On only its second episode, ‘Constantine’ seems to have found a comfortable place in the genre to play around in. If the series’ first episode was clunky and overly expository, if stylish and kind of cool, the second episode is a superior show by leaps and bounds. It’s so much better, in fact, that it feels like a completely different program. Which, like Constantine himself, is something to celebrate and something to bemoan.
It was certainly public knowledge that the show’s producers decided to go “in a different direction” with their leading lady after the first episode was filmed, and the awkwardness of that decision revealed itself in the show’s second episode. Not only is Liv—the show’s secondary protagonist in the premiere episode—absent from the episode, she isn’t even mentioned. There’s simply no effort made to acknowledge this supposed Chosen One and it glares. Hard. Why not cast a throw-away line about how Liv isn’t coming back to L.A., etc.? Instead of attempting to explain Liv’s very conspicuous disappearance, the show goes ahead and replaces her with a young woman who looks so similar to Liv that it’s distracting, has a unusual-but-not-too-unusual three-letter name (Zed), and a penchant for psychic visions. Why cast someone with such similar features to Liv? Are the producers hoping viewers won’t notice the change? That we’ll be so confused by someone so different and so similar to Liv that we’ll be caught in a back and forth of wait-is-that-the-same-lady-from-last-week?-No.-Yes?-Maybe? that we’ll just give up and accept the change?
More likely: the producers had an idea in mind for a leading lady and weren’t making any exceptions no matter what direction the show went in.
Though awkward, the character replacement is ultimately a good one. Zed is what I was hoping Liv would be from the beginning: someone who’s unfamiliar with the consequences of her powers and of the wider world of sorcery, but someone who isn’t a complete outsider. Zed is a psychic who wants help from Constantine to better understand her “gifts.” With Zed and Constantine, there’s no need to clumsily explain the demons and monsters inhabiting this world. Instead, we’re carried along on an immersive and rich supernatural ride without having strangeness awkwardly spelled out for us every step of the way. The assumption of the audience’s willingness to invest in these characters shows a commitment from the show-runners that gives this reviewer a lot of hope for the future.
I want to keep this spoiler-free, so I won’t mention too many plot details, but this tiny but high-stakes adventure in a backwater Pennsylvania town seems to be a great pace for the show. Many people aren’t fans of the “monster of the week” quality of many popular fantasy shows (Buffy Season 1 springs to mind as an example) but I love it as a means to introduce the audience to our heroes and to test their mettle—or lack thereof—without wiping out our willingness to come along for the adventure with an overabundance of heavy plot. As long as each episode continues building the “spreading darkness” that Constantine’s smoking two packs a day over, I would love to see this world fill in with spells, monsters, and heroes just as it did this episode.
Highlight moment of the week: Constantine pouring bloody water over himself and seeing nearby ghosts through the sheets of liquid. So. Awesome.
Cringe-worthy line of the week: “And then I remembered what you said. You’re Romanai. There’s nothing blacker than Gypsy magic.” Hellblazer-canon aside, this line is simply, aggressively racist. “Gypsy” is a slur referring to the Roma, a dispersed people who have struggled and continue to struggle through racial discrimination throughout Europe and Asia. No matter what whomever wrote about the group in the pages of ‘Hellblazer’ (if, indeed, anything about the Roma was written in them: I haven’t read every issue), there’s no need to carry a racist sentiment that many people still strangely believe to be true—that “gypsies” are evil and nothing else—onto network television. Check yourselves before you wreck yourselves, guys and gals.
Final word: Though the premiere trudged along, the second episode of ‘Constantine’ hopped, skipped, and jumped its way into this reviewers good graces. As long as the show continues to smartly mix world-immersion with decent character development, I’ll keep tuning in.