looks gorgeous, but there were a few mechanical errors that popped out at me. Look at that tracking shot leading up to Milus and Baron Ventris. It’s herky-jerky and discomfiting. Tracking shots, by their nature, are supposed to be immersive, and show you exactly how much is going on in this world. A lot of the dialogue was too on the nose and overly expository, but since this is a pilot episode that’s more or less forgivable. The Bastard Executioner could be a hell of a show – as of now, I don’t know. It didn’t make the same splash with its debut episode as did Sons of Anarchy or Game of Thrones, its two most obvious comparisons. But flaws notwithstanding, it’s good to have Sutter’s uniquely depraved voice back on the air.
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