Preacher – Monster Swamp

By: Kelly Kearney

On this week’s episode of “Preacher,” Jesse (Dominic Cooper) pulls out all the stops and tries to convince Odin (Jackie Earle Haley) to return to church. Will he be successful? Probably about as successful as The Saints are at cutting the spirit out of the preacher and sticking it back into a Folgers can.

Falling for Tulip

Some men have an interesting way of getting their yah-yah’s out and men from Quinncannon Meat and Power are apparently no different. When the episode begins, a young woman is being chased through the woods by a group of men who appear to be hunting her with rifles. We soon find out this isn’t a chapter of The Most Dangerous Game. This is a paintball match between Odin Quinncannon’s men and a group of scantily clad hookers. It’s some strange version of The Hunger Games only with paintball, half naked women and illegal prostitution. The chase is over and right as one of the women, Lacey (Barbie Robertson), is blasted with green paint and a sinkhole opens beneath her and swallows her whole. The following day Sheriff Root (W. Earl Brown) recovers the woman’s body who died from most likely choking on excrement. Yeah…let that sink in for a second…no pun intended.

Tulip (Ruth Negga), a feminist in her own right, isn’t too happy about the Quinncannon men hunting these women. At the local whore house, she attacks a paying client in the middle of his “purchase.” She thinks it’s one of the paintball misogynists and throws him through the window, landing on glass scattered concrete. Only the man wasn’t one of Quinncannon’s guys, it was everybody’s favorite Vampire Bieber fan, Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun). Cassidy has a rather large shard of glass sticking out of his neck, blood pouring out of it like a faucet and Tulip realizes her mistake. She panics and desperately tries to get the Vampire to the hospital before he dies. Wait, what? What Vampire dies? They’re immortal and Cassidy is no different, but he is a player and gets a guilt ridden Tulip to give him a final kiss. Well, Tulip thinks it’s a dying man’s last kiss, but when the bloody blood sucker gets to the hospital he disappears. Tulip finds him very much alive and guzzling a few pints of transfusions, like some kind of immortal pick me up. Could this be true love?

Gambling on Salvation

Last week’s episode had Cassidy promising The Saints, DeBlanc (Anatol Yusef) and Fiore (Tom Brooke), that he’d deliver Jesse to them for a spirit extraction, but the vampire is loyal to his new best friend and warns him the spirit hunters are after him. He tries to convince Jesse to get out of town and head to Mexico, but Jesse is too distracted by his past and his current dwindling congregation. In a flashback we see Jesse’s father was also a preacher at All saints, but a saint he was not. He abused Jesse and his parishioners, but his pews were always full. Jesse wants to regain that glory and make the church great again. He decides to reach out to the most powerful and respected (feared) man in town, Odin Quinncannon, and convince him to come to church and get right with the lord. Odin, a man who once flaunted his power over Annville’s Mayor by urinating on a town proposal, isn’t really the church going type. He needs something to convince him, so Jesse offers the man his father’s land, something Odin’s had his eye on for a long time. The deal is if Odin comes to church and sits through Jesse’s sermon, he gets the land. Jesse, who isn’t known for giving a stellar groundbreaking sermon, gives it his best and in front of the congregation asks Odin if he will serve God. Predictably, the evil Odin says no and starts to leave, walking away with Jesse’s land and his dignity. Jesse asks Odin one more time, but this time uses his power to will Odin to agree that yes he will serve God. It seems like Jesse is getting control of this power inside of him and once it’s honed, there’s no telling what this ex-criminal holy man will do with it. Maybe it truly does belong stuffed in a coffee can and out of the hands of mortals.

If Heaven Calls, Tell Them We’re Not Home

Cassidy has done his best to stall off the chainsaw wielding Saints from getting their immortal mitts on his best friend Jesse. They tell the inebriated vampire that they were sent from heaven to retrieve that wayward spirit from Jesse. Cassidy remembers how they tried to take it from him previously, as it was some kind of amped up version of Scarface’s chainsaw bathroom scene, and wants no part of it. He devises a not so elaborate, totally transparent plan where he asks the The Saints for money to help him bring the preacher to them. These Saints are seriously gullible because they trust Cassidy who proceeds to blow that money on endless drugs and more “purchases,” from the local whore house. He had no intention of bringing Cassidy to the “Holy Chainsaw Hunters,” but his plan of stalling them off is working for now. The duped men are back at the motel beginning to realize that Cassidy played them when Fiore wants to “call above,” and let heaven know they’ve had no luck in the “spirit removal plan.” While the two are mulling over their next move, heaven makes their decision for them and the phone rings. Will the Saint’s pick up the phone or will they run? Can heaven send a text? Can a vampire and a feminist bad ass find true love? Will Jesse use his powers for good or can nothing good come out of breaking people to your will? Find out next week on “Preacher.”