By: Brandon Wolfe
‘Constantine’ is still plugging right along. “The Devil’s Vinyl” is very much a case-of-the-week outing, but it allows the series to continue to color itself in. More so than last week’s episode, this entry provides a fair amount of detail on the world that John Constantine inhabits and the players that share that world with him. While the story at its core isn’t terribly vital, that which we are provided in the service of said story certainly is.
We open with Zed tracking down Constantine’s lair, using the clues afforded to her in her sketched visions. After finishing some weird blood ritual that isn’t explained to us, Constantine is headed out the door to Chicago to investigate the odd circumstances surrounded the apparent death by suicide of a music producer that John befriended in his pre-demon days when he was embarking on a singing career. Zed, whom Constantine and his associate Chas still don’t entirely trust, decides to tag along and they’re off.
The key object behind this death is a cursed record called the Acetate, forged when a blues singer sold his soul to the devil and the transaction went south. Now whoever listens to the record is beset by demonic forces. The Acetate was hidden decades earlier before being unearthed by a woman named Jasmine (Joelle Carter from ‘Justified’), who is attempting to use it to barter for the return of her soul, which she herself sold in exchange for the health of her cancer-ridden musician boyfriend years earlier.
The Acetate is a valuable commodity in the occult underworld, given its ability to be used as leverage against damnation, and it is also being pursued by a Jamaican mystic called Papa Midnite (Michael James Shaw), an adversary of Constantine’s whose control over the dark arts exceeds those of our hero. Midnite dispatches a couple of thugs to claim the object, attempting to do away with Constantine in the process by tying him down and leaving him to slowly bleed to death in true Bond-villain fashion. While bleeding out, Constantine is visited by Manny the angel, who snidely urges John to get back to work while not being able to help him out of his predicament. As far as angels go, Manny seems like a jerk.
“The Devil’s Vinyl” doesn’t tell a remarkable story, but gives us much to chew on in terms of world-building. Papa Midnite, a key figure in the comics, is an interesting opposing force to unleash into the series for Constantine to tangle with during his investigations. The episode also gives us several nifty little bits of business in terms of the supernatural tools the characters wield. Constantine carries a bag of tricks that, in this hour, includes a pair of mystical nails that can be used as a tracking device and a mummified hand that, when each finger is lit like a candle, can resurrect the dead for a few moments (in the neatest segment, Constantine uses it to interrogate the corpse of the producer and reanimates an entire morgue in the process). Little touches like these go a long way toward giving this universe some texture and nuance.
Where ‘Constantine’ is still struggling is with its supporting cast. Zed may be a resourceful character to drop into this operation, but Angélica Celaya’s performance often feels stilted. Also, the show still doesn’t seem to have much of a handle on where Chas fits into the mix. Last week, he inexplicably sat out the mission, and this week he doesn’t get involved in the case until the very end. It’s as though the show is so hung up on making Constantine and Zed a bickering/bonding/flirting duo in the ‘Bones,’ ‘Castle’ and ‘Sleepy Hollow’ mold that it doesn’t quite know what to do with this third wheel that the comics have saddled them with. Hopefully they’ll figure it out soon, so that Charles Halford’s intimidating presence doesn’t go to waste.
Intriguingly, though I just spoke of how it seems to be following the leads of several network shows, the series that ‘Constantine’ seems to have most set its sights on for inspiration is ‘Doctor Who.’ In addition to the basic conceit of the wise, eccentric, British-accented pro and his plucked-from-obscurity female companion travelling around saving the day, there are many additional allusions that stand out. At one point in the episode, Constantine brandishes a magic playing card that takes the image of whatever credentials he needs at that moment in the eyes of those who look upon it, which is the exact same concept as the Doctor’s psychic paper. You add this to the revelation that Constantine’s lair is far bigger on the inside than it appears from the exterior and it all seems very familiar. These pieces might have origins in the ‘Hellblazer’ comics for all I know, but I can only point out the parallels I see as a television viewer which, in this case, are too overt to ignore.
‘Constantine’ is still piecing itself together, so it gets a lot of slack cut right now. The stories we’ve followed thus far haven’t been showstoppers, but that’s not unusual for any series this early on. Matt Ryan continues to anchor the show adroitly with his scruffily insouciant charisma, and the show offers up the occasional fun moment, such as John storming a radio station with The Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.” blaring through his ear buds to protect him from demonic music (though one would expect a guy like this to favor a deeper cut). The hope continues to be that, as ‘Constantine’ steadies itself as a series, it will abandon such a cookie-cutter procedural template and develop into something more intriguing, but for the time being, it gets credit for doing just enough right to keep us watching.
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