Preacher 2×06 – Sokosha

This week’s episode of Preacher has somewhat of an odd cold-open, even for its standards. A businessman is in the middle of negotiating a deal with a couple who is currently having trouble paying their mortgage. By the husband donating a substance in himself, they will be given a $150,000 check to assist them. The couple questions what the side effects to the procedure are, but the businessman assures them there isn’t any, though there are occasional mentions of mild headaches. He sticks a needle into the husband’s leg and navigates it via a computer to find what he’s looking for and then begins to drain.

After gathering 15%, which was the deal between him and the couple, he stops and take a vial of what looks like glowing crystals. With the husband sleeping from the procedure, the businessman hands the wife the check and departs. His next stop is at another home, where he turns one of the vials into a pill to give to a elderly woman who seems to be suffering from alzheimers. After digesting the pill, she’s back to normal and her husband pays a large amount for the treatment. The businessman gets back into the van that drives him from appointment to appointment and we see that the van is filled with the mysterious vials.

Back with the crew, Cassidy and Denis continue to have tension between them that goes unexplained due to the language barrier, while Tulip makes breakfast and Jesse takes a shower. Upon all reconvening for breakfast, Cassidy tries to bring up what happened the night before with Jesse and the words that were said. He expects an apology from Jesse just as he gave, but Jesse just states he’s forgiven without blaming himself too. The trio discuss what they should be doing next and Cassidy mentions Lara, who Jesse had ran into a few nights ago. Tulip starts to get jealous and prods on about this Lara, intercut with Cassidy rambling about using tactics from detective television shows in order to find clues.

In the meantime, the Saint of Killers has been led to Denis’ with the help of Allie, Viktor’s daughter, and she points him to the right floor of the apartment, but not exactly the right door itself. This causes the Saint to go door to door killing each occupant until he finds who he’s looking for: Jesse. While Cassidy continues to ramble about detective shows, Jesse notices something wrong about the fridge and goes to investigate. Here he sees a bullet had penetrated through the wall into a cup of cream cheese and sees that the bullet is from the Saint of Killers’ gun. He alerts the others just as the Saint reaches their apartment and upon opening the door, he finds them no longer in the kitchen, but a pancake with Jesse’s name on it.

After narrowly escaping from the Saint, Jesse calls the Mumbai Sky Tower and learns that Fiore was killed by the Saint of Killers instead of calling the deal off like he asked. They decided that the Saint needs to have some sort of weakness, so they head to the local library in order to find one. There turns out to be a surprisingly amount of material written about the Saint of Killers and it’s here that everyone learns about his past, which was largely covered for us last season. He was once a Confederate soldier that fell in love with a woman and had a child with her, but they were both lost to him by sickness. His soul then apparently shattered into four pieces and went to the four corners of the world, so he was now a living man with no soul. This was how he became the bloodthirsty man known as the Saint of Killers. After killing all the town of Ratwater, he eventually was killed by a tornado and sent to Heaven. God didn’t want him and instead sent him to Hell, where he was forced to live the death of his wife and child over and over. That is, until Fiore made the deal with him that was established in Season 1: find Jesse and kill Genesis to see his wife and child again.

While summing up what they found in their respective research, Cassidy realizes that he forgot all about Denis and attempts to call him to make sure he doesn’t return to the apartment. Thanks to the language barrier once again, Denis doesn’t understand or care and does exactly what Cassidy tells him not to. The Saint is waiting and is about to kill Denis, but Jesse takes Cassidy’s phone and uses Genesis over it, alerting the Saint. He tells him not to hurt Denis and that he’s coming. When Jesse arrives, he sees the Saint with Denis and he wastes no time raising his gun to Jesse. It’s a good thing that Jesse didn’t come without a plan though, helps that it’s not even a lie either.

He informs the Saint of Killers that the deal he had with Fiore wouldn’t even work anyway even if he did kill Jesse as God is missing and won’t be able to send him to Heaven to see his family. The Saint asks for proof of this, so Jesse shows him the audition tape from a couple episodes ago, though the Saint doesn’t really understand the concepts of televisions or actors. Despite this, he listens to Jesse’s offer to get him into Heaven if he lets Jesse live. The Saint agrees to this, but makes note that he needs a soul in order to get to Heaven and Jesse will have to do that in an hour, while Cassidy, Tulip, and Denis stay with him in the meantime.

Jesse heads to a voodoo shop and demands the owner cut the bullshit as he knows they sell souls. Stating that his name is Jesse L’Angelle helps convince the man to help, but it turns out he hasn’t sold souls for 10 years. The Japanese had come and pushed almost all the voodoo shops out of soul selling as they have advanced tech to do it more effectively, confirming that the cold-open was the extraction of part of the husband’s soul. Just as Jesse and the voodoo shop owner are discussing this, the Soul Happy Go Go van arrives. Jesse tries to get into the van with no avail and Tulip just so happens to call for a progress report at the same time, so Jesse asks for some assistance on how to get into an armored truck. She gives him a laundry list of items required, none of which Jesse has, but he see a hardware store nearby and scraps together a homemade C4 explosive. Sadly, it does almost no damage to the van and the police arrive, so Jesse tells Tulip he’ll call back.

Denis is becoming increasingly sick due to the Saint destroying his medicine when he first encountered him, so Tulip and Cassidy start to get desperate. This is increased even more when Cassidy reveals that Denis is actually his son, so Tulip heads over to the Saint to try and convince him to at least let Denis go so he can get medicine. The Saint instead grabs Tulip by the throat and lifts her up, explaining that if Jesse doesn’t get back in time, medicine won’t matter anyway. Meanwhile, Jesse uses the police in order to finally get into the armored van. It’s no use though as none of the souls match or are even close to what is compatible with the Saint of Killers. Tulip calls once again and informs Jesse that there isn’t much time left, so he decided to test his own soul…and of course it’s a match. He asks the businessman what the least amount of his soul he can give is and is informed it’s 1% and that “he won’t even miss it.”

Jesse arrives just in the nick of time to stop the Saint from killing Tulip, assisted by Cassidy who held back the Saint’s saber and lost all his fingers in the process. Tulip takes Cassidy and Denis to the hospital, while Jesse prepares to give The Saint of Killers the pill that contains 1% of Jesse’s soul. Once the Saint takes the pill, however, he falls right into Jesse’s trap as Jesse knew the only reason he wasn’t able to use Genesis on the Saint was due to him not having a soul. Now that he did, Jesse can make him do whatever he wants. The Saint doesn’t deserve to be in Heaven, so Jesse at first decides to send him to Hell right away using Genesis. The noise that plays whenever Jesse thinks of the L’Angelle’s is heard again and we see Jesse changed his mind to driving the Soul Happy Go Go armored truck into the Angelville swamp, while the Saint of Killers is trapped in the back. With the Saint out of the way, Jesse returns home to Denis’ and hides the Saint’s weapons in the floor of the bathroom, hopefully never having to worry about him again.

“Sokosha” was probably my favorite episode of the season so far. The concept of being able to give up parts of your soul was interesting to me and I wonder if there actually is side effects that the businessman wasn’t letting on, even with Jesse only giving 1% of his soul up. The cat and mouse game of Jesse and the Saint of Killers finally coming to an end in a way I didn’t anticipate was a welcome surprise too, though I have a sinking feeling (no pun attended) that the Saint won’t be stuck in the depths of the swamp for long. Though I guess this does make room for Herr Starr to become the primary antagonist for the remainder of the season.

Sokosha – 5 out of 5

Pros:

• Surprising way to deal with the Saint of Killers
• The Soul Happy Go Go/Soul Harvesting concept was cool to think about
• Finally revealing who Denis was to Cassidy and it’s his son!

Con:

• Felt a bit too early for the Saint of Killers to go out, which is why I doubt he’ll be gone for long.