With American Gods wrapped up, Amazon fills the 'neo-mythic American road
movie weirdly heavy on British acting talent' slot with the return of Preacher, which readers may recall as
the slow-building story of a preacher with a dark past receiving a superpower
of dubious origin and trying to save his town.
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| "Are we there yet?" |
This season ain't like that.
Aside from anything else, the town of Annville was destroyed in the
finale of Season 1, in large part thanks to the despair caused by Jesse
Custer's failed attempt to get God on the phone. We open therefore with the aptly
titled 'On the Road', in which we find Jesse, Tulip O'Hare and Cassidy embarking
on their epic road trip to find God, as yet ignorant of the fate of Annville.
Almost immediately, they are side-tracked by a police chase in grainy,
grindhouse contrast to the tune of 'Come on Eileen'; because of course they are.
Jesse uses the Word to disable the police, but then the literal cowboy from
Hell shows up, blowing cops to red mist from a mile away.
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| "This sort of thing happens to us a lot lately." |
Jesse takes the gang to visit an old religious contact. Mike, a stern
preacher who locks his parishioners in a covered cage to help them deal with
their addictions, has a weird and eclectic body of esoteric knowledge, and I'm
looking forward to learning how he acquired it. He shows no surprise that god
is missing, and sends them to a lapdance club, the owner of which professed to
have met God. This key witness is killed by a stray gunshot when Cassidy gets
into a fight after touching one of the dancers, but tells them that God didn't
come for the girls; he came for the jazz.
Meanwhile, Mike is confronted by the cowboy, whom he knows – as do we, thanks
to one of Preacher's trademarked whole-screen captions with accompanying
hate-filled musical sting – to be THE SAINT OF KILLERS. Mike acknowledges that
the Saint could force him to say where Jesse has gone, but stabs himself in the
heart to keep that from happening. I guess we'll never know where he came by
his knowledge.
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| Boom. |
The Saint catches up with the gang and shrugs off the Word, as well as
the assembled bullets and grenades of an adjacent not-the-NRA rally, and our
protagonists flee another massacre to the 'Mumbai Sky Tower', hoping to get
some answers from Fiore, who is shown in a short montage to have come to the
titular casino resort to try to kill himself, only to be defied by his angelic
nature until, finally, coming back from the dead becomes a career in which he is murdered on stage over and over again. He reveals that he and the late deBlanc hired the Saint, and his
contempt when Jesse threatens him with the Word tips Jesse off that this is how
the Saint is tracking him.
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| This series is weird, but good. |
Having now learned – in an unexpectedly emotional scene – that Annville
is gone, Jesse and Tulip contemplate marriage. Tulip, however, is reminded by a
chance encounter(1) that she has problems of her own, in particular a crime
boss named Victor. This prompts her to reject the cosy notion of forging a
family with Jesse. Meanwhile, Cassidy is given two hours forty-five minutes to
talk Fiore around, which he does in another montage, this one of a riotous
drugs bender. Cassidy persuades Fiore to call off the Saint, only for Jesse to
fuck it up by refusing to give up the Word. To call the Saint, he orders Fiore
to 'find peace', which they angel does by engaging the Saint to kill him while
keeping him on Jesse's trail(2).
Next stop is New Orleans, which Tulip is less than happy about, but seems
the logical place for God to find jazz.
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| It's that man again. |
And so to 'Damsels', which opens with Eugene being called to his best
friend's side and talking her out of suicide, only for her to try to go through
with it – after he burns the suicide note – because he mistakes her intent and
tries to kiss her. This is the tragedy of Eugene, and of course Tracey's failed
suicide attempt and his own are being replayed to him in HELL(3), just as the
Saint's bloody deeds were. However, something goes wrong and the punishment
projector fails, leaving Eugene alone in a little grey cell.
Oh, and we also get opening credits, having missed those for a couple of weeks. Not sure what that's all about.
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| ... |
In New Orleans, Jesse seeks for God, but after a disappointment involving
a woman and a man in a Dalmatian costume, Tulip cries off and Cassidy takes her
to stay with his old mate, a francophone named Denis who clearly detests
Cassidy. Jesse gets a lead, a singer, only for her to be abducted by men in
white. He rescues her and gets another lead, although it turns out that she was
working with the men in white to confirm that the Word exists, and now kicks
Jesse upstairs to 'Samson Team', and their terrifying, one-eyed leader. He also
gets hella ratty with Tulip on the phone, prompting her to take a walk, apparently
with the deliberate intention of getting recognised and picked up by Victor's
men.
And in Hell, Eugene finds his door is open, and goes out into a
corridor. He sees another man out of his cell, who may in fact be Hitler, and
hears other doors opening.
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| "Perhaps you know my work?" |
Season 2 is a massive change of pace, but retains the mix of humour,
gore and pathos that made the first season so successful. The motel massacre at
the start of episode 2 is an insane tour de force of splatter, while every
scene with Fiore is melancholy and moving in one way or another. It is also
rewarding to see the characters finally learn about Annville and be dumbstruck,
even in the midst of a firefight. It makes the first season and its sprawling
cast of characters seem like less of a throwaway.
Although the more trigger-happy of the two, Tulip proves to be the
moral core of her relationship with Jesse, especially as regards the Word, and
Jesse's insensitivity to her troubles – however minor compared to 'God is
missing' – reminds us that he can frankly be a bit of a dick sometimes. A lot
of the time, in fact. In a series about a struggling preacher literally looking
for God, it's the career criminal and the anarchic vampire who provide the
moral and spiritual backbone.
Eugene and Tracey have a very cinematic tragedy, but it's hard not to
feel for them both. In a more conventional narrative I'm sure we'd be supposed
to sympathise more with friendzoned Eugene, and maybe it's just perception that
steers me away from that, but I see in that scene a boy misled by his own hopes
and society's false promises, and a girl who breaks when the one peer in the
world whom she thought didn't see her as a prize or a rival proved otherwise.
Their story was heartbreaking without details, and it's heartbreaking with.
(1) Ending, as so many encounters do in Preacher, with her having to kill someone.
(2) I have zero doubts that Jesse will blame Cassidy when the Saint
next turns up.
(3) Thanks, hyper-aggressive captions!
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