Preacher recap "Damsels" S2E3 7/3/17

Oh, hey!  There's Eugene!  He's riding a bike and his face isn't all fucked up and he goes to his best friend Tracy's house.  She's all sad about her boyfriend cheating on her and she's decided to kill herself.  Eugene, stricken, tries to talk her out of it and almost succeeds, except he takes advantage of what he thinks is a Moment and gives her a little kiss.  She recoils in disgust and grabs that shotgun.  Eugene lunges for it just as she pulls the trigger: as we know, the shot takes the top of her head off but doesn't quite kill her.  As Tracy's mom pounds on the locked door, Eugene TRIES TO SCOOP THE BRAINS BACK INTO TRACY'S HEAD.  Oh uck.  He panics, grabbing up the gun his own self and - bang! - off-screen, but we know how that turned out.  And then it all happens again.  And again.  Eugene is, of course, in Hell.  On the plus side, we now know that he didn't shoot Tracy, like everyone thought in S1.  Then there's a glitch in the Hell-system and the loop stops, leaving Eugene alone in a drab, gray cell.

Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy arrive in New Orleans.  [Why does it bother me so much that Tulip always wears her sunglasses down on the end of her nose?]  Making their way down Bourbon Street, Jesse is determined to find God.  The first time he goes into a bar and says they're looking for God, they get taken down the hall and out the back and into a downstairs dungeon for some shady looking sex with a dude in a dog costume.  Oops.  Not quite.  They go back to Bourbon Street and while Jesse is as yet undeterred, Tulip, frazzled by being in Victor's town, has had enough.  She takes off to find them a place to stay.  Cassidy waffles a bit but then follows her, leaving Jesse to fend for himself among the jazz dives, beer bars and neon discos.

[Something else that bothers me: I know New Orleans is all about go-cups, and I fully support mobile drinking, but I find it horrifying the amount of plastic that must be thrown in the trash on a daily basis.]

Apparently Cassidy also knows someone in New Orleans, taking Tulip to an amazing, slowly rotting Victorian mansion occupied by one Dennis.  Cassidy speaks highly of him but grumpy Dennis, who seems to speak only French - which neither Cassidy nor Tulip speak - grudgingly lets them in.  [I don't speak French either but I have the sneaking suspicion that this guy isn't actually Dennis?  I think maybe he said "Dennis is not here" - any French-speakers out there?]  Cassidy finds Tulip pacing and asks her what's wrong.  She tells the vampire that she screwed Victor and now she's here in [Victor's] backyard.  She doesn't want to tell Jesse so Cassidy volunteers to help.  She rebuffs him and he snaps at her a little, reminding her of how much he has actually helped and insisting that she tell him the truth.

Finally, after asking countless people if they've seen God, Jesse finds a bartender who tells him to go talk to the singer at a jazz club.  He does, after listening to her torch song and then watching her get the better of a doofus who thinks he can pick her up.  When Jesse asks her about God, she gets squirrelly and tries to ditch him, but he sees her getting snatched up by white-clad masked men driving a van.  Jesse runs outside, commands the van-driver to STOP, using the Genesis voice (and thus sending up a flare for the Saint of Killers, who does not make an appearance this episode but who must be on his way now).  The van stops, Jesse and the white-clad men fight.  He manages to subdue them, helping the chanteuse out of the van.

She takes him home, where she has a baby waiting.  While she packs a suitcase, Jesse asks her about God.  She is nervous, saying that those men were part of a super-secret crypto-religous fascist organization with designs on world domination, which she learned from a former bar patron who told her one night that God is missing, that this group was after him and then, days later, said bar patron washed up in the swamp, dead.  She presses Jesse about how he got the van to stop and he reluctantly gives her an example of the Genesis voice (flare #2).  She's like, oh, yikes.  Jesse puts her in a cab to the airport and she tells him good luck with his God search.

Jesse is feeling pretty good about rescuing a damsel in distress until he sees a spooky poster for some place called "Angelville" that freaks him out for a bit.  He goes into a bit of a trance until awoken by a phone call from Tulip.  She's babbling on the phone and Jesse knows something is wrong.  But she still can't bring herself to tell him what's going on and they hang up on each other.  Frustrated, Tulip grabs her jacket and tells Cassidy that she's going out for some smokes.

Back in Hell:  Eugene's cell door opens.  He walks out into a deserted corridor, empty except for a dude who looks like Hitler.  Because, Hell.

While Jesse finds himself enjoying the music at yet another jazz club, we learn that the lounge singer is more than meets the eye.  She climbs into the white-clad dudes' van, pulling off her blonde wig.  The bartender who sent Jesse to her in the first place asks for an update and she confirms that whatever it is the preacher has, it's for real.  It's time to send it up the chain of command.  In an office somewhere, a file with Jesse's name on it lands on the desk of a one-eyed dude named Herr K. Starr (there is also a file entitled "Pig" and I'm super-curious about that).

Finally, Tulip makes her way to a laundromat.  She gets change and goes to the cigarette machine.  As she feeds coins into the machine, the other laundromat patrons skedaddle when a whole bunch of black-coated men file in and order them out.  One of these guys has a walkie-talkie and he calls Victor, saying "We got her."  Tulip turns to face them calmly.

Previously on Preacher / next time on Preacher