Get out your dusty old Rock Band guitars, it’s time for a new Preacher y’all! I’ve spend the last week and a half looking for God in the Alaskan wilderness. I didn’t find him, but I did see a lot of salmon. Anyway, we missed a week, so cue up some Harry Connick Jr. (RIP), and prepare yourself for a double helping of spoilers.
1. Everyone is talking, no one is listening
If there was a through-line of this pair of episodes, it would be the breakdown of the friend group. The first scene of Puzzle Piece is a microcosm of the whole conflict. Jesse continues his search for God by impotently searching YouTube. Cassidy defrosts some blood, and seems to be up to something (which becomes clear soon after). Tulip is real upset and not dealing with it in a good way. Everyone is worried about everyone else, but expressing it through anger. At this point in the story, it’s pretty upsetting to watch. If the conflict is resolved in a satisfying way though, the catharsis is going to feel amazing.
2. P. Koyama and Co.
The first person shooter-style action scene was pretty great, eh? Preacher likes to stay fresh when it comes to sequences like this, and the execution was excellent. By jumping between the body-cams of the Grail soldiers, the show was forced into an economy of storytelling that was simultaneously tense and hilarious. My favorite part? The official reveal of Vampire Dennis, which was done with an Ed Wood-like manic glee. This also more than makes up for how withholding the show has been about Cassidy and Dennis for the last few episodes. Preacher had the opportunity to give Cassidy a big character moment, but decided that the reveal worked better as a wet fart of a punchline. I’m not about to argue the choice.
3. The charming Herr Starr
“What kind of a world is it where a woman obeying a man is seen as some kind of super-power?” Herr Starr asks his minions. What a nice charming guy, right? Starr really lets us see his hideous soul this episode, as he deadpans through horrors, most of them of his own making. He goes on a date with the daughter of the governor of Louisiana, who tells a sweet (albeit banal) story about how the smile of one disadvantaged child was the missing puzzle piece that brought her life together. Starr is so disgusted by this kindness that he orders her to strip off her shirt, hold a stick of butter under her chin, and then… he is interrupted. Maybe I’m too vanilla to know exactly where this was going, but I’m not exactly upset about that.
Starr proceeds to be totally evil, and also totally detached. He’s detached while he’s working, and while he’s preparing to kill Featherstone and Hoover. He’s detached while he plans his “rape fantasy.” It’s absolutely revolting. And yet, most of my notes on these episodes were on Starr and the Grail. Say what you will about how disgusting this guy is, he makes for compelling television.
4. Tulip’s PTSD
On the other hand, Tulip’s PTSD has been tedious television. I’ve mentioned this in all of the episodes since they fought the Saint, always with the caveat that I love Ruth Negga’s performance. That’s all still true but something is really not working about this storyline.
First, Tulip’s depression is not very cinematic. She has repetitive dreams, usually followed up by slow silent shots of her and a piece of broken kitchen appliances. It’s no wonder I’d rather watch the comically taciturn, flamboyantly dressed asshole; at least he’s consistently surprising. The other problem is one of characterization. Tulip is introduced as a stone cold badass who murders a dude with an ear of corn, improvises a goddamn BAZOOKA out of toys, and acts as a one-woman army. I get that she’s not used to vying with supernatural killers, but I don’t buy that in her heightened reality, getting roughed up by the Saint would make her buckle like this. Now she’s jumpy and incompetent and it’s a damn shame. It’s still a fair bit better than what the comic does to her (and there’s still time for that, though I hope we never go there), but all of it rings as false, and I’m ready to give Negga something better to work with. It does her a disservice, it does the character a disservice, and frankly it does a disservice to real people dealing with trauma. Bring back the Tulip who killed a dude with a heart-shaped buzzer.
Continued below5. The missing puzzle piece
The big moment towards the end of the episode is Herr Starr realizing that his missing puzzle piece has been Jesse Custer all along. His moment of clarity comes at a surprising moment- during what may actually be a funny rape joke?
I’m not ready to make that claim yet, but it happened (and I laughed uncomfortably), so let’s break it down. Starr has spent the episode demanding his underlings hire him prostitutes to carry out a “rape fantasy,” which he presumably planned to execute with the same detachment he gives everything. The task of finding the prostitutes fell to Hoover, who’s sort of a dweeb, and needs to research hookers in what looks like a tourist booklet you’d pick up at the airport. Of course, he messes it up, and instead of hiring three women for Starr to play out his sick desires out (where “no means yes”), he hires three men who don’t take no for an answer, and “sodomize” Starr (as he himself later puts it). This leads to Starr seeing Jesse’s file, and thus his epiphany.
The structure of any good joke involves tension and release, and there was certainly a lot of tension. I didn’t want to see Starr menace women, especially not after his date with the governor’s daughter. The slow buildup of Hoover’s incompetence was good foreshadowing that something would go wrong. What makes the joke work for me though, is how dispassionate Starr is. Despite the gender swap, there’s no edge of homophobia to the joke, it’s more like inconvenience, as if Starr is debating whether to send back chicken when he ordered steak. He also doesn’t appear to suffer; you get the feeling that if he were in another mood, this might be the kind of rape fantasy he would like. The combination of his reversal of fortunes, his life-changing realization, and his total lack of caring… it made me laugh.
6. Oh Jesus
Our next episode starts with Jesus Christ. He’s currently banging a married chick. The Jesus flashback is pretty funny, because Jesus seems pretty nice… but not holy nice. He’s blessed with divine bedroom talents, despite being a virgin (even invoking the name of his Father mid-coitus). He’s sweet, but not too smart (the girl, presumably Mary Magdalene, new she liked him from the moment she saw him “at the market, hanging out with his friends”). He says “I love you” on the first date, but he’s Jesus, he loves everyone. Instead of making the Son of God a perfect human being or an absolute shmuck, Preacher made him a sort of pleasant dudebro. He leaves the girl pregnant, and thus the Grail is inadvertently born.
7. Friend Jenny the trickster
Featherstone steps up in this episode as Tulip’s friend and neighbor. Giving her a new foil makes Tulip a bit more watchable, and letting us in on Featherstone’s plan grants the story some much needed tension: she’s trying to split Jesse and Tulip up, so that Jesse will be more inclined to befriend Starr. The levels of deception were pretty fun, and we even make some headway on the Tulip and Cassidy tension. Featherstone even describes Cassidy as “all elbows and Adam’s apples,” which I’m still snickering about. I’d still like to see Tulip be a little more active in her own story, but now at least we’re getting somewhere.
8. Interview with some vampires
Cassidy turned his elderly son Dennis into a vampire, and it doesn’t look like it’s working out too well. Cassidy is a lot of fun, but not a great dad, and as Dennis’s body goes through some changes, our favorite Irish vampire doesn’t know how to do an adequate job of reigning him in. Now that he and Dennis share some interests, including blood, hookers, and dancing, he had the genius idea of buying a translation device so they can communicate. The whole relationship seems unhealthy, and the fact that Dennis definitely ate a girl by the end of the episode doesn’t bode well for his future with his daddy.
9. We call him Humperdoo
I’m sure the inbred messiah offended someone. That someone wasn’t me- I knew the twist was coming from having read the comics, plus I’m Jewish, which sort takes the edge off of mocking Jesus. Come to think of it, the showrunners are both Jewish too, which makes all of this Christian imagery even more interesting. All of that in mind, you can still feel the sense of profound blasphemy when Humperdoo the messiah takes a piss on Preacher Jesse. It’s one of the best Dominic Cooper moments of the season. His shock and disgust are palpable, then they give way to a profound emptiness, as everything he’s ever believed in continues to fade away.
10. Abuses of power: Be God edition.
The reason I like to keep track of Jesse’s abuses of power is because that’s the core of the show. Jesse wants to be a good man, but has been raised to be an American. The two things aren’t antithetical, but they’re not exactly the same either. Jesse uses his superpowers to control the woman he loves, by forcing her to sleep moments after she tells him not to. He then, in a moment of wrath, forces a Grail soldier to brutally kill his friends. He selfishly hijacks the lives of at least a dozen cops for a little over a week. Mistrust, anger, and selfishness are all understandable, but they’re not exactly the things a good guy would do.
Maybe Jesse realizes that. Dirty Little Secret ends with Starr revealing his master plan to Jesse: he wants to make the preacher into the new God. Combine their powers, and they could reshape the world. Jesse rejects this idea on the grounds that it’s blasphemy. But the reason it’s blasphemous is because of how flawed a man Jesse is, something that’s within his control. He has the power to conquer the world, but not to conquer his own feelings, and on some deep fundamental level, he understands this.
