Preacher has thus far built a world for us in which heaven and hell and all their hosts are real, so are vampires, and even the most horrifying of cruelties, the most brutal violence and coldest of ironies is made to seem commonplace, or even funny. Nine episodes in and there’s not much you can show us that would disturb us. So when we see things like the sheriff choking a dismembered woman to death in a bathtub full of ice, or a cowboy swinging around a pile of children’s heads in an American flag, or two friends reigniting their bro-mance by burying an elected official on top of two other dismembered bodies, we just kind of expect it and are eager to see how it plays out and furthers the story.
It’s for this reason I think this is the best thing AMC has done in a long time. We could argue about Breaking Bad or Mad Men, sure. But what’s happening here is a success in adapting an extremely difficult graphic novel property into a wildly imaginative and weirdly compelling pseudo-drama. Not only that, but in a world where milquetoast Marvel movies get rave reviews and billions of dollars, and people STILL can’t get Superman OR Batman quite right, Preacher is the quiet beacon of light in comic adaptation darkness. Now that I’m done having a wank, let’s talk about episode 9.
It was almost not worth showing Jesse getting arrested because he escapes right when he needs to, when they’re passing through town. On the run, he seeks to fulfill his plan to bring god himself into church on Sunday. This is accomplished by finagling the heavenly phone away from DeBlanc and Fiore, who didn’t notice it missing until they began packing for their trip to hell. Jesse decides to apologize to Tulip first, but she has taken a roadtrip to Albuquerque, finally working up the nerve to ice Carlos by her onesie. Instead he finds Emily, casually setting free small rodents that Tulip had been using to nurse Cassidy back to health. Here’s yet another moment of “meh, this is normal” that Preacher does so well. Taking over Cassidy’s care for Tulip, Emily decides she doesn’t have the stomach for feeding helpless pets to him. Instead, taking inspiration from a scene in Psycho, of all films, she decides to take care of her clingy nice guy “boyfriend” problem by baiting the knight in shining armor mayor into Cassidy’s room. Having expressed my disgust for Miles in my last post, I was a bit miffed they didn’t apply some of that patented Preacher violent choreography and draw out his demise a bit further.
Still, Jesse and Cassidy are reunited even though Cassidy is still a bit sore (haha) from their last encounter. While I cannot abide by the killing and eating of pets, I do love Cassidy as a character. He’s monstrous and he knows it. He’s an aberration of the natural order and it’s clear he has been wrestling with self-loathing for the better part of a few centuries. All the Irish charm, womanizing and substance abuse and world travel is just a front and an escape from spending too much time with himself. It’s clear that he has walked the earth in search of someone to call a friend, or someone who will at least accept him where he cannot accept himself. Jesse is a monster in a different sense, and deals with his own self-loathing in harmful ways. They’re a perfect match, and I’m glad they patched things up fairly quickly. The show is much better when they’re up to their violent, metaphysical shenanigans. And it’s through their odd friendship that Jesse is able to get the final piece (haha) of the puzzle he didn’t know he needed, to operate the heavenly phone.
Meanwhile, we see the end of the nameless cowboy’s tale of revenge. Being too late to save his wife and child, he returns to Ratwater and murders every last man, woman and child, no matter how sweet their singing voice. And through a confusing, at first, repetition of flashbacks, we see that he is in hell, and it’s pretty clever how they show that each person in hell is living in an entirely personal one. DeBlanc and Fiore’s trip to his hell was to recruit him to retrieve Genesis, but it seems that the old cowboy only knows how to do one thing.
One more episode to go, and I can’t wait to see who between the cowboy and Jesse is the faster hand.
Written by A Play On Nerds contributor, Jerry Herrera - Lover of horror, sci fi, and fantasy in that order. Semi-permanent Disneyland resident. I'm at least one of the droids you're looking for. Twitter: @FrankenJerry - Instagram: @GeraldoPedro