Posted in: Movies | Tagged: constantine, entertainment, Jim Corrigan, john constantine, nbc, Papa Midnight, television, Zed Martin

The Six Important Moments From This Week's Constantine – Waiting For The Man

This is a spoiler filled discussion about the season finale of Constantine… if you haven't seen it, you might want to turn away now.

Last night's episode was loosely based on the fourth issue of the Hellblazer series and is quite a bit of a game changer for almost all the characters involved. But with this being the final episode of the season and the fate of the series still up in the air… those changes may never get explored. The show pulled a 0.8 rating in the 18-49 demographic and 3.13 million viewers overall. That's not counting DVR watchers, internet viewers etc… There is still a chance that NBC might give the show a second season since it was jerked around so much or move it over to one of their other networks like SyFy… but we'll have to wait for that decision.

Here are what I think were the six important moments in last night's episode.

1) Gary Lester hijacking a corpse to send a message to John Constantine. From a story standpoint, John needed to know that there was a bounty on his head, but there were many other ways for him to find out. The key here is that this may lead to John having a new way to get information that would normally have to come through Manny. This could basically make Gary an afterlife informant and it's always better to have two information sources than one.

2) Zed Martin is having a lot of questions about her abilities and her seeing Jim Corrigan dead brings that all to the surface. Constantine has been dealing with this world a long time, but for Zed its only been a few months and she is already talking to corpses, has a new angel BFF, seems to have feeling for a soon to be dead cop and hangs out with a guy who has over two dozen different souls in his body. Manny is helping her feel better about her gift, but her decision to tell Corrigan what she saw was a big step in her acceptance of her role in all of this.

3) When John finds out that there is a bounty on his head, other than being a little more observant maybe, he pretty much ignores it and goes about his business. When Zed calls him on that, he makes a joke about his smoking is just as likely to kill him and how he is 'fit as a fiddle'… but the moment alludes to a run in the Hellblazer comic where John has to deal with terminal lung cancer. This was a storyline they planned to deal with through the last nine episodes of season one which did not happen. If there is a season 2 then it is likely to be a very big thing.

4) With Papa Midnight's return, we get to see him as an adversary again but we also get an idea of his true motivation. He doesn't want revenge on Constantine… or at least that's not his main purpose, he wants the life he would get for killing John… a life for a life… in which Midnight would use it to bring back his sister. Good villains are rarely motivated by greed, the best villains are motivated by love and Midnight's love for his sister and his willingness to do anything for her makes him a good adversary for Constantine and his world of varying shades of gray.

5) This is the second time we've hung around with Detective Jim Corrigan and thanks to Zed's visions, he's just a ticking clock leading towards the Spectre. But the Corrigan we met the first time wouldn't have attracted the Spirit of Vengeance. As Corrigan sees more and more of the Constantine world, the importance of justice far out weighs the law. At the end of the episode when Constantine convinces Corrigan that they should execute the man… he stepped closer to being the Spectre. Though they did leave who actually shot him vague. Both of them had guns… and John's was bigger.

6) And the biggest WTF moment of the episode had to be Manny meeting Midnight. After Midnight is arrested, Manny stops time and frees him. He then lets Midnight know that the bounty on Constantine has been rescinded and John is now off limits. When Midnight asks Manny if he works for the Brujeria… Manny says no, the Brujeria works for him. So, does this mean that Manny is behind the rising darkness? Maybe. It does say that things are far more complicated than we originally thought. Manny has had a plan all along hence he made contact with Constantine. But why would he pull John into it if he was behind it all? And why put a hit on John only to rescind it later? There are so many different directions they could go from that moment. Hopefully we'll get to see what they have in mind next.

With any luck, NBC will find someway to continue this series somewhere. It deserves it. The show has progressively gotten better week after week and I think a second season announcement and a marathon of the first season would bring in the viewers that the network is looking for.

Last night during the show, most of the cast and producers were live-tweeting the episode. I tweeted out that as a back up plan to get NBC to renew, they should move the series north and call it Chicago Occult… executive producer Daniel Cerone favorited the tweet. You don't get stuff like that from a show that is dead in the water.

And speaking of cast and crew… here is the To Hell And Back episode that goes with the season finale.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/jO4tB3vc5Dc[/youtube]

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