AMC
The last time we saw Jesse, Tulip and Cassidy, our own Michael Noble was covering the show but the maddening storyline got to be too much so he threw in the towel, so I’m here now to pick things up and hopefully find some sense in all the nonsense from season two. There was definitely a lot going on in season two with the quest to find God and Jesse seeming to have not given a single thought to poor Eugene after sending him to Hell, not to mention Herr Starr and his minions, so the season three premiere was quite surprising in how it told a pretty self-contained story that revealed more details, more backstory, about Jesse and Tulip.
Two things we needed to remember from the season two finale — a glimpse of Jesse’s childhood in Angelville working for a woman with some kind of supposed supernatural powers, and Tulip being shot, her apparently dead body in the back of Jesse’s car as they head to Angelville, under the assumption that he’s taking her to his former employer for a possible resurrection. And that is exactly where we pick up, and Cassidy is still furious that Jesse would not allow him to save Tulip by turning her into a vampire. If this plan doesn’t work, Cassidy promises he will kill Jesse because he’s chosen this moment in time to tell Jesse that he shagged Tulip and she really gets him, and he knows more about her than Jesse does despite their long history together.
AMC
In the prologue to the episode ‘Many Years Ago,’ we meet Marie L’Angelle (Betty Buckley) and see that she can work a spell. Assisting her are Christina (Liz McGeever), TC (Colin Cunningham) and Jody (Jeremy Childs). Christina has a secret and once Jody tattles to Marie, she wants to know what that secret is. But Christina tries to run away, only to be tracked down by TC and Jody and brought back to Marie. But she swallows whatever it is Marie wants to see, and Marie has no problem cutting Marie open to get it from her. A photograph of a young boy … Jesse Custer. Christina is — was — his mother and Marie is not just a former employer, she’s his Gran’ma.
That’s a lot of family drama to be thrown in the space of a few minutes but we know that Gran’ma is a formidable force to be reckoned with. And now Jesse needs her help, something she’s a bit reluctant to give without something in return. When Jesse says he’ll do anything to bring Tulip back, she taunts him with ‘that’s a might big word, anything,’ but he knew what she wanted — his blood, and as we often see when someone needs to give blood for some ritual, Jesse slices open his palm to give her a few drops. Why … why do they always slice their palms? A few drops from a poke in the fingertip aren’t enough?
Marie needs a few other things to bring Tulip back, a collection of some of her favorite things, things that can help lure her back from the dead. Which again brings up some conflict between Jesse and Cassidy because Jesse specifies her favorite music and Cassidy tells him that Tulip actually loves Joni Mitchell. (And, it seems as if they’ve pretty much given up on keeping Cassidy out of the sun for while his upper body is shaded with an umbrella while outdoors, his hands are clearly being struck by sunlight with no ill effect and he walks past windows with sunlight streaming in without singeing a hair.) While Cassidy goes for those items, Jesse needs to get something else for Marie, something called ‘transpoil’ and he has to get it from Jody. Jody, by the way, is the man who killed Jesse’s father. (I’d have to go back to season one to see if this, in fact, is true.) And there are unresolved issues between the two men, to say the least.
The little reunion seems to go well and Jody has the transpoil, but before he gives it to Jesse — after driving back to Marie’s — Jody wants to see if Jesse’s man enough now to take him down. I don’t know if Jody is preternaturally strong or possibly a zombie (and old-fashioned one, i.e. a person under a spell controlled by someone else like Marie, not a modern brain eater) but after Jesse manages to get a few licks in, Jody is about to finish the fight by dropping a pickup on Jesse’s head. Marie intervenes in the knick of time and she gets to work on Tulip.
AMC
We’ve been getting glimpses of Tulip who is now in Purgatory, stuck with a child version of herself. Her father is just out of jail and her mother is a whore, or as daddy says, she’s just working. Daddy goes for an interview and gets a job, but apparently once a criminal always a criminal and before you know it, there’s a gunfight from the apartment window with daddy and both Tulips. Marie warned Jesse that Tulip can only stay in Puragtory for so long and once Death comes knocking at the door and she answers, she’ll be gone. And Death does come a-knocking, but Tulip thinks it’s the police … until her younger self — who helpfully tells Tulip she’s just a reenactor — is suddenly chowing down on a bowl of Boo Berry cereal. Tulip she decides she has time for a bowl before going with the police and as she’s eating, Marie gives her a few drops of the transpoil which produces a battery in Tulip’s mouth.
Marie tells Jesse and Cassidy that it can take a while for the dead to figure out how to get back to the living. Apparently the magic she’s working can only go so far, and it’s up to the subject to put all the pieces together. Cassidy starts playing Joni Mitchell, which appears on the TV Tulip is watching in Purgatory, and she remembers what she said about time. Finally paying attention to the cat clock on the wall, Tulip uses the battery to make it start ticking again and the next thing she knows she’s running down a tree-lined dirt road. And then she sees that person in the dog costume, and yes it is God. Tulip asks if he brought her back and he says another did that but Tulip is the ‘chosen one’ and he wants her to ‘get those sons …’ and BOOM she wakes up. She smiles at Jesse, but she smiles even bigger at Cassidy (and he somehow even ends up sleeping next to her in bed, not something Jesse is too happy about).
As Jesse contemplates all that’s happened, Gran’ma joins him for a drink and reminds him that they have a deal now. Jesse confirms but then he says he could cheat and change his mind, kill her like he should have years ago, push her over and she’d be dead before she hit the ground. She asks if he thinks she hasn’t thought of that (killing herself?) but she almost dares him to give it try to see what happens. And the she tells him she loves him, more than anything. But somehow it still sounds ominous, and it leaves us with the question of what is their deal? You could almost say he’s made a deal with the Devil to bring Tulip back, but will it have been worth it, especially if she chooses Cassidy and then reveals she’s God’s ‘chosen one’?
The season’s just getting started, but we will catch up with Herr Starr, Lara and F.J, as well as see what life is like for Eugene and Hitler (or Hilter) now that they’re back in the land of the living. It was a low key start to the season but we got a lot of information about Jesse’s and Tulip’s pasts, and a few new characters to think about.
AMC
Best moment of the episode had to be Cassidy eating a ‘scorpion pepper’ because Marie said the pain would help draw the dead back. Watching Cassidy’s face turn beet read while he broke out in a sweat and a seriously runny nose was hilarious. I’m not sure if the ritual was real or if she was just having some fun with Cassidy, but she seems to like him if nothing else but for bringing Jesse home. And for that she offered him anything he wanted, all he has to do is ask. Might he see if she can ‘cure’ him at some point?
What did you think of the season premiere? Is the show getting back on track? Start a conversation in the comments section below!
Share this post
