The most controversial comic book based show on television returns! After what I thought was a pretty enjoyable and very promising first episode, Constantine returns with its follow-up effort: ‘The Darkness Beneath’. And, not to spoil the rest of the review or anything, but I did think that this episode was even better than the first.
But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. Now, let’s dive into my five thoughts on Constantine’s ‘The Darkness Beneath’.
1. Hot Opening
Major improvement over the first episode #1: the setting.
By moving the setting of the episode from the city of Atlanta to a small mining town in Pennsylvania, Constantine has already upped the creepiness factor tenfold. With a similar air to the episode as things like the original Silent Hill, the opening of An American Werewolf In London and especially My Bloody Valentine, this is a very creepy episode and very good sign that this show has a good grasp on how to wring out the scares from TV.
All this is encapsulated in the cold open for the episode, which sets up the event that leads Constantine to the town. It’s subtle, it’s unnerving, it’s creepy and it has a great payoff before cutting to, easily, the best title card of any of the comic book shows on right now. Seriously, all of the other DC shows (especially The Flash, I mean, c’mon) and Agents Of SHIELD have nothing on the title card for Costantine, which eschews the subtle framing of the first episode’s title shot for something like the best title card Supernatural never used. Great stuff.
2. Zed’s Dead, Baby
Major improvement over the first episode #2: Zed.
Now, look, I did not hate Lucy Griffith’s Liv Aberdine. In fact, I thought Griffith was pretty good in the role, it just wasn’t a role that was terribly well written. Built to be a doe-eyed damsel in distress who would watch in awe as Constantine did literally anything in order to build the mystique of the character for the audience, she was basically a walking trope, but was pretty necessary for the structure of the pilot and had room for development.
But Liv is gone now, sadly, and in her place comes Zed. Now, Zed is an entirely different woman. Where Liv was, ostensibly, a normal girl thrust into the world of demons and spirits, Zed is a woman already entrenched in Constantine’s world even if she doesn’t exactly know how or why. Seen at the end of the first episode obsessively drawing the image of Constantine himself, Zed shows up here and is actually a major part of the episode.
Not only that, but because she’s already connected to the world of demons and spirits and all that, she makes for a great foil for Constantine in this episode as the two banter and bounce some wit off of each other. Zed is a great addition to the show and I would really love for to stick around for a while.
3. How To Solve A Problem Like Serialisation
In comics, serialisation is pretty easy. Mixing up story arcs and single, self-contained stories builds a larger mythology within the series and if you’re working inside of a larger universe, crossovers can do that even better. TV shows aren’t quite the same. Self-contained stories can seem pointless to the audience unless there is a connection to a larger story woven through the narrative. Hell, we even came up for a word for it: filler.
And so, this episode gave the answer to the question “How is Constantine going to explain away John randomly showing up to places all over the world to solve random mysteries?” Turns out the answer is linked very heavily to the first episode. If you remember, the first episode ended with Constantine receiving a map of the United States that Liv had scryed with, revealing points of dark energy all over the country. Each of the points, it turns out, is the basis of an episode as that map is pretty much the only reason the show gives for why Constantine ends up in Pennsylvania.
It’s not the worst reason I’ve seen for linking even the most filler of episodes to the season’s narrative and can allow for more out there stories in the future.
Continued below4. Constantine The Trickster
This episode one thing really well: in showing Constantine investigating the disturbances in this mining town, it shows the con artist and trickster side to the character and allows Matt Ryan to play with that in a really fun way. From blending into crowds to sneaking into mines to straight up lying to people in order to get the information he needs, this is an episode that shows Constantine as a man playing all the angles at any given moment. Along the way are some nice moments that reference his roots as a magician and shows that his experience in magic is not solely linked to how much Latin Matt Ryan can recite.
Another thing that might make a few people happy is the compromises that the show takes to establish that, yes, John Constantine is a man who smokes cigarettes even if they’re not allowed to showing him actually smoking. It’s a nice nod and a neat way around network limitations to say that even if they’re not allowed to shot that side the character, they can establish that it still exists (unlike his bisexuality *cough*).
5. [Scouse Accent] My Bloody Valentine
As I said, this episode takes place in a mining town and that shift from the big city to a small town upped the creepiness factor of the episode by a lot. Another thing that helped that is by shifting the otherwordly aspect of the episode to a location – the mine – and having it target more than one person. Instead of it being an episode about Constantine protecting one person and trying to draw one demon out, it’s an episode about Constantine racing against time to stop whatever is killing people before it’s too late.
Sure, it’s a lot more X-Files-y than I thought this show would go, but from the writing to the performances from Matt Ryan and Angelica Celaya (as well as some of the townsfolk, like the obligatory preacher-who-lost-his-faith) it actually worked really well and ended up being an episode even more enjoyable than the first. And, honestly, if any show could pull off X-Files with demons instead of aliens, it’s this one. (Sorry, Supernatural.)
