On the heels of the, apparently, very popular television series “Lucifer” comes the hard hitting small screen adaption of a very adult oriented comic book about a tough but spiritually lost country preacher Jessie Custer. Now I’m not particularly inclined to the “binge watching” epidemic that is apparently sweeping across our planet, but this series’ first season I did check out in, what we shall call “rapid succession”. Does that mean I liked it? Well, yes and no.
While “Preacher” is based on the comic book series by Garth
Ennis, with art by Steve Dillon I can at best say that it is loosely based on
the source material. It pulls from the
material the basic characters, such as Jessie, Tulip, Cassidy, and Arseface,
but sets out to tell its own story of manhandled redemption. Probably the most important aspect of any
series is getting characters that you can connect with, relate to in your own
way. Everyone going into this series is
probably going to have their favorite characters, but that doesn’t mean that
these characters are “good people”. In
fact, a big part of the series is peeling back layers and finding out that
characters you thought were one way end up being very different from
preconceived notions.
For instance, lets briefly examine Emily Woodrow, a single
mother of three children, who is a waitress, the church organist and church
book keeper and basically Jessie’s keel, keeping him in line (mostly) with his
pastoral duties. On the surface she is
apparently the best person in a town full of pretty nasty people. Then you find out that she’s stringing along the
town’s milquetoast mayor so that he’ll baby sit for her and satisfy her sexual
needs while making sure he understands that they are, at best “friends with
benefits”. Then she sends him to his
death by mauling from a vampire. Bear in
mind, said mayor isn’t a great person, but still, for the second highest
ranking person in the local church, this seems kind of harsh.
Flip to the other side of the coin with one Odin Quincannon
who is without a doubt one of the worst possible specimen of humanity to date. He is the highest ranking person in the town,
and he rules the roost with childish fury.
He is a straight up psychopathic lunatic with no redeeming
qualities. Except, as the season unfolds
you discover that his entire family was killed in a freak accident while
vacationing in Europe. His…entire…family. The final shot we have of him in the season
is of him cradling a mock-up of his daughter he made out of meat. This man is broken on a deep psychological
level and if you imagine losing your past and your future in one quick moment,
you can kind of understand why this guy came unspooled.
A large portion of this season deals with this kind of
dynamic, where people you thought weren’t that bad end up being kind of
horrible, and the horrible people end up not being as bad as you thought. The series tries, sometimes clumsily, to balance
the character dynamic within itself, but again, that may be the point of the
writers, that within people in general, this balance is clumsy at best.
Dominic Cooper headlines the series as Jessie Custer, the
wayward titular preacher who has been given the power of “Genesis”, an ability
to inflict his will on others with his voice.
I was pleased to see how Dominic handled this because this could easily
be something the studio placed on the effects department alone, but Cooper embellishes
the moments where Jessie uses his power with posturing and facial expressions
that sell that he’s letting something else take over. When he really sells it is when it seems like
Jessie is abusing the power, but his expressions leave the viewer to wonder if
Jessie is using Genesis, or if Genesis is using Jessie.
Jessie is clearly the hub of the series. Everything revolves around him, but if Jessie
is the hub, then the forces that hold it together are Joseph Gilgun as Cassidy,
Ruth Negga as Tulip, and Ian Colletti as Eugene. The character of Tulip in the first two
thirds of the series starts to really grate on the viewer, at least for me, and
she just comes across as a stubborn irritant.
This is later paid off on by explaining her sordid backstory with Jessie
and how they came to be at odds. I don’t
necessarily feel this excuses her behavior, but it certainly informs it.
Eugene, which fans of the comics will know as “Arseface” due
to an unfortunate encounter with a shotgun, is actually the nicest guy in town,
and offers the most candid understanding of the faults of others. This is due to him being the town’s outcast,
treated as a monster for something he supposedly did (check out season 2 for
details). Eugene is too good for this
town and it’s simple as that. While the
town of Annville has turned normal people into monsters, this monstrous looking
young man proves to be the one good thing there. Which, I have a theory, is why the people of
this little slice of purgatory really don’t like him. He’s better than they are. He is a more decent person than they are, and
that bothers them.
Then you have my, hands down, favorite character Cassidy,
the hard drinking, hedonistic, drug abusing, self-deprecating vampire. Again this is a monstrous character that
partakes of horrible things but ends up being one of the most decent people in
the whole town. He admits that he’s not
the best person, that he’s done terrible things, and unlike a lot of the other
characters who straddle this good/bad line (cough-tulip-cough) he actually
regrets some of the bad things he’s done.
Even as a blood guzzling creature of rage and murder, he’s not that bad
of a guy. And that’s not saying “Well
compared to this guy or that lady, he’s not THAT bad.” He helps out Jessie in a bar fight without
being asked to step in, he protects Jessie when he’s incapacitated, and he’s
constantly trying to get Jessie to be the better man. Cassidy is a good guy who
does bad things.
When you strip away all the supernatural elements from the
story of Preacher, you really are left with an analysis of the choices of
complex people and the elements that fashion their decisions. Everyone ultimately needs something. Cassidy needs people to understand and accept
him. Eugene needs people to forgive him,
but for it to be on their own terms.
Tulip needs closure so she can begin healing. Jessie needs direction a purpose in his
life. That, my friends, is a
congregation of real people.
So did I like it?
Well, I liked elements of it. If
you are looking to it for an insight into the minds or the actions, or
spiritually of church going members of society, you will find it very
pessimistic, and as a cradle Christian and self-described prodigal son, that
kind of hurts my feelings. Not so much
that it’s wrong, because while sometimes way over the top, it’s not 100% wrong,
but it’s pessimistic. Everything is
portrayed in such a way that you wonder if its ever going to be set right, so
gritty and grimy that it obscures any chance of hope. A major part of the problem is the town’s
preacher, as he’s actually really bad at his job for the first half of the
season. If you want to get a glimpse of
a small town church, do not look here.
This is what a church looks like when it has no leader. A flock with no shepherd, no one to guide it
or protect it, will drive itself into hell while singing hymns. Obviously I liked some of the characters, but
will those characters be strong enough or well-rounded enough to get me to come
back, to spend my limited personal time to watch the show again?
We’ll see. Thanks for
reading.
