Constantine 1.13 “Waiting for the Man”

“[The finale is] an episode that moves everyone on, and it is satisfying and gives the potential of what next season could be.” – Matt Ryan

Really, Matt; what in the everChristing fuck gave you that impression?

Because last I checked NO IT’S FUCKING NOT.

Okay, sorry. Deep breaths.

This episode was good. It was absolutely just fine for a normal, mid-season episode of Constantine. It was dark, creepy, had some solid character interaction and development, and a satisfying conclusion… for the episode.

Not for the fucking season and especially not for the series. I’ve been hearing all about how the producers and actors are confident in getting a renewal, how they had these grand plans for a finale that would knock the network on their ass. So I honestly have no clue what happened here. I’m gobsmacked. Nonplussed. Flabbergasted. Dumbfounded. Other words with exactly the same meaning as those last four.

This episode is about a satanist with a thing for underage ghost brides. Which, I mean, fuck, who can blame the guy, who doesn’t like an underage ghost bride now and then*? Constantine, Zed, and… <sigh>… Jim Corrigan, have to hunt the guy down before he takes his fourth undead wife.

*Lexi supports neither pedophilia, necrophilia, or polygamy.

The team hits the road and starts getting their hands messy while the show keeps pretending they actually know what to do with the Brujeria. A bounty is placed by them on John’s head (which will make no fucking sense at all in a few minutes), and Papa Midnite’s on the case right away. He starts off by using a voodoo zombie to track John down, but when that doesn’t work he instead decides to… get a gun… and just… go look for him.

…What the fuck, show? A magician so skilled that he considers John to be little more than a dabbler, goes after his nemesis with a rifle? Just like, that’s it? No charms, no wards, no minions, no anything, literally just a gun? Because that’s how I’d get shit done if I had potentially-limitless capacity for spellcraft up to and including resurrecting the motherfucking dead. That’s exactly what I’d do. Just go shoot the guy. YEAH. MAKES SENSE. GOT IT. RIGHT.

Elsewhere, Zed keeps seeing visions of Jim Corrigan all glow-y and dead, like she did last time they met. Meanwhile he obliviously horns in on her since, hey, y’know. Romance! Romance doesn’t need any foundation in… anything, right? Last I checked, my big box of porn doesn’t think so*. So Zed and Jim get officially shipped, kissing at the end of the episode despite the fact that Zed sees him as a corpse every time she touches him, which I should assume includes lip-to-lip contact. MAKES SENSE. GOT IT.

*Lexi uses the internet for porn, like everyone else.

You may recall that at the end of my last review I bitched a little about the fact that we didn’t get a two-part finale, and wondered what the hell we were gonna be treated to for our last forty minutes of Constantine. Well, we didn’t actually get an entire episode dedicated to the ending at all. The episode runs just like any other, wraps up like any other, gives us no real closure on anything, Chas is literally not even in it, and the whole “finale” bit gets wrapped up in the last sixty seconds, with a groan-inducing cliffhanger that may or may not be meant to get you “hooked” and erases every drop of development for the character it’s attached to.

There is no season finale. It’s just a regular episode with a teaser for the second season, should it get picked back up. I’m… kind of embarrassed, actually, since I have really been wanting the series to get renewed but am now not sure it deserves it. I should give Constantine the benefit of the doubt and possibly chalk its… lackluster… finale to the excessive executive meddling we know it’s been privy to. It wasn’t given many episodes to work with, admittedly, and perhaps those restrictions stunted it. But I nonetheless find myself wishing that the significantly-more-powerful mid-season two-parter had been the season/series finale rather than what we got instead. It may not have wrapped anything up, but then again, neither did fucking this.