Thursday, September 21, 2017

Preacher: “Backdoors”

Like the gun, the fire of the season leaves characters unchanged SIMILE!
OK. With two episodes left in the season, the purpose of the long, drawn out, mushy middle of this season presents itself.


What they're going for, I believe, is a deal where The Grail tries to manipulate Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy (mostly the first two) based on their observations of who they are via the surveillance of Denis' apartment. The only problem is, they're not actually those people. Jesse is a badass with an unshakable moral core, Tulip takes no bullshit from anyone, and Cassidy is, well, OK, Cassidy, but they aren't manipulating him so they can't mess it up.

The problem with that is, for it to seem remotely plausible, the characters have to act out of character for this entire sequence. So we get monomaniac Jesse, mopey, vulnerable Tulip, and, well, Cassidy killing time with his son.

In this episode, the wheels come off the manipulation plan. Tulip comes to understand why Jesse lied about the Saint. Jesse, even after being confronted with his horrible past with the L'angelles (through recordings of his prayers obtained by Starr). These changes come largely out of nowhere, because the plot has decided it's time for everyone to return to their primary character traits to head for the finale, but it's a welcome change.

In service of this we get a really entertainig argument between Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy. We also get lots of flashbacks to Jesse in the underwater coffin his grandmother used as punishment. And we get the stupid and pointless revelation that God was probably the weird man in the dalmatian suit from like the second episode of the season. And we get, in Hell, the full version of Hitler's Worst Moment, which tells us nothing we hadn't already extrapolated from what we saw of his worst moment five or six episodes ago. And some entertaining threatening of a smelter, albeit threatening that Betsy DeVos would like.

But, at least, the episode ensd with Jesse and Tulip acting like Jesse and Tulip, and Starr deciding that ultraviolence is the only workable solution. Sure, that ultraviolence just consists of letting The Saint loose again, but at least the finale should be exciting.

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