PREACHER, Ep. 4 - 'Monster Swamp' - A TV Review

Sunday night was batshit bonkers, y'all. You had the NBA Finals game 7, LeBron vs. Curry; you had the highly anticipated and penultimate episode of Game of Thrones' sixth season, Jon Snow vs. Ramsey Bolton (seriously? Ramsey has basically just gone full Joker here at the end); and so it was easy for 'Preacher' to get overshadowed by those things. But even stacked against its competition, Sunday's episode was pretty good. So let's talk about it, shall we?

SPOILERS - There are spoilers for this episode, for Game of Thrones, and some comic book spoilers, too. Y'alls is warned.

If "Battle of the Bastards" was about giving us exactly what we expect (and totally want, because eat a giant's fist, Ramsey!), then "Monster Swamp" is about subverting those expectations at every turn.

From the beginning, the episode starts with the vibe of a cliché horror movie. A young, scantily clad woman runs through a seemingly empty town, followed by a menacing man with a gun. The only other people she can find are other girls, hiding, frightened, and desperate. And when she's finally cornered by the gunman, and a gunshot rings out (in hindsight, this particular point makes no sense, since paintball guns are air guns, and not powder-based, but that's me being a nerd) it's a paintball gun, and the girl is in no danger from the friend who's "hunting" her. That is, until she plummets to er death through a surprise sinkhole on the QM&P grounds.

Opening Credits

Jesse isn't expecting to start his day by hearing that Cassidy's both a vampire and is working at the behest of angels trying to reclaim the entity squatting on the preacher's soul, so he brushes it off, focusing instead on how to get people into church* on Sunday. He barely notices the encore appearnce of Cassidy's hilarious rice-hat/poncho ensemble, before deciding the church needs a high profile raffle to boost attendance.

*Jesse and Reverend Anderson of 'Outcast' are both dealing with the same problem - getting butts into the pews. Jesse hasn't gotten there yet, but before long, he'll join Anderson in no longer needing to call it "faith" so much as "hard, concrete knowledge of the divine, etc." But still...I'd kill for these two characters to sit around, drink whisky and bitch about their parishioners.

Back at the sinkhole, we probably shouldn't expect Odin Quincannon to make any sort of sentimental speech, though circumstances dictate a normal man do that very thing. But Odin is anything but normal; he mostly just seems annoyed that he has to take time out of his day to basically deliver a "you kids settle down, now" speech to a group of mourners and gawkers.

Though "Monster Swamp" gives us our best look at Quincannon yet, he's still a mystery. In the flashbacks, we don't know why John Custer tried to 'save' him, or what exactly was going on. In the present, we don't know why Jesse spends time with him painting toy soldiers, or what in the fuck is going on in his combination abattoir/power plant. But we get a better glimpse into his person. He's definitely not a religious man, yet he keeps the company of two preachers, so clearly there's more to his odious personality than meets the eye. Yet despite the company Odin keeps, he's still terrible enough to piss in the mayor's briefcase because he had lunch with the competition. But Jesse's determination to turn Quincannon into a servant of God, come hell or high water, indicates there's a lot more to come from the QM&P storyline.

In another ongoing subplot, Emily may or may not expect Jesse to ever understand the way she looks at him, but she was sure expecting something when he leaned in close to kiss pull some trash from her hair. And Emily caught us all off guard a few times in just a few minutes later on in the episode. Prior to the scenes with her and Miles, I found myself wondering "have we seen Emily's husband? is she even married?" Then moments later, she comes home from work with Jesse's giant for-raffle TV, and is greeted by Miles in a series of tableaux intended to create multiple assumptions about their relationship:

Marriage (how much did that cost? are the kids asleep?)

A babysitter (you got here at 4:30, how much do I owe you?)

An unrequited lover (I'm never going to be with you. You know that, right?)

An actual lover (Out before morning, kids almost caught you last time.)

As much as Quincannon is a mystery to the audience, it soon becomes clear, we don't know anything about Emily, or almost anyone else in this show.

And though we assumed they'd been sent by heaven, we find out instead that the angels DeBlanc and Fiore have actually gone rogue in an effort to clean up their mess before anyone in the Host finds out. On Earth, the two grow impatient with Cassidy's machinations, and seem worried that Dad is going to find out what they're up to down here. They expect their informant to help them out, but instead, they end up sitting in a motel watching TV (Fiore heading to the front desk to request a "Big As Texas" burger was some pretty inspired comedy) Then, once it's revealed, we expect their little hotline to heaven to ring any moment, but we get faked out. When it rings again, we're expecting another red herring, but it's a legit call. Ruh roh, boys...

And instead of annoying me, Tulip spends this episode growing increasingly agitated by the nonchalance of Quincannon's goons. When she finally blows her stack, it's Cassidy who pays for it. And while Tulip is expecting Cassidy to die and is totally freaking out, the audience isn't worried and is able to chuckle when he cons a kiss out of her. What will come of her finding Cassidy sucking down bags of blood, though, is anyone's guess.

I'm not sure whether or not the young girl in the flashback of Jesse being pressured into trying a cigarette is Tulip, but that's certainly the implication that's made. It's terrible that Jesse gets punished in front of his friends, but if it is Tulip, then she certainly didn't seem to learn anything by seeing Jesse catch hell because of her actions. She was trying to get him to do bad things then, and she's still trying to get him to do bad things now. That Jesse can resist her temptations may be owed to the lessons his father may have taught him - not with a belt, but with the sight of him on his knees seconds before being murdered.

Jesse's flashbacks show the kind of man John Custer was - devoted preacher, stern and strict father, and...someone, somehow related to a younger Odin Quincannon. When Jesse spends his own time with Odin, we know he can use the Word to make Odin go to church. Odin points out that that wouldn't be very Christian of him and Jesse seems to relent. It's a fair point, as faith without choice is no faith at all; we think we know what line Jesse wouldn't cross, but when it's clear he's lost his bet with Quincannon, Jesse cheats. And suddenly, what we expected of him is quite different from what he does.

And the Raffle itself - for all the comic readers out there, I bet you thought exactly like me; that when Jesse finally got everyone in town into that church to try to win that TV, that would be when Genesis would fully reveal itself and blow everyone but Jesse straight to hell. But - that didn't happen either. Like I said, the entire episode was about subverting (or in some cases, perverting) both the expectations of the characters and the audience. And if that's the case, then it seems like a fairly clear message.

Don't bother trying to predict the future for this weird-ass show.

FINAL SCORE 8/10

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

OUTCAST - Ep. 2 (I Remember) When She Loved Me - A TV Review

Spoilers - I'll be discussing things that could be construed as spoilers both for the show and the comic. FYI.

After the startling and pretty rapidly-paced premiere of Cinemax/Robert Kirkman's 'Outcast' last week, it was probably inevitable that this week's episode would pull back on the throttle a little bit. Not that a lot didn't happen - oh, shit happened - but it didn't have the same self-contained nature as the pilot. We spent more time with the characters, got to know who they are a bit more, and made some disturbing discoveries about the overarching mystery behind just what the hell is happening in Rome, WV.

The episode starts and is peppered throughout with flashbacks about Kyle's mother, Sarah. An idyllic tableau of a single mother and son playing around in their backyard is terrifyingly interrupted by what appears to be the exact moment that Sarah is possessed. Her smile fades, her face is awash in sudden sadness and confusion, and then she begins frantically clawing at the dirt and covering herself in mud. But what really caught my attention though was the sight of Kyle's bike parked against the tree. Kyle is in the yard, playing, reading Homer Price and then his mom calls him over and he leans his bike against the tree.

There's an old picture floating around the internet (and right here...on the left) about a similar bike that was parked by a tree for so long that the tree itself grew around the bicycle, lifting it from the ground and pulling it into its trunk. The story was that a boy parked it there before going off to war, and never returned. Certainly, that is the idea Kirkman and co. are trying to evoke - Kyle's war began at that moment, when his mother was possessed. His childhood ended, and he's never returned. Through more flashbacks, we see the abuse he endured, Sarah's manic attempts to harm him, and a climactic fight that we actually end up seeing from two different points of view.

In the present, though, Kyle has cleaned up the house, gotten the water turned back on and is hurriedly wrapping a present. Almost everyone in the town either doesn't like him or trust him, but he does have a few loyal allies in Reverend Anderson, his sister Megan, and Chief Giles. And they've all got his back in this episode.

The Reverend spends the day trying to more or less muster an army he can use to try to protect the townspeople from demonic influences. He preaches fire and brimstone to a mostly apathetic audience, because they don't know that the Reverend isn't preaching from faith - he's preaching from firsthand knowledge. He knows demons exists, he knows possession is real, and he knows the threat against Rome isn't over. But the people aren't hearing it. Instead, they sit listless in church, chastise him for saying "butt" and vandalize the walls. Anderson preaches patience in the last episode, but this one shows us exactly what he's thinking now: shit just got real.

So much of the episode is about people operating under erroneous assumptions - Kyle assumes that the demon is still inside his mother, because he never saw it exit her body the way it did for Joshua, in the last episode. Deputy Mark (Kyle's brother-in-law) assumes Kyle's just a bad guy who beats up kids, an assumption Giles and Anderson have to refute, to doubting audiences. Megan assumes that Kyle is at fault for what happened between his wife and his daughter, and hesitates to deliver his present for his daughter's seventh birthday. And the rest of the town assumes that Anderson's preachings about the devil and demons are just general church fear-mongering. But they're all wrong.

Megan attends her niece's party, and delivers the gift. Perhaps she is driven to break the rules of the restraining order by seeing Allison with another man (even if it wasn't overtly romantic, that was an assumption or implication that Megan could draw, and one that might make her take Kyle's side). And certainly Megan was heartbroken to see another man teaching Amber to ride a bicycle. She sneaks Kyle's present* into the party and doesn't confess who it came from when both Allison and Amber wonder.

*The book Kyle sneaks to his daughter as a gift is "Homer Price" a children's book about a young boy who has various adventures in a small town, often acting as a sort of good samaritan, which draws a pretty obvious parallel to Kyle himself. But it also acts as a sort of tether to Kyle's youth, which he spends this episode trying to recover, in a way.

In a weird subplot that probably has more to do with the main storyline of the season/series, Mark and Giles go out to the woods to investigate what they discover as a series of animal mutilations and a creepy-ass trailer out all by its lonesome. While they're walking, though, Giles defends Kyle from Mark's accusations, and lets his deputy in on the fact that Giles trusts Reverend Anderson completely. Which makes you wonder what exactly does Giles know about the demons floating around the town? Has he had any previous experiences with it? Giles is disturbed by what they find out in the woods, but his concern betrays some kind of knowledge, too. Curious...

The saddest part of this week's episode is when Kyle visits his catatonic mother in a nursing home. Kyle sits and talks to Sarah about how he'd previously felt like she deserved to be there; he was angry and he wanted nothing to do with her. But now he knows better. And it seems like in an instant he's determined to have his mother back exactly the way she was. After sorta kidnapping her from her nursing home, Kyle and Anderson try to exorcise her again, with Kyle going so far as to reopen the wounds on his hand so he can drip his blood into her mouth. He's hoping, begging for the same reaction as Joshua. The desperation Kyle works with as he's frantically to drive a demon out of his mother is heartbreaking, and shows just how driven Kyle is by both the events of his past and his guilt for not being able to save her earlier.

But then, the "sadness" turns to "absolute fucking tragedy" when we see how pointless Kyle's attempts really are. In another flashback to the climactic fight we saw earlier, Kyle lies there unconscious and just isn't aware that the demon did exit his mother. It gurgled out of her mouth, and then physically tried to strangle the boy while his mother watched, unable to help.


After Kyle gives up hope that he can still save her, the audience is finally introduced to the Big Bad. Sidney. He hasn't got a name yet, but on the surface he's a congenial older man in a simple black suit and hat. And he's played with lip-smacking hammery by Brent Spiner. He visits Sarah just long enough to mock her anguish and failure to save her son. He gloats that Kyle will never know how hard she fought against them and then sinisterly tells her "we have him anyway". She cries, letting us know that this poor woman is still trapped in there, a prisoner in her own body.

Oh, Sidney is a fuck, all right.

So that's where things are left at the end of this emotionally train-wrecky episode. It was damn good, and it continues (through two episodes at least) to be a pretty faithful adaptation of the comic. Patrick Fugit and Wrenn Schmidt had particularly strong performances this week, and I'm really excited to see what happens next.


FINAL SCORE 8.5/10

Outcast airs Friday nights on Cinemax at 10/9c

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.

OUTCAST - Ep. 1 - A Darkness Surrounds Him - A TV Review

Spoilers - I'll be discussing spoilers from the pilot episode of Cinemax's new supernatural thriller, 'Outcast' as well as the comic that spawned it. Be warned...spoilers are coming for you...

It's been a few weeks since the pilot episode of AMC's 'Preacher' was released, and it's an interesting comparison to draw between that and this. Not that 'Outcast' has anything to do with 'Preacher', other than they are both sourced from comic books. But while 'Preacher' is about as loose an adaptation as is possible while still holding true to the mythos that spawned it, 'Outcast' is as faithful to the source material as one can get. I'm sure that has a lot to do with the fact that Robert Kirkman, the comic writer (and also creator of "The Walking Dead") wrote the script for this episode and is acting as the showrunner. And so far, he's doing a pretty bang-up job.

Immediately, 'Outcast' sets itself up as a supernatural thriller. A young boy stares hypnotically at a cockroach before crushing it and eating it. Then potato chips. Then the flesh off his fingers. Something untoward is clearly happening. And it has something to do with our main character.

Kyle Barnes (played by 'Almost Famous' teenage star Patrick Fugit) has returned to his childhood home in Rome, WV. He lives in seclusion and squalor, barely eating, and interacting only with his adopted sister, Megan (played by Wrenn Schmidt). Megan forces her way into Kyle's life, despite his vocal pleas to be left alone.

Megan's repeated attempts to drag Kyle out of his self-imposed exile reveal plenty of Kyle's backstory, including his connection to the town reverend, a middle-aged man named Anderson. Flashbacks flesh out more of Kyle's history, including the abuse he endured at the hands of his allegedly possessed mother, and some catastrophic incident which has estranged him from his wife and daughter. And while they serve to tell Kyle's story, they also point out a sinister pattern throughout Kyle's life. The mystery of Kyle's life is what drives not only the first episode, but likely the entire series.

Kirkman does not want you to misunderstand - these people are possessed. There is something evil haunting them. Things happen that are not physically possible otherwise. And Kirkman and co. aren't interested in making you wonder if possession is real. In their world, demons exist, and they have a plan.

Fugit's portrayal of Kyle is spot-on. Not only does he physically look like his comic counterpart, he comes just as tortured by his own guilt. Fugit plays Kyle as a man who isn't at fault for the catastrophes that have followed him all his life, but blames himself nonetheless. And when various townsfolk see fit to treat him like a criminal, his self-loathing is such that he doesn't bother to correct them. Kyle keeps his head down most of the time, apologizes for being...well, anywhere besides home, but when he's confronted by the entity which may or may not have been the one to possess his mother, he morphs into a person almost vengefully violent. And Fugit's quiet delivery of the final line is perfectly ambiguous - "come and get me." Is he wanting to defeat this evil, or is he wanting to be destroyed by it? His depression throughout the episode forces us to consider the latter, even if it may be unlikely.

Like Fugit, Philip Glenister is a physical match for his comic inspiration, Reverend Anderson. He's introduced sitting at a card game that would make you think he's just one of the guys, and maybe even not all that faithful. But when he's pulled out of it and sent to deal with a possessed child, he becomes a man of most devout faith, and ardent desire to rescue the members of his flock. And he's not going to take any of the demon's shit.

Wrenn Schmidt does a solid job as Megan, creating a sister who loves her brother no matter how much of a fuck-up she may think he is. She won't let him be ostracized, and she won't let him wither away to nothing on his own. I wouldn't say she's a sunny optimist, but you can see that she clearly believes in the good inside her brother, even if her husband and young daughter don't.

And there's plenty to love aside from the story and the performances. Visually, Rome, WV comes across as a fairly lower middle class area of the country. Director Adam Wingard and Cinematographer David Tattersall create a cool color palette that makes Rome seem like an ordinary, boring small town. But when it's contrasted by the elongated and discordant notes of Atticus Ross's score (who partnered with Trent Reznor to win an Oscar for scoring 'The Social Network') Rome becomes something haunted and eerie. As if the town itself was complicit in the maleficent goings-on. All around, this is an exceptionally well-constructed TV show.

Good pilots need to really succeed on multiple fronts to draw you in. They need to establish their characters - who they are, and if not what they explicitly want (to get off the island, to be a more emotionally stable mob boss) then to figure out what they need. They need to establish their location in a way that feels unique and vibrant - Deadwood, New Jersey, Albuquerque, Baltimore. And in the case of these  types of serial dramas, they have to establish plot threads that are going to run throughout the series (what is the island? who will survive? will the Strike Team ever get caught?).

'Outcast' succeeds on all fronts. It tells a self-contained story about a group of people who come together to save a possessed boy, but it also creates a larger mythos - why is Kyle the focal point for demonic activity, what do they want, and why do they call him "outcast"? Kirkman's comic is only through it's third major story arc, so the TV series may catch up to it sooner than later. But I'm damn sure going to keep watching AND reading. This one pulled me in immediately.


FINAL SCORE - 9/10

Outcast airs on Cinemax, Friday Nights at 10/9c

PREACHER - Ep. 2, 'See' - A TV Review

SPOILER WARNING - I will be discussing events explicitly from both this episode of the AMC series 'Preacher' and the comic series 'Preacher'. So if you don't like it, GTFO.

WOW! What a difference another episode makes. While the pilot had a meandering feeling to it that made the direction of the episode seem unclear, this episode was focused, well-paced, and far better constructed than anything we'd previously seen. The pilot's flaws also called attention to its divergence from the source material. Episode two, titled 'See' diverged even further from any of the comic's early story arcs, but was still so interesting on its own merit that I didn't even care. The acting and tone of the show were eased back a little, though still fairly outrageous, and yet it made all the difference.

Dominic Cooper's performance is much more subtle in this episode. Rather than playing as if he's hiding his past from everyone, he plays as though he's fighting his past, denying it even to himself. He starts this episode doling out front yard baptisms. Everyone plays along with the notion that water can wash away sins, but it's clear that no one, including Jesse the baptist, really truly believes in it. That becomes evident when Eugene (a.k.a. Arseface, whose nickname's foundation was laid in this episode) goes to see the Preacher to let him know the post-baptismal euphoria had worn off.

The late night drink Jesse shares with Cassidy, in one of the episode's strongest scenes, underscores the theme of the episode - fate versus free-will, and nature versus choice. Jesse is the subject of most of this conflict, with Tulip is on one side of the argument, constantly nagging at Jesse to give in to his baser impulses, and ironically, Cassidy, the vampire, is on the other. The creature of the night sits there arguing that Jesse isn't a puppet in God's master plan, and that he can take charge of his own life.

And while Jesse seems to finally decide which version of himself he can be, torturing the not-so-poor Linus with scalding water to rid him of his pedophile impulses, Jesse discovers the power of his Word.

The comic made Jesse's power, what they called 'the word of God' pretty clear from the jump off, but this episode teases out it's effectiveness pretty well throughout. From his inadvertent silencing of everything around his church, to the cliffhanger of whether or not it will work on a comatose young girl (who may or may not have some kind of connection to Arseface) the use of the Word and the teasing of the power of Genesis were both handled pretty well here.

The mysterious duo from last week, DeBlanc and Fiore also make a much more prolonged appearance in this episode. Finally out of the shadows and played by Tom Brooke and Anatol Yusef, the two angels (it's not clear yet that they're angels within the show, but the comic establishes them as divine in the opening issue) have a wild and crazy night as they attempt to extract Genesis from the extraordinarily drunk Jesse. During an ultraviolent and surprisingly hilarious brawl with Cassidy, the duo take turns slicing up the Irish vampire with varying degrees of success. But even their divine power is no match for Cass, and they end up butchered with a chainsaw and buried in a trunk out in the middle of the desert...

Until they're shown, alive and well and talking to Sheriff Root in one of the final moments of the episode. To the non-comic viewer, it's a solid tease - who the fuck are these guys? and more importantly, what are they??

And speaking of good teases, let's talk about the episode's prologue, which gives us a glimpse at the origin of the Saint of Killers, credited now only as "the Cowboy". We barely got a look at Graham McTavish's face, but damn if his wardrobe and makeup aren't absolutely spot-on perfect. With only a couple of minutes of screen time, we learn several things about this man - he's hard, he's tough, he's under no illusions about the "wonder of God's work", but he's got a family. And he's willing to ride a dangerous trail to save his daughter from illness. I can't wait to see more of the Saint's story, but I do wonder - in the end, will it be more effective to tell his story before we've already come to fear his deadly power? Would it work better to fear him, and maybe even hate him, before we know it's ok to pity him? I'm very curious to find out.

Not all was wine and roses in this episode, though. Ruth Negga continues to bug the shit outta me, with her annoying presence, and the way any momentum in the show comes to a screeching halt any time she shows up. She plays Tulip like an annoying child, hassling the older brother to take her out to play. The one good thing I can say is that the way they're developing her character, showrunners Rogen and Goldberg may be setting her up to not be the pure-hearted love interest of the comics at all. They may be going a darker route entirely. Which would be interesting.

 And as much as I love Jackie Earle Haley and would literally watch him read a phone book, the introduction of his portrayal of meat kingpin Odin Quincannon was underwhelming. It is strictly an introduction of his face and little else. We see him buy a house and immediately bulldoze it...and that's about it. There's very little to establish who he is or what he is. It was a scene that felt as muddled and pointless as much of the pilot. But hopefully, that'll get rectified pretty quickly.

This was a damn solid episode, but even if it wasn't, if a show can end an episode on a strong note - one that makes me shriek or gasp or yell out "no!!" to the TV because I can't stand to wait to see what happens - that's usually a pretty good sign. It means I've become fully invested in the story. And Jesse trying to use his power to wake up the gravely injured girl achieved that response. And I'm glad it did. I am genuinely excited for next Sunday's episode.


FINAL SCORE - 8/10

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

INJUSTICE 2 ANNOUNCED!!

While the rumor has been building for a while, almost to the point of straight-up confirmation, today we finally got official word that NeatherRelm is releasing a sequel to their smash-hit superhero fighting game - INJUSTICE 2!!

This game was way better than it had any right to be. It is essentially Mortal Kombat, but with the heroes of the DC Universe, and a story mode that is so powerful, suspenseful and challenging to every idea you have about your favorite superheroes that is more than exceeds whatever expectations you could have had for it. The tale of the story mode (Year One of which will be reviewed here on PRC soon) is strong enough that it could easily have stood in for an actual feature length Justice League movie. Ostensibly coupled with the conclusion of the long-running comic-series prequel, the story of the alternate universe of DC heroes will be continued in 2017!!

I CAN'T WAIT!!!!

BLU RAY ANNOUNCEMENT - BATMAN V SUPERMAN ULTIMATE CUT

Warner Bros. has released a short trailer for their R-rated cut of this year's 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice'. Labeled the "Ultimate Cut", this version of the film was teased several weeks before the theatrical version hit theaters. Boasting more brutal violence and almost 30 minutes of new footage, this is the edition I've been waiting for. Hopefully, it will address some of the characterization issues I had with the theatrical cut. You can expect a review of the film shortly after it's digital release date (June 28). The blu-ray version will be available for purchase on July 19.