In this episode of Preacher, “South Will Rise Again,” Jesse continues to use his power (his followers have complete confidence in him after the Quincannon miracle), Tulip continues to deal with the preacher refusing to go back to his old ways and someone figures out Jesse’s secret.
But first things first. This episode takes us back to Ratwater and the old man who left his home to seek medicine for his sick child. While there, he asks for the medicine from an apothecary, then wanders around the town.
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He sees everything from fights in a bar, to a preacher telling dirty jokes, to a woman being raped while her child watches in a back room. And he himself brings the barkeep a collection of scalps, presumably from the Native Americans hanging from a tree outside of town. So it’s not exactly the picture of law and justice, Ratwater.
While there, he’s recognized, though the other man can’t place who he is at first. This comes back to bite him when, after he gets the medicine and leaves town, he thinks about the woman in the back room, and her child, and decides to go back and do something about it. That’s when he’s recognized and he gets into a fight while there, though he manages to protect the medicine through the melee.
When he goes to leave, the man who recognized him comes out to speak to him as he’s about to ride out on his horse. The man tells him he remembers him from Gettysburg and how he killed a lot of men while there. “Lost a lot of horses too,” he says, then promptly shoots the guy’s horse in the head!
So the man is forced to walk back to his home, medicine in hand. But when he gets there, he finds his wife and child dead already — he was too late. My guess is he’s going to go back and seek vengeance or turn into the spirit of justice or something; I don’t know. This show is full of that stuff so far and I have no idea where they’re headed with this.
Forgiveness
In the present, Jesse is busy giving many of his parishioners advice in the Flavour Station restaurant. He doesn’t have time for either Emily or Tulip, and they both seem hurt. But as part of his newfound abilities and confidence, there’s one person in particular whose life he works to make better.
Early on in the episode, someone breaks into the Sheriff’s house and, while Eugene is downstairs, spray paints on the boy’s walls that someone should “finish the job,” with an arrow pointing to a shotgun. This clearly spooks the Sheriff, who then has trouble eating or sleeping in the days that follow. He also lashes out at Eugene one morning while eating breakfast, throwing his plate at the wall and screaming at him that maybe he should go ahead and finish the job after all.
But instead of being extremely hurt by this, the way I would be if my father ever said something like that to me, Eugene is instead concerned for his dad and goes to Jesse for help. He talks to Jesse outside the Flavour Station, as the staff won’t even let him inside, and asks him to pray with his dad and help him, as he feels that his father is in pain because of him. Jesse agrees, and they head to the Loach house together.
At first, Mrs. Loach doesn’t realize that Eugene is waiting in the car when Jesse arrives to pray with Tracy. When she spots the boy, she makes her way to the car and starts smashing windows with a baseball bat, screaming that he’s a murderer. Eventually, Jesse commands her to stop her rampage, then tells Eugene to get out of the car. He announces that the whole thing had gone on for long enough and commands Mrs. Loach to forgive Eugene. To Eugene’s total shock, she does, even going as far as to hug the boy.
Later, when Eugene asks Jesse what exactly happened, the preacher is evasive. All he’ll say is that now Eugene can tell his father not to worry anymore, since the boy has been granted forgiveness by Mrs. Loach. But I have a feeling that’s not the last of Eugene’s troubles.
Cassidy + Tulip Forever
Meanwhile, Cassidy and Tulip get to know each other better now that Tulip knows his vampiric secret. She asks questions — and for the record, no, he doesn’t have fangs and he doesn’t turn into a bat — then he asks her where to find both drugs and a hardware store. He tells her that he’s into her, and she scoffs at him, telling him she has a boyfriend already anyway.
But when she explains about waiting on her boyfriend to finish a “job” dealing with a man who ruined their lives and how he doesn’t seem to care about it, Cassidy suggests that maybe her boyfriend is not the man she thought he was. Determined to prove him wrong, Tulip tracks down Emily — in Jesse’s house, I believe (and while she’s in the bathroom, poor girl) — and asks her where to find him.
She’s directed to the Flavour Station, where Jesse sits advising many of the townsfolk. She barges in and says she has a problem to discuss — specifically about her love of bad boys, one in particular. She tells a story about a time this “bad boy,” aka Jesse, shot a rare lizard in a weird trade deal they had going on because the guy buying it wouldn’t stop checking Tulip out. The people who are congregated quickly realize who she’s talking about, but Jesse spins it and says he’s not denying who he is. He’s just changed — he’s good now.
He tells Tulip she can be good too, and she doesn’t seem to know how to take that. She makes her way to a drug store, and it’s implied that she robs it, before she finds Cassidy at a gentleman’s club and gives what she stole to him. She also decides to forget about Jesse, and the two of them get it on in the back of her car. Is this the start of Tassidy? Culip? I have no idea what these two should have for a ship name.
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Donnie’s Breakdown
Elsewhere, Donnie doesn’t seem to be able to handle himself after Jesse threatened him, and his wife has to force him to even get out of bed one morning. When he does make his way to work, he sits in on Quincannon, asking the mayor to set up a meeting between himself and the Green Acres people, and Donnie is totally floored. He interrupts the conversation, demanding to know what Jesse told Quincannon to do. He’s told that all his boss was asked to do was to serve God.
But it’s enough to freak Donnie out. He seems to realize there’s a pattern to what Jesse has been doing to people and finally breaks down and tells his wife what happened in the gas station bathroom when Jesse almost made him shoot himself. He tells her that Jesse has a power and that “he made me do things,” and she comforts him and tells him that Jesse will eventually get what he deserves.
Betsy probably doesn’t believe it’s anything more than her husband having a breakdown, so Donnie is the only resident of Annville to know the preacher’s secret. But who knows how long it’ll take before someone else catches on.
Jesse Meets the Angels
Back at the restaurant, Jesse is advising some folks later one day when the Sheriff tells him that some people from the government are there to see him. In walk the angels, Fiore and Deblanc, and though Jesse doesn’t know who they are, he senses that he’s in trouble.
The two men have been dodging phone calls on their special phone all day and have no idea what to tell whoever is calling them (other angels? God?) about their mission since Cassidy never got back to them. They tell Jesse they’ve waited long enough, and gave him money for drugs and women to boot, so they’ve come to take back the “thing” inside him.
Jesse, thoroughly confused, tells the guys that he’s never met them, and they say they spoke to his best friend. He catches on that they mean Cassidy and asks where they’re from. When they say Heaven and show him the coffee can, explaining that they need to take his “enormous power” back, he seems to think it’s actually God himself inside him giving him his new powers. They say that it’s not God at all, but that’s the only further explanation we get in this episode on that front.
Goodbye, Green Acres
The mayor, Miles, brings the Green Acres people to Quincannon’s office at the end of the episode, and he and the owner of Quincannon Meat and Power get their visitors some brandy to start off the meeting. Quincannon asks if they should wait for a final member of their party but decides to start without him.
And by start, I mean he begins and ends the meeting by promptly shooting each member of the Green Acres entourage in his office. Miles, completely shocked, does nothing when he then shoots the final guest when he walks in the door, and Quincannon calmly goes to put his gun away. I mean, this doesn’t seem at all like something that someone serving God would do, but who knows what’s going on inside that maniac’s head? I guess we’ll have to wait until the next episode to see what Quincannon’s next move is.
Preacher airs Sunday nights at 9pm on AMC.
(Image courtesy of AMC)
Contributing Writer, BuddyTV
