Preacher – Angelvile

By: Kelly Kearney

There’s that old saying “you can never go home” and in Jesse Custer’s case he probably should’ve taken those words to heart. After the Season Two finale found Tulip shot dead courtesy of the Grail, Jesse and Cassidy head home to the swamps of Angelville to ask the family matriarch for a favor. A favor that could bring Tulip back to life but also cost Jesse what’s left of his soul.

Madam Marie L’Angell

Opening with a flashback, we are reminded of how terrifyingly powerful Marie L’Angell’s (Betty Buckley) is as black magic, while effective, always comes with a price and Marie is all about collecting for her services. Besides the family’s business of hosting tours around their plantation for curious tourists, the old woman also has a side job in raising the dead and curing what ails the locals for the right price – a price that often ends in murder. After curing her local councilman’s alcohol addiction, a seemingly homeless man wanders back to the plantation to beg for “it.” Marie’s hired hand (Colin Cunningham) kills the man making it clear there is no return policy with the dark arts. Thanks to the incredible blood curdling performance by Betty Buckley, it’s clear that Jesse’s (Dominic Cooper) family has their own version of righteous justice, one which makes Marie all the more dangerous. She giveth life and she has no problem ordering her backwoods swamp family to taketh away.

Speaking of lethal family members…Jody (Jeremy Childs), another of Jesse’s kin who was rumored to be the one who murdered the Preacher’s father, proves he’s as deadly as any voodoo Queen when he relentlessly drags Christina (Liz McGeever) to Marie once he finds her hiding something in her room. It’s not long before we learn the young woman is Jesse’s mother and secrets do not fly in the swamps of the Bayou. Marie demands to know what her daughter is hiding, but after Christina eats a photo while yelling, “Wouldn’t you like to know you crazy bitch,” her mother cuts her open and rips the photo out of the screaming woman’s stomach. There are no limits to the control Marie has over her family and as she glares at the photo of her grandson Christina begs her mother to leave Jesse alone. Ignoring her daughter’s pleas, Marie orders her flunkies to strap Christina in the “machine.” While we don’t know what this machine is, it’s bound to make the Extrapolator look like a kiddie ride at your local carnival.

Granny, I’m home!

Returning to the present, Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) and Jesse load a very dead Tulip (Ruth Negga) into their car and head to the swamps of Angelville to ask Grandma Marie for help. Once they arrive and find the matriarch amongst the missing, Cassidy thinks it’s a great time to talk about Tulip and who’s fault it is that she is dead. The vampire blames the preacher and then comes clean about his tryst with Tulip. The news that Jesse’s life long love slept with his best friend makes him crazy and the two men throw down in an epic preacher vs. vampire fight. The fight gets interrupted by Marie and Jesse quickly informs his granny as to why he’s there. The fact Tulip’s been dead for a while means they don’t have much time, which is why its especially evil when Marie wheels herself into the kitchen for a leisurely snack. She is going to make Jesse beg and he knows it. Marie isn’t jumping at the chance to help her ungrateful grandson who bailed on the family and left them to rot. Jesse insists she has to help and she responds by calling him a betrayer and saying, “…I don’t have to help s**t!” Custer all but begs, offering her anything for Tulip’s return to life. Marie lights up with his “anything” promise and immediately the wheels start turning in the old hag’s head. She reminds Jesse that he knows what she wants and whatever it is, it requires her grandson to bleed on a napkin that she stows away for safe keeping.

A Recipe to Raise the Dead

After the deal is struck, Marie orders Jody to gather some supplies and tells Cassidy to collect some of Tulip’s favorite things. This will hopefully entice the dead to leave Purgatory, which is where Tulip is currently cooling her heels. Time is of the essence since in purgatory “death’ll come to the door and when she answers, she’ll be gone for good,” Marie warns.

After some light arguing about what’s on Tulip’s list of favorite things, Jesse and Cassidy stumble onto Jody gutting an alligator and mocking the Preacher’s black on black garb. He laughs about him dressing like his father when he looks so much like his mother and then the two distant relatives hug in an awkward and aggressive display of masculinity. It is definitely unexpected considering Jody killed his father, but families can be weird like that and this one is no different. The two men trek off to the neighboring Boyd’s (Renes Rivera) for supplies to help Tulip that include something called a trance boil. Only the Boyd’s are less than receptive and the bullets start flying. Luckily, Jody saves Jesse from taking a shot to the head and the two cousins escape unscathed.

Meanwhile, Cassidy gathers all of the items on Tulip’s list and even includes her favorite Joni Mitchell song that Jesse swears isn’t her jam, but Cassidy knows better. He presents them to Madame L’Angell who’s eating a scorpion pepper over Tulip’s body. Apparently, the hot pepper is to induce pain so as to lure the spirit back to life and ease the burn. Marie hands one to Cassidy and says, “Maybe she’ll come back for yours,” because the old woman is keen to the grief the vampire feels over losing the one he loves. Offering her best romantic advice, she tells Cass a story about a past love who didn’t return her affections. The story didn’t end in hearts and flowers, but in a spell that forced him to love her until she became tired of his obsession and killed the man. Storytime with granny is not for the faint of heart, but she does thank Cassidy for bringing Jesse home to her and offers to repay him with anything he wants, all he has to do is ask.

Purgatory, Deals and Family Reunions

Back from their trance boil fiasco, Jody and Jesse decide to settle old scores (namely the murder of Jesse’s father) and it’s clear almost immediately that Jody has some kind of super human strength. The two men start fighting and just as Jody is about to drop a truck on Jesse, Marie intervenes and stops them from killing each other.

While her loved ones are working overtime to bring her back to life, Tulip is reliving all her good and bad times from purgatory’s couch. Beside her younger self (RaeLynn Bratten) she revisits a childhood anyone would be lucky to forget. Her mother who ignored her for the John’s she serviced. Her father, the ex-con, who taught Tulip about police standoffs and shoot outs, as well as the time social services came to take her to a new life, one that eventually ended up in the Custer home. Tulip tells her younger self not to be afraid since wherever they’re going it can’t be nearly as bad as where they are now. Knowing how tough Tulip O’Hare is, it’s no wonder she was raised in a tornado of crime and neglect and makes even more sense as to why she’s so connected to Jesse. For an ex-criminal turned preacher, Jesse was the only constant in her life. It’s why she pauses when she spots some of her favorite things on a coffee table in Purgatory. Then, she faintly hears Jesse mourning his partner in crime and after they cue the Joni Mitchell and she spots a box of her favorite Boo Berry Cereal, Tulip is drawn back through the door to life. Before she opens her eyes, she gets a bizarre visit from the dog suited God who tells her he needs her help. Tulip is the key to him fulfilling his greatest design and what that entails is anyone’s guess because Tulip wakes up in her body, exhausted from this whole ordeal.

As Tulip sleeps off her corpse hangover, Jesse can’t get over the fact his best friend slept with Tulip. He keeps picturing Cass sleeping next to her and it drives him to drink. As he’s finishing off a bottle of whiskey, his granny enters to discuss their deal. Now that Tulip is alive, and Jesse is three sheets to the whiskey wind, he tests Marie by saying maybe instead of their deal he just kills her and be done with it. Marie laughs that off because she already prepared for that scenario so Jesse is out of luck. “Push me. See what happens,” Marie chillingly states and Jesse knows his grandma means business. Reluctantly, he agrees to her deal and with a sinister smile she admits she loves him, maybe even more than his mother.

Whatever this deal is, Marie is a powerful woman and rules with an iron fist. Jesse may soon regret asking the old woman for help and from the looks of things she’s counting on it. As for Cassidy, he has enough problems with his unrequited love of Tulip and his crumbing friendship with Jesse so its no wonder what kinds of favors he will ask of this Hell on wheels woman. Add the fact the Grail is still looking for Jesse, Herr Starr (Pip Torrens) still wants him to take the throne and the Saint if Killers (Graham McTavish) is still in the run means Granny is just one lethal part of the Custer/Cassidy/Tulip equation. How will our favorite trio deal with all of these deadly problems? Time will tell but for now, the gang is back together and Gran’ma could be the one who brings them all together or she’s the devil that will breathe new life into Jesse’s Genesis powers. Powers that have disappeared but could come in handy when it comes to striking a deal with the evil L’Angell.