SPOILERS FOR SEASON 1, EPISODE 6 FOLLOW!
By: Tyler Miller
Ever since the show premiered, Preacher has been giving us one slow episode after another. Some of these episodes have been good whereas others have been pretty boring and disappointing. Last night’s episode finally got us out of this rut though and totally kicked things up to eleven.
Things picked up directly where we left off last week with Fiore and DeBlanc talking with Jesse in the diner about the entity that’s inside of him. They finally revealed that it’s not God inside of Jesse, but an angel/demon baby named Genesis that needs to remain a secret because people from Heaven and Hell will want to use it for their own purposes. As they’re explaining this to Jesse they notice a woman leave the diner. They go outside after her and start to attack her, causing Jesse to run out and intervene. The woman ends up attacking him back though, causing Fiore to have to kill her. She then comes back to life inside the diner and starts coming after them Terminator style, causing the three guys to hop into Jesse’s truck and go to their motel.
On the drive there, they reveal that she’s an angel called a Seraphim that’s trying to keep the peace. Once they arrive at the motel, Fiore destroys the Heaven phone and they prepare to try and get Genesis out of Jesse. Things get interrupted though when the Seraphim arrives at the motel and all hell breaks loose in the show’s best fight yet as people die and come back to life over and over again. Cassidy even gets involved after some time.
The following morning the fight is over and everyone is covered in blood. Fiore and DeBlanc try to get Jesse to give up Genesis, but he refuses to and heads back to the church with Cassidy where they wash their clothes, talk about their tattoos, and what they learned about Genesis. After their clothes are done being washed, Jesse sets up a speaker outside the church that he can use to make everyone hear his voice. As he does this, Cassidy continues to try and talk some sense into Jesse so that he gives up Genesis, but Jesse continues to refuse to do so.
Meanwhile, Emily is at her house taking care of her sick daughter when Tulip comes in and tells her to stay away from Jesse, and breaks her daughter’s art thing before storming out to her car. Emily goes after her and yells at her about it, and then goes back inside to clean it up when Tulip comes back in and decides to fix it for her. The two of them then start talking and bonding with each other some when Tulip offers to help Emily out with her busy day by running some church errands for her so that she can stay home and take care of her daughter. She gets the necessary things and heads off to take care of business.
Shortly after this, the mayor shows up at the church to talk with Jesse and helps him set up some chairs for church the next day. He’s been dodging calls from the Green Acre company in light of what happened last week when Quincannon killed a couple of their employees, and wants to do something but he’s not too sure if he should so he wants some guidance from Jesse. Jesse can’t help him much though because the mayor just doesn’t want to tell him what he’s planning to do. What he does say is that he hears a voice in his head, but he’s not sure if it’s his voice or God’s voice telling him to do what he’s planning.
Tulip then shows up at the church with everything and starts to head inside as the mayor is leaving. She goes to the supply closet to drop the stuff off when Cassidy comes in and starts talking to her about the “fun time” that they had together the previous night. Jesse then calls Tulip’s name, and Cassidy realizes that her and Jesse used to have a thing together and she still likes him, greatly saddening him.
Throughout the course of the day, Eugene’s been at school having a good time and making some new friends. He actually gets treated well by a group of boys and they invite him to a tunnel that’s kind of hidden. You would expect something bad to happen to him there, but nothing does. They actually set off some small fireworks and just enjoy the sight of it all. It’s something great for Eugene since he normally doesn’t get treated this way by anyone outside of Jesse.
Jump forward a full day and everyone’s outside the church and they’re ready to come in for service. Emily comes inside and tells Jesse that Eugene wants to talk to him, but Jesse says he’ll talk with Eugene later. He goes on to thank Emily for what she did to setup for the day and also says that Tulip did a good job too. As a response to this, she sends in Eugene to talk with him.
Eugene proceeds to talk about how he wants Jesse to take back what he did to Tracy’s mom. He doesn’t want to be forgiven for what he did in the past because he believes that God will see that as cheating. This pisses Jesse off since he’s getting tired of Eugene coming to him with these problems over and over again and not being grateful for Jesse helping him be happy. He says that he’s going to fulfill his promise and make the town see the light, causing Eugene to start arguing with him about how that’s a sin and not right at all. This sends Jesse over the edge as he uses his power and tells Eugene to go to Hell. A few seconds and some truly horrifying sounds later, Eugene is gone. Straight to Hell.
Holy. Shit.
The episode ended with the mayor calling the Green Acres company and telling them about an incident that happened to some of their employees as he stands by a burned car with people in it, presumably Green Acres employees. Was this what he was planning to do? Most likely.
Other thoughts:
- I know I said it already, but that fight at the start of the episode was truly amazing. Seeing the angels constantly come back to life and immediately throw themselves back into the fight from different angles was crazy and the way that the camera pulled out through the hole in the wall while the fight continued on was just perfect.
- How are Fiore and DeBlanc going to deal with the Jesse situation now that he knows all about Genesis and doesn’t want to give it up? Are they going to call in reinforcements or take matters into their own hands again?
- Now that Cassidy knows that Tulip and Jesse had a thing before, I wonder how that’s going to change their relationship since he likes her and she likes Jesse. Things are only going to get more complicated, especially since he thinks Jesse should give up Genesis.
- Jesse sent Eugene to Hell! That’s definitely going to make things a lot more tense in town since the sheriff is going to be looking for him and there’s no way to bring him back, or at least no way that we know of. You done fucked up big time Jesse!
- Throughout the episode, and especially at the end, Jesse started to become more and more unhinged. He’s become a different person than the one we saw at the start of the series and it’s possibly all because of Genesis. Sure the power that Genesis grants him has changed his personality, but is Genesis itself causing Jesse to act differently as well? Maybe we’ll find this out as well in a future episode.
It was a long road here, but it seems like Preacher is finally starting to really go somewhere and not just sit around waiting for stuff to happen. We finally got answers on just what the hell is going on in the show with the characters and the entity inside of Jesse, and it was worth the wait. I would’ve liked getting these answers sooner so that we weren’t just sitting around for weeks without a clue, but the payoff this week was worth it. Even some of the townspeople were interesting this week! Preacher is definitely becoming a better show. Now it just has to maintain this level of entertainment and excitement, and the rest of the season will be great.
TheComfySpot 