Preacher Season 4 Episode 8 Review and Recap: Fear of the Lord

Preacher season 4 episode 8, explained

By its eighth hour, Preacher's last season has put everyone on a collision course. The AMC series, developed by Sam Catlin, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg from the comic by Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, premiered on May 22, 2016. AMC announced on April 8, 2019 that the fourth season would be the final one, and the series ended on September 29, 2019, after four seasons and 43 episodes. Season 4 has ten episodes, which makes "Fear of the Lord" the last full chapter before the home stretch.

The episode was directed by Iain B. MacDonald and written by Wes Brown. About 0.45 million people watched live in the United States and about 0.91 million once DVR viewing is counted, in line with a season whose audience slid from roughly 0.62 million to 0.51 million per episode. The critical mood matched. On Rotten Tomatoes, the season holds 77 percent approval from 74 reviews, and the site's consensus says the show remains violent and profane but seems to be running low on momentum in its final stretch.

For all that, "Fear of the Lord" is one of the season's more focused hours. Its title points at the central question of the series, which is what a person does when the being in charge of the universe turns out to be petty, vain and in the room. Three storylines answer it in three different registers: grim in Hell, absurd at Masada and tender in a forest hideout.

Anyone searching for Preacher season 4 episode 8 will find it hard to follow without the context of the previous seven hours. Jesse Custer, played by Dominic Cooper, has been trapped in Hell and pressed to take God's throne. Tulip, played by Ruth Negga, and Cassidy, played by Joseph Gilgun, have gone on the run with Humperdoo, the Messiah that the Grail organization wants for its Apocalypse. And Herr Starr, played by Pip Torrens, is climbing back toward the Grail's leadership one humiliation at a time.

Recap: Herr Starr and the Grail

The episode begins with Starr recovered by the people who found him, who have fitted his stump with a spigot. A hazy nightmare follows, set at a 1979 pageant called Mr. Little Dusseldorf, in which an adult Klaus beats a field of children and then gets beaten up by the losers. It sums up his vanity in one scene, and it ends with the pageant's favorite carving a star into his eye. He wakes humbled, then is rescued by Lara Featherstone, played by Julie Ann Emery, who reminds him that the Grail still has use for him.

Back at Masada, Hitler, played by Noah Taylor, keeps pushing a reluctant Jesus Christ, played by Tyson Ritter, to take the role of the Messiah. A haggard Starr watches Jesus perform a routine of footwork and headspins to Run-DMC's "It's Tricky" and tells the room that he wants Humperdoo, not Christ. The scene that follows, in which Hitler consoles a downcast Jesus, is one of the most tender in the episode and sums up what the series is about.

Later, Starr appears naked and drunk in a dark conference room, hoping to end things, and the attempt fails when the nipple chain he uses gives way. It is dark comedy of a very Preacher kind, and its theme is the question of whether failing at a task is worth dying for. By the end of the episode the Grail is celebrating, Starr is back in full glory, and an official date for the Apocalypse has been set.

Recap: Jesse, Hell and the throne

Jesse refuses the throne, and the angel Fiore, played by Tom Brooke, escalates. When an army of ants fails to change his mind, the Saint of Killers, played by Graham McTavish, seems to help him escape and even shares a drink and a story, which turns out to be one more attempt by Fiore to give Jesse false hope. Fiore's angels force Jesse onto the throne against his will, and he rises from the place where he was buried.

In the desert, he finds God's RV. Mark Harelik plays God as a genial man who is exactly who he claims to be, and who also wants to be thanked for creating humanity. When Jesse refuses, God punishes him. Jesse fails the test, and God takes his right eye. The sequence is the episode's cruelest, and the show leaves it unsoftened.

Recap: Tulip, Cassidy and Humperdoo

Three months pass in a jump. The trio of Tulip, Cassidy and Humperdoo has become a family, and the two adults have a drill called "Go to the Moon," in which Humperdoo hides in a blast container if anyone comes for him. A scene in which Humperdoo wanders off and is found being gentle with fauns moves Cassidy deeply and shakes Tulip's resolve about the plan to use him as a weapon against God.

When Featherstone and Starr arrive, they expect a fight. They get a dinner party gone wrong: a device the pair installed to make intruders sick also makes everyone else vomit, which gives the show its most gross sequence of the season. Tulip hits Cassidy with an axe to get the detonator, but she cannot press the button as Humperdoo is airlifted out. Apologies are exchanged and the pair resolve to get him back.

Their story ends on a quiet note. After a night together, Tulip feels calm, and a knock at the door reveals Jesse, beaten and eyeless, coming home. A final cut to Eugene, in an Australian jail, picking up the flamenco guitar that was playing earlier ties the episode to a story still unresolved.

Episode facts at a glance

• Title: "Fear of the Lord," season 4, episode 8.
• Air date: September 15, 2019, on AMC.
• Director and writer: Iain B. MacDonald directed; Wes Brown wrote.
• Audience: About 0.45 million live viewers in the U.S., 0.91 million with DVR.
• Where it sits: Two episodes before the finale on September 29, 2019.
• The big beats: Jesse fails God's test and loses an eye, Humperdoo is taken, the Apocalypse gets a date.

Preacher season 4 episode 8 review: the verdict

"Fear of the Lord" is the best-structured episode of the final stretch, and the reason is that it knows what each storyline is for. Starr's thread is about vanity, Jesse's about faith and Tulip and Cassidy's about love, and all three cut toward a single image of the three leads in one room. After a season of splits, that image is an earned one.

The strongest material belongs to Jesse and God. Harelik's God is neither a monster nor a joke. He is a very ordinary-seeming being with a very large ego, and the scene in which he asks for thanks and gets none lands because the show plays it straight. It is the most direct statement in the series about the relationship between a creator and the people he created, and it makes the loss of the eye a consequence of pride as well as of plot.

The weakest material is the vomit sequence. It is gross, it is long and it works as a joke only if the audience accepts that a show this far into its run can afford to be pointless on purpose. Some viewers will, and some will wait for it to end. The episode's cleverness is that the failure of the plan, a trap that sickens the people who built it, is also a comment on the plan itself.

There is also a gap between the energy of the Starr scenes and the weight of the Jesse scenes. The Masada material is funny but sits uneasily beside the moment God takes an eye. That unevenness is part of why critics saw the season as running low on momentum, and the episode does not fully solve it. What it does solve is the question of the central trio, who spend most of the hour apart and are united in the last minute. Cooper, Negga and Gilgun are best as a group, and the film comparison that fits them is Truffaut's 1962 Jules et Jim, a story about a triangle of friends bound too closely to separate.

The verdict is that this is a strong penultimate chapter and one of the better hours of a season that was uneven. Viewers who dropped the show earlier should return for the God scene. Viewers who stayed will find the payoff the season had been promising.

Sources

• Preacher (TV series), Wikipedia — season 4 episode list, cast and air dates