"Deviant" -Preacher S04E03 Review

And the Preacher some of us know and love is back.

Jesse is a dick, is off on his own, and has a cool fight scene. Check.

Cassidy is off on his own, getting horribly abused, and reminds us he's Irish. Check.

Tulip is off on her own, and admits she's really really violent. Check.

Starr acts all creepy with a new assistant. Check.

Eugene and the Saint of Killers are off on their own and walk down a road. Excitement!

Last week's two episodes were fairly promising. God was involved with the Grail, Jesse and Tulip staged a raid on Masada, Cassidy had a brief bonding sequence with his torturer, Staff stepped up as the new Allfather and chatted with some world leaders. But this week was the general slowness that bogged down much of Season 3. It's not that it's bad, it's just the show doesn't move forward. There's no character development, there's no major plot twists.

So what happened in "Deviant"? Jesse is on the plane heading for Australia, and thinks back to what happened at the House of Entertainment. We find out he got a blast of opium smoke in the face, killed a bunch of residents who tried to kill him, and the boy he came to rescue was hit by a stray shot. It's a cool five-minute fight scene, as Jesse (and the stunt coordinator) shows off his chops and our protagonist forgets to use the Voice. ("Everyone, freeze!"). Maybe Jesse is just supposed to get off on the violence, but it comes across mostly as the writers neglecting to use the Voice to provide a fight.

As Jesse leaves with Pilot Steve, we see God watching them from an upstairs window. We also see Starr dictating a script about Jesse being "evil incarnate". Jesse's plane starts going down, and a newscast flashes on the screen with the reporter describing Jesse as "evil incarnate". So apparently a lot of it was setup.

Before the plane goes down, we get a scene as Jesse waits for his plane at the airport, when Hitler (Noah Taylor) shows up. Things perk up a bit as they banter back and forth. But Jesse is in full dick mode here. He comes across as less sympathetic than Hitler. That... takes some work.

Tulip is in the Grail infirmary in Masada. A helpful doctor (Christopher Brown) holds her for psychiatric examination, and straps Tulip down. He flashes some Rorschach color blots at her and finds out that, surprise! she's really violent. Then she escaped and goes looking for Cassidy.

Cassidy? We have an opening bit where we have a Toscani Foreskin Facial Cream commercial, and then a shot of Cassidy being shorn of his foreskin repeatedly at Bensonhurst. I guess that's a flash-forward, because the rest of Cassidy's exploits are in a cell in Masada, that he's sharing with an Archangel (David Field). Cassidy talks about how he fought the British in 1916, hid while a comrade was butchered, and then was bitten by a vampire. And that's how he became the Cassidy we know and love today.

It's a little late to be giving Cassidy new characterization. The fact he's telling his origin story to a stranger, rather than Jesse as he does in the comics, doesn't help. One wonders why Jesse and Cassidy are friends. They've been apart so much over the course of the show there's almost nothing there.

As noted, Starr is dictating a script to his new aide, "Hoover 2" (Aleks Mikic). For this they killed Hoover 1 (Malcolm Barrett) off? Lara figures out Tulip snuck into Masada and is ready to take her out. The Grail operative discovers Tulip has escaped and heads for Cassidy's cell.

The Saint and Eugene? They're walking down a road in Texas, the Saint able to home in on Jesse when he uses the Voice. Can't wait to see what happens when they come to the ocean. Hopefully Eugene won't drown: Ian Colletti and Graham McTavish are probably the best part of the show right now. And at least they're doing something. Which is more than Joseph Gilgun as Cassidy can say. They're not doing much, but beats hanging around regenerating one's foreskin.

Colletti and McTavish make a near-perfect Odd Couple. Eugene is still the sweet innocent boy who ended up shooting himself in the face. And the Saint is... the Saint. He does rescue Eugene at the end, after Eugene has an unfortunate encounter with a man in a diner restroom via a gloryhole. Which leads to a confusing sequence where a "sex detective" breaks in, arrests Eugene, and then hands him off to man from Child Services who is taking Eugene back to the orphanage. The Saint shoots the CS man dead and off they go.

And that's it for this week. Jesse's plane is going down, Tulip is going to rescue Cassidy but he isn't there, Cassidy is heading to Bensonhurst, and the Saint and Eugene are heading to the West Coast. Maybe it's all adding up to something for the series finale. Maybe it will turn out like Season 3, where the whole side trip to Angelville ended up as... nothing.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?