Go find your VHS copy of Rio Bravo, it’s time for a new Preacher y’all! This week goes dark, really dark, as people get exploded and we see our favorite couple’s lowest moment. So grab yourself a substance of your choosing, and a serving of peanut butter pot roast, because here be spoilers for season two, episode five: “Dallas.”
1. Everyone is awful
Preacher the comic is sometimes funny, but its often an ugly story full of terrible people. Preacher the show has so far largely avoided that by focusing on madcap antics and shocking images of blasphemy. This is the first episode that has truly gone to some of the dark places the comic liked to linger in, showing Jesse and Tulip at their lowest. We know Jesse and Tulip have a criminal past but seeing how mundane, and how boring it was somehow sucks the air out of the whole thing. Far from being the romantic past full of car chases and stick-ups, it was a sad time for them, full of alcohol, bad TV, and pregnancy tests.
The depression montage still read as more effective than any sad imagery in the comic. The humanity the actors bring to their characters is a far cry from the sometimes misanthropic comic book. Also, the whole production team from hair and makeup to costumes did a great job at showing us terribly dressed past versions of these characters.
2. The ghost of John Wayne
Jesse and his buddy Reggie have a silly debate about John Wayne. Jesse is drunk and Reggie is high, but the levity was welcome in an otherwise dark episode. It also made me admire what a good adaptation this show has turned out to be. John Wayne plays an important role in the comic, both as a character in flashbacks to Jesse’s father, and as a ghostly narrator.
Far from feeling like an obligatory Easter Egg, the inclusion of John Wayne feels like some potential foreshadowing or a reference to a different take. The show managed to set up the Grail and Herr Starr through what felt like throwaway gags, and its doing the same thing with Jesse’s terrifying family. In a show where Hitler is a sort of likable supporting player, I can’t wait to meet the ghost of John Wayne.
3. Jesse the abuser
Of course, things don’t go so great for Reggie. Jesse stares forward swallowing his feelings as Tulip gives him a harsh read. She invokes his dad, and John Wayne, two figures of toxic masculinity while Jesse just slams a beer, trying to feel nothing. When Jesse finally loses it, he doesn’t turn on Tulip- he would never do that, right? He turns on Reggie. Because Jesse Custer is the kind of misogynist who tells himself he honors women, when he thinks of them as separate, and inferior. He wants to batter Tulip, but he can’t because of what that would turn him into, so he makes laid back Reggie a stand-in, and beats the crap out of him. It’s upsetting to see, but a nuanced (while still goddamn awful) take on Jesse’s sexism.
4. So what’s up with Viktor?
Ultimately the answers about Viktor seem a little bit of a letdown. He was nice to Tulip at a time when she was scared of Jesse, for good reason. He accepted her for the criminal that she was, and wanted to be. So she married him. And that’s kind of it. I wasn’t expecting a deep dive into the psyche of Viktor, but after we spent an entire episode setting him up, I kind of wanted him to amount to more than a brief diversion before getting brutally murdered. Preacher has an unfortunate tendency to explode dangling plot threads whether it be an entire town, or an ex-husband.
5. Abuses of Power: Consequences Edition
Jesse has been using the voice a lot more than I thought he would. The season established a plot device that would bring the Saint down on him if he used his power. I thought that was going to be his Kryptonite- a plot convenient excuse to prevent him from seeming too O.P. as the kids say. But no, Jesse was still Jesse, using the word in emergencies and sometimes just for fun. And now there’s a murderous immortal racking up a huge body count. The show is doing a good job at showing that there are consequences for Jesse’s use and abuse of his power, now we need to see how he really feels about the increasing amount of blood on his hands. He wants to be a good man after all, there’s already too many of the other kind of guy.
