[rating=9.00] “Pilot”
As a reader of comics, my life can be divided into two parts. There was the time before I first read Preacher—a comparatively innocent period of familiar superheroes fighting for truth, justice, so forth, etc.—and there’s the time after I read Preacher. The sprawling epic of violence and blasphemy was a milestone. Comics had never been so profane, so grotesque, so…enthralling. It opened minds like an axe to the head with its deeply imagined world and its take no prisoners approach to the traditions of comic book narrative. It was genre bending, form breaking, mold destroying greatness that ran for six years and reminded everyone what heights the medium could reach in the hands of the right mad men.
So it is with its new TV adaptation, which premiered last night on AMC. The pilot episode of Preacher is one of the more balls out, madcap, description defying, batshit 90 minutes of television in recent history, and how blessed we must be to live in such a glorious time. From its blood soaked opening to its heart ripping conclusion, Preacher defied all logic, all notions of decency, and all mores to create a fascinating introduction to a fascinating world that begs to be dived into head on without the benefit of nets or harnesses.
The pilot wastes no time setting itself apart from the rest of the current crop of television offerings as a mysterious entity falls from space, crying like a baby, possessing and then exploding a priest in rural Africa. Immediately, we’re given some hint as to what we can expect with Preacher. Violence. Gore. Blasphemy. Of course, none of this is used for its own sake. No, it’s used as the first step in a series of larger critiques. Like the comics before it, the series is establishing itself as a grand satire—of politics, of religion, of society at large.
The entity in question isn’t explored too much in the opening episode, which makes sense. You’ve got to give them reason to keep coming back. What we know so far is that the entity makes its way across the earth, attempting to bond with various religious men before they are exploded in front of their congregation. This offers one of the more hilarious moments of the night, as Tom Cruise, addressing a gathering of scientologists, disappears into blood and viscera live on TV.
From here, we meet our trio of mains. There’s Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper), the titular preacher; there’s the resourceful assassin Tulip (Ruth Negga), Jesse’s partner in a former life; and there’s Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun), a hard drinking, hard fighting Irish vampire being hunted by some mysterious organization.
Much of the first episode consists of Jesse tending to the needs of his dwindling flock. Through this, we’re given insight into the twisted underbelly of the small, West Texas town of Annville. True to Texas fashion, its denizens speak on traditional values while acting on darker impulses. Sheriff Root refuses to do anything about a woman who may be being beaten by her husband; the changing of the high school mascot from Big Chief to a prairie dog inspires fights in the streets over political correctness; nobody much cares that the local church is dying after the opening of a massive mega-church nearby.
None of this sits well with Jesse, of course, but he does his best not to sit in judgment. Still, the pressures attending to his flock weigh heavy on the preacher’s mind, sending him down the path of spite and alcoholism as he tries to be a good leader for the townsfolk. The people we meet range from decent to abhorrent to bizarre. There is, perhaps, none more bizarre than Eugene Root, son of the sheriff.
I can’t imagine what his introduction must’ve been like for the uninitiated. Eugene (Ian Colletti) is horribly deformed (the reason for which is only hinted at here, so I’ll remain mum on that except to say it’s not too hard to figure out with what they’ve given us) with a face like an asshole. In the comics, he’s known as Arseface for this very reason, though the name is as yet unused in the series.
As we make our way through the town’s introduction, it’s hard not to sympathize with Jesse as he makes his decision to quit the cloth, probably to join up with Tulip once again. We can’t really blame him for that, given the general disarray of his congregation and the mess he’s made of his life. Besides, he’s not really a good preacher, a fact we see immediately as he stumbles over his sermon attempting to use a story of Tom Landry (because this is Texas, after all) as a modern biblical parable about humility. Just as he’s made his decision, however, the explosive entity makes its way to Jesse.
Instead of the results we’ve seen so far, however, Jesse and the entity seem to bond together, imbuing the preacher with powers he can’t even dream of. We’re given a bloody taste of this power as he informs a hapless parishioner to “open his heart” to his mother, a suggestion the man takes as literally as one can.
Preacher was unlike anything the comic book world had ever seen when it made its debut; this fact made it next to impossible to adapt for decades. Somehow, AMC, along with producers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, pulled it off. So far, the series does a masterful job of adapting the heart of the comic book series, without being a beat for beat retelling of that story. Changes were made, but they’re all reasonable, given the new era in which we live and the new medium in which the story dwells. Die hards may not like the approach, but it was the approach needed to be taken in order to bring this sprawling story to life in in all its gratuitous glory.
Though the series is, unfortunately, taking the next week off, a victim of the notoriously poorly rated Memorial Day Weekend, AMC will be broadcasting an encore of the premiere for any unlucky enough to miss it the first go around. It’s an opportunity I suggest that you take. Irreverent, grotesque, profane, and bloody fantastic, Preacher has quickly established itself as being totally unlike anything else currently on TV, positioning itself to become the must watch show of the season.
