Preacher season 1...

.....or the comic book translation continues to disappoint this week.

Well after some time I finally finished watching AMC’s version of Preacher. You know the tale of a holy man who lost his faith and then gets invaded by the offspring of a demon/angel baby; thus giving him the “Word of God.” Throw in his ex-girlfriend, and Irish vampire, a patron Saint of Killers. A clandestine organization set on starting the apocalypse. Then sprinkle in a ton of quirky characters. Have the preacher searching for God to get answers to his questions (which is the main plot of this sorted tale)  and a side story where the preacher becomes a local cop.

No before I started watching the show I pushed through the comic book series again. It was a favorite of mine in the late 90’s-early 2000. It was irreverent, depraved, bigoted, racy, uber violent, blasphemous, at times wildly ridiculous, and bizarre. So yeah, I loved everything about it.

Now after a reread, it is still descent, but it hasn’t aged well. It is a very late 90’s comic. Most of those don’t hold up very well, yet I’ve heard the Authority does…..

However, even though it is not as awesome as I remember it (due my aging and adulthood nonsense) it is still a good series and worth a read if you have then chance.

Now the T.V. show is a completely different animal than the comic. It was said that the source material was going to be deviated from. Well duh. There is a ton of stuff in there that no network, sans HBO, would want. This was already done with The Walking Dead and I was ok with it until season 6. I could accept the changes they would make to the Preacher comic. Right?

Well I was wrong.

The changes to Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy are just terrible. Now I’m not talking look. I could care less that Jesse has a beard. That Tulip isn’t white and blonde. That Cassidy is without his trademark sunglasses.

I’m talking what they did to their relationships and stories. Jesse is a dedicated and caring preacher who wants to help the community? He is not emotionally broken and tired of being a holy man for a town that doesn’t care and nor does he. He is also following in his father’s footsteps? He is an ex-bank robber instead of a petty car thief?  What is going on with that? That is all way too far off the path for me.

Tulip is a bad-ass that can take out a helicopter with a makeshift bean can bazooka? She is not the awkward would be assassin that I was introduced to. She is all types of want to be sassy, sexy and tough; and still fails to manage even one of those well. She sexes up Cassidy to I guess spite Jesse, but in the comics she loathed that guy? Why is she also a bad ass bank robber like Jesse? Wait she was preggers and lost a kid? What is going on with Tulip?

Cassidy is the closest of the three main characters that is pretty close to the comic. He is still Irish and still enjoys both booze and blood. However, when introduced he is fighting a plane full of vampire hunters. Why? No idea but probably to showcase that the show can be violent and fun like the comic. Especially when the takes out the plane full of goons and leaps away into the morning sunrise. Wait…..he is still a vampire and spends about half of the season in the sunlight. There are a lot of sunlight vs. vampire inconsistencies in this show. It seems when it is warranted Cassidy will burst into flame. When it doesn’t advance some bit of story he can just walk around outside with a hat on and be fine. Hrrrmmmm. They didn’t get to his backstory so who knows what they will change that into?

I get not wanting to just regurgitate the comic to the screen. Still changing the core characters this much? I hated it.

Then there is the fact that this season takes place within Annville. They were in this town for like seven- to pages in the first two issues. Now we get a full season in there?

This scene captures the fell of the comics here.

Then add in the sheer amount of quirky characters in this town. There are too many unique characters for the sake of having unique characters. They are strange for no other reason than to just be strange for the sake of wacky strangeness. 

Seriously, Annville gave us an awful and racist sheriff and his ass-faced son in the comics. That was it and it was more than enough. Here we get two school mascots in constant mascot attire, an annoyingly friendly and creepy mayor, a wife who like a beating in the bedroom, but to the point where it looks like abuse and her Confederate reenactment uniform wearing local bully husband, a bondage fetish power plant employee, more drunks and rednecks than is possible (then again Texas- am I right), a mousy polite church lady who flips to killer in a heartbeat, a travel agent with ties to the afterlife, two wildly inept and cowboy hat wearing angels, a mother and her invalid daughter that have no real bearing on the story, the same anus faced kid and his not so awful and non-racist cop father.

Then they throw in Odin Quincannon and his meat packing/power plant. Why? Why add this to the show already. Actually why add this at all. That story arc was so much filler to the comic. Sure it had some crazy stuff, but it wasn’t needed by then. I definitely wasn’t needed to start this series. So we get Odin Quincannon to be the sort of villain in the first season of Preacher? I guess they needed a bad guy so why not use him? He was nowhere near as creepy as the comic and just came off a bit weird. A bit weird that didn’t work very well. He never seemed a real threat, but what do I know? I guess he was bad enough to qualify for season one villain? Whatever.  

The violence was as over the top as AMC would allow. Isn’t it strange that AMC edits the crap out of the movies they show for violent content, but their series they let the violence fly? Sorry random aside. Still at times the violence had a want to be serious or wildly comical, and couldn’t find a comfortable place between. Give me comical or realistic. Just don’t try and do both at the same time. It doesn’t work.

                       

The story development was away too slow or way too schizophrenic.

The random location and character jumps are terrible. Look we are here. Look there is this guy with a fedora. Look we are back here. Now to Vail. There we jump over here to this person or location. Ugh. So annoying!

They want the Saint of Killers, but don’t want the Saint of Killers at the same time? I loved the concept of that character and his back story. They are ok with the absurdity of the whole Genesis entity, but not the Saint of Killers bit? His inclusion felt forced. He could/should have been his own episode. Plus his beard was just a terrible choice.

Nowhere near as frightening as the artwork.

This show could have been a tight six episodes, but it was stretched to a tedious ten. There was so much not happening that I almost missed the big plot points because I was zoning out.

Ugh. I’m just done. I don’t want to complain anymore about this show. AMC has killed my want to watch another episode of an adaptation of a comic book I enjoyed.

Needless to say I will not be returning for a second season of this show. If you are a fan of this show then I would hope the comic would impress you even more. Even after all this time, the comic is still much better than this show.