Saturday, November 22, 2014

Constantine 1.05: "Danse Vaudou"

“Those people came to you for closure, mate, and you took their money without thought of consequence. Because of you they’ve got more blood on their hands, that’s disrespectful.”
- Constantine

This week’s adventure takes our demon-hunting trio to New Orleans; city of jazz and creepy surgical-mask covered women who kill people with fabric shears. The cop who saw the whole thing is now on leave for shooting at nothing. But Constantine, Chaz and Zed are on it. Her powers were on the fritz but Constantine managed to get them working again thanks to a zoetrope. She sees a young boy being taught how to shoot by his mom and when they meet the cop, Jim Corrigan, she realizes she saw his past. Oh and comic book fanatics should be pleased that when Constantine was fixing the zoetrope, he was smoking. The writers are also really playing up the flirtiness between Zed and Constantine. They’ve got two rooms in a nice hotel and Zed teases him about not respecting her enough to share a room. He explains that he respects everyone he sleeps with but he wants to know something about them first. So Zed lets him know she doesn’t like champagne. The two of them as a couple could be entertaining as hell, especially since she calls him on his shit (kind of like Donna did with Ten). They are heading to the elevator when Zed has another vision of a car crash. We see a kid hitchhiking and getting hit on by the driver and then the kid disappears and reappears all bloody in the middle of the street, causing said accident. I don’t think Corrigan is going to be pleased with Constantine knowing all these details before anyone else. It makes our anti-hero look mighty guilty.

I was right. Corrigan shows up at the crash site and arrests Constantine as a murderer. So that leaves Zed and Chaz to do the leg work while Constantine convinces Corrigan to look into old case files about other people killed in the area as well as other stabbings. Constantine thinks they’ve got tow ghosts on the loose. I have to say, I like the way Zed handles things. She’s a very convincing con woman and she just plays off Constantine so well!

Chaz has luck finding the masked woman and he saves a guy from certain death. But he gets hacked up quite badly by the ghost himself. Paramedics shows up and at first it looks like he’s dead but he comes back to life and heals himself. I really want to know how he can do that! Back at the precinct, we learn that the woman was a model who was disfigured by a competitor five years ago and that the woman killed herself after getting out of the hospital and the boy was killed three years ago in a car accident. Constantine wants to talk to the boy’s living relative and the other model. Corrigan is very concerned about all of this and how it reconciles with his faith and such. All Constantine can say is that it may mark him and touch him but it doesn’t have to change who he is. Interesting.

So Constantine goes to talk to the former model who is working part-time at an animal shelter while Zed chats up granny. They both get rather sad stories but the important thing is that they each said they were able to talk to the ones they hurt/lost thanks to Papa Midnite. Oh Constantine, you have some seriously creeptastic nemeses. Now I’ll admit, I have no idea if the scene of a big party with dancing and drums and blood drinking is accurate for the practice of voodoo but it was definitely freaky. A woman goes to Papa Midnite to speak to her husband who died from cancer when Constantine cuts him. He confronts Midnite about his magic going awry but Papa doesn’t believe it. He magically drugs Constantine and locks him in the trunk of his car. He then talks to his sister (which is a big painted and carved skull) and asks if what Constantine said about the spirits rising completely and going on killing sprees was true. So he pays the woman with the cancer husband a visit and confirms that it is true as the husband is back and stealing away the wife’s life force energy. So it looks like he and Constantine will be teaming up to take them down and try to beat back the rising dark just a little bit. And Constantine gets to ask the skull a question if they succeed.

Chaz is still out walking the streets trying to find the model while Zed is trying to keep people off the road so no more accidents happen. Corrigan rolls up and suggests it might be better if they are the ones to pick the kid up. They’re driving around for quite a while and Corrigan drops a little hint that he knows who Zed really is and asks when she changed her name. I really want to know more about her. Even just a little bit. Well it turns out Corrigan was right and they pick the kid up. Zed mentions some personal details about the kid and he disappears from the car and rematerializes in the road. Instead of swerving to avoid hitting him, Zed just plows on through.

Constantine and Papa Midnite are stealing the bodies of the three ghosts to try and burn them and return the spirits to the place they belong. Meanwhile, Zed wants to try and pick up the kid again and get him to stick around this time. Just before they hang up, they reveal that at least the grandma and the other model felt like the deaths were their fault. I’m guessing the wife does too. Unfortunately, the spell doesn’t work and Constantine and Papa Midnite get into a bit of a fist fight, throwing insults and hurtful reminders of the people they’ve lost. But, Constantine figures out why it went wrong and what was missing so he needs to call Zed. At least her plan to get the kid to stay works when she talk to him about his grandmother and why she did what she did and that really they just had a communication problem. Oh and Chaz finds the model and starts asking her questions to keep her from running off. It was kind of hilarious.

With the guilty people on board this time, the spell works and sends the ghosts on their way. We also learn that Zed was a missing person in the area and the file no longer exists thanks to Corrigan. But things get creepy when he kisses her hand. He glows green and he’s all bloody. I guess it’s her powers picking something up of what’s to come. I hadn’t realized until that point that they hadn’t actually touched. Anyway, she tries to brush it off and act like nothing happened as Constantine and Papa Midnite share a drink. Constantine wants to know what there is to know about the rising darkness and how to fight it but the answer doesn’t bode well for him. According to the skull, all of his efforts are futile and it’s because someone close to him will betray him. I have a feeling it might end up being Corrigan somewhere down the line. While I don’t necessarily trust Papa Midnite it was nice to see him and Constantine working together, even if only briefly.

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