S01.E05: South Will Rise Again

[formerlyfreedom]

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After his stunt with Quincannon, Jesse is Annville's newest rock star; and Tulip and Cassidy connect. Meanwhile, the Cowboy makes a tragic decision.

 

[Lantern7]

I confess (heh) that I haven't been paying my utmost attention to this show. Why did Quincannon shoot those people? What sort of loophole did his subconscious figure out to circumvent Jesse's whammy?

Damn, the show is so sllllllooooooooooww. Watching Jesse the rock star isn't that interesting to me, as he solves all of Annville's problems. And most of the people suck ass for their treatment of Eugene. Anybody else think Jesse was mean to whistle a tune while driving with Eugene? I mean, the boy's whistling days are long, long past.

Cassidy/Tulip? Ew. Maybe this is from watching all of True Blood, but that didn't seem healthy for either of them.

[La Tortuga]

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.

[Sandman87]

Quincannon breaks out the Quinn' Cannon and kills the heck out of the environmentally-friendly types who have been bugging him, but only after apologizing profusely to the mayor for peeing in his briefcase. I'll be interested to see how that fits in with serving God. Maybe it's in a "you got served" kind of way.

Tulip is the one person that Jesse should use the voice on ("go away!"), but he never does.

It's fun trying to think of the ways that people will follow Jesse's commands that will turn out badly. "Use your best judgement" is a foolish thing to command if the commandee has poor judgement to start with. Likewise, "be patient" can turn out horribly wrong in situations where violent opposition is needed ASAP.

I thought the "Government Men" were just playing along with Cassidy's obvious lies for their own reasons, but it turns out that they really are just astoundingly credulous.

Still waiting to see what all the 1800s flashbackery has to do with Jesse's story in the modern era.

[thuganomics85]

I'm sure the 1800s stuff will end up being a factor in the main plot eventually, but right now, it's still kind of a strange and at times jarring diversion from the rest of the show.

So, it looks like Jesse is actually getting on a bit of a power-trip with his new powers, and truly believe's he is God's voice now.  Even doing things like making Tracy's mother forgive Eugene is kind of shady.  It's nice for Eugene, but it still feels like Jesse's just overriding the mother's true feelings and simply using his power to take the easy way out.  And he is still so loose with the way he phrases things, that I can seem almost everything backfiring on him.  Like with Quincannon.  Really curious to see how he found a loophole around the "serve God" order, that allows him to kill those environmental folks.

Despite all that, it's still kind of funny watching Tulip trying to "fight for his soul", because her plans for him really aren't much better.  It sounds like he was a nasty guy back in the day, and she wants him to become that guy again.

Cassidy and Tulip hook-up.  I'm not sure which one is getting the loosing end of that deal.

Emily doesn't believe in closing the door when she uses the bathroom?

Glad Jesse has finally met the "Government Men."  Well, met them without being knocked out, at least!

[Primetimer]

And other smoldering questions from 'South Will Rise Again.'

View the full article

[ItCouldBeWorse]

7 hours ago, thuganomics85 said:

Emily doesn't believe in closing the door when she uses the bathroom?

Well, she was alone, and it's one of the sliding door types that takes longer to close than just pushing a regular door does.  Did anyone else worry that Tulip was going to steal the bag with the church's money in it that Emily had put down before going to the bathroom?

Edited June 27, 2016 by ItCouldBeWorse

[queenanne]

23 hours ago, Lantern7 said:

I confess (heh) that I haven't been paying my utmost attention to this show. Why did Quincannon shoot those people? What sort of loophole did his subconscious figure out to circumvent Jesse's whammy?

Damn, the show is so sllllllooooooooooww. Watching Jesse the rock star isn't that interesting to me, as he solves all of Annville's problems. And most of the people suck ass for their treatment of Eugene.

I confess for my own part that I've had this thought for quite some time; a burning desire for someone to say "Jesse, it's not your religious advice that sucks - any of it so far.  That's been textbook-wisdom to me.  Seems to me like it's primarily the members of your congregation who suck."

[Snookums]

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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

Or even how she feels! As we saw with Broken Arm Guy, the people Jesse's putting the (Un)Holy Whammy on are totally aware that they are being made to do whatever he says (however they interpret the literal version of whatever he says.) Granted, being forced against your will to nearly blow your head off is different from actively seeking counsel and being happy to hear whatever cliche' Jesse comes up with in his Magic Voice, and he really did think he had come up with a "Tah-dah!" solution to everyone's suffering, but. I cannot fathom being forced to forgive somebody who, it seems clear, managed to put my daughter into an irreversible vegetative state, especially out of nowhere. She has to know she's being made to do this, which is the precise, exact OPPOSITE of the Christian tenet of true forgiveness. 

Jesse is paving hell with energy; that is, he is just spreading his good intentions far and wide, but as the episode pointed out, he doesn't suddenly have great depths of insight or feeling or some kind of divine measure of people's problems. He's just spouting the stuff we all say when our friend or family member is complaining about something: "Be patient," "Use your best judgement," whatever, because we really don't know what else to say. And Jesse doesn't either. He thinks the voice is imparting all this wisdom to him but it's the exact opposite--he's renounced his critical abilities (which made him so impatient and exhausted and doubtful) in favor of  "my new God Power is granting me the ability to fix everything!"

As for the rest of the show---uuuuuuughhhhh. The whole 1880s thing is basically one giant Calvin Peeing On The Cowboy Sticker, apparently they can't come up with anything to do with Emily other than gratuitously humiliate her, Tulip is banging Cassidy in the world's most joyless car fuck? Why should I invest myself in watching people who are just wandering around like wind up toys? 

[themadman]

Sorry, I'm out. I gave this show 5 episodes and I have not read the original comics. It's just too damn slow for me. And I can't understand things like the first ten minutes of this episode that seems to have no connection to current happenings. I assume it's part of a later arc, but it doesn't fit the weekly episode format. Perhaps this should have been on Netflix. 

[pezgirl7]

I could have done without seeing that woman being raped while her son watched. I felt like I was watching Game of Thrones. I guess something that horrible was needed in order to explain why the guy turned around? Although why he didn't do something the day before, when he actually saw it, I don't know.

I really don't like Tulip. She seemed to take offense when Cassidy thought she worked at the whorehouse, but has no problem sleeping with him to get what she wants. I wonder how stringing Cassidy along will help her get back with Jesse? Hopefully Cassidy sees through her and isn't dumb enough to think that she actually likes him.

I still think the show is better than most on TV right now, so I'll be sticking around to see how everything turns out. I'm mostly amused by Cassidy, the angels, and Jesse. And the music is good!

[Sandman87]

I'm going to assume that Cassidy is experienced enough (how old is he anyway?) to know that Tulip is trying to manipulate him. If he feels like playing along, he will; if not, he'll tell her to go fly a kite.

[Bruinsfan]

An interesting thing to me is that Cassidy doesn't seem to have any supernatural powers beyond immortality and fast-healing. Which makes me wonder how the hell he managed to drag a cow into the crater he was in after the no-parachute skydiving in the pilot. Someone who's strong enough to do that should have been able to shrug off Tulip's attack as if it were a tantrum being thrown by a toddler. (Can't really judge regarding his fight with the "government men," they might have supernatural physical abilities themselves.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention the thing that most horrified me. Sheriff Root telling his kid that he should have finished the job was pretty much unforgivable.

Edited June 30, 2016 by Bruinsfan

[WayneK]

Historical nitpicks.

The guy in the cowboy town claimed he was in the 8th Ohio at Pickett's charge and recognized the protaganist as belonging to the 4th Virginia.  The 8th Ohio was positioned on the right of the union line and had no close-in fighting with the Confederates.  Even if they had, and even if he wasn't blinded by the smoke, the idea that a soldier would focus on the face of some random enemy soldier and remember it 15 years later is laughable.

The 4th Virginia was in the Stonewall Brigade and was not part of Pickett's Charge.  

I really don't expect shows to be historically accurate but there's no reason to just ignore simple things that could be looked up in two minutes.

Wayne

Edited July 1, 2016 by WayneK
edited to remove Hollywood refs

[La Tortuga]

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?

[Captanne]

Or, not to patronize the genre, this is a television version of a comic book so it could just be that Cassidy is horny and this is written by misogynists.  Boys buy comic books and boys want sex in which women behave the way they fantasize about it.  So, Tulip and Cassidy are very cartoon-ized for the audience.  We've already been treated to an abuser who beats his wife and the reason is "I'm not a bad guy, I do it 'cause she likes it".

The sadness of the Cassidy/Tulip sex scene shouldn't come as a surprise, imo. 

[Bruinsfan]

I think that look on Tulip's face and her posture contradict the sex being gratuitous fanservice—clearly the actress was instructed to play it as if she couldn't have been less enthusiastic about it. Kind of the opposite of over-the-top moaning and writhing you see in porn, they stopped just short of having her check her watch.

[Sandman87]

20 hours ago, La Tortuga said:

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.

Cassidy is a sex and drugs and rock and roll kind of guy. Free drugs and sex without any emotional attachment is probably his idea of the perfect date. Kind of like free pizza; even when it's bad, it's better than no pizza.

[Captanne]

I wasn't referring to the sex as fan service, although I see that as an easy inference from my post.  I meant, this is the genre.  If you pick up a horror novel and it has murdering murderers who murder, that's the genre, not fan service.  Or, maybe it's the very definition of "fan service".  (Although, I consider that more -- the fans want a hookup in drama because they have an agenda.  It could happen or not in the course of the novel's world, but fans with agendas want it so it gets written into the script.  A "genre" event would be if it was a romance novel and that, well, that would be the script.)

[SnarkyTart]

At this point in the series, the viewers shouldn't have so many different, purely speculative, opinions about character motivation, imo.

Tulip may loathe Cassidy, or she may be completely indifferent to him.  Tulip may be banging Cassidy as revenge against Jesse, to make Jesse jealous, to get Jesse out of her system and move on, or just because she's bored.  Cassidy may actually like Tulip, believe she likes him, or he may hate her, be completely indifferent towards her, etc. etc.  His motivation for banging Tulip may be boredom, sex addiction, drug addiction, or something completely different.  And that long, slow look Tulip gave Emily when she walked in on her peeing: contempt? jealousy?  Does Tulip think Jesse is involved with Emily?  Is that why Tulip is banging Cassidy now?  Who knows?  Who cares?

We've completed half of the premier season.  These are the three main characters, and we still don't really have a clue or general agreement on who these characters are.  I see this as a problem, one of many with this series.  I want to like this show, I do.  I keep watching it, hoping for better...for more.  But they're making it so damn hard!

[AnnaMayWong]

Since ya'll have more than VERY well described, analyzed, and posited ev'rything(❗), my only commentary is that I believe Donnie's wife is going to become problematic for ole Preacher.

[SoSueMe]

On 6/30/2016 at 11:33 AM, Bruinsfan said:

An interesting thing to me is that Cassidy doesn't seem to have any supernatural powers beyond immortality and fast-healing. Which makes me wonder how the hell he managed to drag a cow into the crater he was in after the no-parachute skydiving in the pilot. Someone who's strong enough to do that should have been able to shrug off Tulip's attack as if it were a tantrum being thrown by a toddler. (Can't really judge regarding his fight with the "government men," they might have supernatural physical abilities themselves.)

EDIT: Forgot to mention the thing that most horrified me. Sheriff Root telling his kid that he should have finished the job was pretty much unforgivable.

Yeah, Cassidy is somewhat of a slacker as vampires go, lol. Pretty adorable. 

Poor Eugene, breaks my heart. The actor really does the job with his eyes.

[Desertrat89]

Apologies if someone else already pointed this out, but the boy wasn't being forced to watch his 'prostitute mom' have sex... that was the family with the boy that the Cowboy saw earlier when he was told he would have to wait till the next morning for his medicine.

The men in the back room of the bar had robbed the family, killed the father (who was there dead on the floor) and were raping the mother while forcing the boy to watch. Storywise, this was setting the Cowboy up to have to make the decision he does to return when he is riding out of town and sees the new family coming in to Ratwater. He took no action for the first family's destruction, and plans to take no action to save the second family... but changes his mind. That's why he goes back, and he punches the preacher because he is trying to get to the backroom to save the new family he knows is there. That's when he sees the family turning in scalps, not getting robbed and murdered, and then gets knocked out himself.

The horse was not just killed as lazy writing to make the preacher "bad"... it was killed so that the Cowboy would have to walk all the way home and thus, be too late to save his family.

It was all set up to make the Cowboy return to what we assume is his once-set-aside past of being a total badass. I expect he will be returning to Ratwater soon now... with all his rage and all those weapons.

[SoSueMe]

19 minutes ago, Desertrat89 said:

Apologies if someone else already pointed this out, but the boy wasn't being forced to watch his 'prostitute mom' have sex... that was the family with the boy that the Cowboy saw earlier when he was told he would have to wait till the next morning for his medicine.

The men in the back room of the bar had robbed the family, killed the father (who was there dead on the floor) and were raping the mother while forcing the boy to watch. Storywise, this was setting the Cowboy up to have to make the decision he does to return when he is riding out of town and sees the new family coming in to Ratwater. He took no action for the first family's destruction, and plans to take no action to save the second family... but changes his mind. That's why he goes back, and he punches the preacher because he is trying to get to the backroom to save the new family he knows is there. That's when he sees the family turning in scalps, not getting robbed and murdered, and then gets knocked out himself.

The horse was not just killed as lazy writing to make the preacher "bad"... it was killed so that the Cowboy would have to walk all the way home and thus, be too late to save his family.

It was all set up to make the Cowboy return to what we assume is his once-set-aside past of being a total badass. I expect he will be returning to Ratwater soon now... with all his rage and all those weapons.

Thank you, I was really confused on that part. So are we to think that the Preacher's persona is mirroring the 1881 cowboy?

[pezgirl7]

19 minutes ago, Desertrat89 said:

Apologies if someone else already pointed this out, but the boy wasn't being forced to watch his 'prostitute mom' have sex... that was the family with the boy that the Cowboy saw earlier when he was told he would have to wait till the next morning for his medicine.

The men in the back room of the bar had robbed the family, killed the father (who was there dead on the floor) and were raping the mother while forcing the boy to watch. Storywise, this was setting the Cowboy up to have to make the decision he does to return when he is riding out of town and sees the new family coming in to Ratwater. He took no action for the first family's destruction, and plans to take no action to save the second family... but changes his mind. That's why he goes back, and he punches the preacher because he is trying to get to the backroom to save the new family he knows is there. That's when he sees the family turning in scalps, not getting robbed and murdered, and then gets knocked out himself.

The horse was not just killed as lazy writing to make the preacher "bad"... it was killed so that the Cowboy would have to walk all the way home and thus, be too late to save his family.

It was all set up to make the Cowboy return to what we assume is his once-set-aside past of being a total badass. I expect he will be returning to Ratwater soon now... with all his rage and all those weapons.

I think you're referencing mistakes in the Previously TV recap, but, thank you, because I totally didn't get that it was a different family he went back for. I did think it was odd that he somehow arrived to town after the second family, even though I thought he turned around right after he passed them and the kid said hello to him. I could be remembering wrong though.

[Ubiquitous]

On ‎6‎/‎26‎/‎2016 at 9:05 PM, Lantern7 said:

I confess (heh) that I haven't been paying my utmost attention to this show. Why did Quincannon shoot those people? What sort of loophole did his subconscious figure out to circumvent Jesse's whammy?

I thought it was because Jesse's command had worn off and he came back to his senses.

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 3:50 AM, Sandman87 said:

I thought the "Government Men" were just playing along with Cassidy's obvious lies for their own reasons, but it turns out that they really are just astoundingly credulous.

Well, the one wanted that "big as Texas burger" he saw on TV. It was amusing, though, to see them realize that Cassidy had been stringing them along.

On ‎6‎/‎27‎/‎2016 at 5:33 AM, thuganomics85 said:

I'm sure the 1800s stuff will end up being a factor in the main plot eventually, but right now, it's still kind of a strange and at times jarring diversion from the rest of the show.

I'm not sure where they're going with that. As I understood it, he went to Ratwater and watched what they did to that family in the back, left with the medicine for his wife, remembered seeing that family in passing earlier, mostly b/c the kid said "hello", went back to help them, only to get his horse killed so he got home too late to help his sick wife.

[ItCouldBeWorse]

On 8/16/2016 at 4:54 AM, Ubiquitous said:

I'm not sure where they're going with that. As I understood it, he went to Ratwater and watched what they did to that family in the back, left with the medicine for his wife, remembered seeing that family in passing earlier, mostly b/c the kid said "hello", went back to help them, only to get his horse killed so he got home too late to help his sick wife.

Nope; two different families.  On his first trip to town, the Cowboy stopped on the way and ate dinner with the "talkative" boy and his family; that is not the family that was attacked in Ratwater.  On his way back to his own family with the medicine, he passed the "talkative" boy and his family on their way to Ratwater, and made the belated decision to turn back to Ratwater and rescue them from the same fate as the earlier family that had been attacked.  They did not need rescuing (they were happily selling scalps) and the Cowboy wound up without his horse, and, ultimately, without his family.

Since the Cowboy's wife, (who had not appeared to be sick when he left 2+ days ago) was now quite dead along with their daughter, who knows if going straight back home with the medicine would have made a difference, but, to the Cowboy, it must have seemed that he sacrificed his family for corrupt people who did not deserve his help, in a corrupt town that did not deserve to exist.

Edited August 18, 2016 by ItCouldBeWorse

[Ubiquitous]

Oh, I did not realize he had made multiple trips to Ratwater and the people he passed heading to Ratwater were the people he camped with in the previous ep. That makes a lot more sense.