Preacher – ‘Sokosha’

What? No. You're crying.

Okay, I apparently left this one for a while, so...

The Saint of Killers comes gunning for Jesse, but Viktor’s daughter puts him off just enough for our ‘hero’ to escape. However, his friends are not so quick, and Denis ends up in the crosshairs; Denis whom Tulip misidentifies as Cassidy’s father, only to learn that he is in fact the vampire’s son(1). Despite his mission and all that, Jesse proves that he isn’t an unmitigated jerk and agrees to meet the Saint. This is all set to go very badly, but Jesse turns it around by showing the Saint the video of the God audition to prove that his ‘fee’ was never sanctioned.

Jesse then offers an alternative. The Saint, it turns out, can not enter the Kingdom of Heaven ever, because he doesn’t have a soul. Jesse offers to bring him one, and is given an hour (I think; as I say, been a while since I watched it,) to do so. He contacts a soul broker, who purchases parts of souls for resale on the occult black market, but can not find a matching donor for the Saint’s specific spiritual DNA... until he offers his own soul. 10% of Jesse’s soul later, and the Saint is primed for a true afterlife, but also – as Jesse no doubt foresaw – vulnerable to the Voice, allowing Jesse to trap him in the back of a van and drown it – although presumably not the Saint – in a swamp.

‘Sokosha’ shows that Jesse is not without empathy, compassion, and even a willingness to sacrifice; he’s just really self-righteous and a dick pretty much most of the time.

(1) Preacher’s thing is kind of letting you think that a thing is a silly thing and then turning it around on you, in this case Cassidy’s abusive relationship with Denis all apparently stemming from the fact that neither one of them has ever unbent enough to learn the other’s language (and the father’s cardinal sin of not aging as his son becomes old.)

Preacher - 'Viktor' and 'Dallas'

Another double-bill of God-seeking and bloody violence this week, as I catch up on two episodes of Preacher.

"There are three lights. Well, one."

Cassidy is worried about Tulip, who went off and hasn't come back. Jesse assures him that this is what she does when they fight, and is more interested in the secret society who seem to be taking an interest in his business; or at least in business that he considers his. Then Cassidy sees an infomercial about the aftermath of Katrina, featuring actors including the false God who appeared on the angel phone in the church. They track him down by pretending to be casting for Game of Thrones, but discover that his agent lost touch after he got the part as God. They watch his audition tape, which concludes with his execution in order to allow him to transition to heaven and take up the job. This is a dead end, but the coincidence of this happening in New Orleans intrigues Jesse.

Meanwhile, Tulip meets crime boss Viktor and is invited to take some time to consider her options. She tries to talk to his goons, the staff and even his daughter, but they all treat her as if she were the scum of the Earth; even Viktor's torturer gets all holier than thou. Finally, she beats us a henchman, steals his gun and tries to force Viktor to 'let [her] go,' but he refuses and she is recaptured. When she continues to be a no-show, Cassidy confesses the reasons for his concern to Jesse, who storms off to rescue her.

Meanwhile, in Hell, Eugene is picked on by the local bully and Hitler stands up for him. Hitler's Hell is a scene in a café where he met a gallery owner, but he has learned to stop interacting with it. Apparently mellowed by the years, Hitler seems like a pretty chill dude at this point. The warden – somewhat snowed under by equipment malfunctions and the Saint’s escape – invites Eugene for a chat, telling him he seems like a nice guy, and that sort of behaviour won't fly in Hell. Mindful that she says she will be watching, Eugene joins in when the other inmates deliver a beat down to Hitler for going soft. Oh, Eugene.

Jesse busts into Viktor's place, freezing all the guards with the Word before getting into a brutal fight with the torturer, who likes to work with headphones in(1). He attacks Viktor, but Tulip tells him to let go, because Viktor is her husband.

And so to 'Dallas', in which we see the aftermath of Carlos' betrayal, with Jesse and Tulip living a rough life on the straight and narrow (in Dallas,) only for Jesse to discover that Tulip is still doing crimes, and is on the pill while he believes they are trying for another child. He opts to return to his father's church and she eventually hooks up with Viktor, only to abandon him when their former handler locates Carlos.

Yeah... this isn't going to last.

In the present day, Jesse strings Viktor up in the torture room, while Tulip – unable to intercede, thanks to the Word(2) – takes Viktor's daughter to visit Cassidy and their reluctant host. After much soul-searching and an intervention by Cassidy as the most unlikely conscience ever, Jesse opts to release Viktor, who goes home to rea with his daughter. Of course, this is not a happy ending for them, since Jesse's careless throwing about of the Word attracts the Saint, who shoots up the house and murders Viktor, but the daughter tells him that she knows where to find the Preacher.

So, Jesse continues to be a dick, while Tulip and Cassidy struggle to keep him on some sort of even keel. The fact that an unrepentant contract killer and a largely shameless vampire hedonist are the voices of his conscience is a concern that seems slow to impinge on Jesse’s peace of mind, and all in all I’m not convinced he was a very good preacher. Of course, it’s part of the point that he is a melding of good and evil, a man with both light enough and dark enough in his soul to coexist with the awesome power of Genesis without exploding. It’s interesting that neither of his companions represents the light in him – the nearest anyone came to an angel on his shoulder is currently shouting ‘zieg heil’ and kicking Hitler in the nards – and also that the combination of righteousness and rage manifests so specifically as a sort of smug, angry dickishness. He’s a monumentally unlikeable protagonist, and yet remains compelling, or at least involving enough you can be bothered to want to slap him instead of just hoping for him to take a bullet from the Saint.

(1) Speaking as someone who painfully tugs his own earphones out at least once a week, I want that guy's earphones, which did not come out once during the course of said brutal fight, even when impaled on a rail from a foosball table.

(2) Dick move, Jesse.

Preacher - 'On the Road', 'Mumbai Sky Tower' and 'Damsels'

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.

 

"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.

 

"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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

...

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.

"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!

Preacher - 'Call and Response'

"This would be that 'Southern hospitality' I heard so much about then."

And so we reach the end of the first season of Preacher, with 'Call and Response' and Jesse's promise to call down God to answer the questions of the people of Annville.

In the run-up to the big event, Sheriff Root tortures Cassidy in an attempt to discover what happened to Eugene. The interesting part of this is that Root has checked out Cassidy's rap sheet and put together a century of crimes and misdemeanours to work out on his own what his prisoner is. Still; being a sporting type, he lets Cassidy out for the visitation. Meanwhile, Tulip finds Jesse staying with Donnie and his wife, who consider the preacher's actions to have saved Donnie from darkness. She pushes him to kill Carlos, and a flashback reveals that not only did Carlos abandon them mid-heist, out of pure spite against their happiness as a couple, but that by doing so he turned a bloodless raid into robbery-murder and induced a miscarriage. Once he shows willing, however, she realises that she doesn't actually want him to go through with it, and they settle for a very solid beating.

And then it's Sunday. Jesse calls up Heaven on the angel-phone and sure enough, there's an answer. A white-bearded man on a throne pops up, first raging and then agreeing to answer the questions of the congregation. Yes, loved ones are in Heaven; suffering exists so that humanity can know the full panoply of experience; despite his stumbles, Jesse has saved the town of Annville. And so our tale of flawed folk draws to a happy, hopeful close, and...

"What does God want with a starship?"

Yeah; not so fast. As 'God' continues his platitudes, Jesse steps up and uses Genesis to demand an honest answer to a very important question: "Are you really God." The figure breaks down, confesses that he's not, and that they don't know where God is, before being dragged off by two figures in white, who might have wings but are dressed more like asylum nurses. Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy walk out, and the town descends into a mire of desperation, despair and suicide which ends with the custodian of the methane reactor which has been shown straying towards danger levels from time to time dying of a heart attack, leaving the reactor to explode, destroying the entire town.

Some distance away, Jesse and Tulip assure Cassidy that he's the only person who doesn't like The Big Lebowski. Jesse declares that they are going to look for God. If God wants their help, they'll help. If he doesn't, they'll kick his ass.

And Fiore returns from Hell, alone, the implication of which is bad news for the Seraph, who survives the destruction of Annville only to be gunned down by the Cowboy, with no sign of restoration.

So, that's Preacher season 1, which, yes, is basically 10 episodes of build up which concludes by annihilating 90% of its cast, but it does it so with seven hours of sedate, sumptuously grotesque southern Gothic. If nothing else, the image of Odin Quincannon cradling a replica of his deceased daughter made out of ground beef is one that isn't going away any time soon. The acting has been universally excellent, the blending of the mundane and the celestial deftly handled, and the Cohenesque pacing makes this first series essentially an entity unto itself.

Also, points for Tulip punching Jesse for using Genesis to make her kiss him, whether she wanted to or not.

Preacher - 'El Valero' and 'Finish the Song'

I really don't know if anointing oil is that combustible...

Jesse Custer comes to the end of his long, dark night of the soul as Quincannon's men lay siege to his church.

'El Valero' gives us a little background on Quincannon, whose family were killed in an accident which left him determined that God and the soul were nothing but a lie. This was what caused him to reject God and created the rift with Custer Snr. Now he has come to lay siege to the church, but Jesse is a challenging obstacle. Even three sheets to the wind and confronting a returned Eugene, he takes out the initial team sent to extract him, then holds off a frontal assault from the bell tower before demanding to see 'the agents'.

He soon realises that 'Eugene' is an hallucination, Hell being harder to escape than to enter, hence his desire to see the two angels and have Genesis removed from him. Despite some last minute doubts that maybe God did have a plan, he allows them to replace the entity in the coffee can, but when Deblanc and Fiore prove less than eager to restore Eugene, his anger seems to call to Genesis, which bursts the can apart and returns to him.

"Who's insecure?"

As the town turns out to enjoy the siege, including Mayor Miles, who has convinced himself that given the existence of a 'verbal contract', Quincannon is in the legal right, Donnie goes to his car and seems to put a bullet in his head, but it turns out that he is wilier than we might have thought. Deafened by the gunshot, he is able to approach Jesse without fear of the voice and capture him.

Jesse signs over the church, as Quincannon affirms that he 'resisted' the Voice because his God is not Jesse's, but 'the god of meat', a pseudodeity of matter and manifest destiny. Jesse however makes one last bargain: One more Sunday, and he will call on God to appear, and if He doesn't, then Jesse will denounce Him as false in front of the entire congregation.

This episode has little of Tulip or Cassidy, save the former adopting an adorable bloodhound from the pound's death row, which she regretfully feeds to the latter after one last good day.

He's back!

In 'Finish the Song', we see the end of the Cowboy's story, as he returns to Ratwater and savagely executes about 93% of the adult population as a storm begins to sweep over the town.

Jesse jumps out of a moving police car and flees into the night. The sheriff is keen to catch him, but Quincannon is unconcerned, sure that he will be there on Sunday to lose his bet and denounce the Lord. Deblanc and Fiore try to decide between two courses of action: Call Heaven and face their inevitable separation, or use a dodgy travel agent to go to Hell in search of another means of resolving their problems. The matter is forced, however, when it turns out that their phone is missing, stolen by Jesse.

Ouch.

Tulip heads to Albuquerque - where we briefly see her sitting before her bound enemy with a table full of tools - leaving Emily to look after Cassidy, with money enough to keep him in donors. "Don't go to Pet Centre though; they're onto me." The recognition of the truth of Cassidy's nature is a major rug pull for Emily, and nudged by the discussion of traps in Psycho, she decides to be free of part of hers, luring Miles to the O'Hare house and locking him in with the vampire before releasing the remaining animals and heading off to pick up her kids, which is straight up not a development I saw coming for that character.

Jesse is reunited with Cassidy and apologises for being a dick. To make it up to him, he agrees to help dispose of Miles' body. When Jesse mentions that he needs an angel hand to make the phone work, Cassidy has a brain wave, and as they are burying the mayor beneath the tree, takes the opportunity to grab a paw from one of the 'clones' he killed earlier.

Angels are not nice people in this series. Neither are people, if we're being
honest.

Deblanc and Fiore, whose mutual affection is increasingly to the fore, leave their motel room and take a bus. The Sheriff is called after the mess is discovered, including a limbless woman in a bathtub full of ice, who begs him to kill her. Of course, when he does she reappears behind him, then leaves him to struggle with his conscience.

We get a series of increasingly swift repeats of the Cowboy's story, seeing his failure to save his daughter and his bloody revenge over and over again, until finally Fiore and Deblanc join him and the place caption flashes up: HELL. They offer to get him out of this recurring nightmare, if he kills the Preacher for them.

Despite ongoing complaints about the pacing of the series who feel that it should have long-since left Annville behind, I continue to find Preacher a compelling, dark and quirky show, with a slow-burning tension as its lead character crashes from nadir to nadir in a rambling tumult of absurdity that marks it out as something entirely unique. It's long, slow scenes never drag, and it mixes close-up camerawork and wider shots to great effect, as when Jesse calls to apologise to Tulip. We see her listening as he records a message, face bloodied and expression bleak, as though she is unable to answer due to a gun to her head, but then pull back to reveal that it is Carlos who is bound, while she is just waiting to start work.

These two episodes pretty much get us caught up on the backgrounds and motivations of all our characters, so the finale is presumably going to be all go, and Season 2... Well, it should be different, is my thinking. I look forward to seeing how that goes.

Preacher - 'He Gone'

Plot lost.

No question, Jesse Custer is starting to lose it.

Interleaved with flashbacks to his past - his troubled childhood friendship with Tulip; his father's rejection of his friend because 'she's an O'Hare'; his bitter prayers for God to kill his father and take him to Hell; and his father's subsequent execution in front of his son's eyes - Jesse struggles to deal with the implications and consequences of his harsh words at the end of the previous episode, and effectively does so by deciding that it's not his problem. God has a plan, he's part of that plan, and so what will be will be. Right?

As Tulip tries to become part of his life, Emily tries to admit her feelings and Cassidy tries to be a confidante, Jesse systematically rejects them all, scorning Tulip's cooking, telling Emily she was foolish to believe in him, and letting Cassidy burn in the sun when the vampire tries to call him on his bullshit. Even Tulip, despite telling Cassidy in no uncertain terms that Jesse would reject him if he really knew what Cassidy was, is disgusted by his rejection of his friend.

The sensitive Celtic complexion.

So far, no-one has raised the issue that Jesse's experiments with Cassidy proved that he can't compel someone to do something beyond their abilities, which strongly suggests that anyone could just go straight to Hell if they felt so inclined.

To cap it all, Odin Quincannon returns to collect on his bet. His god, it turns out, is his business and his family legacy, so Jesse's command has made him more ruthless, not - as the bet stipulated - a Christian. With enemies at his gates - literally, Quincannon bringing all of his men and machinery in the night to knock down the church - and all of his friends telling him that he's an arsehole, Jesse breaks through the floor and starts calling for Eugene to come back.

Or... Actually, he yells: "Come back!" and I can't imagine that his failure to stipulate a name will in any way bite him in the arse.

Between the flashbacks and his reactions in the present day, it emerges that Jesse's devotion to God is based not in faith or love, but in fear and guilt, and his sermons it is clear that this is how he wants to appeal to others. When he tells Odin Quincannon 'With God, all things are possible,' it comes across as a platitude, but his threats of hell fire are entirely sincere. Props to Dominic Cooper, whose restrained performance is the heart of this episode. Ruth Negga and Joseph Gilgun get to do the big performances, but Coopers is all in the face, the eyes, and the maniac grin when the power of Genesis crashes through him.

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.

Preacher - 'Monster Swamp'

Cassidy's daywear is a delight.

Okay, it's been a few days and the rambling, Cohenesque nature of Preacher can make it hard to get my recap straight, but here goes:

We open on women in their underwear fleeing men with guns. One of them is cornered and shot with what turns out to be a paintball pellet, this being a spot of 'harmless fun' between the workers of QM&P and the staff of the Toadvine Whorehouse, the brothel where Tulip hangs out (in a non-professional, mostly poker-playing capacity) between gigs. Unfortunately, a sinkhole then swallows up the unfortunate young woman, leading to a heartfelt eulogy from Quincannon:

"Thank you all for coming out today. There are some lessons to be learnt. First, you boys need to watch the roughhousing. 'Cause this is what can happen. And, uh, you ladies, if you're gonna be out here in the middle of the night, you need to watch where you're walking."

Tulip is frankly steamed at this, but we'll get to that later.

Cassidy tries to warn Jesse that there are government clones from Heaven coming to try to remove the thing inside him with a chainsaw, but being Cassidy he's not that clear about it, and Jesse is preoccupied. Jesse has PLANS (TM). Inspired by flashbacks of his father beating him for smoking and confronting - unsuccessfully - Quincannon, he asks Emily to announce a raffle with a big screen TV as the prize; he wants to get lots of people into the church for something special.

Miles, the Mayor of Annville, confronts Quincannon and asks him to consider a deal with an environmental group called Greenacres (whom Donnie had previously offered to rough up,) but Quincannon pisses in his briefcase. In a later meeting with Custer, the shamelessly faithless Quincannon agrees to a bet: He will attend church on Sunday, and if he leaves an unbeliever, he gets Jesse's father's land. Miles, meanwhile, babysits for Emily (and it's kind of telling that the Mayor of Annville moonlights as a babysitter.) She blows off his advances, then tells him he has to be out by morning, which HUZZAH is a personality beyond 'Custer's loyal helpmeet'. It's a tiny moment, but adds layers to the character.

"Well, that hit the spot."

Cassidy tells those two guys that he will bring Cassidy, but he needs money to induce the Preacher, whom he claims has a substance abuse habit. The two guys discuss whether they should trust Cassidy, or call in on their old-fashioned field telephone. They decide against the latter, as they aren't keen for their superiors to know that they are on Earth without leave, or why. They're right not to trust Cassidy, however, who takes their money and is immediately seen getting high and laid in the Toadvine Whorehouse.

At around the same time, a wake is being held for Lacey the dead prostitute, including an hour 'on the house'. Tulip is hacked off, and hearing loud music decides to go upstairs and clobber the man who chased Lacey into the swamp. She smacks him around and throws him out the window, only to find that it's actually Cassidy, who now has a piece of glass in his throat. She rushes him to hopsital, wracked with guilt, and even grants him a final kiss, only for him to ditch her at reception and turn up in the blood bank, gorged and healthy. Classy, Cassidy. Classy like Cersei Lannister.

We finish up with Custer's sermon. He tells the congregation that the world is fucked because of their selfish sin, but that he will bring them all to salvation and the service of the Lord, starting with Quincannon. Quincannon rejects his call to serve God, until Jesse hits him with the Voice, provoking him to agree that yep, he'll serve God. Sure. I can't help but feel that once more, Jesse may come to regret his loose phrasing.

"Do you see the light!"

And then the angels' phone rings.

'Monster Swamp' continues the trend of meandering plot threads which dance and intertwine, but rarely actually touch on their way to a singular conclusion. It's pretty clear now that those two guys are angels, and that their attempt to recapture the entity is unsanctioned because they haven't told their superiors that they lost it yet. Jesse has decided that he has the gift in order to save Annville, by hook or by crook. On the other hand, it's still not clear what's going on with Greenacres (I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that they aren't all sweetness and light, because I don't believe that such a thing exists in this sepia toned purgatory) and Quincannon, or that cowboy from episode 2 (even if you know from passing knowledge of the comics who and what he is.) 

Honestly, I don't see this as a problem; it's not that sort of series. Its pacing is odd, but deliberate. It rambles because it means to ramble, not because the makers don't know what they're doing.

Preacher - 'The Possibilities'

Dance for your mammy...

Episode three - officially 1.02, as the pilot is apparently unnumbered - brings something new to the table: A credit sequence.

We also get some of that backstory I was asking after, as Tulip travels to Houston to trade a thing for an address with a woman named Dani who works for a man in a white suit who is attending a Snuff Film convention. Nice. The man's snuff habit - the content hinted at in audio only - mirrors a scene in which Donnie's boss, Mr Quincannon, sits listening via intercom to cattle being slaughtered.

Those two guys meanwhile are explaining to the sheriff that they are pursuing something 'like' an escaped lunatic, provoking the Sheriff to recount a story of a couple who lost their youngest at a fairground and found him again, only for their other two children to be kidnapped and murdered while they were searching. It's another moment reminiscent of Fargo, if the philosophy of Fargo were more bleakly pessimistic. The Sheriff leaves and the two men arm up like SWAT to recover 'first the can, then the Preacher.'

Having successfully commanded the coma girl to open her eyes (not wake up, just open her eyes,) Jesse ropes Cassidy into a further test, making him dance, shadow box, sing and try to fly. While ostensibly just them fucking around, this scene neatly encapsulates some of the limits of the power: It can't make someone do something that they physically cannot, it's incredibly literal, and it depends on the listener understanding the command. Cassidy is a font of wisdom on the subject, suggesting that the world is now Jesse's oyster and offering sage counsel on the potential sources of the power:

"Now, there's three possible explanations here. Number one: John Travolta. You know the movie where he gets his power from a brain tumor. Number two: Jason Bourne. Gets his power from a secret government agency. Or, aye, it's least likely, but it's my favorite: you're a Jedi."

Now, clearly some people got hurt.

Tulip dodges a speeding ticket by pretending to be a veteran, and heads back into town to try to convince Jesse to join her, not in a heist but in seeking 'justice' against a man called Carlos. The exact scenario is as yet unclear, but we do now know that Carlos drove off with the money from a job and left a fancy looking Tulip and Jesse standing over the body of a headshot security guard.

Jesse agrees to this particular mission, perhaps driven by the rush of the power he now has. When he uses it we see his face in a frankly diabolical light, set in a mask of cruel glee, both as he tests it on Cassidy and, when he and Tulip stop for gas, when Donnie tries to ambush him in the toilet. Mocked by his boss and by the children of Anneville, Donnie is determined to reclaim his power, but instead finds himself compelled to put his own gun in his mouth. Jesse stops short - barely - of ordering him to pull the trigger, as a moment of revelation dawns, and instead he turns his back on vengeance and goes off to read scripture at Ted Reyerson's funeral in the company of bland church helper lady, whom I really hope gets some actual personality rather than just being a generically nice counter-influence to Cassidy and Tulip. We also see his other influence here, as his father's gravestone is prominent, dated 1955-1990.

I'm not saying best character, but so far most fun.

Speaking of Cassidy, he's dropping off Ted at the crematorium a bit earlier when he spots the two guys in their SUV. Still taking them for vampire hunters, he follows them and runs them down when they get out of the car. With shock he recognises them, but assumes them to be clones. Almost immediately they pop up again, and this time they parley and come to an accord. If they really are from Heaven and intent on reclaiming a thing that ought not to be reclaimed, it seems Cassidy is okay with helping them, but insists that they let him talk to Jesse instead of bushwhacking him.

Preacher continues to be a slow, rambling delight, punctuated by moments of savage violence. It really is like a slightly more nihilistic version of Fargo, and I love it for that. Also, I need to see if Netflix has season 2 of Fargo yet. I love the fact that there are all these forces in the world - Quincannon, the man in white, the cowboy - that we (we being viewers not familiar with the source material) still don't really know yet, just waiting to be embroiled in the story later on.

Preacher - 'See'

Those two guys.

As much of the big season TV closes down, Amazon Prime continues to provide alternatives, most recently with Preacher.

We open in 1881, with a cowboy travelling to fetch medicine for his sick daughter. He tells a hopeful family of homesteaders that the west is not paradise, before riding under a tree full of hanging corpses into the town of Ratwater.

In the now-now time, Jesse Custer performing tin bath baptisms for his flock, and I find myself wondering how many of them were getting rechristened Ernest. This is observed by the two mystery men who have been tracking the entity which has entered Jesse, and who seem very surprised at his failure to asplode. Tulip horns in on the baptisms in a thoroughly unsuitable baptismal robe, and afterwards Jesse hears the confession of the local school bus driver, who has indecent thoughts about one of his passengers and seems to want a pass instead of actually repenting.

We meet the thuggish Donnie's employer, a real estate magnate and owner of 'QM&P' who talks an elderly couple out of their house in a scene which triggered a reminiscence in my brain that took a while to crystalise.

This is a friendship that basically only makes sense when they're very drunk.

Jesse gets drunk with Cassie, eventually passing out after drinking some of the vampire's special reserve, and following a disagreement on the virtues of The Big Lebowski* which crystalised that sense of familiarity. In a lot of ways, Preacher - espeically in this episode - is playing out very like a Cohen brothers film, and perhaps more so like the Fargo TV series. I don't reckon that's a bad thing, although the leisurely, decompressed pace is apparently turning some people off. Before the unconsciousness, they have a rambling conversation about their pasts, in which Jesse is evasive about who taught him to fight and Cassidy confesses to being a vampire and over a century old.

I find it hard to hate any show with an honest to goodness chainsaw fight.

Cassidy goes for more booze, and returns to find the mystery men, having failed to lure out the entity with a weird rendition of 'Winken, Blinken and Nod' (one of my daughter's favourites,) trying to chop it free of the unconscious Jesse with a chainsaw. Taking them for vampire hunters he gets lairy with them, and after a long struggle kills them both, dismembers them with their own saw and packs them into a trunk, getting everything in the church nice and tidy just in time for daybreak.

We see some more of Jesse's day to day life as a Preacher, dealing with lost congregants with no time for fine words, poor souls like the hapless Arseface who are finding that baptism does not instantly make them a better person, and getting tasered in the neck by Tulip, who still wants him to join her for her big score, and is determined to bring out 'her' Jesse Custer. Frustrated, Jesse confronts the bus driver and tells him to forget the girl, which he instantly and absolutely does.

Cassidy buries the bodies beneath a tree (possibly the same tree from the prologue,) only for the two men to visit the Sheriff's office the next day, claiming to be from the Government. Then Jesse visits a girl in a coma and commands her to open her eyes.

'See' is a strong follow-up to the pilot, although I'm itching to get some backstory filled in on the main characters, all of whom are to some degree ciphers. Overall though, I'm quite enjoying the pace, and am interested to see where we go from here.

* I'm with Jesse in that I like The Big Lebowski, although I suspect that Cassidy has a point that it's overrated, simply because its cult following rate it so absurdly high.

Preacher

"Um... something about God."

An invisible force descends from space and begins inhabiting the bodies of religious leaders - an African priest, a Russian-Orthodox minister, and Tom Cruise - granting them momentary rapture and then making them explode.

As two mysterious men track the force across the globe, Texas preacher Jesse Custer is rethinking his calling in the face of his appalling sermonising skills, his complete lack of faith and the dilemmas of life as a preacher with a history of violence. Things are complicated when an old friend drops in - figuratively speaking - and an Irish vampire drops in literally, leaping out of a plane to land nearby. Just as he is thinking of quitting, the force enters him, but he does not explode. Unless, he finds a new sense of mission, and gains the ability to compel people to follow - very literally - his every word.

Preacher, based on the cult comic by Garth Ennis, is the pilot episode for a series now picked up for a 10 episode season beginning in June. It rather incongruously stars Dominic Cooper (English) as the Texan preacher Custer, Lucy Griffiths (English) as his right-hand woman at the church, Ruth Negga (Ethiopian-Irish) as Custer's erstwhile colleague Tulip, and Joseph Gilgun (English) as Cassidy. There may be the odd Texan in the supporting cast, but I guess we can chalk that up to human error.

The world of Preacher is one that would gel neatly with that of Constantine, although I doubt we'll see him show up in Arrow any time soon. With his shady past, full and manly beard and smoking habit, Custer is superficially a lot like Constantine himself, but he lacks the swaggering arrogance and the details of his story are clearly quite different, even if those details are yet to be made clear.

While I can't speak for the adaptation, the pilot at least blends humour and violence well, with just a hint of future theological subtext. And it's definitely a hell of a lot better than Lucifer.