Preacher 1.9 Review: Finish The Song

Emily is called to Tulip's house where Tulip explains Cassidy's true nature to her - that he's a vampire - so that she can continue to feed him small animals until be gets better after being left to burn by Jesse outside the front of the church. Tulip, having waited long Jesse and seeing what he did to Cassidy, has finally decided to travel to Albuquerque to kill the man she has wanted revenge on for so long. After feeding him a hamster she calls Miles, who she now considers her boyfriend and lures him into Cassidy's room before shutting the door. Saying it like that makes it come across as a drastic decision on Emily's part, but the series did so well into building up to this all season with their relationship. So when Emily starts to talk about Mile's to Tulip at the beginning of the episode you know that Emily feels like she has gotten herself in too deep with Miles (and possibly even Jesse as well) and with the knowledge that Cassidy is a vampire decides to do something that'll at least give her some sense of control in her life that is becoming increasingly crazy.

Having escaped from the back of Sheriff Hugo's police car, Jesse was on the run and still planning to bring God to church the following Sunday to prove to Quinncanon and the rest of the town of his existence. After stealing Fiore and DeBlanc's direct phone to heaven he shows up at Tulip and Emily quickly leaves telling him that she has to pick up her kids without a word about Miles. Inside he finds a better-healed Cassidy and he apologises for letting him burn for so long, the pair then get started on deposing of Miles' body (and collecting a hand of God to use the telephone). Jesse also calls Tulip and leaves a voicemail apoligising to her, although it's potentially too late, with her having arrived at Albuquerque and looking ready to kill her man.

After failing to retrieve Genesis from Jesse, Fiore and DeBlanc organise plans to go to hell via a travel agent - unable to return to heaven for fear of God's wrath (and because, thanks to Jesse, they have no phone to contact him). They take a shuttle to hell and find 'The Cowboy', who after all this time watching his seemingly unrelated journey we realise has been eternally repeating his own personal hell in Ratwater. He shoots DeBlanc and asks Fiore what job they have for him and Fiore tells The Cowboy that they want him to kill a Preacher.

Rating 3.5/5

Preacher 1.8 Review: El Valero

With Odin Quinncannon coming to collect on his bet, a drunken Jesse finds himself trapped in his church as the businessman attempts to bulldoze it to make way for a bigger and better Quinncannon Meat & Power.

This should have been an interesting showdown but Jesse being the marksmen that he is and assumedly the power of Genesis on his side he easily bests Quinncannon's men not one, not two, but three times throughout the episode as they try to charge the church - and it all happened off-screen as well avoiding any potentially exciting action sequences as well. Not only that, but the oddly-timed attacks ensured that is was made painfully obvious in this episode that the writers were stalling. There was no reason for Quinncannon and his men to sit around and wait to attack Jesse again but they did so twice, obvious that the writers were trying to give time to Jesse's going-ons in the church.

Eugene's return was a welcome surprise but Jesse soon realised that it wasn't actually Eugene that had crawled his way back from hell, but rather an hallucination. His presence was odd, sure Jesse felt guilty about what he had done but the hallucination didn't seem represent of Jesse's conscious at all but rather the spirit of Eugene himself - which also randomly departed at the end of the episode and very much felt like they just needed to put actor in the episode for contractual reasons. It also seemed like that was happening with Tulip for majority of the episode as her few short scenes showed her adopting a dog - only for her to later push it into a dark room assumedly feeding a severely injured Cassidy.

Fiore and DeBlanc's visit to the church, as least, was somewhat more interesting. Realising his inability to control Genesis - with Quinncannon on his doorstep with a bulldozer and a hallucination of Eugene messed with his head while the real one was in hell - Jesse called upon the angels to finally remove it from him with their song. While they were annoyingly tight-lipped with information this episode they revealed that Eugene could in fact come back from hell. Jesse wanted them to bring him back in return for giving back Genesis - but it had other ideas - popping straight back into his body before the angles left in a huff (maybe to get their chainsaws?).

The church siege ended due to yet another loophole with Jesse's powers. Donny, desperate not to be coerced by Genesis again, but also desperate to to prove himself to his wife and Quinncannon shot himself in the ear enabling him to go into the church and pistol-whip Jesse without a problem. He awoke with Quinncannon and go serving him with the papers to sign over the church. Jesse didn't understand how Odin hadn't followed God - yet he had. Again with those loopholes, as the flashback at the beginning of the episode told us in which Quinncannon lost his entire family in a skiing accident - he has only followed the God of Meat for a long time. Jesse asked Quinncannon for one more week to prove that God was tangible, and that he could bring him to Texas. Assumably Odin refused to listen to Jesse anymore as the episode ended with him been taken away in a police car by Sheriff Root.

Rating: 3/5