Jesse Custer and friends find adventure and misery in New Orleans.
This review contains spoilers for Preacher: Season 2.
Preacher ended its first season on a strange note, effectively wiping out the majority of the cast and leaving Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) and his pals free and unencumbered as they began their cross-country journey to find God. As much as that decision was a frustrating and abrupt way to end the first season, there's no denying the appeal in being able to start Season 2 with a clean slate. That allowed Preacher to become a very different show this year. Not always a better one, but at least one with a clearer sense of purpose.
The show certainly fell more in line with the comic book source material this year. While the two still diverged pretty wildly at times when it came to characterization, the general "three unlikely friends hit the road to find God" premise was finally, firmly in place in the premiere, "On the Road." That episode quickly and efficiently set the tone for the season as a whole. On one hand, the show's dark sense of humor was fully intact. The opening musical number, with Jesse, Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) cheerfully singing along to the radio while evading the police ensured that much. But it wasn't long before our heroes were confronted by the unstoppable Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish) and that levity turned to blood-curdling violence. Right away, the Saint provided the visceral danger the show needed, essentially morphing Preacher into a southern-fried version of the Terminator franchise for the first half of the season.
More than anything, Season 2 found success playing with the two biggest villains in the comics: the Saint and Herr Starr (Pip Torrens). It's no coincidence that the best episodes this season were those that focused the most heavily on one or the other. The Saint made for an imposing villain, one who couldn't be wounded and who was immune to even the power of Genesis. But as much as McTavish thrives at playing the badass killer cowboy, this season also succeeded in highlighting the tragedy fueling this character. It didn't hurt that we had already seen his sad origin story in Season 1. This season continued to build on that foundation, making the Saint into a surprisingly sympathetic figure and linking his story to Jesse's in an unexpected and very satisfying way. That shared bond between Jesse and the Saint may be the single most inspired alteration the show has made to the source material.
Herr Starr worked for his own set of reasons. Starr was a much more comical counterpoint to the Saint, if no less ruthless because of that. The show did a great job of balancing the goofy and sadistic elements of the character - his eccentric behavior, his sexual depravity, his boundless ambition and his skill at manipulation - and crafting a villain who is as hilarious as he is dangerous. That balance extended to Starr's two minions, Agents Featherstone (Julie Ann Emery) and Hoover (Malcolm Barrett). In particular, Featherstone's dynamic with the unwitting Tulip provided for some of the most memorable moments of the season. Negga's performances were generally strong in Season 2, but never more so than when playing off Emery's outwardly friendly Featherstone.
Again, this season's storytelling problems tended to come whenever these villains faded to the background. While the premiere opened with Jesse and friends hitting the road, the show only lasted a couple episodes before settling down in New Orleans and remaining largely confined to that setting for the remainder of the season. Not that New Orleans doesn't have plenty to offer. It was certainly a nice change of pace from the dusty, quiet town of Annville, and a place full of weird dive bars in which to hunt for the wayward God. But even so, the show lingered far too long in New Orleans without any real, tangible benefit. The writers perhaps did too good a job of putting viewers in Jesse's shoes and mirroring the character's frustration at his own lack of progress.
If there's any one criticism to be made of Preacher: Season 2, it's that it was simply too long for its own good. AMC upped the episode order from 10 to 13 this year. That may have been the worst thing the network could have done for the series. Never did it feel like producer Sam Catlin and the rest of his team actually made use of that extra length. Trimming the season back down to 10 episodes almost surely would have resulted in a leaner, meaner series. As it is, Preacher developed an annoying habit of continuously building momentum for a couple weeks and then losing it again. Looking back at my episode reviews, there's a pretty clear trend where two good episodes are followed by one or two sub-par episodes. In hindsight, it feels very much like the writers were stretching to fill that extra space rather than actually putting it to good use.
The result is that certain subplots received far more attention than they really deserved. The big offender being Eugene's (Ian Colletti) ordeal in Hell. Early on, there was a certain novelty in seeing the cheerful Eugene stuck in a decaying prison and bumping elbows with the likes of Adolf Hitler (Noah Taylor). But after a while, the joke became played out. The question was less whether Eugene would actually escape his unfair imprisonment in the afterlife and more how badly he would be warped and corrupted by the ordeal. In the end, the show spent far too long in Hell and failed to provide a truly satisfying answer to that question.
But even in its weaker moments, Preacher always has that core Jesse/Tulip/Cassidy dynamic to fall back on. Sluggish pacing notwithstanding, the series succeeded in both fleshing out that dynamic and putting it through its paces this season. The cheerful camaraderie of the first few episodes slowly gave way to jealousy, resentment and secrecy as the season wore on. Each of the three leads dealt with their own personal struggles this season, and the more they retreated inward, the more than once solid partnership began to fray. While the episode "Dallas" was more guilty than any other of slowing the season's overall momentum, its flashback-heavy approach did lend new context to the Jesse/Tulip romance and the reasons it fell apart the first time around. The season may have been slow to push each character's individual arc forward, but it did succeed in leaving each character in a much darker and more conflicted place by the end.
Perhaps the single most significant change this series has made to the source material involves Jesse's characterization. In the comics, Jesse is a genuinely decent, even heroic guy who does his best to live up to his father's dying request - "You gotta be one of the good guys, son, 'cause there's way too many of the bad." By comparison, Cooper's Jesse is a far more flawed person. You never get the sense that he's ever truly managed to live up to that request, as much as he'd like to. For a long time, I viewed that as one of the central misfires with this adaptation. But if this season accomplished anything, it's in making a case for this weaker, more tortured Jesse Custer. He lacks the strong conviction of his comic book counterpart, and that has the potential to lead the character into some bleak and unpredictable places as the show continues its darker turn in Season 3.
There were several big developments this season worth focusing on in greater detail. As I said, the intertwined connection between Jesse and the Saint is probably the single most clever wrinkle to the source material. Now the two characters' fates are likely linked from here to the very end of the series. Jesse has to deal with the knowledge that his very soul is tainted and broken, even if that soul may be the only thing that gets the Saint where he truly wishes to be in the end. It was disappointing that the Saint was wiped off the board as quickly as he returned in "On Your Knees," but at least there's plenty of potential for a rematch down the road.
I also enjoyed the open-ended way the writers left the Grail situation in the finale. Rather than mirror the comics and deliver an epic shootout/rescue mission, the show went in a very different direction and focused on Jesse being tempted by his new role as worldwide messiah. The finale didn't end his rivalry with Starr so much as put it on hiatus while Jesse and Cassidy go deal with more pressing matters. As much as I'm looking forward to the debut of Marie L'Angelle in Season 3, I'll be very disappointed if Starr doesn't continue to play a major role.
Speaking of Cassidy, he often felt like the show's most underappreciated character this season. He was rarely the focus of any given episode, but Gilgun tends to be the most charming and magnetic personality whenever he does appear. Cassidy's storyline also proved to be one of the most poignant of the season. It was very interesting to watch the tone of his relationship with Denis (Ronald Guttman) evolve as it became clear what their connection actually was and what Cassidy was trying to accomplish by reconnecting with him. You couldn't help but sympathize with the immortal vampire, even as it became clear that there was no way his arc wasn't going to end in misery. And that it did, with Cassidy being forced to take the life of the very son he saved.
Getting back to the idea of the show's version of Jesse being a weaker, more conflicted take on the comic version, it feels like the big takeaway from this season is that both Jesse and Cassidy are men who tend to leave everyone they encounter worse off in the end. It was there from the very beginning, with dozens of innocent people being gunned down for no other reason than being caught in between the Saint and his prey. And it was there at the very end, with both Denis and Tulip dead as a direct result of their actions. More than finding God, it seems the defining struggle for both characters is going to be whether they can truly become the men they wish to be. I''m not holding out much hope for Cassidy, but maybe by the end of the series we will see Jesse become worthy of his father and of the man he is in the comics.
The Verdict
For all its flaws, Preacher was ultimately a better show in Season 2 than it was in Season 1. The shift from rural Texas to New Orleans helped spice up the conflict, as did the addition of two great new villains in the Saint of Killers and Herr Starr. The show generally did a better job of capturing the vibe of the comics while also making some inspired changes to the formula along the way. The biggest strike against Season 2 is simply that it was too long. The show never seemed to make use of its longer, 13-episode structure, and it may be in everyone's best interests to return to a more condensed format in Season 3.
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