Constantine Ep. 13 Review: And So It Ends

Constantine, Episode 13: Waiting For The Man

Ah, it’s such a shame that this series – this season, even – got cut off before it can have a proper conclusion. Trying to judge this as a season or series finale really isn’t fair (and likewise I wasn’t really being fair to the previous two episodes), because the way it is written it really feels like a mid-season finale and the show writers are really confident that they are going to get around ten to fifteen more episodes down the line to properly flesh out their plotlines and characters.

And this episode really feels like an ‘escalation’ episode. We get the surprising but not unwelcome returns of both Jim Corrigan (a.k.a. Spectre) and Papa Midnite as the horror movie cliché we go for this time around involves satanic weddings, hillbillies and implied pedophilia. This rather sorry excuse for a filler plot really hurt this episode the most, because, well, the one-shot guest stars for this episode are borderline annoying, and “the Man” isn’t threatening at all to our heroes. Sure, we fear for the life of the poor little girl but honestly I’d rather we just dispense with the filler plot entirely. For all the buildup that this is yet another in a series of many, many things caused by the Rising Darkness we get scant little in lieu of information about said Rising Darkness.

The fact that the girl doesn’t really seem to come from a particularly broken home, neither did the Man or his ghostly child-wives really tempt Vesta or whoever beyond going all “hey, y’wanna get married?” which really screams idiocy that the girl played along all the way through the Man’s fly-infested home and all the creepiness and only backing out at the satanic altar. The Man and his ghostly child-wives don’t even seem to be putting any kind of spell on her, so it’s yet another strike for the moronic filler plot.

Also, this episode it’s Chas’s turn to go absent.

There is a lot of content in this episode. There is Papa Midnite and his voodoo zombie (an actually accurate adaptation of how voodoo-created zombies are, actually) trying to claim the bounty that the Brujeria has put on Constantine’s head, with Papa Midnite having somewhat of a sympathetic goal in reviving his sister. Midnite’s definitely being built up to be more than just a villain with a funny accent, and, again, it’s a shame that the show didn’t get to do as much with him as I would’ve liked. There is Jim Corrigan’s return as your helpful friend in the police force, and Zed having to deal with both falling for Corrigan as well as seeing visions of his death and eventual rebirth as the Spectre – something we’ll sadly never see. And honestly I'd rather we get more stories about Constantine instead of just trying to jump the gun and make even more DC character tie-ins. We get a bit of nice little moral ambiguity from Constantine, which is something the show version sorely lacks – he goads Corrigan into letting the Man run away so they will have a justifiable reason to shoot him. We also get a surprise appearance by a corpse-possessing Gary that warns Constantine about the Rising Darkness and Brujeria, neither of which we are getting real answers about.

And, most of all, we get the final twist that Manny the angel is really the man pulling the strings behind the Brujeria all along. It’s a nice, awesome little twist that makes sense yet warrants a crapton of explanation. Why is he doing this? What are his motives? Why did he deem Constantine untouchable at the end of the episode? How far does the Brujeria organization extend? Why recruit Constantine to fight demons and the rising darkness if Manny is the one behind it all? I’m thinking of all the previous Manny appearances. Him being dissatisfied with his lot in life has been hinted in his two most prominent episodes – the previous episode and the Imogen one – and he has been uncharacteristically cryptic and whatnot. Just who the identity of Manny, and what his main goal is…

Ah, so many questions, and none of them will get answered. Or maybe they will, if I ever decide to read the gigantic collection of comics that is Hellblazer.

Also, y’know, add Resurrection Crusade, Spectre and Papa Midnite’s fight against Constantine into the big pile of “unresolved things” alongside Manny and the Brujeria. It’s a shame, really, and I know this episode isn’t filmed with the mindset of resolving things, but honestly I wanted and expected at least one of the plot threads to be tied up. There really isn’t any finality, or even a sense of finality, to the episode. Maybe it would’ve been better spent cutting either the filler ‘the Man’ plot or the Papa Midnite angle and having something more Brujeria-related thrown in. But alas, we are out of time. This review is written a fair amount of time after the show’s cancellation and any attempts at resurrecting it like a voodoo zombie is cut short.

Although I do mourn the loss of the show thanks to losing the opportunity to learn about the stories of these interesting characters and all the mystery surrounding them, the things that work against the show’s favour really isn’t ignorable either. The show focuses way too much time on meaningless filler horror show with vague allusions about ‘rising darkness’ every episode, and while it’s interesting… fifteen episodes down the line and we really didn’t get much answers. The fact that the show is insistent on putting one or two of its primary supporting cast (Zed and Chas) out of commission every other episode is also a bit of a poorly-managed thing, as is the whole “oh, this episode is supposed to be aired after the pilot” or “oh, this episode is going to introduce the NEW female lead” mess that is the earlier episodes. The fact that Constantine tries to adapt Hellblazer… and then proceeds to create a fair amount of their own original – and in several cases, extremely filler-worthy – stories is probably another mark in the fans’ eyes. I have it on good authority that they filed off a lot of John Constantine’s more questionable character parts, more of the darker side of his character that we saw in the Gary episode, ended up not being adapted in favour of a more family-friendly lead. And the fact that, well, Constantine is trying to compete with shows like the ten-season-strong Supernatural and what-have-you on the network that also cover a lot of the same angel/demon/mystical beings premise and really based on Hellblazer a fair bit… yeah.

I think it’s still a bit too harsh for the network to hammer the nail down on the coffin before they can get at least 20 episodes to wrap up this first season, but hey, at least part of the cancellation is justified. Doesn’t mean that I like it, though, because what the hell Manny I need to know the conclusion to that!