Limerick Review: Contantine S1E13, Waiting For The Man

On the Louisiana side,
Where all kinds of mischief reside,
It seems that some ragin'
Occult rapist Cajun's
Gonna take a new child bride.

Leaving the casework to Zed,
Someone's put a price on John's head,
So Papa Midnight
Books the first flight
To go and make Constantine dead.

So we go from the pedophile's house
To Midnight's game of cat and mouse,
But one's just a fetter
For its clear better,
And some of the fire just gets doused.

That's not to say it's all half-assed,
The Midnight scenes are just a blast.
Zed is conflicted
On what she's predicted,
And Manny is badass at last.

So when it's all over and done,
This is the lesson to run:
Creepy Cajun dude
Can establish the mood,
But Papa Midnight's just more fun.

Limerick Review: Constantine S1E12, Angels and Ministers of Grace

It seems that the cosmic Il Duce
Long ago came upon the excuse
To send down a canny
Young angel named Manny
Who's always needlessly obtuse.

John, with his distaste for the gaudy,
Thinks this divine scheme's rather shoddy,
And he's so nonplussed
That he gets Manny trussed
Up inside an earthbound mortal body.

So John and the Angel move out
For some misadventures throughout,
And there's evil to thwart,
In the form of some sort
Of heroin monster about.

Turns out, a doc wants to get at
Those who turned down second chances flat,
A new iteration
Of Saw's motivation,
And it's just as bullshit as in that.

All that, and it turns out that Zed
Has a tumor clinging to her head,
But future damage incurred
Can just be deferred,
So the show kind of loses that thread.

The episode won't disappoint,
But the season arc's thrown out of joint.
While it's fine that the louts
All get fleshing out,
I wish we'd just get to the point.

Review: Constantine S1E11, A Whole World Out There

No sooner had the companions of John Constantine received some much needed fleshing-out last week, than we got an episode that sees John on a solo adventure with an oddly brief hand-wave about Zed and Chas being on holiday or something.

There is nothing inherently wrong with doing a solo one-off episode, except that it falls into the obvious trap that a solo one-off would tend to imply, namely that it devises a terrific concept and then finds itself without the necessary time or space to give that idea its full due.

Specifically, this episode sees Constantine help yet another old occultist chum from his younger days - and since to my recollection we have yet seen neither footage nor photograph of his whole former entourage together, the show can keep on doing this more or less indefinitely - to fight a mad doctor in a magical mindspace in which the power of the consciousness determines the nature of reality.

This is a terrific idea, packed with not only exciting story and visual potential, but with tremendous thematic resonance if the show were only to start digging for it. Unfortunately, the time constraints inherent in an hour-long show do not accommodate the possibility of making good on all of this potential, and so even the grand climax less resembles a Dark City-style reshaping of the world than one good CGI shot and an array of underwhelming greenscreen effects.

In short, the key phrase of the day is unrealized potential. A very interesting idea is left without the necessary room to breathe, and the result is an intriguing but ultimately middling episode of the series. The teaser for next week's episode seems to imply the return of the main season arc along with the side characters the show has been slowly developing over its run, so that will be worth returning for at any rate. Until then, we are left with this noble failure of an episode, and at the very least I would much rather see an installment that fails due to an surplus of ambition rather than one kneecapped by a dearth of it.

Review - Constantine, Season 1, Episode 10: Quid Pro Quo

Unlike some, I was never reflexively opposed to the idea of John Constantine having a more or less constant entourage following him around on his show. There are definitely merits to having the character constantly alone, particularly since it would emphasize the extent to which the abrasive aspects of John pushes everyone away no matter how hard he tries, but at the same time the sharp demarcation between those who hate Constantine and those who trust him far past the point of reason says just as much about the character, as well as providing some as yet unexploited opportunities to comment on the nature of fandom, but I digress.

All of that said, the various hangers-on only really work if they exist as characters in themselves, not merely as functional tools in the arsenal of the main character. Otherwise they might just as well be spell circles or reliquaries that occasionally deliver lines of exposition. We have gotten some hints of that sort of development with Zed in the last couple of episodes, and now we get a sudden rush of that sort of development with Chas. In this episode alone, we are introduced to his wife and daughter, told about his first run-in with Constantine, given an explanation for his extraordinary resilience, and shown perhaps the biggest piece of character development we have gotten in the show so far.

While the introduction of all this information can feel somewhat rushed at times, the backstory given to Chas is genuinely compelling and tragic, all tied up into a thought experiment that never loses its sense of the human cost of the magic involved.

The plot of the episode is - perhaps by necessity - not as interesting as everything that surrounds it, although it does manage to slip in one dramatic little twist just at the climax. Fans of the comic will doubtless be pleased at the introduction of legendarily weaselly magician Felix Faust to the show, and we will doubtless be seeing more of him down the line. Also, the last two scenes in the show may be the best that this show has yet produced.

In fact, while by no means perfect, this episode is one of the best of the series so far. And, as I mentioned above, if we are to be saddled with not only John Constantine but with his ragtag family, then developing the characters that make up that family can only bode well for the future of the series, and I will be returning to see whether the show can make good on its promising new direction.