Swamp attack episode 9 tv#

Lara hires three male prostitutes, assuming that Starr’s “rape fantasy” is being raped.

Swamp attack episode 9 tv#

(“Puzzle Piece” probably has the dubious honor of being the episode with more instances of the phrase “no means yes” than any TV show in history.) Lara, always eager to make an impression on her ruthless boss, volunteers herself sexually - he declines - before suggesting that she track down a whole group of prostitutes instead. Early in the episode, Herr Starr tasks Lara Featherstone with tracking down a prostitute for a rape fantasy. That’s the other thing we need to talk about. In this particular case, Herr Starr winds up having an epiphany about Jesse while he’s getting raped by a trio of male prostitutes. The show wouldn’t work very well if Jesse, Tulip, and Cassidy died.

to blow up the apartment building and kill them all in one shot. On the advice of Lara Featherstone, Herr Starr deploys a drone missile called B.R.A.D. Jesse uses Genesis to amass a small army of cops to guard the building. Our heroes hole up in the apartment, waiting for the next strike. Tulip is asleep when a small platoon of Grail soldiers bust into the building, but Jesse (using Genesis), Cassidy, and Denis - now a vampire, as implied by last week’s ending - make short work of their attackers.Īnd so begins a lengthy standoff between Jesse and the Grail. In any case, Starr’s glib “kill them all” order turns out to underestimate Jesse and his friends. What do we learn here that wasn’t already better demonstrated by the long, throat-clearing preambles that already put Herr Starr in Jesse’s path? Did we really need a random, degraded female character - whom we’ve never met before, and will presumably never meet again - to wax rhapsodic about the missing “puzzle piece” she found to give her life meaning, which somehow makes Starr rethink his decision on Jesse? Or fascinatingly Machiavellian, like when he tossed his new Grail boss off a balcony and took his job instead.īut Starr’s date with the daughter of Louisiana’s governor - which culminates in him making her stand silent and topless with a stick of butter tucked under her chin - is a long, weird, sadistic exchange with no purpose. Or chilling, like when he poisoned an entire village to cover up a floating pig. His weird, unpredictable sadism can be funny, like when he started masturbating to throw off a wrestling opponent. Preacher needs formidable, well-drawn enemies - especially with the Saint of Killers trapped at the bottom of a swamp until the plot requires him again - and Starr definitely fits the bill. Lara Featherstone believes Jesse is a big deal, but Herr Starr isn’t convinced.

And despite Tulip’s repeated, emphatic criticism of Jesse using Genesis to cut corners, Jesse uses it to cure her PTSD-induced insomnia by sending her into a dreamless sleep.Īll of this is being watched by the Grail. Tulip mocks Jesse’s discomfort with her new “getting shot in the chest for money” hobby. Cassidy passive-aggressively dismisses Jesse’s latest chatter about finding God. As it begins, unspoken tensions are still poisoning the air around our three heroes. And the final few minutes of the episode, in which Herr Starr finally confronts Jesse in person and offers to help him find God, promises to kickstart an increasingly draggy narrative.īut other than that, the episode is basically just an ugly, unpleasant time-waster.

There’s a long action sequence shot from the perspective of a Grail operative’s night-vision helmet camera, which is inventive and cool-looking. Here are the good things about “Puzzle Piece.” The idea that Jesse is desperate enough to look for God on YouTube - and ends up finding a dude who claims he saw God on a piece of toast - is pretty funny. If this is what happens when Preacher parks itself in the same place for too long, well, maybe it’s time to get the gang back out on the road. But this is also as dour and unenlightening as the show gets. That might have been fine, if “Puzzle Piece” were still a good Preacher episode in its own right. But it’s also led to more wheel-spinning, as is the case in “Puzzle Piece,” which is so frustratingly inessential that I’m pretty sure you could skip the whole episode and watch next week with minimal confusion. The longer season two has made room for a few detours, like the standoff with Tulip’s ex-husband, Viktor, and Eugene’s stand-alone saga in Hell. Well, let’s look at what Preacher has done with those extra hours. Three more hours of Preacher! What could go wrong? For season two, AMC upped the order to 13. Preacher’s first season consisted of just ten episodes.