Preacher - 'South Will Rise Again' and 'Sundowner'

It's that man again.

Golly. How did I end up with two episodes of Preacher backed up?

'South Will Rise Again' opens with another visit to our old friend the Cowboy. Remember him from a few episodes back? Well, we see him arrive in Ratwater, a cesspit of a town where Indian scalps are sold over the saloon bar and women are raped over the body of their husband and before the eyes of their children. Seriously, it's like Game of Thrones all up in this joint.

The Cowboy gets his medicine, but apparently fearing that another family will meet the same fate, rides back only to find them selling a huge pile of scalps. Then he gets beaten up, and a dubious preacher recognises him from Gettysburg and shoots his horse. By the time he walks home, his wife and child are dead and being fed on by crows. He opens a cupboard full of guns and that's all we see for now.

La vida Preacher.

Back in the now-now time, Jesse is loving being the Preacher. He's holding court in the diner and making house calls, and generally saving the shit out of Annville. Tulip tries to shake Jesse out of his cosy nook, but fails to dent his air of smug satisfaction. Instead, she talks to Cassidy about her boyfriend and his dead end job in sufficiently roundabout terms that neither one realises that they both know Jesse. With hilarious consequences (by which I mean sex.) In all of this, Cassidy continues to not mention anything about those two guys - Fiore and Deblanc, who manage to dig themselves even further into the muck by failing to answer their phone in time - to Jesse.

Boom!

Meanwhile, Odin Quincannon is a changed man, genuinely determined to serve God. Despite Donnie's concerns - his boss's change of heart tips Donnie off, making him the first person to realise independently that Jesse possesses some sort of power - he has the mayor set up a meeting with Greenacres, an environmental group. They meet in his office and he offers them drinks before suddenly killing the four executives with a shotgun. Apparently his idea of serving God is a little off what Jesse might consider the baseline, and comes as quite a shock to the poor Mayor, who can only stand and gawp as bits of eco-executive flutter in the breeze.

Finally, Fiore and Deblanc catch up with Jesse at the diner, wanting to know when they get 'it' back, since they paid out for his hookers and blow.

As 'Sundowner' opens, the three of them quickly establish that Cassidy is to blame for at least something, and proceed to rehash the situation. Unfortunately, Jesse realises that he doesn't have to put up with their circumlocutions, and orders Deblanc to tell him what he has inside him. Its name is Genesis, and it is the offspring of an angel and a demon, considered the abomination of all abominations by both sides. They were its custodians, but it escaped, and they are here unofficially to bring it back, which unfortunately makes them wanted men.

This is basically their version of Daredevil's hall fight.

They suddenly leave and murder a blonde woman in a car park, only for the same woman to come charging out of the diner again. They explain this is a Seraph, sent to bring them back, and there follows a truly amazing scene in which Jesse, Fiore and Deblanc try to restrain the Seraph, as each time any of the angels die they just reappear in the next room. At one point they almost succeed, only for Cassidy to burst in and shoot the woman dead again. Finally, with the angels' motel room filled with corpses, Jesse declares he is keeping Genesis and orders Fiore and Deblanc to keep away from him. Case closed.

Tulip confronts Emily, but her attempt to get her to back off from whatever she has going on with Jesse backfires, and the two end up bonding such that Tulip covers for Emily on church work while Emily's daughter is sick. In another twist, after Preacher compels coma girl's mother to forgive Eugene for putting her in the coma, he suddenly has friends at school who take him to a storm drain where they set off a firework. The twist is that they don't turn around and do something mean to him. Apparently they are entirely sincere, and this is too much for Eugene, who asks Jesse to undo whatever he did, as it feels like 'cheating'. Unfortunately, Jesse is preoccupied with his ability to make things right, and commands Eugene to 'go to Hell.'

And he does.

While Preacher has previously been taking its leisurely time introducing us to Annville and its world, and Jesse's ability to affect it, 'South Will Rise Again' and especially 'Sundowner' begin to show the consequences of Jesse's actions, his inability to control them and the spiraling chaos which began with a man cutting out his own heart. As crappy as Annville has seemed before, now things look set to really go to shit.