Constantine Series Premiere Review: More of a Dabbler than a Master
By Nick Campbell
TV.com

I come to you not as someone who's read the Hellblazer comics or even someone who's seen the Constantine movie starring Keanu Reeves, because I have done neither. Instead, I come to you as someone with fresh eyes who can take this show for what it is to the casual NBC viewer. I have no knowledge of the Hellblazer mythology, nor do I have any expectations regarding John Constantine and his cohorts. I did, however, live in Atlanta for nearly two decades, and thus bristled at Constantine's mention of "Edgewood Avenue." We just say Edgewood.

Ah, the city of Atlanta. If you're looking to tell a story about supernatural predators who require abandoned cityscapes through which to perambulate, come to Atlanta, home ofThe Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries, and even Dropdead Diva. Of COURSE it's the city where demon bait is most likely to reside. If the hellmouth isn't in Sunnydale, California, it's definitely in the Atlanta metro area, probably Cobb County. If you've ever spent a summer there, you know that what I'm saying makes complete and total sense

But Constantine isn't about surviving intolerable humidity or punishing heat. Instead, it's about a man of wit (the eponymous John Constantine, played by Matt Ryan) who's privvy to what's on the Other Side thanks to an aptitude for the occult, and how that knowledge has ruined him forever because he now has to chase down demons and occasionally save the world. It falls nicely in line with the new breed of horror series that's emerged in the wake of recent genre successes like The Walking Dead andAmerican Horror Story, particularly in its visuals. It has the potential to achieve the dark humor of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though it'll probably travel a slightly more serious path than my beloved, goofy Reaper (the Liv story seemed one Sock short). And it'll pair nicely with Grimm, particularly since they match up in the "I-see-things-no-one-else-sees" niche. As you might've guessed based on all the shows that Constantine seems to recall, the pilot was jam-packed. In fact, it bulged so mightily with concepts, stories, and teases that it's a wonder the show managed to squeeze everything without seeming utterly ridiculous.

Of course, that's not to say wasn't a little ridiculous. Pilots are hard; quickly establishing a vast, comics-based mythology for a mixed audience is even harder. In "Non Est Asylum," exposition wasn't treated with respect so much as something that got in the way. Events whipped by so rapidly that I almost felt like the show was trying to conceal its shortcomings by simply breezing through them. Forgive the sports analogy (the name "Matt Ryan" makes me think of Matt "Matty Ice" Ryan, quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons), but it's kinda like in football, when a dropped pass has been ruled complete by the referees and the offense hustles to line up for another play before anyone has time to think about it and toss the red challenge flag. "Hey, wait a second. Did we just go from 'reluctant hero' to 'determined hero' in the span of 30 seconds? That seems a bit fast."

Mostly, Constantine's pilot wasn't particularly kind to its characters. Take Liv (Lucy Griffiths), for instance. She sure reacted oddly for a woman who'd gone from a humdrum existence to having the universe revealed to her within a span of 24 hours! When a giant brimstone sinkhole opened up right before her, her first response was to mace the next guy she saw. When a pendant she was holding pricked her finger so her blood could scoot around a map, her demeanor was one of, "Oh, that's neat." She vacillated between appearing unflappable and appearing absolutely, severely flapped. I just didn't know what to make of her—one minute she was remaining calm after seeing someone she knew get impaled by a live electrical cable, the next she was flipping out about a ghost in a mirror. She was an odd Everyman, is all I'm saying. Thankfully, she doesn't even matter. 

She doesn't even matter because Liv will be leaving us after this episode. The character was cut from the show entirely after the pilot was filmed; Constantine's gender balance will now be achieved by Angélica Celaya as Mary "Zed" Martin, Constantine's female companion from the comics. I'm guessing the creative team found Liv as troublesome as I did—but the pilot wasted an awful lot of time on her, trying to focus on her plight and her backstory, when it could've been making the exposition surrounding Constantine less clunky. Oh well. Here's hoping that once the Zed transition is complete, the writers will balance everything out. I guess you win some, you lose some.

And that's where the pilot left me in the end. Win some, lose some. Likable parts, bemusing parts. Comme ci, comme ça. Constantine as a character grew on me; I like his potential for dark humor and wit, which is something we no longer see in most characters who live within the horror genre (Rick Grimes never takes the time to crack wise with things that are trying to kill him). The fact that Constantine's pilot featured not one, but TWO former Lost actors is also appealing. "WAAAAAAAAAALT"-shouter Harold Perrineau is Manny, an angel with a decidedly un-seraphic name. AndJeremy Davies, who played the island drama's tickish professor prone to dramatic pause and wonder Faraday, tried his hand at a tickish professor prone to dramatic pause and wonder... with a questionable Southern accent. Unfortunately, the latter isn't a series regular. You know, just to add more confusion to who we should be focusing on.

So Constantine's pilot was kind of a mess. You might even say it had its share of demons (har). Apparently the only three characters we currently need to keep track of right now are Constantine, Manny, and Chas (the victim of the aforementioned impaling, who somehow survived), despite being introduced to a bevvy of others. The tone was slightly off—sometimes it was cheesy, sometimes it was funny, sometimes it was dramatic in a way that could've been mostly acceptable except that it became melodramatic when combined with the cheesiness and funniness—but there's no reason to believe the show won't smooth that out in the future. All told, the parts are greater than the sum. At the very least, with a major casting/character swap in the cards, Constantine is worth sampling for at least a couple more episodes before deciding whether to dump it into a river of boiling pitch or keep it as our sweet little demon familiar.