The best episode of “Preacher” to date, “Sundowner” starts with a bang and ends with a whimper (from me and my fellow Eugene fans, at least). It’s an hour filled with action, revelations-with-a-lowercase-r, humor and a tragedy that serves as a punch to a gut. We’ve spent enough time with these characters that it isn’t only the battle royale fought between warring angels, an Irish vampire, and the titular character that makes this good television; instead it’s their interactions that keep the episode on its A-game.
But that battle. It’s enough to almost make us forget what DeBlanc (Anatole Yusef) and Fiore (Tom Brooke) are sharing in their continued conversation with Jesse (Dominic Cooper) in the episode’s first quiet minutes. What’s giving Jesse power isn’t God, the angels explain. It’s the product of a forbidden union between an angel and a demon: the “most powerful entity ever known, the singular force that could shift the balance of power and threaten all of creation.” There isn’t much time to absorb this information, as a seraphim disguised as a blonde woman spies on them. They follow her out to the parking lot, where an epic fight begins and moves to their hotel room at the Sundowner Motel.
DeBlance, Fiore and the blonde seraphim all have the power of regeneration, and so their bodies begin to mount in the hotel room as the brawl continues in near-giddy fashion for 10 minutes. At the helm of this episode is Guillermo Navarro, a solid TV director in his own right with credits on “Hannibal” and “Narcos,” but he also has an Oscar for his cinematography for “Pan’s Labyrinth.” This scene features solid camerawork throughout, but it’s hard not to stand in awe of a slow zoom out from the action through a hole in the hotel room wall. It’s a beautiful cap to a breathless scene, but we’re brought back post-commercial, and they’re still fighting. Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) finally enters the scene and knocks out the seraphim, keeping her from regenerating. Jesse uses Genesis, the name of the power within him, to compel DeBlanc and Fiore to stay away, but they’re not happy about it. In the post-fight clean-up, Cassidy remarks on Jesse’s flower tattoo. “It’s my Tulip,” the preacher explains, and Cassidy doesn’t make the connection with “his” Tulip.
Speaking of which, the TV gods have answered my prayers for more of my favorite badass. Tulip (Ruth Negga) goes to Emily (Lucy Griffiths) to threaten “Stay away from my boyfriend!” and break some shit. She stomps out, and Emily follows her to reveal that the shit Tulip broke was Emily’s daughter’s “art thing.” Tulip softens, later revealing that she had a child once, and the two women spend the day together, with Tulip helping fold pamphlets and running errands for the church. These two women shouldn’t get along – they’re polar opposites who love the same man – but there’s a bond between them that shows us different sides of both Tulip and Lucy beyond just their connection to Jesse. There’s still tension between them, but it’s not the only aspect of their interactions.
“Sundowner” further reveals that they could both probably do better. Jesse was never a saint, and his dual nature is probably what made him the perfect home for the angel-demon spawn of Genesis. The pilot shared that it tried and failed to inhabit an African pastor, a Satanic priest and Tom Cruise (is he too good or too evil?), but Jesse’s struggles with faith and being a good man make him an ideal host in theory. In practice, he’s become monstrous and obsessed with the power that he sees as a gift from God. He refuses to return Genesis to DeBlanc and Fiore and sees it as his way to keep his promise to his father and save the town of Annville. “This is why Genesis was given me, Cassidy,” he explains. “This is what it’s for. God doesn’t make mistakes.” In his centuries-learned wisdom, Cassidy replies, “God may not make mistakes, but people are bloody famous for it.”
Jesse soon makes what may be his biggest mistake. After hinting that Eugene “Arseface” (Ian Colletti) may be attacked by boys at school, they actually just want to share their love of fireworks with him. Eugene’s awe and joy at the beauty makes what comes later all the more heartbreaking. He sees Jesse prepping to forcefully convert the town with the power of Genesis, and he warns him that “You can’t make people see the light.” An angry Jesse accidentally invokes Genesis when he yells, “Go to hell, Eugene!” and then he disappears. It’s an awful moment, made all the more painful by the fine work done by Colletti under his prosthetics and the script to establish his character’s innocence and goodness.
The final scene feels like an afterthought, or perhaps just a moment to collect ourselves after the trauma we’ve just witnessed. Mayor Miles (Ricky Mabe) has been dodging the dozens of calls from Green Acre about the missing executives whom he saw murdered by Odin, and he tried to get advice from Jesse about what to do. Without getting a good answer from Jesse on doing the right thing, he helps fake an accident in the interest of greater good for the town and he finally returns their call to deliver the news.
Written by Nick Towne of “Deadwood,” “Sundowner” ably balances the big moments and the small. The ongoing love square of Cassidy, Tulip, Jesse and Emily gets more depth as each person/vampire discovers their place within it. If it weren’t it weren’t for “Game Of Thrones” and its “Battle of the Bastards,” the hotel room brawl is the fight scene that would rule 2016 TV. But despite the blood and bodies, “Preacher” is most concerned with souls and Jesse’s is looking lost after this superb episode.
