‘Preacher’ Recap: S1E10 ‘Call And Response’

Well, we’ve made it. We are now at the end of Preacher season one, and it has certainly been a wild ride. The AMC series has literally gone to Hell and back — on more than one occasion — and, much like an unholy, God-fearing Energizer Bunny, it just kept going, and going, and going. Even when it did drag at times (like it did in the middle), it always kept it fast, loose and ready to rumble. That was certainly the case with tonight’s finale, “Call and Response,” written and directed by showrunner Sam Catlin.

It’s Sunday, the day of the Lord. God is promised to come to the town of Annville, and the local preacher, Jesse Cutter (Dominic Cooper), is on the run from the law. Blamed for the disappearance of Eugene “Arseface” Root (Ian Colletti), Jesse has been arrested one or two times already, but his experiences fighting the law has proven him slick against Eugene’s father, Sheriff Root (W. Earl Brown). With Jesse constantly escaping the police, the sheriff decides to instead target his best buddy Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun). Locked up for what could be any number of reasons, Cassidy is used to this song and dance. But the immortal 900-year-old is going to get a bit of a surprise this time around.

With the Sheriff aware of Cassidy’s true form, a vampire, the law enforcer decides to fill the bloodsucker with a few bullets — and then some drinks of blood — to get him to talk. And while it takes more than a few rounds, Cassidy eventually relents and tells his father that his son, indeed, is in Hell, just like Jesse told him. The Sheriff, likely not quite convinced, decides to let the vampire go on his way, but his heart still weighs heavy. He won’t be the same man because of Jesse. His life is a rather bleak tale, especially as this episodes continues on.

Meanwhile, Tulip (Ruth Negga) is still a woman on a mission. She needs to find Jesse, and she won’t stop until they’re reunited. After searching around Annville, she learns that he’s ultimately where nobody would expect to find him: at the home of Donnie (Derek Wilson) and Betsy Schenck (Jamie Anne Allman). But wait, doesn’t Donnie hate the preacher’s guts? Well, Donnie did, but now he has found the light. He’s a reformed man since that night they spent together in a dingy gas station men’s bathroom with a gun pointed towards one another, and he is all about the Lord. Of course, it took a little persuasion from Genesis in order for that to happen, but Jesse needed to be on the down low and that’s the best option he got. Nevertheless, Tulip finds them, and she knows how to make an entrance. She busts a glass door open, slams Betsy’s face on the dining room table and demands to see Jesse. Sure enough, a recently showered Jesse comes walking her way and soon the four of them share bread at the dinner table.

After Tulip lets herself and Jesse outside for a smoke, Jesse gets the chance to confess his rotten feelings and, sure enough, they forgive one another and embrace. And in that tender moment, Jesse says that he’ll do anything to help his former love. Anything? Maybe he should have watched his words carefully, because Tulip reveals a blast from the past in the back of her muscle car: Carlos (Desmin Borges), a former bank robber associate of Tulip and Jesse’s who, as we see in a flashback, took off with their stolen money and caused the death of their first child.

Tulip, naturally, is out for revenge, and she wants her man to lay a bullet inside the head of their betrayer. But as a man of the Lord, Jesse can’t go to hell. He is a man of peace, not a man of sin. But knowing he’s going to Hell in a hand basket anyway, Jesse decides to do the job. Well, at least he was going to do it. But Tulip stops him, even though it was her plan in the first place. Because it wasn’t about the attack; it was the thought that counts. After all, it won’t bring back their child. It’ll just take another life. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to let Carlos walk away clean.

Oh no, they won’t let him walk away without a fight. And with two against one, and with the fighting expertise they both exhibit, it’s not even a contest. Even with a gun in hand, Carlos walks away covered with blood, mouth gushing, and with a pretty nasty little limp. He’ll certainly think twice before he ever crosses Tulip and Jesse again. But with that business out of the way, it’s time to welcome God to Annville. Through Betsy’s help, they sneak their way back to the church and set up for the day’s big presentation. Will it work? Will it fail? It’s hard to say. But all that is certain is that Tulip and Jesse are going to stop for fries when it’s all said and done.

And with the whole town in attendance, Jesse sets up the machine he stole from angels from Heaven and calls to God. But nothing happens. Then nothing happens again. Then nothing happens again. This happens at least five or six more times, until the lights go out and the church is illuminated with God himself. Looking more like the stereotypes than the real deal, God nevertheless asserts his presence and presents himself to the little Texas town. The town is in shock, baffled by what they’re witnessing, most particularly Odin Quincannon (Jackie Earle Haley), the businessman who professes there’s only one god in this world: The God of Meat. But he, and the rest of Annville, are subjects to the grace of the all-mighty, and they all take their turns asking questions. Why do good things happen to bad people? What is my purpose in life? Is my family safe? Will I get my dick back? But through it all, there’s something off.

Jesse notices it fairly quickly, but the rest of Annville is taken by the glory of God, including Tulip and Cassidy. Or so they think. After using Genesis to his advantage, he and the rest of Annville are hit with a bombshell: God is missing, and the man they’ve been speaking with is merely an imposter. The town is taken with confusion, grief, anger, hostility, depression and crushing humility. What is the point of anything, if there’s, indeed, no God to watch over us? Some resort to suicide. Others go about their days as they did before. Some lie in bed and do nothing. But it doesn’t matter. With the radiator keeping the town together on the fritz, it’s ka-blamo for Annville. There’s hardly a piece of wood untouched. Everyone is presumed dead, if they weren’t killed already. Not even the house of God is left standing.

Left unaffected, however, are Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy. During the explosion, they were off in the distance, enjoying themselves some fries, like they promised themselves before. Cassidy continues to assert his negative thoughts on The Big Lebowski, but he’s left alone. Put to a vote amongst the diner, everyone agrees: it’s a pretty darn great movie, and he’s in the minority. But now truly in the minority when it comes to survivors, the three unlikely friends decide to search for God, who might very well be on Earth among them. With a reinvigorated sense of purpose, they will drive across the country, searching high and low for our creator. It’s going to be a hell of a ride, and we’ll have to wait until next year to see how it goes down (that is, unless you read the comics).

Thank you for reading. It means a great deal, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. But before we go for good, let’s break down the finale’s top five moments, shall we?

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‘Jason Bourne’ Review: Trapped In The Past

Like its titular character, Jason Bourne is trapped in the past. He can’t escape the neverending array of secrets from his days as an assassin and he can’t escape the gravity of his own tropes. Too many sequels become remakes of the previous film, down to iconic moments, and in that tradition, Bourne is mainlined fan service. It provides everything a Bourne fan could expect or want – shaky cam, crazy car chases, brutal household accessory-to-household accessory action, nameless characters prowling government control centers covered in screens etc. It isn’t exactly nostalgic but it does provide everything fans of the original trilogy did.

Above all, the fifth entry in the series (the fourth with Damon and his third with director Paul Greengrass, whom he refused to make the film without) feels perfunctory. It doesn’t move the ball forward but runs in place with it. Instead of innovative and fresh, competent and average are words that come to mind. But the best word to sum it up would be serviceable. Watching this film is a bit like watching an aging rock band tour past their prime. It’s the same musicians and the same music but time has worked its magic, changing them and the world their art lives in.

After discovering his true identity as David Webb, exposing the CIA program Treadstone that made him a conscienceless assassin and swimming to freedom, Bourne went off-the-grid, spending the decade since The Bourne Ultimatum bareknuckle fighting in Europe because, well, he’s a badass that’s why (plus, Damon didn’t get into that shape so he could not be shirtless multiple times in the first fifteen minutes).

Meanwhile, Bourne’s fellow rogue agent Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, the only actress to appear in all four Damon films) hacks the CIA for secret Treadstone files, drawing the attention of director Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), his protege Heather Lee (Alicia Vikander) and a CIA assassin known only as The Asset (Vincent Cassel). The information, concerning Bourne’s father and his involvement in the program, compels Parsons to reconnect with Bourne and sets into motion the plot that takes the character from Athens, Greece during an austerity riot to Berlin to London and finally to Las Vegas, Nevada during a tech conference.

Jason Bourne occupies a strange space where it is neither as good as the previous films but it is better than a lot of similar spy actioners. There’s effort here but not enough. Greengrass is incapable of delivering an incompetent film; indeed, the editing is top-notch and the shaky cam more tolerable than in previous films. Nonetheless, there’s an air of mediocrity to the film, of repetition and retread. Making the driving plotline Bourne’s continued quest into his past also overrides the ending of Ultimatum, the catharsis of which is somewhat diminished by this film. Further muddying the water is the revelation of the involvement of Bourne’s father in the conspiracy, which never overcomes its cliched soap opera origins.

The series used to take seriously an idea that “history doesn’t repeat but it often rhymes.” Ultimatum made the narrative choice of co-existing within the same time period as The Bourne Supremacy, an intersection the Jeremy Renner-led spinoff The Bourne Legacy followed up on. In Jason Bourne, however, history flat-out repeats, especially in the first act and not in a good way. To say more would be a spoiler but these copied moments look and feel like shortcuts.

The Bourne series was never a paragon of plotting and narrative but this film is literally two big action sequences laced together by some connective tissue. In my estimation, it reflects the incredibly tight production schedule, which saw filming commence last September and end this March. Speaking of pacing, despite almost a decade between films, it exercises the tiresome trope wherein a character is in stasis in between sequels and the intermittent time is written off as “brooding” or whatever (other offenders include The Dark Knight Rises and the recent X-Men films).

The film gives scant time to the central conflict, concerning a social media platform named Deep Dream the CIA wants to exploit for their surveillance program and the privacy vs. security debate therein. The world events that supposedly spurred the return of Bourne, like the financial collapse and Edward Snowden leaks, are off-handedly referenced to provide a backdrop and context but little more. The politics are secondary and are treated as such. It’s frustrating and disappointing because when the film takes scant seconds to delve into their characters and themes, it comes alive, thanks to the caliber of performers and the interesting undercurrents the film ultimately just doesn’t have time for.

Despite a story that merely goes through the motions, neither Greengrass nor Damon sleepwalk and ruin their franchise. Damon and Vikander are both excellent at acting with their faces and this film showcases those skills to good effect. The recent Oscar-winner fits in seamlessly with the franchise’s cavalcade of shifty government types while also layering Heather Lee with doubt, ambition and idealism. When these she and Bourne, very much equals though on different playing fields, finally meet is when the film genuinely resonates. Jones and Cassel carve genuine villains out of the film’s wooden ambiguity. Ato Essandoh, Scott Shepherd and Riz Ahmed (fantastic in HBO’s currently-airing miniseries The Night Of, if you’re not watching) provide able assistance in relatively thankless roles.

Despite the film’s ambiguous ending and because studios like money, Universal stated its desire to make these films with Damon and Greengrass until President Drumpf initiates nuclear war (or something like that). The original trilogy innovated spy thrillers so much James Bond himself copied. But if it takes nine years to get them back in the saddles again (when Damon is 54) and they have no intention of recasting a la Bond, I hope a sixth film is more original material than greatest hits. And for the love of God, no more giant posters of Damon’s head.

UPDATE: Goddamnit

Grade: 6/10

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