PREACHER - Ep. 3 'The Possibilities' - A TV Review

Spoilers, y'all - Fairly self-explanatory spoiler warning. 

This first season of 'Preacher' has been a rather up-and-down ride, so far, although I'll concede it's still early. I wasn't that into the first episode, I really liked the second, and now I have sort of middling feelings about the third. There's a lot of stuff going on, to be sure, the clarification of a couple of mysteries, and the introduction of some more.

The episode's prologue gives us a mystery Houston woman who needs something from Tulip (something marked with "Grail Industries" which immediately leads to the tangential introduction of comic antagonist Herr Starr, and his...questionable taste in pornography) and who gives Tulip a tip on the location of someone named Carlos, who wronged both Jesse and Tulip in some way. But I'm going to get back to this later.

Hooray! Actual opening credits now! And they're not half bad, either. I like the little Ratwater bottle you see with the silhouette of The Saint of Killers. It's good stuff!

Then we get to Sheriff Root questioning DeBlanc and Fiore who pretend to be federals on the trail of a fugitive or "something like that". It's a comic scene, both for their misleading dialogue and juxtaposition with Root's sincerity. But Root is most definitely concerned about the thing they're hunting, and he tells a ghastly tale that informs his paranoia about the dangers of every day life. The angels shenanigans are consistently pretty entertaining (in this episode, they dress like little kids playing ATF), and I get the feeling that they might adopt a sort of 'Kenny' role on the show - constantly getting killed only to show up again in a burst of light.

In an interesting turn, we get to see a brief check-in on the three lives Jesse has touched so far in the series - Tracy (the comatose girl), Donny, and Linus - all worse for the wear. Tracy's eyes are opened after last week's cliffhanger, indicating she can at least follow Jesse's word, but there's no other activity present, and it's painful to see her mother hold on to hope for improvement that won't be coming. Donny talks with his son (who mistook his parents bedroom antics for abuse) and finds out the whole town is aware Jesse kicked his ass. Donny catches some abuse at the hands of Quincannon, too, who gives the one-armed man an impossible task and then mocks him for it. And Linus wears a bandage over half his face and comes off even creepier to the poor girl he's just supposed to ignore, because he know longer remembers her at all. If Jesse's determined to do good as a Preacher, he's off to a rough start.

Then, we get to see Cassidy navigating life as the church's handyman, while still hiding his vampirism and severe allergy to sunlight. Seeing him make the trip to a crematorium in a poncho and rice hat was worthy of a good laugh, and it's nice to see him not only acquiesce to doing actual chores, but also being mildly respectful toward Emily.

But once again, the highlight of the episode is the duo of Jesse and Cassidy. The bros have a discussion about Jesse's newfound power. Jesse tries it out, and Cassidy's amused laughing while hops, cops to liking Justin Bieber, and throws himself against the wall is followed up by the genuine concern Jesse shows him after he mildly injures himself. It's a light, yet rich scene which creates not only a sense of camaraderie between the two but also seems like the foundation of real friendship.

So then once we've checked in on all the main players, they can go about their business of furthering the plot. Tulip continues to be a devil on Jesse's shoulder, relentlessly badgering him to join her on a vengeance run. Cassidy generally acts as an advocate for Jesse once he's filled in on the nature of Genesis as well as DeBlanc and Fiore - although he's clearly got an angle for himself. And Jesse is tempted to use his power for ill - twice in fact. Once, when Tulip spills the beans on Carlos, and then again when Donny corners Jesse in a gas station bathroom.

In a both enthralling and terrifying-in-its-implications scene, Jesse lets Donny think he's in charge for a brief moment, before making him sit on a toilet, put his gun in his mouth and pull back the hammer. Whether Jesse intended to kill him or just scare him is unclear, but he doesn't. But Jesse is sobered by the depth of his power, and his near immediate capacity to use it for ill. So when he makes the choice not to kill Donny, he also makes the choice to spare Carlos...for now. He's honest in his attempt to go straight. Which brings us back to Tulip.

I've made no attempt to hide the fact that I don't care for Ruth Negga's portrayal, but I'm starting to feel like it's deliberate. It's not just that I don't like her, it's that Tulip is just...not likeable. And though her contempt for Carlos seems justified - after all, it's nearly enough to get Jesse on his way to torture and murder the poor bastard - the deranged way she delivers the line "that was the day it all went bad [for Jesse and me]" almost comes across as someone looking for someone or something to blame for the end of her relationship with Jesse. We don't know the circumstances of how they ended up apart, but the way Negga plays it, it comes across like she's grasping at straws, trying to return to the way things were.

When Tulip continues to deride and denounce Jesse's "positive" choices, though we assume she loves him (because he's a male lead character, and she's a female lead character, and they were in love in the comic book) she mostly just seems to want to use him. She's got her beef with Carlos and we've seen she's a capable killer in her own right, so if it was just about taking out Carlos, she could do that. But she wants to bring Jesse into the bloody dirt with her. And that...well, it doesn't seem like it's a good foundation for a relationship. And so, series-wise, it makes me wonder if she's really going to be meant to be Jesse's OTP. Can you be OTP's with a shitty person? I mean, in real life, sure, but in a TV show? Dunno.

So it was a pretty entertaining episode in a lot of respects, but it does feel like it retraced a lot of the same ground as the last one - particularly with regards to Quincannon (we get it, he's a sadistic asshole) and with Tulip and Jesse's coupling. She wants him to be a bad man again, and he doesn't want to change. The episode also introduced a major player-to-come in a way that makes little sense if you haven't read the comics. And I question (at this point, three episodes in, and it may start to work later on) the wisdom of continuing to do things that comic readers will instantly get, and the rest of the audience will be left in the dark. Does it work to create an air of mystery, or does it just make them feel like you're wasting a chunk of 42 valuable minutes?

We'll see.



FINAL SCORE - 7.5/10

Preacher airs on AMC, Sunday nights at 9/8c.