Written by Tyler McPherson
Preacher is back! And it is as dark as ever. The hyper-violent and dark-humoured show returned to the small screen as Jesse (Dominic Cooper), Tulip (Ruth Negga) and Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) begin their search for God while being hunted by the Saint of Killers (Graham McTavish), a being from hell itself.
With a show as strange as this, it is hard not to divide viewers on whether the material is offensive. Preacher continues its trend from the first season and decides to treat this in the only way it knows how. It doesn’t care. In the first fifteen minutes alone, viewers are treated to a spectacle of foreskin jokes, police mace their balls and singing songs, and plenty of violence and blood.
The second season of Preacher is aligning more with Garth Ennis’ and Steve Dillon’s original comic than the first season with Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy having all formed their relationships and the road trip to find God has now begun. It was good to see the season start practically where the last ended and to also start off with comedy.
Preacher doesn’t take long to reinforce the fact that it is a very stylised show, a car chase quickly becomes old school and doesn’t hold back from playing on old clichés. It is when the Saint of Killers appears that the show starts to move onto a more plot-based focus.
Jesse and co. are forced onwards towards an old preacher buddy of Jesse’s father, Mike (Glenn Morshower). Mike, a minister who puts new initiates in cages to tempt them away from sin (drugs, sex and twitter), settles them in and tells them of a map that can be used to find God. Something that sounds too good to be true. And is. After all the joking has been set aside, he informs them that if he is to believe Jesse than one of his old acquaintances may have seen God.
In one of the more serious moments in the episode, viewers are treated to his standing against the Saint of Killers. In a pure act of defiance, he stabs himself so as not to reveal anything to the Saint about the whereabouts of Preacher and his friends.
The next place the crew search for God is at a strip club, because why not. It is good to see that Tulip is against Jesse using Genesis, the power of God, to influence people. Her objections to his overuse of the power is what stops him becoming a character that seems almost unstoppable. If the writers didn’t work out a way to stop him using his power, it would feel like the stakes weren’t that high.
That’s why it was good to see that Genesis also doesn’t work on the Saint. The final minutes of the episode set up what is to come. This episode mainly served the purpose of reintroducing the audience to the main characters, and establishing what the story of this new season is going to be. Finally, at the end we have a direct confrontation with the Saint and a hint at something strange with the Mighty Ganesh.
Overall, the premiere of Preacher satisfied. It was a fantastic episode with many great comedic beats (even if they were dark), plenty of action and the stirrings of an interesting plot.
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