La Tortuga

I like that while Jesse is the star of the show, that doesn't mean the audience is convinced he's the hero, even if he is convinced that he is. I thought it was interesting how Fiore's logic against Jesse keeping Genesis echoed Tulip's statement from the pilot. Fiore: You're just a human. A sinful one. Tulip (when Jesse insists he wants to be a good guy): There ain't good guys or bad guys. There's just guys.

The Tulip & Cassidy hookup makes me sad, and not just because Tulip didn't even bother to take her jacket off when she stared dead-eyed out the window to remove her mind from whatever Cassidy was doing to her. She obviously loathes him--and I mean that it should be obvious to him, not just to the audience, just by the face she makes when she looks at him and says, "Even better, we're in love." So I'm left wondering why Cassidy is going along with this? It can't be that he's that desperate for sex, not when he just got laid the night before and he's just walked out of a low-rent titty bar. I'm also wondering what exactly Tulip is hoping to accomplish by banging Cassidy? I wouldn't think it stems from a lack of self-respect; she seems determined to do it, like there's a reason she's decided to sleep with this person that has nothing to do with sex or even how she feels about herself. Is it to piss Jesse off, or to get Jesse out of her system by sleeping with someone else? Is she just bored?

I figured that Quincannon would find a way around Jesse's command (which was a fairly ambiguous command, really), but I sure as heck didn't expect him to get around it before the end of the week! I like that they've chosen to portray Jesse as arrogant, naïve, and benevolent all at the same time. That's complicated to pull off, and I think Dominic Cooper is doing well. But at the same time I also think they've taken the naïve part too far. There's a difference between thinking "I can fix everything" and observing whether or not things have actually been fixed. Jesse's so busy congratulating himself on his perceived success that he doesn't even notice that Eugene (and by extension, his dad) is in no way reassured by what happened, nor does Jesse understand that forcing Mrs. Loach to publicly forgive and embrace Eugene doesn't actually change how the rest of the community feels. And that's really what's at the root of Jesse's problem: he can give commands all day long trying to make everyone behave themselves, but he can't just order them into feeling any different or wanting something else. (Personally, I think this is a problem inherent to religion itself, but that might just be me.) Tulip's frustration with Jesse's occupation has as much to do with his refusal to understand this element of human nature as his refusal to give in to her demands.

I'm wondering something: in the pilot, Tulip was trying to get Jesse to pull a job with her that required the use of the map--the job to end all jobs. But in episode 3, all she does is turn the map over to Danni the middle-woman, who gives it to someone else. Presumably Tulip went after the map because she was commissioned to do it; she doesn't seem to know what it's for. So... what was the actual job for which she needed Jesse in the first place? Was she lying about that part just so she'd have some excuse to get Jesse to leave town with her? Or is there an actual job that she is (or was) planning to do and for which she needs a partner?

The show creators, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, are Jewish. If you listen to the commentary during the chainsaw battle scene, Seth mentions that they weren't allowed to show someone beaten to death with a bible on TV, so they had to use hymnals, even though they didn't actually know what hymnals are. I'm guessing they don't know all the nuances and variations from one denomination to the next, so they just cobbled together a bunch of bits and pieces of Christianity for the church scenes without understanding that these things don't all belong together.

I was also interested in the question of when the show takes place. The dilapidated storefronts and old cars coexisting with modern personal technology, combined with the mayor's concerns about declining tax revenues, suggests the timeline is recent but the town is stagnant. Nobody can afford to upgrade their businesses, and even if they could, the town is too far from the interstate to become a bustling center of commerce, so why bother? However, the Houston skyline from the previous episode was missing a few of the newer buildings, suggesting that this show isn't totally current but could easily take place up to five or six years in the past.

I thought Jesse's conversation with Odin in his office was the most interesting part of the show. I'm a formerly religious person who is now an atheist, and in spite of knowing the show takes place in a world where Heaven is a real place, I still thought Odin's argument was spot on. Jesse doesn't actually know where his power comes from or whether it's at all related to the rest of his dogmatic assumptions about judgment and hell. He's just afraid that if this one heavenly power is real, then so is everything else, and he's in for some serious hellfire if he doesn't take the opportunity to make up for his awful sins somehow. He's not trying to save the town solely because he loves the people in it; those people are the means for him to secure his own forgiveness. I was impressed that Odin was able to see through Jesse's rhetoric and call him on his bullshit a little bit. I have to say, I'm looking forward to watching Jesse wrestle with the ethical dilemma of forcing Quincannon onto a religious path that has nothing to do with Quincannon's faith or lack thereof. Odin was right: forcing it isn't Christian in the sense that it's not a Christian principle. Although, I guess it is a Christian thing to do in the sense that historically, Christians forced their religion on non-Christian people as justification for the seizure of their resources and labor.

I feel like Tulip is conveying not just anger or stubbornness, but some actual hurt. When she and Jesse argue for the umpteenth time and he leaves her at the gas station, the way she says she's not leaving without him makes me think there's a deeper pain there that she can't alleviate on her own. Between that, the way she talks about Jesse in the traffic stop scene, and her flashback scenes (she looks so terrified and blindsided when the speeding car takes off without her), I'm incredibly curious as to what is motivating her to kill Carlos and what role Jesse has to play beyond the muscle or the wheelman. The problem, I think, is that the writers are taking their sweet time to get us there because they want to explore Jesse's journey as he tries to save the town, in addition to all the other ongoing storylines they're trying to set up at the same time. That doesn't leave Tulip with a whole lot to do while she's waiting for Jesse to change his mind, not unless she's going to strike out on her own (which she's obviously not, otherwise she'd have taken a hint by now). It actually might have been better for the story to introduce her later in the season, or make her take longer to find Jesse, if they couldn't figure out what to do with her now, but I guess you can't wait that long to introduce your lead actress on a television show.

I love Tulip, but I think I'd like it better if I got to see the scrappy, ass-kicking, bazooka-improvising, teaching-kids-inappropriately-violent-skills Tulip from the pilot again. That's not to say she has to be violent 100% of the time (I really liked her scene when she was pulled over by the state trooper), but I feel like I need to see her DOING things, not just talking about doing things. Incidentally, the leisurely-paced-story issue is not unique to this show. It is a frequent problem on Game of Thrones: they have to set up for future action, so they spend three episodes following seven different lines of conversation before we get to the battles and murders. If I can deal with it for GoT and The Americans, I can do the same for Preacher. Still enjoyed this episode. I didn't read the comics, so based on Tulip's reference to Carlos as a "child killer," I'm speculating whether Jesse and Tulip had a child together that was killed by Carlos, which would explain why Jesse abandons his moral high ground and jumps into the car with Tulip when she presents him with the address.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I love this show, and I enjoyed this episode. Lots of glimpses into the dark places our characters visit within themselves, and the varying degrees to which they actually want to revisit their own dark sides. I like it!

I'm from Texas, so I understand the sheriff just fine, but even with all the British shows I watch, I still can only understand half of what Cassidy says and almost none of what the taller Government Man says. Are their accents really that thick, or is there a problem with the audio track?

This season Stan has had an awkward dinner with a squirming Pastor Groovyhair and Alice, during which he found out that Tim has been arrested for protesting nuclear weapons, and he's (probably) aware that the pastor went missing in a Soviet controlled country. Now that William has spilled the beans that there's are married Directorate-S agents with kids, and that they live close enough for William to have interacted with them, I predict that Stan will start to suspect the Groovyhairs first. He will be wrong, of course, but this could ultimately lead him in the correct direction: across the street.

You're not wrong about the process, but it's one they use intentionally. I remember reading an interview with one of the writers. The producers actually instructed them to write themselves into a corner and then see how they can get out of that corner. It's an exercise in storytelling ingenuity, I guess.

I thought and planned carefully, too. And then I actually had to sit down and have the awkward conversations with my kids, and all my plans went out the window when confronted by the reality of their curiosity, stubbornness, and level of understanding. And that was just talking to them about normal stuff they had no control over, like puberty. Conversations about danger or self defense or keeping secrets get weird and scary. I think Elizabeth DID plan out how to talk to Paige for these last few months, but she is clearly finding her plans thwarted when Paige calls her out on giving these pat, uninformative responses about "making the world safer" instead of genuinely answering the question. Paige is pushing for real answers, which is what kids do, and Elizabeth is having to rethink her entire parenting strategy. I don't think Elizabeth should have told Paige about the weapon, but I get how E is up against a wall here trying to protect her work and identity while maintaining this new and very different dynamic with her daughter.

I was rolling my eyes at Paige for not being more grateful--or even conscious--that her mom had just saved her from being raped. But then I remembered that when the two muggers approached them asking for cigarettes, Paige was naïve enough to tell them where to find the nearest grocery store. One of them even chuckled at her for not realizing what was going on. This kid has no practical idea what the world is like outside her suburb, because that's the life her parents carved out for her. She also has no idea that Elizabeth has been raped before and has nightmares of the same happening to Paige. So, eyerolls notwithstanding, I can forgive Paige for being clueless about that part. As the mother of a teenager myself, I can even forgive Elizabeth for having no idea how to handle Paige, as she never thought there'd be a need for these kinds of conversations with her children. Even perfectly normal parents who plan ahead often find themselves inadequately prepared for the reality of raising teens.