I tried to start Preacher twice, but something would come up and I would end up not having AMC in the cycle. I had AMC for a minute last year to watch Interview with the Vampire, but I canceled it as soon as that season was done. I don’t even bother with The Walking Dead spinoffs, I just buy those for $20 off of Apple because I know I’ll love them and I need to know what happened to everybody.
I got Amazon Prime for a month so I could watch season 2 of Outer Range, but I binged that in a single night and I have a few days left to watch anything else on their platform - I couldn’t find anything. That’s when I saw the AMC promo deal attached to the first episode of Preacher for free. They pulled me in with the deal and I really enjoying season 1. Before we get into this new show, we have to have a talk about our Outer Range peeps without giving too much away.
Everything I understand about time travel I learned from Back to the Future and Time Cop. We’re not taking a deep dive into the multiverse here. What I was led to believe is that you can’t change timelines and you can’t run into another version of yourself in the same timeline or bad things happen. Perry broke all of these rules in season 2 and then they said, “see you in season 3”. I don’t know how I feel about this, but I’m along for the journey. Autumn and Perry seem to be operating on different time travel rules and hopefully it will all make sense.
I was stumped by the ending of season 2 and so I went to the season 1 finale of Sugar to make sense of it all. I like the genre bends in this show. There had to be a reason he was so into classic Hollywood films and drank bourbon like it was his last day on earth. Twenty minutes into the first episode I immortalized that scene on my TikTok because it spoke to me. I thought I was watching a show about a PI who had seen it all and just needed a minute to let everything calm down with a beverage. His slow intake spoke volumes to the calm he was seeking and then with the big reveal in episode 7, that drink made so much more sense. LA Confidential meets the cosmos. I will watch a second season.
Back to Preacher. When this show came out I was watching House of Cards and had washed my hands of the supernatural and urban fantasy. I teeter totter between wanting to watch shows that resemble the national landscape complete with its pros and cons, and then sometimes I want to believe in unicorns and dragons.
Preacher isn’t the camp show that I expected it to be. I thought it would be True Blood with gospel, but I think great urban fantasy is when you can remove all of the supernatural and the characters would still do the same things they do. I’m bingeing this entire show with my week-long promo.
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I’ve finished all four seasons. This show was a lot of fun. I’m an even bigger fan of Sam Catlin now. Coincidentally, Sugar is his show as well. He got his start on Breaking Bad, another show I loved. I’m watching a lot of work from writers that cut their teeth on either Breaking Bad or Mad Men. AMC has lucked out with a lot of quality television and I like that they’re continuing to allow these writers to explore worlds in their way. Now I’ve got to write a short story with a bourbon as the name prop.