Preacher recap S2E9 "Puzzle Piece" 8/14/17

Herr Starr's office is readied for him, the file marked "Jesse Custer" placed in his in-box.

We get a flashback to when Jesse's dad was shot in front of him and then it's straight to now in New Orleans, Jesse struggling with that remembrance.  He's also struggling with his search for God and has been reduced to checking on "sightings of God" videos on YouTube.  Like, faces on toast and whatnot.  Cassidy gives him a little bit of a hard time as he heats up some frozen blood on the stove.  He remarks that Dennis is feeling better, didn't need Jesse's help after all, but Jesse isn't really listening.  Tulip straggles in, bruises from another round at the Hurt Locker spreading up her chest, a big wad of cash in her hand.  She is ragged and she shrieks at Jesse when he suggests that she get some sleep.  So he uses the Voice on her - "SLEEP" - and she collapses into his arms.  "She was tired," says Jesse when Cassidy raises an eyebrow.

Meanwhile, the Grail teams is observing on CCTV.  Herr Starr is bored - "What kind of a world is it when a woman obeying a man is seen as a superpower?" - and late for a date, so he tells his team ("Jenny" and her pudgy partner) to just kill them all.  So a white-suited strike team is sent in, wearing night vision goggles and ear protection.  The insertion is cool, filmed first-person POV via the team member's cameras (like Aliens), and there's no sound other than what comes over their comm system.  They get into the apartment and Cassidy immediately attacks them.  While the vampire keeps five or so of them busy, the last team member searches the apartment, shooting Dennis in bed before tangling with Jesse.  There are fisticuffs until Jesse is able to rip the guy's ear protection off.  The preacher uses the Voice to tell the guy to shoot his remaining friends.  But then, just as Jesse is about to question the last team member, Dennis tackles him and bites his throat out.  Guess that answers that.

On Herr Starr's creepy date (with the governor's daughter, no less), he admits to some ennui with his current situation.  She tries to connect with him, saying that she too had some dissatisfaction, like being a puzzle with a missing piece.  But when she relays the cliche that was her missing puzzle piece, Starr is unimpressed.  He instructs her to stand up, take her top off and tuck a stick of butter under her chin.  (For some reason, she does all this without seeming too discomfited.)  Thankfully, before this date can go any further, Starr gets a message about the strike team's failure against the preacher.  He leaves, the governor's daughter still standing there.

At Starr's office, a tarp is laid out and Starr prepares to shoot "Jenny" (whose name is Featherstone) and her partner Hoover.  His gun jams though so Featherstone offers to fix the gun for him, which she does, while offering an alternative scenario to getting at Jesse.  She thinks they should activate Brad.  Starr is intrigued by this.  He also has an ongoing rape fantasy so Featherstone says she'll get Brad going while Hoover sets up the fantasy scenario.  "One of those no-means-yes things."  Yuck.  Starr is amenable but says he's going to leave the tarp out in case they fail again.

Back at the apartment, Tulip, under the Voice's command, slept through the attack last night so when she gets up in the morning, she is surprised to find six bodies and a bunch of police in the kitchen.  Jesse has commandeered the police using the Voice to try to find out who the team was and also to set up protection. "YOU WORK FOR ME NOW."

Featherstone and Hoover are back in the apartment down the hall.  She calls Starr to report that Brad is in transit and to suggest that Starr might like multiple prostitutes.  He concurs and then hangs up the phone to watch the CCTV footage, focusing on Jesse exclaiming that God is missing and without God, there's no structure.  Starr is intrigued where he wasn't before and starts paging through Jesse's file.

Dennis pours a mug of warm blood for Cassidy, who was fairly severely wounded in the fight against the strike team.  When Dennis inadvertently burns himself in the sunlight coming through the window, Cassidy comforts him and give his son some blood to drink as well, cautioning that this is the only time he's to drink human blood.  (What are the chances that Dennis, as a baby vampire, will heed that warning?)  Jesse comes in and asks Cassidy why he didn't tell him he'd turned Dennis.  Cassidy asks if Jesse would have been cool with that and Jesse is all, yes, of course.  Jesse says that the men in white will be back, probably tonight, so they've got to get ready.  Cassidy assures him that despite only having half an intestine and no liver currently, he'll be good to go.  But he's not who Jesse should be worried about.

So Jesse takes the hint and goes to talk to Tulip.  She does seem better for having gotten some sleep, although she is sad that he used the Voice on her.  But what seems to make her better than anything else, Jesse reminds her, is getting into a fight.  And since he thinks the men in white are coming back, he's got a fight for her.  She's like, okay, but I need a gun.  And where does she go to get said gun?  Right down the hall to "Jenny's" apartment.  While Hoover, who is on the phone with the hooker service, hides in the bathroom, Featherstone jams the Jenny wig on quickly and answers the door.  She gives Tulip her gun and says to let her know if she needs help.  When Tulip is gone, Hoover's all, now she's armed.  Featherstone: "A gun's not going to stop Brad."

As night falls, Jesse starts to get anxious.  The cleaner that Jesse had asked the cops to bring in has showed up to work on the kitchen; the cops are in their perimeter positions, checking in; Cassidy is pounding blood to speed up the healing.  And Dennis has picked right this moment to crank up the old timey French music and dance around his room.  No one can hear anything over the music and the cleaner is starting to look a little squirrelly.  Outside, a huge, half-naked man in a mask - Brad? is that you? - has approached one of the cops.  As the music swells, shouts of "Officer down!" as the other cops converge.  Jesse's all, "They're here! Don't shoot - I need one alive!" and rushes out of the apartment.  He's but halfway down the stairs when he hears a shot from behind him in the apartment.
When he goes back inside, Tulip has shot the cleaner.  She thought he had a gun (spray bottle of cleaning fluid).  Oops.  And outside, the cops have determined that the naked man in the mask was just a drunk.  They call an ambulance and try to regroup.

That'll be tough because Brad is actually B.R.A.D.: a Battle-ready Remote-operated Aerial Drone.  Yeah, a gun's not going to stop B.R.A.D.

As the drone approaches New Orleans, the prostitutes show up at Starr's office.  But Hoover has made a mistake and hired three men, not three women.  But these guys are professionals and have their instructions: "No means yes."  So Starr resignedly gets bent over his desk.  But as all that is going on, he catches sight of the Jesse Custer file and exclaims, "The missing puzzle piece!"  When it is over, he calls Featherstone and tells her to call the drone off.  It's close but she manages to reroute it - sending it to Harry Connick, Jr.'s house instead.  Heh.

ONE WEEK LATER.  Everyone is looking a little bedraggled since that strike that Jesse was sure of still hasn't showed up.  He releases his team of cops from their duty, instructing them to forget any of this ever happened.  Then he goes to a bar.  Which is where Starr finds him.  The German puts down a drink and tells Jesse that he came alone.  He introduces himself and says that he's heard Jesse has been looking for God.  "Perhaps I can help."

Previously on Preacher / next time on Preacher