Preacher 3.08 "The Tom/Brady":
Directed by Wayne Yip & Written by Mary Laws & Kevin Rosen
With just three episodes to go in the third season of
Preacher, the show upped the ante for a solid hour of entertainment. Of course, Jesse and Herr Starr's planned coup was never going to work, and despite a rather entertaining elevator brawl that saw Jesse unleash hell against the disposable Grail operatives only to shoot The Allfather in the stomach rather than the head, causing a mere flesh wound that he didn't seem to be impacted by at all. I did like the novelty touch of the elevator leading to different floors that weren't part of The Grail's organization, and it allowed for an unexpected moment of humour once a perfectly ordinary worker was trying to get on board. If that scene greeted me when I was waiting for a lift, I'd probably take the next one too. But at the end of the day, Jesse is now in huge trouble as he needs to come up with a way to escape before Genesis is taken from him.
It seems like The Grail has come up with a way of creating a disposable line of Humperdoos and now they are sending one after another into a room where they have created a machine to extract Genesis from Jesse. In a rather crude way, the place for the other half of Jesse's soul that The Allfather deems to be safe is up his own ass, something that Jesse is decidedly uncomfortable with getting it out of him. But none of that matters as The Grail are seemingly in control, and The Allfather at least doesn't seem swayed by Jesse's speeches about the fact how he is the only one that's worthy to wield The Grail.
The sequence of the Humperdoos exploding to classical, upbeat music with each Humperdoo exploding as The Grail attempted to find the perfect combination of good and bad was one of the funniest moments of the hour, as the show delved into its dark humour once again. It's pretty obvious now that the show is delighting in playing some upbeat music when something terrible is happening, but the way that something like this is treated as comic relief doesn't feel tiresome at all. As they were eventually bound to do, The Grail stumble across a solution which Genesis is willing to accept, and as it turns out, it's the combination of Thomas Jefferson and Wayne Brady, of all people. It's a matchup of two people that only
Preacher would be able to put together, and the culmination of an incredibly bizzare moment of hapless slaughter turned out to be successful, putting Jesse and Starr in a very tough situation indeed. Starr may have placed a gun inside Jesse's clothing, but given how Jesse is tied up at the moment, it is decidedly hard for him to get to.
This episode didn't feel like the most coherent hour of
Preacher ever but that can be explained by the fact that a lot of the groundwork was being laid down for the next two episodes to come. We get caught up with pretty much everyone in this episode, from Gran'ma to Hitler to Cassidy, people who normally wouldn't feature in an episode with this much time spent on The Grail get their moment in the sun.
It turns out that Gran'ma has a direct line to hell and has been feeding on the souls to keep herself alive all this time. The second she dies, The Devil is waiting for her. It turns out The Devil is actually aware of Jesse after all and is keeping an eye on him, but Gran'ma does have a tempting offer that he might be interested in. And that's Genesis, which by the end of the episode, has been found in a target that will be a lot easier to get it out of. Humperdoo, who now has the power to control even Jesse, who has been immune to the powers of Genesis after all this time. I find it interesting that Gran'ma apparently has no interest in harvesting something as powerful as Genesis for herself, but if she can use it as a bargaining chip to get the best deal for her then by all means, she's going to take it.
Gran'ma wants Tulip gone so it's an easy deal to make for her and The Devil that satisfies both parties. He dispatches The Angel of Death to get Tulip but makes a crucial mistake in not giving The Angel a depiction of what Tulip looks like. A brown haired woman on a plane back from Osaka in a Grail Uniform is all she has to go on, and it comes as no surprise when Tulip plays a get-out-of-jail free card in the unfortunate Lara Featherstone.
The entertainment value that comes from putting Lara, Jody and Tulip in the same room together never gets old and their mission was another highlight of this episode. Whilst there were easier ways to get a security card, Lara decides that the best way would be to maintain their cover through a sexual harassment seminar, if only to annoy Tulip. It's moments like these where it's perfectly understandable that after the mission is complete and the souls are secure, that Tulip decides to hand Lara over to the Angel of Death, but in the process, she takes the wrong briefcase and leaves Tulip with the souls that are now bound for hell.
And it turns out that Lara is not the only one going there. Eugene is still rambling on about being chosen by God, but Hitler - still posing as Hilter, has been keeping busy during his time on Earth and has seemingly amassed some followers. One of these recognises that he's in trouble once he borrows a phone from Lara, and The Saint and The Angel of Death may not find it as easy as it seems to get their subjects back to hell.
Finally, it's also worth mentioning the Cassidy and Eccarius sections of the episode and it's pretty clear that at some point Cassidy was going to figure out what Eccarius was up to when Hoover is turned after being caught. Hoover finds himself on the verge of being a victim, but Eccarius is found by Cassidy, and it quickly becomes apparent that Cassidy isn't strong enough to stop him. It's also worth mentioning here the delightful silliness of the texting between Cassidy and Starr as they debated about what to do with Hoover - Starr was quite happy to let him die despite Hoover's insistence that he was bluffing. It's moments like these that really play into the show's comedic strengths, and the fact that bees were suggested by an actual beekeeper as a means of killing Hoover felt like an nice touch, and feels like a shame that they weren't used here.
I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't see them again before the finale though, but in what capacity I don't know. Both bees and the gun in Jesse's jacket feel like a big case of Chekov's Gun moments waiting to happen, after all, why bring them up if they're not going to be used?
What did you think of The Tom/Brady? Let me know in the comments below and be sure to check out the next episode of Preacher, airing this Sunday on AMC.
