EPISODE REVIEWS: Kings: "Prosperity" (Episode 2)

This is my second attempt at a review, because I spent 49 minutes writing the first one only to push the wrong button and wipe it all out. Disheartened, this will probably been more terse than my usual go round.

“An evil spirit was on Saul, as he sat in his house with his spear in his hand; and David was playing with his hand. Saul sought to strike David even to the wall with the spear; but he slipped away out of Saul's presence, and he struck the spear into the wall: and David fled, and escaped that night. Saul sent messengers to David's house, to watch him, and to kill him in the morning”
---1st Samuel 19:9-11 ( http://bible.somd.com/web/B09C019.shtml )

We start off with Saul atop a rooftop in the rain, beseeching God not to go. David awakes to find a man sitting on the foot of his bed telling him not to go. David awakes, again, to find the man was a dream while pigeons fly portentously around through both his dreams and real life.

Silas has decided David is a threat, and orders Abner to have him assassinated.

The Gathians have sent envoys to sign a peace treaty, but they refuse to until they get to meet David. The young captain is called in, and ordered to shut up, which he does in a loquacious fashion that annoys Silas and the Gathian General, but seems to charm the premier. When the time comes to sign the treaty, Gath claims it’s been changed to Gilboan advantage, and they stomp out.

Told that the king is having the worst day of his life, his Brother in Law decides to pull all his megacorp’s funds from the royal treasury, bankrupting the government and the king. Silas confronts his inlaw about this, and fails to resolve the situation. He proves to be rather charmingly resilient and undaunted at his failure and heads to “Gehenna,” a kind of maximum security prison/fort thing in the middle of nowhere.

Here he confronts Vesper Abaddon, the deposed mad king of Carmel. 30 years before, Silas defeated Carmel and imprisoned its king, though he told everyone he’d killed the guy. Abaddon’s subjects emphatically celebrated his demise. When Silas captured the kingdom, its treasury was empty, and in the thirty years hence no one’s found the money. Silas bribes Abaddon in to telling him where it is by giving him information about where the Abaddon family is today. Evidently he’d told Vesper he had them killed.

Silas takes the money, puts it in the treasury, and passes off the whole ‘economic collapse’ thing as a computer glitch, much to his brother-in-law’s annoyance. The Queen shows up proving she knows more about the troubles between Silas and her brother than we would have imagined last week. She independently brokers a deal that will smooth things over - evidently her nephew was banished from the court “For good reason,” but she can get him back in.

Princess Michelle speaks well of David to her dad, but he reminds her of something dark in her past which upsets her.

A dejected David decides to leave town with his mom, but sees a kid on TV holding a sign that says “Don’t Go” and realizes what he has to do: he carjacks the cab and crashes it in to the Gathian motorcade, nearly resulting in a firefight on the palace steps. Silas steps in to restore order and is able to get the Premier alone so he can negotiate. Turns out Gath is a poor military dictatorship that wants a higher standard of living, but can’t create it. Silas offers them “Port Prosperity,” a major world trade center that they captured from Gath a generation before in six months if they’ll agree to peace. They agree.

David praises the king and how great he is, and the king realizes that since fortune smiles on David, it also smiles on those around him, for now anyway, and calls off the assassination, but not before the shooter takes his first shot. Fortunately those portentous pigeons save the anointed one’s life.

OBSERVATIONS---
Man, this really is The Silas Show isn’t it? Ian McShane just chews every bit of scenery, commands every scene, stomps around regally, and it all totally works. This is no small feat because - let’s admit it -