Constantine: Angels and Ministers of Grace

February 7, 2015 7:53 AM - Season 1, Episode 12

John discovers people at a hospital are being murdered because of shards of a prehistorically shattered diamond made of pure evil, to which contact with a human causes insane rage, doubled strength and a desire to kill. Yeah, you read that right.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (6 comments total)

Oh....was this painful, PAINFUL to watch for ever so many reasons. The shard of the diamond of evil ripping off of Time Bandits, the killer being COMPLETELY obvious, the killer essentially transforming into the Hunchback of Notre Dame (what was up with the costume change there?), Zed's decision that potentially dying of a brain tumor is just "the price of magic." Sure, why bother to even find out if I may or may not be dying? Really? And this is a GOOD THING she learned from John? I think not.

What few fun and interesting moments completely collapsed under the weight of all that dreck. It was an episode that actually really pissed me off. Luckily Grimm was awesome so I managed to recover.
posted by miss-lapin at 11:52 AM on February 7, 2015

This show is so frustrating. I want to like it and I want to see it picked up, but with episodes like this one that make so little sense it's just too difficult. Outside of all those things mentioned above I just couldn't get past the concept of sticking a screwdriver in Chas. Really? I assume that's not enough to kill him and use up one of his lives, but it's certainly enough to really give him a nasty wound. So, so stupid.
posted by sardonyx at 10:01 PM on February 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

I found myself wondering if the writers hadn't yet established the rules of Chas's immortality when this episode was written...if the idea was, "You know, pretty much like Captain Jack on Torchwood," and hadn't yet been refined, then the screwdriver thing would have made sense. ...If been unnecessarily cruel. John, Chas and Zed could have just walked into the ER with a verbally expressed complaint and been admitted just as easily. You don't have to show any proof of injury!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:46 AM on February 8, 2015 [2 favorites]

Hmm, I didn't have any problems with this episode, I liked it.
posted by Pendragon at 5:56 AM on February 8, 2015

The black diamond predates Time Bandits by a few decades (although it's on a pretty high level of comic-nerdism for a TV audience).

I think it's funny how Manny spouts pretty much the same nonsesnsical, cryptic bullshit to Zed as he does to Constantine, but Zed eats it up with a spoon while John just finds it supremely irritating.
Also this: “This man’s body had all these feelings and I used a woman to extinguish them!”
posted by obloquy at 12:47 PM on February 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

This episode worked well as character piece, i.e. exploring what a bastard John is, yet he's still human, Chas's frustrations with John and Zed's struggles to live the life, so to speak. Yes, the villain this week wasn't one to remember, but it served as good foil for all this exploration. Plus Manny becoming part human was hilarious.

No idea what the Rising Darkness is doing though. They've probably already arisen and are in their cubicles at the office, hard at work on bringing Armageddon.

Next week is the last episode of this run. The show doesn't look like it's going to be renewed, but there are rumors that it might shift from NBC to SyFy, which is owned by NBC. That might be a better home for it, especially after its mostly found some legs, wobbly though they may be.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 8:37 AM on February 10, 2015