The following is a quick recap/review of the eighth episode of ‘Preacher’, available on AMC in the United States and on Viaplay in Denmark. Expect spoilers for the episode.
In the eighth episode of the first season of Preacher (“El Valero”), a beloved character ‘returns’. Tulip (played by Ruth Negga) gets a dog, Jesse (played by Dominic Cooper) starts seeing ‘things’, and Quincannon (played by Jackie Earle Haley) goes to Church.
I’ll admit that the episode opener didn’t make a lot of sense to me at first. I was thinking what could connect the two major scenes, but it didn’t occur to me that, apparently, the crates in Odin’s office were the remains of his family that had died in the skiing accident. It’s a really bizarre reveal, and I’m really happy we got to see what kind of meeting John Custer (played by Nathan Darrow) had with Odin way back then.
“What’s it like?” – Jesse Custer.
“Crowded.” – ‘Eugene’.
I was definitely fooled twice this episode, and my first surprise was seeing Eugene come back. They set it up really well. Jesse said he’d never use Genesis again if God would just bring Eugene back, and poof there he was – digging himself up from Hell. Still you could argue that that kind of return would have been way too easy for a show like this one.
“I never told you about the guys in the motel.” – Jesse Custer.
So yeah, Eugene isn’t back. I thought that was a pretty clever reveal, and I’d actually be pretty happy with Eugene being nothing more than Jesse’s conscience for the rest of the season. However, looks like that isn’t happening seeing as Eugene suddenly disappeared after Genesis returned to Jesse.
Speaking of that. Are we done with DeBlanc and Fiore now? They did their ritual, they got Genesis back – but Genesis blew up the container and returned to Jesse. I wonder if Fake Eugene disappeared because Genesis was bringing the real Eugene back. Maybe? Who knows.
“Preacher shot my dick off.”
So much for ‘warning shots,’ huh? I thought that was a hilarious scene. It does stand out as one of the only jokes in the episode, however, and you could argue that the scene was tonally inconsistent with the rest of the episode. The Quincannon scenes outside the Church definitely were more humorous, and I enjoyed the speech about the food court.
Okay. I wrote that there were two scenes that fooled me in this episode, let’s talk about scene number two. Okay, so we see Donnie go over to his car. He puts his head in the trunk and shoots a gun. There was no doubt in my mind that Donnie had killed himself. I thought the reveal was great! Genesis didn’t work on him! I will say though, that I thought an injured Cassidy would have saved Jesse or something, but it looks like Cassidy is being fed elsewhere.
The only parts of the episode that didn’t work for me were the scenes with Miles and Emily. I don’t really care about those characters as much as I care about the main characters and Odin Quincannon. Also, I should add that I thought the epilogue was pretty underwhelming. I was waiting for some big reveal, but we got nothing – and, ultimately, it was just a weird scene.
A-
– I’m Jeffrey Rex
I'm Jeffrey Rex 