SPOILERS FOR SEASON 1, EPISODE 6 FOLLOW!
By: Tyler Miller
This week on Preacher, we got to see Jesse really start to embrace his power and use it to help the people of his town. At the same time, things didn’t really progress much this episode, just like last week. Unlike last week, that didn’t keep the episode from being good or interesting.
The episode started off by continuing the story of the cowboy traveling to get medicine for his family that was introduced in the second episode of the season. He’s finally made it to the town of Ratwater where he can get the medicine necessary, but the doctor isn’t able to get it to him until the following morning. To pass the time, the cowboy stays in a nearby bar/inn that’s filled with some terrible people (rapists, brawlers, a shitty preacher). The next day he gets the medicine and heads off back home, but comes across a family heading to Ratwater.
To prevent anything bad from happening to them, he returns to the town and heads into the bar/inn, attacks the preacher, and storms to the back where the rapists were. What he finds is nothing though, causing him to get beat by some of the people in the building. He manages to get himself out of there though and on his horse, but the preacher recognizes him from a past event and shoots his horse, forcing him to walk all the way back home. His journey was all for naught though, as his family is dead and being eaten by crows by the time he returns home. He then grabs some weapons, presumably to head back to Ratwater and kill everyone that kept him from making it back home in time.
After our flashback opening, the rest of the episode takes place in the present day at Eugene’s/Arseface’s house. It’s nighttime and the sheriff is looking outside for someone because he thought he heard something, but he doesn’t find anything. After coming back in, Eugene sees that someone wrote a message on his wall telling him to kill himself, greatly pissing off his father. The following morning, we see Jesse and Emily at the local diner talking about the last church service. She sees him as being a different person, something that he confirms as being true since he’s changed some. He then goes to talk to some nearby kids about the Bible and give them some advice.
As this is happening, Tulip asks Cassidy all about his vampirism and discovers what is and isn’t true about the creatures of the night. After her crash course on vampires, Cassidy admits to Tulip that he’s fallen for her, to which she says that she has a boyfriend, but she doesn’t say his name (Jesse). She goes on to tell Cassidy that she’s waiting for him to quit his job so that the two of them can go off on their own and get revenge on Carlos for leaving them behind on their job two years ago.
Elsewhere in town, Donny is at home in bed when his wife comes over to wake him up. He doesn’t want to get up or go to work, so she tells him that she’ll screw her co-worker if he doesn’t get his shit together. As for our hunters (who’s names are Fiore and DeBlanc! I finally figured this out), they’re scared as hell about their Heaven phone ringing and are in the bathroom of their motel room trying to figure out how to go about answering the phone. Over at Eugene’s house, he’s made an omelette for his dad and starts to cut it up for him, but his dad is still pissed about the writing on the wall and throws the omelette into a wall and tells Eugene that he should just kill himself.
At QM&P, Quincannon is having a meeting with the mayor and it’s going extremely well. He’s acting like a totally brand new person, being respectful and making jokes with the mayor. Donny is watching this all happen and is totally lost as to what the hell is happening with Quincannon since he’s normally not like this. During their lunch break, Donny talks to his wife about everything that’s been happening and tells her that he thinks Jesse has some kind of power that causes people to do things. He ends up breaking down on her shoulder, but she reassures him by saying that Jesse’s going to get what he deserves somehow.
Back at the church, Emily comes in and goes to use the bathroom when Tulip walks over to the bathroom door and asks where Jesse is. Emily tells her that he’s at the diner, so Tulip leaves and heads over there. When she gets there, she sees Jesse talking to other people and helping them with their problems. The way he’s been doing this is by using his power when he gives them the advice that they need. He offers to listen to Tulip about her problem and she proceeds to basically that he’s her problem and she wants him to be the Jesse that he was before. He tells her that he’s changed though and leaves, causing her to end up sad and upset.
When he gets outside, he sees Eugene there who tells him that he feels bad for what his dad has to deal with and wants to help him somehow. Jesse offers to help and takes him over to Tracy’s house. Her mom sees Eugene in the truck and proceeds to attack the truck with a bat and yell at Eugene. Jesse uses his power to get her to stop and has her forgive Eugene for what he’s done in the past, much to the surprise of everyone that was watching.
Later that night, Tulip goes and robs a drug store. She then goes to a strip club where Cassidy is and gives him the drugs. The two of them then have sex in the back of her car, but it does nothing for her. Over at the motel, Fiore and Deblanc have finally worked up the courage to answer the Heaven phone, but right when they go to do it the phone hangs up which only scares them even more. The two of them then go to the diner where Jesse is helping a couple and proceed to tell him that they’re out of time and need to get what he has inside of him. They also inform him that what’s inside him isn’t God although he believed it was.
The episode then ends with Quincannon having a meeting with the people from the Green Acres Company and the mayor. Things are going really well at first, as they’re all having wine and laughing with each other. Everything changes real quick though when Quincannon starts the meeting and pulls out a shotgun, killing everyone with it except for the mayor. So yeah, Jesse’s power worked on Quincannon, but not in a good way at all.
Other thoughts:
- Fiore and Deblanc are a pair of bumbling fools, and the scenes of them trying to figure out what to do about the phone call were pretty funny. It’s a shame though that after the cliffhanger last week with the phone ringing and then them waiting all episode to answer the phone, that we simply got nothing at all on that front.
- Cassidy and Tulip definitely have an interesting relationship to say the least. It makes me wonder how their relationship is going to evolve now that they’ve had sex together (although it was only good for one person), and especially since Cassidy doesn’t know that Tulip was talking about Jesse when she told the whole “boyfriend” story earlier.
- Eugene is honestly one of my favorite townspeople on the show. He’s just a really sweet kid that wants to be accepted by the people of Anneville and by God, but at every turn someone puts him down. His dad’s outburst totally took me by surprise, but I like how he continues to remain positive and keep on pushing through life.
- I mentioned this briefly at the end of the recap, but Jesse’s power definitely had unintentional consequences on Quincannon. He may be a nicer guy now who doesn’t piss on briefcases, but he’s not averse to shooting people at point blank range with a shotgun. It makes me wonder if anyone else in the town will do something crazy now that Jesse’s talked to a lot of them, and it also makes me wonder how much crazier Quincannon will get.
- Does Donny’s wife seem like a more fearsome person that Donny himself? Just the way that she said Jesse would get what he deserves gave me a weird vibe that makes me think there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye.
This was a episode of Preacher that didn’t really move the main plot forward much, but it was still a good one. It didn’t feel as slow as last week’s or as uninteresting as last week’s even though not much happened, and that’s a great thing! I’ve said this before about past episodes and it turned out to pan out, but next week’s episode really looks to be kicking things into gear, something that the show needs to happen right now.
TheComfySpot 