2.10 Dirty Little Secret Perhaps the show is too niche to court much controversy, but if there is a group of people out there willing to start complaining, they’ll find them this week and enrage them. One of the biggest elements of the comic book was that The Grail had in their possession the Messiah, a horribly inbred descendent of Jesus Christ whose holy bloodline was kept pure thanks to 25 generations or so of inbreeding. The end result, as Starr says in conversation with Jesse, is more inbred than a Maltese puppy, with a litany of problems that leave him unable to assume the role that The Grail had in mind for him. I wondered just what plan Starr had for Jesse Custer, and just why he had Featherstone working so hard to get involved in the Jesse/Tulip relationship. It all comes together in this episode. Starr needs a new figurehead, a useful figurehead, and Featherstone needs to sever Jesse from his friendships by pushing Tulip into finding the Saint’s hidden guns and sword. Tulip and Featherstone’s growing relationship is proving to be interesting, because Featherstone is really good at manipulating someone like Tulip, who is very much a straightforward thinker. The most important bit of this episode, the budding relationship between various Grail operatives and Jesse’s crew, works fairly well in Mary Laws’ script. Jesse and Starr may or may not need one another, but there’s definitely something between them. Starr is intrigued by Jesse’s power, and Jesse doesn’t seem as intrigued by the Grail’s power, as they can summon the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but can’t find God aside from his mentally and physically impaired great grandson. That’s not exactly going to win someone over, even if they do have access to attack drones, but Starr, as we see in the final moments of the episode, has a bigger plan for Jesse, and a plan that will require Jesse to lose every friend he has in the process. Step one, taking Tulip. Cassidy is distracted by Denis, so he might not even be necessary to scare off (though the Grail revealing that Tulip and Cassidy slept together would eliminate that friendship fairly easily). But will Jesse fall for the allure of power that even the Voice can’t provide? That remains to be seen. Without his loved ones, will the quest even matter anymore? Or will he be so single-minded in pursuit of the quest that he’ll crawl into bed with Herr Starr? Read Ron’s review of the previous episode, Puzzle Piece, here. US Correspondent Ron Hogan was very surprised by what Preacher was able to get away with this week. Not every day you see that kind of stuff on TV. Find more by Ron daily at PopFi.
