Thoughts on AMC's Preacher Series Premiere
I was introduced to Preacher by love. He’s a comic collector, and he was so adorably excited when he learned that Seth Rogen would be producing an AMC series based on the comic book. I believe he has a few sets of the entire series, and he showed me a few with light in his eyes capturing two of the reasons why I love him 1) He can teach me things that I wouldn’t necessarily find on my own that are unique and interesting to him, and that really strike my personality, and 2) I admire that he has vision for making money doing the things that he really loves. Lucky him. But less about him, and more about Preacher.
The pilot episode starts with a campy comic intro reminiscent of a cross between an abbreviated version of the opening sequence of Eraserhead and Superman. There's an orb of light emitting questionable sounds speeding through “OUTER SPACE” with purpose. It punches through through the rings of Saturn as if it's fisting something on its way through the universe until it makes it way to Earth, Africa of all places, where this entity finds its way into the mouth of a preacher giving an invigorating sermon. At first the stunned congregation thinks it’s a miracle, cheering for the entity that has just entered his body, but the preacher is visibly changed. He looks choked, like he can’t get any air in, and his eyes are bulging and blood shot, and then he screams in an unearthly booming voice for everyone to be quiet. Immediate silence. Even the village dog stops in his tracks. Then he resumes his sermon with a renewed sense of power and shortly explodes Clayton Bigsby follower styles (see video) all over the congregation who flees in terror from the church shack. Then we cut to a black and white dream sequence of a preacher figure making someone make a promise, and then we cut quickly again to the scarred and tattooed back of a man we realize is an alcoholic preacher way out in west Texas whose parishioners like to mess with the weekly sign. This all happens in the first five minutes.
It’s quite an opening, but then we find out our preacher is really, really bad at what he does, and then from there on, that’s where the show loses me. There’s a story going on about a boy and his father that picks up later in the show, but the action sequences and the plot lines all feel a bit disjointed at this point and I wanted more exposition to happen faster. It’s like there’s a lot going on and then there’s nothing going on at the same time. I was really bored with the plot development until Cassidy shows up, and once he was a part of the world, I wanted to know more.
The characters in the show are the redeeming factor because the story isn’t what I was sticking around for. Just when I would be ready to abandon ship, they would introduce another kick ass character that I was way more invested in than the preacher. I love Cassidy, he’s amazing. I thought he was a demon until love told me that he was a vampire. Makes sense after he filled up that water bottle with blood before jumping out of a plane with an umbrella. And then there’s kick ass Tulip. She took down an entire gang of people who came after her, all after hanging out with some random farm kids she duct taped weapons together with. And then there’s Eugene, a.k.a. Arseface who is quite an interesting study in putting a butthole on someone’s face. I kid you not.
Anyway, I plan on watching the next episode on June 5, because it’s something different. Knowing what I know about what it’s actually about, I really dig the premise, so I’m excited to see where this notoriously violent comic book is going to take this show.