Saturday, February 7, 2015

Constantine 1.12: "Angels and Ministers of Grace"

“Nobody’s ever ready. Not for what we do. But this is the labyrinth we chose to walk, isn’t it?”
- Constantine

It’s hard to believe but we are one episode from the season (or more likely series) finale of “Constantine”. It’s been an interesting and crazy little show while it lasted and I for one am glad we got this chance to hang with Constantine and his crew. Speaking of, things are still a little off with our gang. Zed has kind of retreated from the world (into something of a Zen garden in the house). She seems to be afraid of her powers after what happened in New York. But she’s going to need to come out of hiding because Manny pays Constantine a visit (courtesy of Chas’s body) and says that they need to get to a particular hospital because there’s a girl named Taylor being brought in with an apparent overdose. We see her get some drugs from a guy and then something demonic attacks her and plunges both syringes into her chest. So, with a little coaxing and Chas stabbing himself in the leg with a screwdriver, they get to the hospital. Unfortunately, after Zed touches Taylor and has a rather scary vision about a burning hot light, she starts having another seizure.

Zed is sent for a CT scan and she’s kind of freaking out in the machine (understandable). Meanwhile, Constantine drags Chas down to the morgue to look at Taylor’s body. With a quick spell they determine that something made of dark matter killed her and it might be loose around the hospital. I’m guessing it might be just generally messing with people. There’s a guy who is getting skin grafts who got drunk and in a bar fight and wants to get fixed up and he’s just generally rude to the nursing staff. He yells at the custodian, too (who is constantly drinking on the job) but it’s the custodian who is the next victim.

It seems, too, that Zed’s visions may not be a divine gift after all. The ER doctor comes in and explains she’s got a small mass on one of the lobes of her brain and it could very likely be the cause of her visions and headaches. Constantine brushes it off but Zed is clearly upset. And at this point, Chas doesn’t even know because Constantine sent him back to the house to do some research. Constantine heads up to the roof to have a smoke when another doctor comes by to bum a light. Manny takes over the body and ends up in an argument over Zed’s condition with Constantine. So what does Constantine do? He uses some air from Hades to knock out our resident angel and then binds him to the body for a while. Manny protests this, claiming that he loses all connection to the angelic host and his powers by being in a body but Constantine doesn’t much care. They’ve got another dark matter attack to investigate and it turns out there custodian guy had a piece of the heart of darkness in him. According to Manny, there was a sorcerer who was super powerful until God kicked his ass and his power solidified into a giant rock of evil which got shattered and spread across the world in the Great Flood. Constantine tasks Manny with finding out if there were any connections between the two victims while he goes to home to check a theory. He has a piece of the dark diamond thing and he uses Chas to see how it works. While Chas is getting all evil and angry, Manny is experiencing some of the more sensual side of humanity. Namely the nurse who is flirting with him dragging him into a storage closet and giving him a blow job.

Constantine pages Manny and thinks they’ve got an idea on who the killer is once they realize the other victims were addicts who got sober and then fell off the wagon. The rude skin graft guy is who they are after until Constantine finds him and he’s being attacked by someone else. Unfortunately, Constantine doesn’t manage to save the skin graft guy. While he’s getting his ass handed to him, Manny does have a chance to talk to Zed (Constantine doesn’t handle emotions well as we’ve seen). Before they have a little heart to heart Zed’s doctor explains the biopsy procedure for the tumor and the audience learns he served in the military and has some shrapnel in his chest. Once he leaves and Zed calls Manny on not being a doctor, she is comforted to know that the tumor is there for a reason and her powers aren’t evil. Manny can’t confirm that they are a heavenly gift but Zed seems pretty relieved that she’s not demonic.

When Manny finds Constantine, the pieces start falling into place. The killer is Zed’s doctor and he gets very upset when Zed refuses the procedure and is checking herself out. Constantine and Manny show up and Constantine proves that the doctor is the killer because shards of the diamond are drawn together and it’s pulling on the doc’s chest something fierce. They have to chase him down and things are not looking good when a gate closes behind them all, locking them in. Zed says she understands now what her vision was and I have a feeling it’s going to be some light from heaven to scorch the doctor but we’ll see if I’m right. I was sort of right. Constantine reverses the spell on Manny and Manny ends up coming down and taking the doctor to heaven. The shard of the diamond is left behind and it combines with the shard that Constantine had but is safely tucked away in a little container. So not really smiting but still a good way to end. Zed ends up in the chapel and Constantine shows up to tell her that every morning he imagines all of the people he cares about are dead so when it actually happens, it won’t hurt as much. That’s a rather morbid way to start each day but in his line of work I suppose it’s reasonable. And now Constantine isn’t the only one who can see Manny. Constantine leaves Zed and Manny to chat about where Zed’s visions come from. She looked so at peace. The calm before the storm.

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