TV Review: PREACHER: Season 2, Episode 10: Dirty Little Secret [AMC]

Preacher: Dirty Little Secret Review

AMC‘s Preacher, Season 2, Episode 10: ‘Dirty Little Secret,’ took some pretty big swings, at as big an icon as there had ever been; but only as an appetizer. It also continued to chip away at the supporting cast – providing a slower undercurrent to the water-cooler material it led with. what kind of material, you might ask? Well, you can’t go wrong with humanizing a godly figure, sure; but why settle for humanizing, when you could just make your blasphemy The Most Interesting Man in the World meme worthy?

Here – I’ll even suggest a few, to help get the need to address the deed out of the system.

So if anybody were to ask “what would Jesus do,” you can choose from a list out of the Kama Sutra. You can question whether he was the Son of God; but clearly, he was a God in the sack. Sweating blood in the garden is for dudes with bad karma credit – the J Man gets the Happy Ending for himself, first, then the bad ending that helps everyone else. Not even Jesus can excuse the man-bun; but a good head of flowing hair can light up a room like a halo (cue the theme from Hair). And always remember, friends, brah-men, and Apostles, the J Man abides.

Okay! So, with that out of the way, all that remains to say is that the old Monty Python crew might actually be proud of this American anachronistic take on sacred lore.

The current cast of blasphemers picked up with more PTSD nightmares, and Jesse’s (Dominic Cooper) face-to-face with Herr Starr (Pip Torrens). Starr was to-the-point transactional, of course, but managed to talk jesse into the deep end of the Grail operation. The deepest end Jesse commanded his own way into; but for Starr, the point of coming forward remained the same.

Somewhere in the background – to PTSD exploitation, the dementia of religious orders, and the perils of Holy fruit falling too close to the tree – was a little its-not-creepy-cause-vampires hedonistic bonding, between Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) & Denis (Ronald Guttman). Considering the tempting nature of the pair the duo had ‘between’ them, so to speak, I guess it wasn’t all that weird – listening to Cass attempt ‘the Talk’ with his newly sired, physically older son. Still, when you can dismiss this twisted dynamic as one of the lesser perversions of an episode, you got a lot of good perversion to work with.

Of more immediate consequence (but still on the lesser side of the perversion scale) was Lara Featherstone (Julie Ann Emery) finally getting to work over Tulip (Ruth Negga). Some part of me instantly held out that Tulip might eventually pull the dope’s rope, on this one – even as the script almost made that eventuality unnecessary (there goes Lara’s Romanov rating); but Lara’s alter ego, Jenny, had her singing like a canary at a support group. Not that I was all that comfortable, watching Hoover (Malcolm Barrett) stoop to playing Jenny’s ghetto-goon ‘boyfriend,’ but Lara really owes him one, after her major ball drop. With the Cowboy still at the heart of Tulip’s manipulation, this will not go well. It may also hint as to how the Grail might eventual handle Jesse’s Genesis card.

As maddening as 99 Problems Jesus no doubt was for the more pious among us, it was a mercy compared to where that set-up led (and I don’t mean that nod to The Dictator, at the launch of the Grail bloodline Order). Familiarity with the source material may have made it a mere payoff, for some viewers; but Jesse’s disenchantment may have been every bit as palpable as the disgust some others were bound to have felt (move over, Church of Scientology – more traditional Christian outlets may be elbowing to the front of the torch-and-pitchfork line).

I did find it odd that Herr Starr allowed Jesse to wield his power at will, after getting a first-hand taste; but it was sort of somewhere between a time-saver & running gag. It was also a precursory ego-stroke, for the ultimate blasphemy (yes, there was room to plumb much deeper) that Starr had in mind for Jesse.

Unfortunately, that plan ties in directly with Lara’s Tulip garden – the seeds of discord promising more in-house drama, and God Squad squabble. I’ve had enough of that, really – especially now that more of that source material madness is starting to manifest.

‘Dirty Little Secret’ was one of the more promising ‘promise’ episodes; but that just means I’ll be expecting some fairly crazy follow through. I’d be willing to settle for more naughty blasphemy bits; but guns & sword were left on the table, so crazy mayhem’s good – I could go for more crazy mayhem – gimme the mayhem.

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