I’m conflicted about Preacher. As a whole, it didn’t reach up to my expectations but I still enjoyed most of it. I’ve heard about the comic for years and had a basic understanding of the plot. So the show finally starts and it’s weird. That I was expecting but I’m not talking about subject matter. It’s the pacing. It feels disjointed and patched together like they took sections of the book and weren’t following a normal story arc. Since I haven’t read the source material, I can’t say how true that is. There are times when I wasn’t sure what was going on. Not a good feeling but it does come together (the cowboy plotline is a real headscratcher that comes in and out and doesn’t make much sense until very far in).

It’s a slow ride, I guess that’s the easiest way to say it. I’m all for building narrative but man is this show structured weird. I stuck through to the end and I’m happy I did. There’s a lot of cool stuff and it’s the main characters that got me there (my favorite being Tulip and I wanted to see where Eugene’s story was going). In that regard, it paid off for me. Oddly enough, the plot bit I heard didn’t come into the show until the end of the season finale. For weeks I was wondering if what I heard was right or if I was remembering it wrong.

It’s really hard to explain Preacher effectively and it’s a tough blind recommend. There are some creative ideas about religion that some people won’t dig (serious gore and violence too) and many probably won’t have the patience to make it all the way through. The end is probably the best part as the set up for Season 2 points to some major changes that should be a lot of fun. There are a lot of Preacher fans out there and the promise of the best things are yet to come makes me want to see it.

There’s one line of dialog that’s stuck with me since I heard it a few weeks ago:

What’s Hell like?

Crowded…