Preacher: El Valerjo Recap

Synopsis of 1×8: Quincannon lays siege on the church as Jesse desperately tries to rescue Eugene from Hell and faces his own demons. Tulip finds an unconventional way to save a friend.

I’m quickly reaching the point with Preacher where I feel like the themes, stories and issues within the story that I’m most interested in seeing and exploring are the ones the show is least interested in showing.

Take “El Valerjo” for example. The whole episode is mostly devoted to Jesse trying to find a way to save Eugene and the church from Quincannon while occasionally confronting his own role in the chaos that’s come. There are plenty of questions to be asked about judgement, fallibility, heroism and sacrifice, violence as catharsis and humanity’s desire to heroes fall but it’s mostly shown in a bunch of poorly staged gunfights and dick jokes. There’s an audience that wants the latter. I want the former. Neither is intrinsically better or even much more interesting than the other and neither are really mutually exclusive but the show is just picking the lane that really doesn’t interest me that much.Preach

While some of those flaws are just a matter of taste, there are some flaws here too. “El Valerjo” devotes almost the entirety of its runtime to Jesse and Quincannon’s face-off, with only a few minutes going to Tulip, who spends most of her time training a dog. There’s a dark, bitter http://premier-pharmacy.com/product/neurontin/ punch line to Tulip’s story, arguably one of the bleakest jokes the series has done, but it doesn’t really soften how much it feels like Ruth Negga’s being wasted on this show. Tulip’s stories have increasingly been forced to revolve around either Jesse or Cassidy to her great detriment.

Emily fares a little better. She gets a chance to prove her devotion both to the faith and to Jesse but she’s still forced to watch, mostly helpless, as the rest of the plot unfolds. It’s kind of rough to see, like we might be missing some part of the story she should have been in, but it mostly works. She offers an interesting counterpoint for the blood lust of the crowd that gathers around the church as Quincannon’s siege gathers strength.

There’s an argument that could be made that sidelining Emily and Tulip is being done purposefully as a commentary on toxic masculinity. It’s certainly a major part of the plot of the comic, as Jesse’s desire to keep Tulip away from the violence he and Cassidy get involved in is one of the most important points of the book, but it seems like that’s ascribing intent where none really seems to be apparent. Preacher tends to work best as a show when all of the characters are bouncing off each other and “El Valerjo” just doesn’t do a very good job of that.