By: Brandon Wolfe
The recent announcement that NBC has declined to order additional episodes of ‘Constantine’ beyond its initial 13-episode order, rendering the series unofficially canceled, is starting to sting a bit. ‘Constantine’ continues to gather steam. What felt at first like a blandly flavored supernatural time-waster is now inching its way toward becoming something worthwhile. Pity it’s a dead show airing.
After an evocative opener where we are shown the aftermath of a bloodbath where the only survivor appears to be a young girl, we meet up with Constantine in bed with a young woman and being rushed out the window half-dressed when her boyfriend comes home unexpectedly. It’s a nice character building moment for our hero, illuminating the haphazard lifestyle he gravitates toward. From there, he and Chas head off to Birmingham to look into the massacre. A bit of magical forensics work tells Constantine that the little girl was not a potential victim, but the perpetrator, possessed by the rage-filled spirit of a child. That spirit has since been displaced from the girl and has now set up shop across town in the body of a boy named Henry, who begins exhibiting peculiar behavior that concerns his loving mother and tough-love dad.
Using a frankincense-based spell, Constantine and Chas track the spirit to Henry’s home and Constantine tails the kid to school the next day, failing to prevent Henry from seriously injuring a bully when the yard-duty is too suspicious of Constantine’s appearance and shady child-observing to heed his warnings. John’s next tack is to go to the boy’s home, under the dubious guise of being a concerned school counselor, before taking the direct approach and informing Henry’s parents of the possession. That goes about as well as you might expect, with Henry’s dad delivering a fist to John’s face before having him arrested. However, after Henry’s mom observes some behavior that gets her to consider Constantine’s claims, she springs the exorcist from the clink and works with him on a plan to save her son.
“Rage of Caliban” is a strong installment, full of creepy imagery. Evil children can be a musty crutch for the horror genre, but it’s pulled off with some finesse here. The best part is the climax, where Constantine chases the possessed Henry into haunted-house attraction on Halloween night and must locate an actual monster amid scads of artificial ones popping out at him. It’s a fun sequence, executed well. There’s also some good character work on display with Henry’s parents. The father is a skeptic who prefers to exercise a “be a man” approach toward his son, but the show doesn’t take the obvious path of villainizing the man for his parenting techniques, taking the time to show that the man does possess real love and concern for his boy. It’s a refreshing take on a character type that is rarely shown such nuance in film and television.
Chas receiving the spotlight this week is also a welcome change. The show has shunted him to the side on a weekly basis since it began in favor of trying to cultivate a ‘Bones’-ish bond between Constantine and Zed, but this week it’s Zed who is awkwardly dispatched (with the hilariously flimsy excuse that she can’t participate in this days-long adventure because she has “art class”). It’s strange that ‘Constantine’ can’t seem to figure out how to incorporate all three characters at once, constantly feeling the need to write one of the two sidekicks out of an episode entirely, but Chas is a much stronger character than Zed, so it’s preferable that an episode favor him. He gets some funny moments to play here as well, as when he begins to casually bare his soul while holding a sword of truth in Constantine’s lair or not immediately recognizing the flaw of being completely upfront with Henry’s parents about his possession.
Less successful on the supporting roster is Harold Perrineau’s Manny, the smug angel who constantly materializes to Constantine for basically no reason. Manny has appeared in virtually every episode thus far and it’s the same song-and-dance each time. He pops up unexpectedly, trades haughty barbs with Constantine, provides no assistance or useful information and then vanishes. It’s an unappealing character exacerbated by a striking pointlessness. I assume that Manny will play a more substantial role in future episodes (what few there will be), but these repetitive sequences could stand to bear a little fruit in the meantime. Manny constantly reminding us of this impending “rising darkness” isn’t even especially useful because Constantine himself already reminds us of it every chance he gets.
But it’s Matt Ryan that continues to make this series sing. His disheveled, soccer-hooligan charm remains an utter joy, and the show seems to be slowly embracing the character’s vice-filled tendencies. In addition to the aforementioned one-night-stand and the frequent drinking, the show even allows him to light up a cigarette at episode’s end (though, in true Clintonian fashion, we never see him inhale). It’s a terrific performance, and if the show doesn’t continue on past this initial season, one can only hope against hope that Ryan will get the chance to reprise the role in the future, perhaps for Guillermo del Toro’s recently announced ‘Justice League Dark’ film, in which John Constantine plays a major role. It’s not bloody likely, but it’s a lovely thought all the same.
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