Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Preacher, Season 1, Episode 9: Finish the Song



Time for the glorious randomness that is Preacher. And yes, it’s just so much fun and I love it despite being so very weird

Jessie has been arrested by the sheriff, but absolutely no-one is surprised that this lasts exactly two seconds before he escapes.

Moving on from the expected escape, let’s go to something more unexpected. As we saw last episode, Tulip has grabbed Cassidy and is now trying to heal him with lots of blood from a whole petting zoo of animals she’s trying to get from anywhere.

Until she’s sick of it. Of Jessie. Of just about everything – as she tells Emily as she passes the job of feeding Cassidy to her, reveals he’s a vampire and then leaves to hunt down Carlos. Tulip is done. And she drops everything on an overwhelmed Emily who, on top of all of this, just presented the Mayor as her boyfriend and, it seems, was left with a very nasty taste in her mouth.

So what is she to do? If you are surprised that her answer is “feeding the mayor to Cassidy” then I just have to ask – have you been watching the same show as the rest of us? This is Preacher!

The mayor is now snack food and Emily now gets to release her little petting zoo. Cassidy also gets to be a little more sensible for when Jessie shows up so we can have a wonderful reconciliation between them

And it is kind of awesome. For all Cassidy has been such a completely hilariously fun, amoral character, is genuinely ashamed of killing the mayor, ashamed of Jessie seeing him like this, terrified of hurting Jessie as well. Their relationship is so very real here. They’re really good together

On top of that is Jessie – we’ve already seen his guilt about sending Eugene to hell. He now is hot by extra guilt over letting Jessie burn – he put him out. He thinks it isn’t enough, Cassidy thinks that the important thing is that Jessie did put him out. Again, it’s an awesome scene. After which both of them do what any good friends would do – bury a body together. Awww that’s friendship.


Cassidy also stole the angels’ heaven phone (don’t ask why. It’s Cassidy, of course he would). Which needs angel hands to work… which isn’t a problem because Cassidy killed Fiore and DeBlanc so many times that they have an enormous numbers of angel hands to dig up.

Jessie also calls Tulip to leave a very emotional message about her being her one and only. Which I sweet – but she’s not listening. Because she’s out of town, with Carlos tied up. And she has a hammer.

Things are not going to be fun for Carlos.

Which leaves us with the angels – who are in a bit of bind and trying to decide whether to go to Heaven or Hell to try and get themselves out of the mess they’re in. Heaven seems to be the obvious choice, but they will be separated (there’s a strong level of couple-vibes here). Still without the phone they don’t have much choice but to go to Hell, leaving their hotel room

Which is quickly reported to the police since it’s covered in blood and they have a limbless seraphim in their bathtub. Who is found by the sheriff and we have an utterly heart-breaking scene of the Seraphim begging him to kill her (so she can resurrect). Which the sheriff does with tears in his eyes. Ok this is heartbreaking, the acting is amazing and the seraphim utterly not caring just adds to it – but I have to pause and say how utterly not ok it is for the sheriff to kill this woman, even if she’s asking him to, and deciding to go ahead after summing up her injuries and deciding death is the answer. It is deeply ableist to push the meme that death is better than a disabled person living with their disability (and no I don’t expect the angel to have a different view – but this is the sheriff’s view and actions). The message is not just toxic, it’s terrifying

And in hell? In Hell we have all those odd old timey visions we’ve been seeing randomly all season. The vision finally finishes with the man who, after the towns folk beat him, raped a woman, killed his horse and he found his family dead – returns to hell and he kills everyone. All the people. Once everyone is dead, his story resets and he lives it again. And again. And again

Yes, this is his hell. And Fiore and DeBlanc are there to recruit this man to kill Jessie – a Preacher (the preacher was especially someone the man decided to kill). And get out of hell.

Jessie, Cassidy and Tulip versus this guy? That’s going to be messy. I can’t wait.