(Season 1, Episode 2)
**Spoilers**
Two episodes into “Preacher” and I’m still trying to decipher what is going on. The style of story telling forces us to connect the dots, keeping us unsteady as we follow the life of the Preacher. We don’t know his past, but we have an idea—or just enough of an idea to keep us from falling into complete oblivion.
A couple of items from last week were cleared up, while capping off with a WUT?? moment.
Mystery Man
We’re thrown back to the past. The year 1881, where we follow a man riding a horse.
Who is this guy? I have no idea. But I’m guessing we’ll learn about him in time and I’m almost positive, the answer will be as wild as the west was.
What we do know is that he’s not a stranger to death. He enters the Towne of Ratwater, passing a tree decorated with some interesting ornaments—dead Indians strung up, some gutted and scalped. And the man didn’t even flinch.
Back to present… Preacher & Tulip
Preacher is baptizing people and Tulip shows up because she wants to be baptized too—what better way to annoy her good friend.
These two have their fun moments throughout. Preacher doesn’t want to go on some hunting (ur… killing) spree with her. He’s a changed man. He’s the Preacher.
So she toys with him, making her presence known. She removes his steering wheel and strings it up on a street light. At least that ornament is easier to digest than the opening 1881 tree ornament.
Later, she kidnaps him and chains him to a chair… that was kind of hot. These two have some chemistry going on.
Preacher & Cassidy
The two men have an ordinary conversation—you know the one where they smoke and drink in a church. Doesn’t everyone do that?
Cassidy doesn’t get why Jesse wants to continue this Preacher gig. Jesse gives the patented answer about this is part of God’s plan to do good. Yeah well, that sounds good and all but I like Cassidy’s plan better…
“His plan for me is to let you know that his plan for you is the dumbest most boring plan he’s ever come up with” - Cassidy
Tell ‘em, Cassidy! And then he divulged some much needed information.
Answer: Cassidy is 119 yr old vampire, who is being chased by Vampire hunters.
Soon after, the Preacher passes out drunk and our Irish Vampire goes for a walk or to take a leak or to buy more booze or all of the above.
That’s when all Hell breaks out.
Two Men roll in with a large case
They see Jesse and perform some crazy “something or other” where they place a can on his body and sing a song.
What is that can? Let’s take a closer look…
… A coffee can. Well, that clears everything up…
Whatever they were trying to accomplish didn’t work and they look surprised. But that’s all right because they have plan B.
… ur, can we go back to plan A? Maybe it will work next time.
Just when it looked like our Preacher was going to be sliced and diced, in comes Cassidy—he’s the one they really want, not Jesse.
And we get a bloody mess of a fight. These Cassidy fights are wickedly awesome.
He wins the fight. And in vampire fashion, feeds on one of the dead men to heal himself (like he did with the cow last week).
But now he’s on clean-up duty. So he cuts them up because small pieces fit better in that case. Then he mops up the blood. Why do I feel like he’s done this before?
This took all night and he’s about to leave when the sun begins to rise. Too bad Vampires don’t fare too well during the day. So he spent the light hours sleeping in the church.
Preacher and a parishioner
A parishioner confesses that he’s having these “thoughts” about a young girl. Can we move past this? Nah, it’s important…
The Preacher doesn’t feel comfortable with this dude and why should he. The parishioner says he won’t act on his impulses. We go through the episode and every time a school bus passes by, the Preacher looks unsettled.
As we come to the end, the Preacher has a conversation that leads him to conclude that people don’t change. This is the light bulb moment…
He rushes over to the parishioner’s home where we see the school bus parked outside his home—The parishioner is the school bus driver!
Jesse finds the parishioner in his bathroom and is determined to give his own brand of baptizing, which is a lot more aggressive than the opening baptizing sequence (nice bookending here).
Jesse tells the man to “forget her” and the man says he can’t until…
“FORGET HER” - Preacher (creepy voice)And then the man forgets her, like literally has no idea who “her” is. He’s terrified. What did the preacher do to him?!
The preacher is scared too. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but a realization starts to come to him.
From last week, we saw a couple of preachers have the spirit enter them only to be ripped apart by the power of it. Basically, murdered by this spirit. Is this spirit good, evil, is it God himself? 'Cause like God blowing up people from the inside isn’t cool.
That spirit entered Jesse and he was able to handle it. Now he has the ability to make people do things.
That’s an enormous power. I wonder how he’ll use it? During the cliffhanger, he commanded a comatose, head-injury girl to open her eyes.
Will this power have consequences?
The two Vampire hunters
Remember those two guys that were chopped up and stuffed in the case?
Theeeey’re Baaaack!
… WUT?
At the end, they’re seen talking to the Sheriff.
Did they resurrect, put themselves back to together, and climb out of the grave that Cassidy dug for them?
Are there many copies (Battlestar Galactica reference)?
Or is this a flashback sequence?
I have no idea… But they remind me of another AMC duo…
I’ll be tuning in next week. Currently, it’s a ride I don’t want to get off of.
