This week’s episode, Sundowner, starts exactly where last week’s left off, with DeBlanc and Fiore telling Jesse that the entity inside of him isn’t God. He asks what it is and, at first, all they say is that it’s a mistake and he has to give it back. He uses his power to make DeBlanc tell him what it really is. We learn that the entity is called Genesis, the offspring of a union between a demon and an angel, extremely powerful and ridiculously dangerous in the wrong hands.
Fiore keeps glancing suspiciously at a woman that comes into the Flavor Station. He and DeBlanc follow her outside when she leaves and start beating her up. Jesse intervenes, and she attacks him too. Fiore shoots her in the head before chokes Jesse and DeBlanc out. Jesse, of course, is bewildered at what just happened, but we learn that she’s an angel when she regenerates inside the restaurant. They escape in Jesse’s truck, since Fiore left his keys inside. The Seraphim lady takes those keys and finds the bible they took from the motel, called the Sundowner, giving us the episode title.
At the motel, Jesse learns that DeBlanc and Fiore are out of Heaven without permission. There are wanted posters with their faces on them and everything. They worry about what will happen if the Seraphim finds out about Genesis, at which point Jesse suggests just using Genesis on her, since we now know it works on angels. DeBlanc gets mad and reminds him that Genesis isn’t to be used, and that it needs to be kept a secret so other parties from Heaven and Hell don’t try to take it for themselves.
I can’t help but side with DeBlanc here. Since the Quidcannon incident Jesse has become way too willing to use his power to solve problems. We’ve seen the trouble he’s caused with it, especially because he doesn’t seem to understand the exact words nature of it. At the same time, this is a situation where the power might be useful, except that then the Seraphim would know about Genesis.
The scene continues with Fiore breaking the Seraphim’s Heaven phone. There’s a knock on the door immediately afterward. It turns out to be the Seraphim, who shoots Fiore and DeBlanc before turning the gun on Jesse. He ends up getting the jump on her when she glances at the other Heaven phone, and they fight until Fiore regenerates and gets her. He gets killed again, and Jesse jumps back in with a knife. This leads into an extended fight sequence with tons of regenerating, and Jesse being thrown around every once in a while, going into the titles.
The fight is still going on when the titles end, and Cassidy even gets in on it when he shows up. The motel room is filled with dead angel bodies when they’re done. DeBlanc and Fiore tell Jesse again that they need Genesis back, and we learn that it escaped from them – they don’t know how, or why it chose Jesse. Jesse decides that he doesn’t want to give Genesis back, and says that if God doesn’t want him to have it, he can come take it himself. I don’t even have to say it, but that is not going to turn out well.
After the commercial break we see Eugene at school. Someone scrawled “DIE” across his locker. A kid passes by him and says hi, which Eugene automatically replies to with “sorry” before he realizes. This makes me sad, and I really want to know why people usually treat him the way they do.
Emily is at home with her daughter, who’s sick with a fever. She goes to answer the door and Tulip barges in, yelling at her to stay away from her “boyfriend”. It wasn’t until I first watched this scene that it really hit me just how deeply her feelings for Jesse run. She’s not going to be letting go any time soon, so I might as well buckle in. Emily looks out the window and sees that Tulip is still sitting in her car outside. She goes out and yells at her for breaking her kid’s “art thing”. Tulip then comes to the door and says she’ll fix the sculpture. This scene takes a turn for the pleasant when Emily compliments her car, and Tulip returns it with one about Em’s ashtray.
Between Tulip coming into the house and fixing the art thing, there’s a brief scene of Miles listening to a message from someone at the Green Acre Group, saying that they haven’t heard from the three representatives since they left to meet with Mr. Quidcannon. He’s looking at three identical pairs of pants on the bed. I’m not sure what that means.
Next we’re treated to a whole scene of Jesse and Cass in their underwear while their clothes are being washed. Cass tells Jesse that he got pushed off a building, fell in love, and went to the hospital, referencing the events of Monster Swamp. They trade tattoo stories; Jesse has one of a tulip on his shoulder that he refers to as “my Tulip”, so that’s something. Then Cass asks what Jesse is going to do about Genesis.
Jesse says again that he’s keeping it, and Cass says that it’s a bad idea. Watching Jesse talk around Cass’s reasons for why he might wanna give it up makes you realize that he’s doing this less because he thinks it’s God’s plan, and more because he just doesn’t want to give up his power. Either that of he has serious delusions of grandeur, but Jesse does this sort of dance throughout the episode, which makes me think he’s in denial.
We see Eugene at school again, this time at lunch. Someone’s written “pucker up Eugene” on the table he’s sitting at. I have to question how the person knew that he was going to sit at that particular table at lunch, and how the custodial crew didn’t catch it. But anyway, the blonde kid that said hi to Eugene asks if he and his friends can sit with him. The friends look grossed out, but the blonde kid assures them that he’s okay. It’s really nice to see someone be decent to him, for once.
We come back to Emily’s house, where Tulip is telling her stories about when she and Jesse were together. Apparently Tulip slashed Elizabeth Taylor’s tires once. After Emily checks on her daughter, we learn that the church is expecting 200 people that Sunday. Tulip is surprised that Jesse is actually good at the preaching thing. Little does she know. Tulip offers to watch Emily’s daughter for her, and we learn that she had a kid once. Now that is news. I hope we learn more about that in the future. Tulip then offers to do the church errands for Emily.
At the church, Cass is still trying to get Jesse to give up Genesis. He says that it seems like a mistake, to which Jesse replies that Genesis was given to him for a reason, and that God doesn’t make mistakes. Cass reminds him that, while that’s true, people make mistakes all the time. Jesse just tells him to bring the ladder inside. We see that Jesse has put up a speaker outside the church. After a scene of Emily giving Tulip a shopping list, we see that the speaker has a really large range. Oh boy.
After school gets out, the blonde kid asks Eugene if he wants to see something awesome. He is hesitant, but he goes with him and his friends. They ride their bikes to what looks like a drainage basin and go into a tunnel. This is super ominous, but they just set off some fireworks in the tunnel. It’s beautiful, as Eugene says.
Jesse is putting out chairs for Sunday service when Miles shows up. Jesse asks him for a hand. Miles puts down exactly one chair and sits in it. Jesse asks him if everything is alright. Miles says he’s thinking about doing something bad, and wants to know if he should do it, but he won’t say what it is. Jesse says that he probably shouldn’t do it, but Miles says that doing the right thing will hurt more people. He asks how he’ll know what to do, and Jesse tells him to pray.
Miles asks the really good question of how you know which voices in your head are God or just your mind. Jesse says that they don’t sound the same, but Miles says they do to him. Jesse tells him that either he and God are saying the same thing, or he isn’t hearing God at all. Miles is the third person to express troubles hearing God, and from what I’ve learned, three is when it’s officially a pattern. If this is going the same way as the comics, it doesn’t bode well.
Jesse gets suspicious when Tulip shows up to drop off some “church stuff”. When she’s in the supply closet she finds this old mini golf club, and runs into Cassidy. Jesse shows up, and Cass realizes that Jesse is the boyfriend that she mentioned — she’s “his Tulip”. She hides him behind the closet door when Jesse comes in. Turns out the mini golf club means something to them, and Tulip realizes that he kept it after everything, though he insists he never got around to throwing it away. So Jesse’s still got the feels too. To be honest, I probably should have picked up on this earlier. I realize that he never gave off the air that he was completely over her, just that he didn’t want to get back into the criminal life. But poor Cass! He’s genuinely looks upset about these developments. I didn’t realize he actually liked Tulip like that either, considering that he’d only known her for, like, a night when he claimed to be in love. So does this make it a love triangle? I don’t know how I feel about that.
Sunday finally comes, and Emily comes into the church to speak with Jesse before the service. Their conversation reeks of him trying to assure himself that he’s doing the right thing by not giving up Genesis. She is incredulous of his motives at best. There’s some tension when he says that she and Tulip did a good job setting things up. Does she make it a love quadrangle?
Emily sends in Eugene, who tells Jesse that he wants him to take back Mrs. Loach’s forgiveness. He says that Jesse making Mrs. Loach forgive him feels like cheating, which he, reasonably, thinks that God wouldn’t like. This strikes a nerve with Jesse, who says that what’s he’s doing is God’s will. Same story as before — either he knows he’s wrong, or delusions of grandeur. Eugene tells him that it’s wrong to make people see the light rather than letting them choose. He and Jesse get into it then, and Jesse tells Eugene to go to hell. With Genesis.
The last scene of the episode is Miles returning the call of Cynthia from Green Acres. He tells her that something terrible has happened as he stands by a burnt of car wreck with three bodies in it. I wonder if he did all that himself, or if Mr. Quidcannon had a hand in that set up too.
I really liked this episode, guys. We learned so much new information, and it continued on a lot of good trends from the previous ones. In particular I like that Tulip and Emily met outside of Jesse too, and that they don’t hate each other. Like I said last time, I appreciate that they aren’t really being positioned as opposite love interests, since Jesse doesn’t seem to have any feelings for Emily. I do wonder about this rising love quadrangle, but I actually like the characters in it, so right away it should be easier to deal with.
I am a little surprised that DeBlanc and Fiore disappeared after the first scene, but I also realize that this episode was more about Jesse and his struggle with giving up Genesis. He’s moving into full false prophet mode, which will be interesting, if wildly dangerous. Also, I’m still wondering what happened with Eugene and Tracy Loach, and why he tried to commit suicide. I thought we were going to learn more about that in this episode, but I guess it will have to wait until they get him out of Hell or whatever. Not that I’m mad or anything.
Next episode is called He Gone, which could be a reference to a number of characters, and I’m sure that’s the point. We’re officially more than halfway through the season, folks, and things are getting seriously out of hand.
Images courtesy of AMC
