Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: Angelica Celaya, constantine, Constantine Episode 4, entertainment, matt ryan, tv

A Feast of Friends – Literally: Recapping Constantine Episode 4

By Rich Epstein

Is it a bad thing if a show seems to have fallen into a routine by episode 4?  For the third straight week, Constantine opens with a shot of a person we don't know walking. Two weeks ago, it was a miner walking home after an accident. Last week, we opened with a woman walking into an abandoned building and stealing something from inside a wall.  This week, we follow a man getting off of a plane. The man is sweating as he approaches customs.  He tells the agent that his name is Gary Lester (Jonjo O'Neill) and he's here to visit a friend.

Obviously the man pouring sweat seemed suspicious, so he is interrogated. Gary tells the officer that he came from Sudan. The officer asks about a bottle that Gary had on him and he says that it is an antique, very precious. The officer pulls up Gary's sleeve to reveal track marks. Gary begs the officer not to open the bottle, but he does it anyway. Pretty much the same opening as last week, when Bernie listened to the record despite Jasmine's pleas.  The scene itself is well done, but it is so similar to last week's opening that there isn't a whole lot of impact. We have a pretty good idea of what will happen next, the officer will release something and die as a result. Sure enough, the officer drops the bottle, shattering it, and beetles pour out.  A lot of beetles.  More beetles than could possibly have fit in the bottle.  They keep coming, then fly up, circling the officer and pouring into his mouth. Ok, that was a little surprising. And more than a little gross.

John Constantine (Matt Ryan) and Zed Martin (Angélica Celaya) are relaxing in the park.  Zed is learning to hone her senses.  John tells her she needs to lower her walls in order to see what she can really do.  She sees coins, falling all around, when time stops.  Welcome to our guiding angel, Manny (Harold Perrineau). They have a talk about Zed, it seems as though John had tried to help someone else in the past, and it didn't work out.  John and Zed head back to the safehouse, but someone has broken in. There are beatles running around, and they find Gary Lester trapped in midair. John hasn't seen Gary since Newcastle. That's the first reference we have had to Astra since the premier. I'm glad that they returned to it, since it seems to be the defining event in John's life. Gary says that he just needed to escape after everything that happened. It seems that John hasn't bothered to tell Zed about Astra. After Gary ran, he went on a bender and ended up in the Sudan. While there, he found somebody with markings on him that Gary recognized, a man possessed by a demon. Gary drew the demon out an into the bottle and saved the man.

We return to the customs agent to finds him going crazy, eating everything in sight. I guess we know where the demon is. Or was. The officer dies, and the bugs go flying out.

An unknown woman is washing her hands ina bathroom sink when the beetles start coming up from the drain. She exits the bathroom into the grocery store proper and starts eating everything in site, which in a grocery store is quite a lot. She wrestles with a security guard, begins to eat him. Last week we get Doctor Who references, this week an homage to The Walking Dead. Don't know if it's intentional or not, but it's pretty cool.

Back at the cabin, our heroes see a news story about the woman. The reporter says that it's a disease being passed from person to person, John says it's a hunger demon. Gary wants to help him find the demon, John refuses. Zed tells him to let Gary help, he won't. When he leaves, Zed asks Gary about Newcastle. It was John's idea to go. Nobody knew what to do, but John had a plan. He can't bring himself to tell her what happened, starts shaking. Zed grabs his hand, has a vision of someone shooting up, begins to feel the withdrawal sickness that Gary is going through.

John shows up at the grocery store, uses his psychic paper, I mean enchanted playing card, to get in and starts asking questions of the people who were there. It seems the bugs went into a meat delivery guy, so John tracks him to the factory. He finds the dead body of the delivery guy, one bug comes out of his mouth. There's another dead body, only it's not dead. It's a walker, I mean the demon. John takes out a bottle that he had prepared and starts to chant. The possessed woman does a backward crabwalk until the bugs fly out of her and into the bottle, only John drops the bottle, shattering it. The bugs swarm at him, but he uses a side of beef as a shield and manages to escape, locking the beetles inside.

Back at the hideout. John knows there is something going on with Zed. It's stronger than any hunger demon that John has ever encountered. Luckily for John, Zed was able to see the markings on the possessed man in Sudan when she touched Gary. John leaves to see an expert.

John goes to see a friend, Nommo (Charles Parnell), at an African restaurant. He shows Nommo the drawings, Nommo knows the demon but doesn't know how to stop it. He and John are going to discover together, by taking the mist, a very powerful drug. Nommo tells John that mist's effects last forever, or until you take the counter agent. John begins to see visions of burning, until Nommo takes his eye and puts it into his own head. It sounds pretty cheesy, but it works, mostly because of the way the characters accept it. The demon's name is Nemmoth and it has always been there. The local shaman knew of only one way to stop it, by offering a boy as a sacrifice. He removed the boys tongue, carved the pattern into his head with a special knife. The Shaman left the boy trapped, so that the demon would consume itself. Only the demon freed itself, and stumbled into Gary. Nommo feeds John the antidote. John needs to get himself a new knife.

Gary wants to go fight the demon, but Zed tries to stop him. Gary grabs her, forcing her to feel his withdrawal, until she is whimpering on the floor. The scene switches to the factory where the demon had been trapped. Had been.

John returns to find Zed on the floor and Gary gone. John goes searching for Gary, looks under an overpass and finds Gary getting stomped on by a couple of dealers/addicts. John offers to square things by giving the dealers/addicts the best high they will ever have, the mist. He did not, however, give them the counteragent. Note to self, never take anything from John Constantine.

Gary tells John that he betrayed him, that he betrayed Astra. Gary was high when it all happened. He hid under a bed when everything went haywire then he ran when it was all done. John tells Gary that it wasn't his fault, that he should never have gotten them involved. They all knew he was high. John says that it wasn't Gary's world, John dragged him there. He had every right to be afraid. They see a news report about an attack at a theater, and John tells Gary that they have a demon to catch, together. Remember what I just said about never taking anything from John Constantine? He is being really nice to Gary right now. And John Constantine isn't nice. Is he already thinking that he found a new vessel for the demon?

They go to a museum, and John plans to cause a distraction while Gary steals the knife. He is about to break the door open when Manny freezes things. He asks John if he really wants to go through with this, John says he can do it. It's not looking good for Gary continuing to live a demon-free life. John distracts the guard while Gary goes to get the knife. When Gary returns with the knife, John has hypnotized the guard, has him doing ballet.

At the theatre, they both steal ids from EMTs. They go in and find the demon feasting. John says that the demon will be out and looking for a new host soon, they need to get started. John tells Gary that they need a live, human body to contain the demon. Gary realizes what John's plan is, why the two of them are alone. Gary is willing to do this, to make his life mean something. John tells him that it won't be quick, days of sheer agony. Gary is willing, and John tells him that he's proud. Truly. He even seems to mean it this time. John starts to chant, calling the demon out. The bugs fly into Gary's mouth and it's still gross to watch. Gary screams and John begins cutting his face.

John returns to the safehouse with Gary and Zed is pissed. She said that John used him, that Gary came as a friend and John betrayed him, manipulated him. John reminds her that he said people around him die. He never asked Gary to come to him and there was no other way. He tells Zed that if she can't handle it she should leave. She can see that John actually does care, that he didn't want this, that it's eating him alive. She stays and helps. John sits, holding his friend's hand as he screams and writhes in pain. Manny shows up, but doesn't stop time, doesn't say anything. He just watches, with a look of sympathy.

This was another pretty good episode, but once again it left me wanting more from it. It was predictable, and lacked any real suspense for most of the way through. First of all, the opening being so similar to last week is a problem. There really should have been more episodes in between. And we are again going with a friend of John's needing help. Last time, he was trying to figure out what happened to Bernie, this week he needed to help Gary. What about the map that Liv left him? What about the growing darkness? The first episode made it seem like the show would be building to something rather than just a monster, or demon, of the week. I would like to see a little more of Manny, see something that is connected to what we saw in other episodes, at least make us question where everything is going.

The demon in this episode wasn't much either. It basically turned people into zombies, but one at a time. And the whole demon made out of a ton of little bugs thing was done way back in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

That said, some things did work in this epidose, most notably the star. Matt Ryan absolutely nailed it, especially the last couple of scenes. The range of emotions that he was able to convey without words was impressive. It's not an easy role. John Constantine is glib on the outside but inwardly tortured. He does horrible things and knows it, betrays not just those around him but himself as well. Ryan does a great job conveying all this without falling into melodrama or overacting.

And the episode really did help to differentiate John Constantine from other characters on TV. A lot of heroes can act like a jerk at times. And a lot of heroes are willing to sacrifice those around them for the greater good. But John did it without a second thought. There was no conversation with Manny about whether or not he should do this, no whining about there being no other choice. Gary was an addict, would always be an addict, couldn't be trusted and had to be sacrificed. That was the way it was and John had no problem doing what needed to be done. He was upset that he had to do it, but that didn't stop him from lying to and manipulating a man that looked up to him, a man that called him a friend. Not to mention that he also gave the addicts the mist for no reason other than payback. They will spend their lives stuck in a hallucination because they got in John's path.

Like I said, the episode was pretty good. But I am still waiting for Constantine to show that it can be more than that.

Rich Epstein writes for Bleeding Cool.  He can be found on twitter at @kaspe_r11.

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