Constantine Review – S01E03 – The Devil’s Vinyl

Constantine just keeps getting better and better.  In this latest episode, The Devil’s Vinyl, we’re treated to more of John Constantine’s backstory, and some more Hellblazer lore.

Spoilerific Recap

In Chicago, Illinois, a woman visits an abandoned, decrepit Moonrise Records and retrieves an old acetate disc (a record negative that contains the original recording) hidden behind a brick wall.  Bringing it to an associate, Bernie, at another recording studio, the woman tells him to only run a spectrum analysis, and specifically warns him not to listen to it.  Taking the acetate, Bernie comments that it feels cold.  Running his tests, he’s tempted to put the headphones on.  Listening to the recording, he hears torturous screams, and the headphones start to freeze.  When he rips the headphones off, he’s compelled to stab himself in the neck, killing himself.

Zed has found Jasper Winters’s home, the lair of Constantine and Chas, by using one of her drawings/visions.  After a tiny confrontation outside, Chas allows Zed in to see Constantine.  She enters to an awkward sight of Constantine, supposedly in the nude, crazily performing incantations, covered in blood, while Sedated by The Ramones is playing in the background.  Chas tells Zed that Constantine is learning a new spell.  Giving Zed a quick tour of the home, Chas notes that the outside dimensions are actually smaller than the inside (queue the Doctor Who theme right now).

After getting cleaned up, Constantine takes Zed to the scryed map.  He believes that the latest signal appearing in Chicago has to do with the recent death of his good friend — Bernie.  Zed touches the newspaper picture of Bernie and the blood dot on Chicago.  She quickly has a vision of being in a field of jasmine.  As her vision ends, Zed complains about feeling cold.  Constantine now has confirmation that something supernatural is happening in Chicago.  After trying to leave without Zed, Constantine finally agrees to let her come when he finds out that she has a car (Chas’s cab seems to still be inoperable from the pilot, Non Est Aslum).  In a private conversation, Constantine tells Chas to do a background check on Zed — even though her abilities are genuine, he thinks she may have other motives.

Constantine and Zed arrive at the Southside of Chicago.  Inquiring about one of the objects in Constantine’s arsenal, Zed is told that they are nails from the coffin of St. Padua, patron of lost souls.  He gives her a quick demonstration and we see the nails follow each other, almost like they were magnets.  He notes that they’d make a great tracking device.  As Constantine looks for another object to get him into the mortuary, Zed pickpockets one of the mortuary employees and takes his security card.

Finding Bernie’s body, Zed asks how she knew him.  Constantine recollects to Zed that back in his younger days, Bernie was a producer for Constantine’s band, Mucous Membrane.  Back to the plan, Constantine will raise Bernie from the dead by using the Hand of Glory — the left hand of a man who’s been hanged, which has been pickled in amniotic fluid for seven years.  By saying an incantation, and then lighting each fingertip, the dead will awaken, as long as the fingertips stay lit.  Performing the spell, Bernie and all the dead bodies in the mortuary come to life.  As the flames on the fingertip quickly die out, Bernie is only able to communicate that the “voice” on the “acetate” did this to him, and a final world — “moonrise.”

Leaving the mortuary, Zed asks what it cost to raise Bernie.  Constantine tells her that the price was a few days off his life.  Zed does some quick research on Bernie’s words, and comes across Moonlight Records.  The two leave to pay a visit to a record producer, Marcus Mooney, who was there during the 1930’s and still alive today.

At the home of the woman who originally found the acetate, she stores the acetate on a record shelf.  As her daughter watches, the acetate freezes its portion of the shelf.

Arriving at a nursing home, Constantine uses an enchanted playing card to gain access into the facility.  Inside Marcus Mooney’s room, Marcus tells Constantine and Zed about the acetate.

Marcus produced a famed blues musician, Willie Cole, who was rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil.  The acetate that was recording Willie recorded the voice of the Devil.  One day, during a recording session, the Devil came to claim Willie’s soul.  During the onslaught, the acetate kept recording.  When Marcus picked up the acetate, he heard voices.  Knowing that it was evil, he sealed it inside the brick walls of the recording studio.  Recently, a private investigator with a last name of Fell was interested in buying the acetate.

As Marcus feels himself nearing death, he starts to go into cardiac arrest.  Suddenly, time freezes and Manny appears.  Touching Marcus’s forehead, Manny allows him to die (it’s implied that Marcus went to Heaven).

In the car, Constantine surmises that the “private investigator” Marcus spoke of was Ian Fell, a heavy metal artist who was discovered by Bernie.  Zed questions why the Devil would even want souls.  Constantine tells Zed that the Devil is also named The First of the Fallen.  Souls are the purest expression of God’s love.  Every time the First takes a soul, it’s a symbol of revenge for God’s act of casting him out of Heaven.  Meanwhile, in another scene, the woman’s daughter climbs the shelf and retrieves the acetate.

Breaking into Ian Fell’s home, Constantine demands Ian tell him about the acetate and the deal.  Zed then starts to smell jasmine again.  Suddenly, the woman who retrieved the acetate shows up with a gun.  It turns out to be Jasmine Fell, which is why Zed was smelling jasmine all this time.  After Constantine lays down accusations of Jasmine selling her soul for wealth and fame, Jasmine comes clean with the real story: when Ian was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Jasmine sold her soul to save his life.  Years ago, when Ian was in the hospital, a soul broker, Anton, approached Jasmine and offered her a deal.  She signed the contract, and he went into remission.

Examining the contract, Constantine sees the writing on it start to disappear.  Jasmine tells Constantine that when the last of the writings are gone, the First of the Fallen would return to claim her soul.  Anton recontacted Jasmine and told her that if she could retrieve the acetate, he would return her soul.  Constantine thinks there’s more at play because soul brokers never break their deals, which would lead to them losing all credibility to the underworld.  As Constantine leaves to meet with Anton, he slips the Nails of St. Padua into Jasmine’s vest pocket.

Some time later, Jasmine’s daughter starts playing the record.  Zed, Ian, and Jasmine race upstairs where they disengage the acetate from the record player and stop the enchantment.  The girl, safe, quickly falls unconscious.

Meeting Anton in a building filled with ritualistic candles, Constantine runs into Papa Midnite.  In a quick conversation, Constantine learns that Papa Midnite made a side deal with Anton to get an already desperate Jasmine, who had the monetary resources, to retrieve the acetate.  Unknown to Constantine, Midnite’s henchman ambush him from behind.

Now tied to a grate located in an abandoned factory, Constantine is injected with an anti-coagulant.  Papa Midnite then slices Constantine’s arm — which will make him bleed to death in four hours.  Before Papa Midnite leaves, he places a pharmaceutical dose of vitamin K (which can act to stop the bleeding if taken) just out of reach of Constantine, telling him that it’s a sign of “professional respect.”

At the Fells’ home, Papa Midnite’s henchmen burst in and take the acetate.  When the henchmen leave, Zed has a feeling that Constantine left himself a way out, which makes her notice Jasmine’s vest.  In their car, the henchmen become enchanted by the acetate.

A homeless man later arrives at Constantine’s location.  Manny suddenly takes over, but refuses to intervene and free Constantine.  Briefly speaking to Constantine, Manny believes that Constantine wants the acetate for his own gain.  The homeless then reappears and proceeds to rob Constantine of his shoes.  Using the enchanted playing card and making the homeless man think it’s a credit card, Constantine offers a deal for his freedom.  Taking the card, the homeless returns with a knife, but for the purposes of killing Constantine.  Zed shows up just in time and saves Constantine — she followed the Nails of St. Padua.

The next day, Constantine and Zed learn that Papa Midnite’s henchman took the acetate to a nightclub to test it out.  Soon, Chas shows up to give Constantine some new equipment.  He also relays what he found on Zed — she’s not in any law enforcement database.  As Zed communicates with a lone survivor, a deaf man, Constantine deduces that the henchmen will want to play the acetate to as big of an audience as possible.  Zed quickly has a vision of a white tiger.  Scanning the area, Chas sees a flier for a local radio station, which uses a white tiger as its logo.

Arriving at the radio station, Constantine puts in his earbuds and plays Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols to block out the affects of the acetate.  Ambushed by the enchanted hostages, Constantine’s earbuds are ripped out, leaving him vulnerable to the acetate.  Meanwhile, Zed crashes her car into the station’s power transformer to stop the music from being broadcasted.

Papa Midnite enters the station and shoots out the speakers with a Winchester rifle that was blessed by a mystic in the old West.  With Papa Midnite about to retrieve the acetate, Constantine starts an incantation.  Using the dark magic within the acetate, Constantine sends the acetate and the henchmen to hell.  Opening the doors to the broadcast studio, Papa Midnite is greeted to the scene of a deep chasm, still glowing red from Hell’s heat.

Back at the Fell’s, Constantine and Chas force Anton to literally eat the contract.  Jasmine’s soul is saved, but Ian’s cancer will soon return.

In a closing scene, Papa Midnite uses the leftover blood from the knife he used to cut Constantine, and stains a voodoo doll with it.  He then throws the doll into a pot of fire.

“Hell” Yeah! Moments

• Almost every scene with Zed.  She’s not a person you put on the sidelines, and is just as headstrong and able as Constantine.
• Every scene where we get to experience Constantine’s music — the man’s got good taste.

The Devil is in the Details (References)

• Constantine mentions that in his youth, he was the lead singer for a punk band named Mucous Membrane.  In Hellblazer Annual #1, there’s a story that shows the music video for the band’s song, Venus of the Hardsell.  In addition, the issue also published the lyrics to the song.

Final Thoughts

This show is quickly becoming one of my favorites, as there are so many mysteries and small bits of character development that it keeps the viewer interested.  Can I just say this?: Zed is probably the most awesome sidekick/partner in any television show right now.  Smart, tough, and resourceful, Constantine should be happy that she’s on his side.

I loved how, in multiple scenes, she made Constantine aware of his foot-in-mouth syndrome.  That’s right, because of these scenes, the audience is also getting a true Constantine — a guy who’s kind of a jerk.  It’s the small details that make Zed compelling.  Requiring no real assistance from Constantine, Zed has shown that she can solve problems and is quick to pick up on new information.  Every scene with her is fun, and I love it when she calls Constantine out on his arrogance and attitude.  That’s what a companion should do, question your judgement so you don’t end up dead.

Chas is no slouch either.  Though not given enough screen time, he’s very much the muscle for Constantine.  I loved the end when he forced Anton, at knifepoint, to eat the contract.

And let’s not forget about Papa Midnite.  It was quite a good introduction, and, from the ending, he definitely has plans for Constantine.  You know, for basically messing up his latest toy — the acetate.

With all of those characters, we still received some juicy morsels of backstory for Constantine.  He might be arrogant and a little tortured, but the guy still has friends.  That’s what I love about his character development.  Some writers tend to think that creating an anti-hero means you have to have a guy that goes on a killing spree, or sits alone in the dark having no fun.  They forget the “hero” in “anti-hero.”  Constantine is a hero, and even though his goals start off as selfish acts (e.g. wanting the acetate as a bargaining chip), they end in heroic acts.  It’s how the character acts in the face of obstacles that makes him a hero, and I love that the writers didn’t forget about that.

A question before I sign off: is it just me or did Charles Halford (the guy playing Chas) sound a lot like Clancy Brown (the voice of Lex Luthor in DC’s animated universe)?