With a love of slapstick savagery that would make Sam Raimi proud, the Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg adaptation of Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon‘s cult favorite graphic novel series brings a bit of joy to what could have been dour proceedings at AMC. In its first hour, “Preacher” makes it clear that it’s unlike anything else on the network currently. Though it shares the same affection for violence and viscera as “The Walking Dead,” here it’s often done for laughs, with head-snappingly fast cuts and outrageous weaponry that ranges from a broken bong to an ear of corn. It’s closest in tone to Starz’ sadly underseen “Ash vs. Evil Dead,” but the proceedings here are a bit weightier thanks to its soul searching undercurrent. In between the plentiful laughs, the pilot for “Preacher” questions how good and evil can intermingle in a single man, and observes how things aren’t always what they seem.
When “Preacher” begins, you almost wonder if you’re watching the right show. With klaxons blaring, a title card declares “OUTER SPACE” in all-caps, stark sans serif, and we’re immediately thrust into a nostalgically animated version of our solar system as a force passes by Saturn and heads toward Earth. The vague label “AFRICA” shows where the green, pulsing projectile is headed. Cut to a church, where a pastor says “Something is coming,” and preaches of the end times. The same transparent force that traveled through space slams into his body. He promptly explodes, coating his now-screaming congregation with blood. The force is expelled like a spiritual burp, and it moves on. Later in the episode, two men in old-school safari gear show up in Africa to investigate, set to an ominous soundtrack. We soon see its aftermath in Russia where it wreaked similar havoc on an Satanic priest, and the same two men show up, dressed appropriately for this locale. The TV news proclaims Church of Scientology favorite Tom Cruise has met the same explosive, bloody end.
We’re introduced to the titular character Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) after he wakes from a dream/flashback in black and white involving his pleading father, showing a back with a tattoo and scars, and surrounded by cigarettes and beer — he’s not your average man of God. Willie Nelson’s “Time of the Preacher” plays, beginning the show’s solid use of music. A title card tells us we’re in TEXAS, and Jesse’s inclusion of a quote from legendary Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry in his sermon leaves the setting in little doubt. No one appears to be following his words, whether it’s the children playing with tablets during the service or the person who keeps changing the church sign to say things like, “Open your ass and holes to Jesus.” Even his accompanist cuts him off and begins playing the piano. He continually tells mother-obsessed churchgoer Ted (Brian Huskey) to “Open your heart,” but the advice never sinks in. However, Jesse’s ineffectuality appears to be limited to his role as a spiritual leader, and his violent past comes to the surface when a boy asks him to beat up his father, Donnie (Derek Wilson), for abusing his mother. When Jesse approaches his mother about her safety, she tells him that she enjoys the pain.
“Preacher” next introduces Cassidy (a game-for-anything Joseph Gilgun), an Irish bartender on a plane AT 30,000 FEET ostensibly taking a group of men toward Tijuana and debauchery. With coke, pot and booze onboard, they’re getting the party started early. But Cassidy quickly discovers that the men aren’t what they seem, and the party descends into flashily edited violence, complete with bong smashing, crossbow shooting and putter swinging, with all of them intent on killing him. Cassidy too reveals his true nature when he guzzles the blood of the two pilots, after an ineffective attempt to destroy him with holy water. He bails out of the plane sans parachute, and we later meet him in daylight surrounded by his own guts after he has smashed into the earth. A cow wanders a bit too close to the vampire and helps make him whole again. Whether you subscribe to the “Twilight” or “True Blood” school of vampires, it’s clear that these rules don’t apply to him.
If Cassidy’s first scenes wow the audience, they’re soon bested by our initial encounter with Jesse’s ex-girlfriend Tulip (a kickass Ruth Negga), who gets one of the best character introductions in recent TV memory. After Jesse overhears her singing “You’re So Vain” in her father’s shower, we flash briefly back and meet her in KANSAS, NOT THAT LONG AGO with Carly Simon playing in the background. She tussles with two men in her car as it swerves through a cornfield. When the vehicle finally stops at a farmhouse, she kills one man with the aforementioned corncob in front of two children. She immediately wins them – and the audience – over with an arts and crafts session that results in a bazooka, which she quickly employs. We return to the present, where Tulip is asking Jesse to join her on a mission in a conversation full of both nostalgia and chemistry. When he turns her down, she says, “We are who we are, Jesse Custer. We are who we are.”
Jesse and Cassidy’s stories converge in a bar, where Donnie and his Civil War reenactor buddies are looking for revenge for Jesse talking to Donnie’s wife. Jesse slips out of preacher mode and soundly trounces Donnie and his friends, with a little help from Cassidy. This lands them in jail, where they’re bailed out by Emily (Lucy Griffiths), a loyal parishioner and single mom who has an attachment to Jesse. When she drops him off at home, he tells her that he’s going to quit the church during Sunday’s sermon, and she says she won’t beg him to come back.
Once he’s alone in the church, Jesse asks God for a sign and gets nothing. “Fuck you, too,” he says. Or “____ you, too,” given the profanity muting on AMC. Then, the same force that tore through Africa, Russia and Tom Cruise barrels through the door of Jesse’s church in Annville and into Jesse. We see more of his flashback to his father, whose advice “We Custers don’t cry. We fight,” is silenced by a gunshot.
He awakens three days later (coincidence? Probably not) with Emily telling him it’s Sunday, when he’s promised to quit. Everything is sharper and heightened, and his words are now starting to sink in for the congregation. He repeats his earlier advice – ”Open your heart” – to Ted, and the man finally listens. Ted travels across the country to see his mother, where he literally opens his heart (and his chest cavity) to his confused and traumatized mom. Yikes. We return briefly to Annville, where the mysterious men who showed up in Africa and Russia have found their way to Jesse.
In just its first episode, “Preacher” veers dramatically away from the storyline of Ennis and Dillon’s series, but it retains the spirit of its characters. Fans may cry foul at all the changes (and there are a number of them), but it keeps the comic’s twisted soul. It makes a lot of character and subplot introductions and it doesn’t feel the need to answer all the audience’s questions, at least in its initial hour. One such example is the appropriately named Arseface (Ian Colletti), whose face is twisted and scarred, but we don’t yet learn all the details of why he looks how he does. The show appears to take its time with giving us answers to the many questions it raises, both in its plot and themes.
Previously, Rogen and Goldberg helmed “This Is the End” and “The Interview,” and their directing of this pilot hews closer to their first outing, but with far more style. This episode of “Preacher” is full of energy and smart cuts, such as transitioning from Cassidy’s jump toward earth with the splat of ketchup on a plate. It’s all over the place, both literally and figuratively, with only time demonstrating if it will have a coherent story to tell. But this is goofy, gory fun, and its 10-episode first season shows plenty of promise in just this single hour.
