Constantine, Episode 8: The Saint of Last Resorts, Part 1
This is the point in the middle of the season where the show drops the filler arcs and starts delving into something more epic and addressing the plot points built up throughout the season. And, well, with a two-parter smack dab in this short season, it certainly does so. Among the things we get covered in this episode are: more of Constantine's mysterious Newcastle incident, more on the Rising Darkness including a name of the organization, and finally some progress on Zed's ever-mysterious past. Also, the villains here are actually bigger mythological names so they certainly feel more threatening than Child Ghost #9592.
The episode starts off pretty generic, just like any of the last three or four filler Constantine episodes. We get a couple of horror movie cliches that we haven't already covered before, even -- a nunnery and baby abductions. We even get a possible bit of lampshade hanging as Constantine decides to take Chaz on this particular journey and leave Zed behind -- a subtle jab at how the previous episodes had Constantine take one or the other but rarely both?
It ends up with both groups fighting against the two big bad organizations of this season (well, show) though. Constantine finds out that what seems to be a simple 'figure out what demonic creature is babynapping' case ends up against a far more ancient evil than he thinks, real-life Mesopotamian childbirth demon Lamasthu (romanticized as a Sister of Eve on the same level of Lilith in this show, though Constantine's first guess was Lilith), and finally put a name to the cult of witches causing the Rising Darkness -- La Brujeria. La Brujeria is one of the villains in Hellblazer, or so I'm told, so yay for that.
Meanwhile, Constantine's stupid decision to lock Zed in the magic house ends up causing her to explore and escape... and bump into naked model man Eddie. Or whoever he's called. Zed seems to do the monumentally idiotic thing of bringing Eddie into Constantine's magic sanctuary to have some bang bang... but she's better than that and beats Eddie into submission. Though she ends up being followed by people working for her father, and it's implied her father abused her to utilize her powers. Also her real name's Mary. A bit convenient as the very same random magical things like the bottomless foggy Willy Wonka pit that Zed finds earlier ends up getting rid of one of her pursuers, but she gets away from all of them. It's honestly not much, but it gives a fair amount of depth to Zed while still not revealing a whole lot, other than her father wants her back, and he's the leader of a cult or some shit. I would've thought her father is a member of La Brujeria, but apparently it's a different villainous organization called the Resurrection Crusade or something?
This episode also introduces Sister Anne-Marie, Constantine's old love interest and a participant of the Newcastle disaster... and she's turned into a nun after the whole incident. Constantine actually knew her before Newcastle, though, and the two of them are apparently old friends and Anne-Marie is actually the one who introduced Constantine to mysticism. She also has the ability to create astral projections to contact Constantine, which we don't exactly learn how she gets it -- but will no doubt prove useful in the second part.
Constantine and Anne-Marie, actually, are the ones that really work the best here. The chemistry between the two work really well, and their history, which we get hints and bits of but never the full picture, is really effective in telling a story without devoting a crapton of screentime to flashbacks or whatever. And Anne-Marie calling Constantine out in the present day for being, well, a douchebag and for seemingly not repenting for the whole Newcastle thing really works well and hits home more than usual.
Anne-Marie is rightfully disturbed at Constantine's rather unorthodox methods at dealing with mystic stuff, and quickly guesses the guilt-trip plot that Constantine used on Gary a while back. But she goes along with it willingly, and the clincher for her had to be when Constantine threatens to snap a baby's neck, or drown a baby, to extort a confession out of Lamasthu. This ends up leading to Anne-Marie shooting Constantine and leaving him as bait for the Invunche -- quoting Constantine's own line about sacrificing everything to save the innocent. Now with five more episodes to go no one really buys that Constantine isn't going to worm his way out of this one, but it's still a pretty interesting plot twist.
The demon-hunting baby-rescue bit is general stuff. Lamasthu honestly looks a lot more like a live action version of the evil witch crone from Snow White, but hey, I'd prefer this over jumpscares. As much as Lamasthu is built up, Lamasthu's got a pretty generic backstory, about how La Brujeria and the Rising Darkness is allowing her to expand her domain on Earth. The way Team Constantine handles her also ends up being kinda mundane, with Constantine rather hilariously dipping a chicken in blood and using a spell to fool Lamasthu into thinking it's a third baby... before using an amulet belonging to a demon of famine, Pazuzu, who also apparently hates Lamasthu. Convenient, that. (Pazuzu's another real Mesopotamian god and starred in The Exorcist, a horror film you might have heard of).
I'm honestly not sure where the Invunche came from. I mean, yeah, it's cool that the Invunche's appearance was foreshadowed by Zed's creepy drawings, but when it showed up in the end all twisty and twitchy and crawly and shit, its appearance... well, let me put it this way. Before Constantine identifies it by name, I thought Lamasthu transformed the blood-chicken they used to trick her into a demon. Because it does look pretty much like raw plucked chicken. It does end up being creepy, but again, good creepy in a way that does not involve screaming into the audience's face. How Constantine is utterly batshit scared by the Invunche in a way that he isn't for any of the horrors he's met before except maybe the Khapra Beetle demon... yeah.
Overall, though, it's all pretty decent stuff. This episode really makes liberal use of Chekov's Gun, and the sheer amount of how something gets mentioned early on only to appear later on is insane and at times rather too predictable. We get some payoff on the Zed end, though regrettably not quite enough to satiate curiousity -- it's nice to see the girl holding her own in multiple situations and getting out of her predicaments, though. We get some great moments between Constantine and Anne-Marie, who is a surprisingly engaging character despite being a presumably one-off character. The Invunche is suitably creepy. And both Lamasthu and the Resurrection Cult or whatever are pretty decent mooks that build up their respective organizations.
Constantine and Anne-Marie, actually, are the ones that really work the best here. The chemistry between the two work really well, and their history, which we get hints and bits of but never the full picture, is really effective in telling a story without devoting a crapton of screentime to flashbacks or whatever. And Anne-Marie calling Constantine out in the present day for being, well, a douchebag and for seemingly not repenting for the whole Newcastle thing really works well and hits home more than usual.
Anne-Marie is rightfully disturbed at Constantine's rather unorthodox methods at dealing with mystic stuff, and quickly guesses the guilt-trip plot that Constantine used on Gary a while back. But she goes along with it willingly, and the clincher for her had to be when Constantine threatens to snap a baby's neck, or drown a baby, to extort a confession out of Lamasthu. This ends up leading to Anne-Marie shooting Constantine and leaving him as bait for the Invunche -- quoting Constantine's own line about sacrificing everything to save the innocent. Now with five more episodes to go no one really buys that Constantine isn't going to worm his way out of this one, but it's still a pretty interesting plot twist.
The demon-hunting baby-rescue bit is general stuff. Lamasthu honestly looks a lot more like a live action version of the evil witch crone from Snow White, but hey, I'd prefer this over jumpscares. As much as Lamasthu is built up, Lamasthu's got a pretty generic backstory, about how La Brujeria and the Rising Darkness is allowing her to expand her domain on Earth. The way Team Constantine handles her also ends up being kinda mundane, with Constantine rather hilariously dipping a chicken in blood and using a spell to fool Lamasthu into thinking it's a third baby... before using an amulet belonging to a demon of famine, Pazuzu, who also apparently hates Lamasthu. Convenient, that. (Pazuzu's another real Mesopotamian god and starred in The Exorcist, a horror film you might have heard of).
I'm honestly not sure where the Invunche came from. I mean, yeah, it's cool that the Invunche's appearance was foreshadowed by Zed's creepy drawings, but when it showed up in the end all twisty and twitchy and crawly and shit, its appearance... well, let me put it this way. Before Constantine identifies it by name, I thought Lamasthu transformed the blood-chicken they used to trick her into a demon. Because it does look pretty much like raw plucked chicken. It does end up being creepy, but again, good creepy in a way that does not involve screaming into the audience's face. How Constantine is utterly batshit scared by the Invunche in a way that he isn't for any of the horrors he's met before except maybe the Khapra Beetle demon... yeah.
Overall, though, it's all pretty decent stuff. This episode really makes liberal use of Chekov's Gun, and the sheer amount of how something gets mentioned early on only to appear later on is insane and at times rather too predictable. We get some payoff on the Zed end, though regrettably not quite enough to satiate curiousity -- it's nice to see the girl holding her own in multiple situations and getting out of her predicaments, though. We get some great moments between Constantine and Anne-Marie, who is a surprisingly engaging character despite being a presumably one-off character. The Invunche is suitably creepy. And both Lamasthu and the Resurrection Cult or whatever are pretty decent mooks that build up their respective organizations.
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