This review contains spoilers.
3.3 Gonna Hurt
There are times during Preacher in which I struggle to follow along. Not necessarily with the plot or the characters, but with the world itself. This is a world in which, for example, people head to voodoo practitioners to get their problems solved. There are whole organizations that collect souls in exchange for services, money, or some combination of the two. Thus, the soul is real, and magic is real, God exists (and is wandering around the United States), and yet there’s still a need for 12-step programs. There are also multiple groups that know of the existence of vampires, which I imagine would be of interest to the general public.
One of the big questions raised by Gonna Hurt concerns the relationship between voodoo and vampires. As Cas says, logically enough, he should be the main attraction of Angelville; a real-life vampire doing real-life vampire things. Yet when Jody and TC figure out what he is, their first idea is to string him up to leave him in the sun to burn (which leads to a very fun animation sequence where Cas remembers the hanging-man picture in Angelville, only this time it comes to life and starts burning). I’m not really sure why one’s okay and why the other is not, but Jesse establishes that voodoo is something natural, while vampires are monsters, and monsters have a specific purpose on the Angelville farm.
There was nothing too especially stand-out about the episode, but it’s solidly put together. There are some nice moments spread throughout, and things put into play early in the episode by Gary Tieche’s script end up paying off by the end of the episode. There are some fun moments, like Tulip’s brief conversation with God, and the surprisingly sweet talk between Jesse and Cas in which Jesse admits, for the first time, that Cas is his best friend. Cas, of course, fails to take his advice to leave, and gets himself in trouble by trying to short-cut his healing process with a little late-night raw chicken dinner. It’s true to the character, who loves chemicals and short-cuts, and true to Jesse, who loves to throw his weight behind hopeless causes like Cas and the cursed Tulip. Her screw-ups turn out to be part of the divine plan, not that Tulip is particularly happy about that.
That interaction between Tulip and God ends up being really funny in director John Grillo’s hands. The fantasy scene where Tulip beats up God is really funny, thanks in no small part to Ruth Negga’s willingness to get in God’s face and talk back to God even after he literally flicked her away so hard she flew across the road and crashed down in front of her car. She’s pugnacious, there’s no question about that. Not especially smart, but brave. Her flirtation with TC was also very funny, with the use of the baby alligator toy a particularly amusing visual.
Even in a fairly standard episode, there are enough fun moments to carry Preacher along. Ruth Negga and Joseph Gilgun are brilliantly funny actors, Negga especially, with Dominic Cooper playing a solid straight man to the wackier side characters. Tulip is very funny throughout the episode, and even though everything goes wrong every time she tries to do something, it all ends up working out in the end for her somehow. Or at least she survives her misadventures. TC is a little too broad for my tastes, but Jody is strong enough as a semi-villain to off-set the bigger villains of The Grail, and every scene with Marie is incredibly creepy, even when (especially when) she’s pretending to be helpful to Cas.
The story is progressing steadily. Jesse is still stuck at Angelville, and will be for the foreseeable future, but at least he seems to be coming up with plans to make proper use of his time there, and to make proper use of his friendship with Cas. The Tombs are open, and The Tombs will be where Cas will be the main attraction of Angelville. It’s not as lucrative as the voodoo business lost to Madame Boyd and her family, but it’ll be something. And, perhaps, it will help get Tulip out of the trouble that she marched into with only a gun to keep her safe.
I’m not sure what she might have expected. She’s walked into situations like this before and come out okay, but I don’t think that she’s ever really had anything to do with any voodoo before. I’m not sure if anyone save Jesse knows the true power of voodoo. I’m curious to see what it might do if used on, for example, an immortal vampire, or the leader of a giant multi-national conspiracy group bent on dominating the world’s religious institutions.
Preacher is still rounding out its world, but I can’t complain. It’s at least moving in interesting ways and going to interesting places. The show is doing a good job of laying out new wrinkles, and capitalising on them. If nothing else, it’s always entertaining, even when it’s not at the peak of performance. I’ll take consistent entertainment over dramatic highs and lows all day.
Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Sonsabitches, here.
US Correspondent Ron Hogan once had a rubber alligator that he got on a family vacation in Florida. It was only used to eat GI Joe action figures and never for TC-like purposes. Find more by Ron daily at PopFi.