Preacher Recap: Jesse's Friends Lose Faith

Last week's "Sundowner" kicked off that extraordinary action/comedy set piece in the motel and concluded with an unfortunate and dramatic order from Jesse to Eugene, sending the well-intentioned teenager, seemingly, to hell.

Sunday's "He Gone" purposefully lacked any of the zeal or extreme violence of the previous episode; instead, it ratcheted up the tension and unease among the core characters, with Jesse's increasingly secretive and unstable ways at the center of everyone's problems.

At the beginning of the show, pre-Genesis, he was nothing short of a failure, drinking and fighting his way through one sparsely attended sermon after another.

Since the supernatural force became part of him, Jesse has only gotten worse -- less self-pitying and more self-absorbed, still well-intentioned but blinded by sudden power and decades of guilt over his father's murder.

Along the way, the show's most detailed flashbacks yet filled in some necessary information about Jesse's father -- namely that Jesse feels personally responsible for his dad's murder because he prayed for something bad to happen after Custer Senior had Tulip sent away from the church.

[...] he lashes out, screaming at Cassidy that Eugene deserved to go to hell for his attempted murder-suicide with Tracy some time ago, shaming Tulip for sticking around the church like a stray dog, and yet again neglecting the endlessly caring Emily.

[...] some of the season's earlier episodes attempted to make similar maneuvers between scenes, to a far lower degree of success.