‘Preacher’ Episode 2 Review: A lot to “See”

(Reminder: I’ve never read The Preacher comic books. I know nothing about the story, or the characters other than what I’ve seen on the show. That means, I review the show based on the show and nothing else.)

Imagine you’re the world’s greatest violinist, only you’ve never knew because you never owned a violin. Somehow it doesn’t seem possible, right? Whether it’s the world’s greatest violinist or Michael Jordan, it seems like people with amazing abilities always find their way to the thing that separates them from the rest of us. For Preacher Jesse Custer finding his way required some barking dogs, a child predator and a girl in a coma (I feel like I need to add ‘seriously’ after everything that happens on this show).

That discovery kept in the theme of the episode which was, can you really change? Preacher is obviously changing, but is he changing into something else completely, or just an enhanced version of who he already was? This might be the question he struggles with all season as he learns about these abilities while trying to live his new life and avoid his old one.

It felt like the frenetic pace of last week’s episode was slowed down a bit compared to this week. Still, I don’t really know what’s going most of the time. There are probably arguments out there that this show is catering to the comic book fans and I have no idea if that’s true. I can say this thought, I also didn’t know what was going on in LOST or in Game of Thrones when I first started watching so I will be patient and hope the story starts explaining itself.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED:

• An episode after being endowed with powers of persuasion so strong that it caused a man to cut out his own heart, Preacher is starting to figure out something is up.
• Turns out his powers aren’t quite as easy to control as Kilgrave’s. So far it seems his powers are triggered by heightened emotion, be it annoying dogs, or a creepy-pedophile bus driver.
• Cassidy is basically an soccer hooligan in a vampire’s body. He’s also proving to be the best part of the show. His hatred of The Big Lebowski and his love for the term ‘gobshites’ are among the highlights.
• The two aforementioned ‘gobshites’ want to take that power from Jessie and are willing to use a coffee can, a crank handled music box and a weird song to take it. If that doesn’t work they always have a chain saw.
• The one gobshite (is that a singular form?) sounds like Jack Skellington when he sings.
• Arseface ended up that way after trying to kill himself with a shotgun. Ouch.
• Jessie and Tulip were into some Return of the Jedi-themed role-playing

WHAT I’M CLUELESS ABOUT:

• Anything about the mysterious cowboy from 1881 other than Ratwater appears to be the scene of the mass murder of Native Americans.
• How any of that is related to what’s happening now.
• Why the ‘gobshites’ survived being hacked into pieces by Cassidy. Not even sure “survived” is the right term. They sort of just reappeared somewhere else with nary a mark to show for the bloodbath in the church.
• Why there’s so much anger in the group of demolition workers.
• If the leader (?) of the demo team has just one eyebrow or if it’s just way higher on his forehead than his other one. Also if you have only one eyebrow but it’s only over one eye is it still a unibrow?
• Why they are doing demolition.
• The information that Tulip will receive in exchange for doing “the job”.

Last week on Twitter I compared this show to a cross between Kill Bill and From Dusk Till Dawn with a little Sin City mixed in. It has certainly has the over-the-top violence Quentin Tarantino is famous for (mostly thanks to Cassidy) and the wit and charm of From Dusk Till Dawn. I’m not so sure about the Sin City part now though.

Even though I’m mostly in the dark about the story, Preacher continues to be wildly entertaining while being completely different from anything else on TV. My biggest fear was that Preacher would be forgotten on Sundays going up against Game of Thrones but so far the ratings have held steady so that’s a good sign.