Preacher – Backdoors

By: Kelly Kearney

On this week’s episode Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) have had enough of the holy scavenger hunt and Herr Starr (Pip Torrens) is on his own hunt to replace the moronic messiah with the Genesis wielding Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper). Add a missing killer cowboy and a prophetic yapping dog and “Backdoors” makes for one wild, apocalyptic ride.

BURIAL AT SEA…

“Backdoors” begins with a flashback to Jesse Custer’s childhood and it was anything but idyllic. A trunk is being lifted from a swamp and once the locks are off we see a young Jesse (Dominic Ruggieri) inside who’s beyond scared. Wet and afraid, he’s thrown to his knees where an older woman (Julie Oliver-Touchstone) dressed in her Sunday best asks him, “What’s your name?” “Jesse Custer,” he replies and the disappointed woman has him thrown back into the trunk and submerged in the swamp. As the make do coffin slams into the bottom of the swamp, Jesse screams to be let out of his watery grave.

Back to the present, Tulip knows Jesse lied about sending the Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish) to Hell and the two are arguing while they dredge the swamp where Jesse dumped him. After a few rounds of the blame game, Jesse tries proving to Tulip that she’s safe and the Saint can’t escape the van. He just couldn’t find it in himself to send another person to Hell, not after what happened with Eugene (Ian Colletti) and certainly not with the Saint holding a piece of Jesse’s soul. When the van is finally raised, Jesse is shocked to see the Saint of Killers has escaped! An angry Tulip storms off as she questions why Jesse would risk their lives with a possible escape.

Escape isn’t exactly what happened with the Saint of Killers. He’s missing, but it seems he had some help. According to Featherstone (Julie Ann Emery), Herr Starr and the Grail Saint-napped the Killer for leverage over Jesse. Featherstone wonders why they just can’t kill the preacher and Starr lets her and Hoover (Malcolm Barrett) in on a little mind-blowing secret. The messiah that they work so hard to protect is a drooling moron and Herr Starr is plotting a coup to over throw the throne and replace God or Humperdoo (Felipe Fuentes) with Jesse! He plans on using the Saint of Killers to convince Jesse to become the new messiah.

I DETECT EVIL…

In Hell things for Eugene are about to take a turn for the worse. Ms. Mannering (Amy Hill) is conducting Hell’s version of a lie detector test to snuff out the good boy from the bad ones. Tyler (Justin Prentice) the rape-y frat boy is first in the chair and the test seems to rate his reaction to both heartwarming and horrific images. Tyler is hoping he fails because he thinks it’s his ticket out of the Hell-block. Little does he know that good or bad, nobody gets out of Hell. They just get sent to some alt-Hell that’s even worse.

PUPPIES AND BREAKING UP…

Back at the apartment, Cassidy is still playing the good father role and gifts his son with a new puppy/snack. Unlike his father the kitty slayer, Denis (Ronald Guttman) is happy he has a fur partner in crime and doesn’t seem to want to eat the little pup. Enter Tulip and Jesse who are still fighting over the decision to keep the Saint of Killers earth bound and in the swamp and Cassidy is kind of stuck in the middle. The three friends start arguing and nobody wants to take the blame for how bad things seem to be going, which leads Jesse to come up with a plan: they need a vacation. With the killer cowboy running around New Orleans (or so they think) getting out of town for some rest and relaxation seems like the obvious choice. Cassidy wants to go to Vancouver where the drugs are good and the weather is vampire friendly but Jesse is all about Bimini and Catamarans. A first Cass votes no on the beach, he’s not really into flaming sun burns but Tulip assures him sunscreen has come a long way. They all agree on catamarans and Bimini until Jesse throws a wrench into the plans when he says he wants to find God first. Tulip is angry, mostly because she’s afraid and doesn’t understand why Jesse would put them in harm’s way for a search that’s going nowhere. Jesse tells her he met the Messiah and he’s a moron but Tulip’s not impressed. She says they all are morons -Jesus, God, the messiah and even the President of the United States. But since she almost died and Cassidy lost all his fingers for Jesse, it’s time he stands by them. The three start fighting and in the background. Denis’ dog is yapping, which sends Jesse into a holy canine vision. The answer he’s been looking for was right under his nose, but he was just too blind to see it. God is the dog fetishist they met in the basement of the jazz club on their first night in New Orleans! He was told that God isn’t what he thought he would be and a furry fetishist fits that description. Excited, Jesse announces he’s going to find the Dog-man but Tulip and Cassidy are done with this mission and want to call it quits. Besides, the Saint of Killer’s is after Jesse and they’d be safer if they stayed out of this from now on and Cassidy reminds Jesse of this. Of course, the preacher isn’t happy about his friends ditching him when he’s so close to finishing his quest, so he leaves in an angry huff.

WORLD WAR TWO WAS ALL ABOUT PLUMB CAKE…

Over at the Hell-block, Hitler (Noah Taylor), Tyler and Eugene search for a way out now that Ms. Mannering has made it her mission to out the infiltrator. The unlikely threesome break into the room with the machine that contains their worst days and gets a front row seat to Hitler’s. We soon find out that Hitler’s entire downfall began over a few random disappointments that happened in that café while on a date. Besides being out of his favorite plumb cake, after serving the last piece to a Jewish patron (Claudio Laniado), Hitler’s girlfriend (Kristina Adler) leaves him when a local art dealer (Robert Larriviere) calls his paintings “bloodless.”  Not to mention how weak he looks to all the people in the café when he tries to stop a communist soldier (Michael A. Newcomer) from roughing up some locals only to back down in fear. What about this makes it his worst day out of all the murderous horrible days he lived through? He admits to Eugene that was the last day he was good and the moment he lost himself. He’s basically saying that World War Two might’ve been avoided if the plumb cake, art critique, love fail, never happened! Talk about overly sensitive! Being that Eugene and Hitler have formed this weird sort of bond, the Fuhrer decides to use his knowledge from being Hell’s janitor to get Eugene home where he belongs. Hitler gathers the Hell mates for a plan after intimidating them with his Hitler-riffic screams and orders. While Eugene is taking his test for Ms. Mannering, the other inmates create a diversion by singing “Michael Rowed His Boat Ashore,” which leaves Eugene and Hitler a window of time to break into the room with the exit to hell. Right before Eugene is about to taste freedom he has a change of heart but Hitler has plans for this escape and tosses Eugene down the hole, following right behind him. If Eugene is coming home so is Adolph Hitler…And nothing good can come of that.

Over at the apartment, Tulip wants to get rid of the Saint of Killer’s guns and takes her new friend Jenny/Featherstone with her to have them melted down. Only Myron (Clint James) the smelter won’t do it unless the bullets are out of the chamber and they don’t seem to want to come out. Jenny steps in and convinces the man with her special brand of promiscuity, manipulation and threats forcing the man to agree. To everyone’s shock, the weapons won’t melt. In fact, they’re ice cold to the touch after sitting in 6,000-degree heat.

ANGELVILLE…

While Tulip is trying to ditch all memories of the cowboy, Jesse heads to the Grail to tell Herr Starr he figured out who God’s identity. Herr Starr isn’t shocked that God is the Dog-Man, he admits that he heard rumors of God becoming jaded over the years. He wonders why Jesse is so desperate to find him after seeing God’s lineage and Humperdoo. Maybe this search is less about finding God and more about the Preacher finding forgiveness from God? To prove his point Starr wheels out the cart full of recordings of Jesse’s prayers and forces the preacher to listen to them. Most of the prayers are innocent but mixed in are some real doozies like murder, theft and that one time he sentenced his father to Hell! Jesse tries shrugging this off by saying people have done worse. Starr goes on to play one final prayer tape that sends Jesse into a flashback to his childhood and the incident with the trunk in the swamp.

After being pulled from the water and thrown to his knees, the old woman asks him again to tell her his name. This time he doesn’t say Jesse Custer, but responds with, “Jesse Angel” and he thanks God for killing his father and bringing him home to his grandmother in Angelville. The same town that was on the flier outside the bar that hypnotized the preacher in an earlier episode.

Back in the present, Herr Starr tells him to save his soul he will have to do something big and that’s when he asks Jesse to join him. He thinks Jesse would make a great replacement and wants to facilitate his ascension to God’s throne. Jesse immediately freaks out, calling him a blasphemer and orders Starr to shove those prayer tapes up his ass. Since he used Genesis for the order, Herr Starr drops his trousers and starts shoving, while Jesse storms out of the Grail’s offices and heads home.

The episode ends with Tulip, trying desperately to get rid of the Saint of Killer’s weapons but even mailing them doesn’t seem to work. This cowboy has unfinished business with our heroes and those weapons aren’t going anywhere until that business is finished.