It’s a cynical, wild series, but she’s the perfect hero for it
At the fourth and final season of AMC’s comic book adaptation Preacher, demanding female lead Tulip O’Hare (Ruth Negga) is subjected to a Rorschach test psych evaluation. She tries her best to maneuver it, and looking at every image describing the murders she sees in each inkblot. After she’s done, her kind doctor nervously explains,”The test results indicate that you are an uninhibited deviant using a character disorder likely to psychopathic outbursts. Along with a gun fetish. And unresolved abandonment problems.”
Tulip, that had been hopeful when speaking about disembowelments and headshots a minute before, sinks in to himself and acknowledges that the diagnosis fits. When the physician tries to comfort her, then she just gives him a sad smile, like she’s trying to cheer him up. “It is okay. Some people can not be assisted.”
The scene feels just like a Monty Python skit using a hub, a lovely encapsulation of why Preacher has been such a fantastic show. It can also explain why the series abandoned by viewers and was mostly ignored by critics. The setup for this scene — Tulip hyperbolic blood-and-brains reactions to a simple association test — is an absurdist sketch comedy gag. But Negga is fully committed it does not feel like a cheap punchline. It’s more like she is coming to terms with the joke that’s her life. Her combination of sincerity and cynicism, of ironically fantastic narrative and nuanced acting, seems almost designed to alienate every audience.
Preacher relies on the famously profane Garth Ennis / Steve Dillon Vertigo comic about small-town Texas preacher Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) who’s inhabited by Genesis, the most powerful thing in the universe. Genesis provides Jesse the ability of control, meaning he can make do anything he says. Make him explain himself and angry about how the world that is messed-up is, Jesse sets off on a quest with his girlfriend Tulip to find God.
The comic book was an exercise in blasphemous nastiness, and over four seasons, the television show has taken that filthy baton and invisibly operate with that. The season ends with virtually every character once the safety systems malfunction at a pig shit direction centre perishing in a fecal explosion. 1 individual who escapes is termed Arseface (Ian Colletti) because his face, seriously disfigured after a botched suicide attempt, resembles a giant anus. Meanwhile, God (Mark Harelik) has come to earth to listen to jazz and participate in unspecified sex acts while wearing a full-body dog fetish lawsuit. From the fourth season, the gross-out comedy doesn’t let up. Jesse’s vampire buddy Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) is captured and tortured by having his foreskin repeatedly eliminated. (Vampires regenerate.) The foreskin is then processed, packaged, and marketed as a luxury anti-aging lotion.
Preacher stages these sorts of nasty setpieces with a joyfully mean-spirited inventiveness. A recent episode opens with a pitch-perfect ad for that cream, complete with gowns and a tagline. Asked what the secret for young skin is, the model whispers,”I will never tell.” Cut to Cassidy circumcises over and over him. (Yes, there is a snapshot of the bloody bits getting bagged up.)
In the comic, Jesse is a relatively typical tough guy with a code; he’s a sympathetic cowboy hero. From the tv show, however, he is a religious megalomaniac who’s convinced of the destiny. He is also a controlling boyfriend. He is not very sympathetic. And that means that identification at the series shifts to Cass and Tulip’s focus, that ends up attempting to come as Jesse, characteristically to the rescue of Cassidy, skips out to pursue his own pursuit.
Gilgun is fantastic as Cassidy. He doesn’t play with the vampire as a rogue, but as someone pretending to be a rogue. His reveals through, with flashes of murderous self-loathing, confusion, and sadness. But Negga steals the sequence. Female characters are unflappable badasses. Alternately, they move the Buffy the Vampire Slayer route, showing their vulnerability if their strength makes them unfeminine or unnatural.
Tulip is different, though. She loves to fight and break things. She’s confident in her ability to beat the tar out of any antagonist. But at precisely the same time, she’s deeply insecure about her judgment and lovability. Self-mistrust and her doubt are tied to racism. Jesse’s family despised Tulip’s, and that rejection rankles. Also, Tulip’s father was murdered by the police. She is the product of a society that has sent her message that she is no good and all her projects and dreams will end in failure.
Tulip has internalized this message, and she could easily succumb to grief. Negga allows the audience see her considering it. When Jesse leaves her, she is not angry at him (as she should be), but for failing him. Despair and her anger have been turned inward; she thinks she has gotten exactly what she deserves. However, her response to despair, inevitably, is to pick up herself and do whatever she thinks is correct anyhow. She may love, and she can still be a hero, although she could be unlovable and unworthy.
Of course, her strategies don’t work as they’re supposed to. Cassidy is a bulk of bitterness, also he kneecaps every attempt if Tulip attempts to rescue him. But that does not mean the aims of Tulip are wrong or misguided. In season , God himself (sporting that dog costume) informs her she is a fuck-up. She responds that he get out of her face or she’ll kick his ass and thinks for a moment about it. God does seem nervous, although it bravado, perhaps. After all, the entire world is just absurd enough that she could do it.
Preacher’s absurdity is deliberate and philosophical. Jesse, Tulip, and Cass struggle and drink their way through a world which is not really malevolent, although only indifferent. In season 4, God arouses the unlikely death of everybody Jesse attempts to help, such as cute dogs and children. It is funny the way Kafka is funny, albeit using much more car chases and explosions. Like Sisyphus, the characters move on since they don’t have any choice, but also, because they have decided that a rock is not going to conquer them, possibly.
In the exact same way, Preacher the series has made it to a fourth and final season, though nobody appears to be seeing it or writing much about it anymore. Though it’s already obvious that the end will probably probably be different from the comic’s conclusion it’s uncertain how the show will wrap. Will Tulip find happiness, hopefully with someone other than this Jesse? Not; this is an world, and it does not hold out much hope or help for anyone. Television shows admit that the things in life with such humor, and couple characters face this kind of cynicism with all the two-fisted grace of Tulip O’Hare.
