Saturday, December 6, 2014

Constantine 1.07: "Blessed are the Damned"

“They’re all just hungry for something to believe in and he’s preying on them.”
- Zed

We find our crisis of the week down in the south at a revival church that uses snakes. The guy is taking over for his father who recently died and instead of using a copperhead that isn’t poisonous, he uses a rattle snake that during the service bites him (obviously). He dies and then comes back to life. His hand glows and then he regrows a man’s leg. You just know that it isn’t going to go well. Back in Atlanta, Zed is doing a nude male model drawing class when she sees snakes all around her feet. She freaks out which prompts the teacher to call a little break. She’s kin a bit of a hurry to go tell Constantine what she saw when the male model asks her out to coffee and then dinner. She agrees to later in the week and then gets back to HQ. It seems that Constantine already knows about the preacher as it is circulating on conspiracy sites. So they’re heading to Kentucky.

Down at the church, we see the preacher heal more people. Constantine was initially skeptical but he sees that this is the real deal. Especially when the preacher starts rambling and chanting in angel speak. I have a feeling Manny is going to be visiting shortly. Elsewhere, the man with the regrown leg is getting checked out at the hospital when he attacks the doctor. It seems he might be possessed or something. Well, Constantine did say you can’t wield the type of power the preacher is without consequence. And the possessed leg guy is still messing with things. He kills a sheriff on the road and then runs off on all fours. Yeah, he’s definitely possessed by something.

Back at the church, Zed gets to meet the preacher and sees his moment near death and the angel that supposedly saved him. It isn’t quite as trippy for her as a few weeks ago but she’s a bit dazed. Constantine asks the preacher why he’s speaking in angelic tongues but the preacher just brushes him off, saying he can’t question the gifts given by God. He repeats something similar to his sister as he ducks inside later to write his next sermon. His sister doesn’t look well and it would appear that his talents are affecting her, too. Constantine explains to Zed that all this healing energy is going to have a negative effect on the land and they find a pond with a whole mess of dead fish. This prompts Constantine to try and have a chat with Manny. Just calling him doesn’t work and he has to actually perform a little ritual to get the angel to come visit. It reminded me a little of Charmed with white lighters having more than just one charge. Anyway, Manny insists he can’t do anything to sway outcomes but he does suggest Constantine say the angel speak facing the sun. Manny disappears and so Constantine gets Zed to hum. It turns out to be like echolocation. They follow the sound to a tree with a bunch of leaves on the ground and a woman with very white wings lying in them. Well that’s interesting that not all angels have the same color wings. Casts a little more doubt on Manny’s true intentions, doesn’t it?

Constantine and Zed get the angel (Imogen) to a safe place where she tells them that she was taking a dying mortal to heaven when he pulled off one of her wings and she fell to earth, crossing into our plane so she can manifest physically. Manny appears and he and Constantine have a conversation while Zed kind of blindly wanders around trying to find Manny. It turns out angels can die, their souls are extinguished and they just fade away to nothingness. So they need to retrieve the feather back from the preacher. But first, Constantine casts a protection spell around Imogen so nothing evil can get to her. He’s also rather dismissive of religion which confuses Zed since, you know, angels are real. We next see the preacher buttoning up his shirt with Imogen’s feather on a string around his neck when his sister shows up to tell him that the first guy he healed is a murder suspect. She also ends up coughing up blood but refuses to let him heal her. She doesn’t think what he’s doing is right and so he kicks her out of the fold.

Constantine tries to talk to the preacher and get the feather but the feather has other ideas. It kind of kicks his ass and so they are going to need a new plan. Plus, the first healed guy goes after Zed and Constantine has to stab him in the gut to stop him. It seems when she saw the preacher almost die, she took on some of his energy. So she’s going to use her feminine wiles to get close to the preacher. This includes baptism. She manages to snag the feather from him while he’s dunking her in some rather murky looking water and then a bunch of other healed people start going crazy and attacking people. They have to somehow get the feather back to Imogen to keep them all from going super violent.

Things quickly escalate as Zed, Constantine and the preacher head back to the church. Manny is chatting with Imogen about pain and what it’s like to feel solid when Zed races off to deliver the feather. But the preacher confesses to killing a man and Constantine realizes that the preacher was on his way to hell, not heaven. Unfortunately, there’s no way to let Zed know and she reunites the feather and Imogen. But it seems Manny is a little concerned by the things Imogen was saying about wanting to take the Earth back from the mortals. Imogen’s wings turn black and Manny realizes she’s one of the Fallen (she killed a mortal to see how easy it would be) and Constantine shows up just in time to see his protection spell working in reverse. Imogen tires to kill Zed and Manny disappears only to inhabit Zed’s body and rip out Imogen’s heart. It’s apparently pure evil so they don’t want to be messing with it for long. The preacher goes back to his church and tries to make amends for what he’s done and Constantine and Manny chat about how the veil between this world and Hell is ever thinning. The Rising Darkness is really on its way. And it seems Zed’s dinner date with the male model is going off the rails, too. She forgot all about it and then we see that he’s not alone. There are some other people who were hoping she’d show up. Either a contingent trying to get her out of the way for the Rising Darkness or her past catching up to her.

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