Bam Smack Pow
Fansided

Constantine Recap And Review – S01E12 – Angels And Ministers Of Grace

By Steve Lam

facebooktwitterreddit

Tonight’s Constantine episode, titled Angels and Ministers of Grace, was one of the more introspective episodes in the series.  Of course past episodes have dealt with the internal struggles of characters, but Angels and Minsters of Grace pulled it off with three characters.

Spoilerific Recap

A woman ventures through a rough part of town.  Her name is Taylor and she clearly looks like she doesn’t belong here.  Taylor approaches a drug dealer and tells him that her brother’s funeral is tomorrow.  A quick deal later and she attains two drug-filled syringes.  Taylor finds an isolated area to shoot up and is quickly attacked by a ghoulish figure.  He plunges the two syringes into her chest.  Cops are on scene a while later to bag her body.  As black veins spider over her body, Taylor wakes up.

Constantine enters Jasper Winters’s home asking Chas for Zed.  Constantine finds a piece of red thread and follows it through the house’s hallway.  He ends up at a door/portal which takes him into a serene field to a meditating Zed.  The thread he followed was Ariadne’s Thread (the thread that led Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth).  Constantine learns that the events of New York City (Quid Pro Quo) traumatized Zed.  He tells her that she chose this path.

Constantine exits the room and makes his way back into the main area of the home.   Chase tells him that Zed needs her rest.  Constantine sarcastically thinks every one of them should take a vacation.  Manny possesses Chas and reiterates the importance of battling the Brujeria and the Rising Darkness.  To that end, he gives Constantine a mission: seek out a woman named Taylor who has been brought to St. Catherine’s Hospital because of a drug overdose.  Constantine wants to consult the map, but Manny sets it on fire and destroys it — Manny thinks the map is a crutch.  He wants Constantine to use Zed’s visions and be more vigilante.  After Manny leaves Chas’s body, Constantine give tells Chas to get Zed and the biggest screwdriver he can find.

They arrive at St. Catherine’s, and Chas exits the cab with a large screwdriver in his leg.  They reach the ER and Constantine inspects the area.  He sees Taylor and tells Chas that they need to get closer.  Chas pulls the screwdriver out of his leg to create a distraction.  Zed touches Taylor’s hand and receives a vision of a silhouette of an angel.  Taylor starts to flatline and Zed suddenly starts to seizure.

As Zed is given a brain scan, Constantine tells Chas that he’s never seen black veins like the ones found on Taylor.  He wants to inspect her body in the morgue.  As Constantine waits for Chas to put on his clothes, a man named Morris enters the ER because his recent skin graft was torn in a bar fight.

Constantine and Chas enter the morgue with fake credentials — Detective Constantine and Officer Chandler — and present them to an alcoholic attendant, Duncan.  Duncan leaves the two, and Constantine performs an incantation.  This causes Taylor’s body to briefly appear to them as completely black.  Constantine thinks it’s dark matter that did this, but has Chas go back to Jasper Winters’s home to look through his archives.  Constantine goes off to investigate if the dark matter is still lurking around.

Zed awakens and is quickly greeted by Dr. Gaelen.  Constantine enters as Gaelen is about to go through Zed’s brain scans.  The scans show a tumor on her temporal lobe, but Gaelen isn’t completely sure until they’re able to perform a biopsy.  Zed reveals that she has visions, and Gaelen misconstrues it as hallucinations from the tumor’s pressure.  Constantine quickly intervenes and tells him that the tumor is not the source of her visions.  Zed starts to cry, but Gaelen tries to comfort her by letting her know it’s not definite.  Constantine doesn’t want to believe that the tumor and Zed’s visions are linked.

Duncan arrives to fix the flickering light above Morris’s gurney.  After being treated badly by Morris, Duncan goes to the supply closet where he starts to drink.  The same ghoulish figure that attacked Taylor, attacks Duncan and he starts to exhibit the same black veins.

Smoking on the hospital rooftop, Constantine is approached by a doctor, Dr. Caroll, for a cigarette.  The minute Constantine gives him a cigarette, Manny possesses Caroll.  Enraged and wrought with guilt, Constantine thinks he may have pushed Zed too hard for her visions.  Constantine threatens to quit if Manny doesn’t heal her.  Manny tells him to calm down and focus on things that he can control.  Constantine agrees and takes out a vial containing a red-colored concoction.  He drops it and smashes it.  Manny is soon rendered unconcious.

Constantine quickly paints a symbol with blood onto Manny’s chest and performs an incantation.  The symbol disappears and Manny awakens in Caroll’s clothing.  Constantine reveals that the vial contained air from Hades.  Manny (seen to the world as Dr. Caroll) will now help Constantine until the spell wears off.  Manny pleads to Constantine to free him — when Manny is in a host body, he no longer has his angelic powers and is overwhelmed by human emotions and desires.  The lights suddenly start to flicker.  Constantine identifies this as a sign of dark matter because it interferes with illumination.  Constantine and Manny follow the phenomenon.

The two are led into the supply closet where they find Duncan’s mutilated body.  Manny can’t stand the smell and vomits.  Constantine digs into Duncan’s chest and finds the heart to be contaminated by darkness.  Manny tells Constantine that the Black Diamond caused this.  Constantine thinks that it’s only a legend, but Manny reassures him that it’s not — because he was there.  An evil sorcerer who became extremely powerful caused plagues and death.  The people called out to God for help, so God released a shaft of light that destroyed the sorcerer — concentrating his evil into a black diamond mass.  An angel then used his fiery sword to shatter the diamond.  The Great Flood then spread the fragments around the world.  Constantine has Manny search the hospital’s database to find a link between Duncan and Taylor.

Constantine returns to Jasper Winters’s home to look for an object.  Chas questions Zed’s condition, but Constantine keeps avoiding him.  Chas finally gets Constantine’s attention, and he finds out that Zed has a brain tumor.  Constantine continues going through various artifacts and finds an elaborate container — it contains a fragment of the Black Diamond.

Back at the hospital, Manny is helped by a nurse in trying to print files off a computer.  She offers to give help him find the most recent files, but also seems to flirt with him.  He agrees and she quickly pulls him into a closet where she forces herself on him — the real Dr. Caroll and the nurse have been having an affair.

Constantine wants to use Chas as a guinea pig to see what the Black Diamond can do.  Constantine punches a few buttons and the container unlocks and opens.  He hands Chas a glass box containing the diamond.   Chas takes the diamond and holds it in his hand — he starts to tense up and strain in agony, with black veins appearing.  Chas finally drops the Black Diamond when Constantine hits him with an electrified prod.

Constantine meets Manny and tells him that a shard of the Black Diamond will bring out a man’s rage, double their strength, and give them the urge to commit murder.  Constantine then discovers Manny’s embarrassing encounter with the nurse.  Manny wants Constantine to free him, but is given the same excuses Constantine has been given — “it’s out of my power.”  Tabling their conversation, Manny reveals that both Duncan and Taylor were former addicts who fell off the wagon.  Manny is angered that humans would always waste a second chance.  He then wonders if the murderer is also angered by the same thing.  Constantine asks Manny if he’s encountered anyone with suppressed rage.  Manny recalls Morris — who started to terrorize everyone after his family died from a house fire.  Constantine has a plan to find Morris while Manny checks on Zed.  Manny stops Constantine and asks him if he can’t face Zed while she’s dying, when can he.

Manny, seen as Dr. Caroll, enter to Gaelen consulting Zed.  She doesn’t want to remove the tumor — she thinks it was meant to be there.  Gaelen reveals that he has a piece of shrapnel still embedded two inches from his heart — too close to take out.  He tells Zed that both of them are lucky.  When Gaelen leaves, she immediately detects that Caroll is not a doctor.  Manny reveals himself to her, and she asks if she’s going to die.  Manny doesn’t know the answer to that question because he has no access to that information.  Zed then asks if her powers came from God or from some place evil.  Manny leaves the question open and asks her where she thinks they came from.  Zed thinks that if her powers are from God and she’s helping people, then she’ll put up with the pain.

Morris leaves his gurney to smoke just as Constantine enters to flickering lights.  Manny is attacked in the basement of the hospital by the ghoulish figure.  Constantine finds them, but is quickly thrown and knocked out by the assailant.

Minutes later, Constantine and Manny inspect Morris’s dead body.  Constantine didn’t see a face, but a manifestation of the Black Diamond’s evil.  Manny tells Constantine that he needs Zed not only for her powers, but for her support.  Manny admires how Constantine has seen so much evil yet chooses to keep up the fight.  Constantine doesn’t believe that Manny understands his true burden.  However, Manny has watched mankind from the start — he knows that the price of battle has never changed.  That’s when he reveals that Zed’s doctor, Gaelen, served in the Middle East.  Constantine quickly figures out that Gaelen is the murderer — serving in the Middle East means he must’ve been in the place known as the “gift from God”, which is where Jasper Winters’s Black Diamond Shard came from.  “Gift from God” translates to Baghdad.

Gaelen enters as Zed prepares to leave.  He tells her that she’s wasting her second chance by not opting for surgery.  Constantine enters and accuses Gaelen of murdering Taylor, Duncan, and Morris.  When Gaelen denies this, Constantine presents his shard of the Black Diamond.  Gaelen keels over in pain because the shrapnel that’s in his chest is actually a piece of the Black Diamond — the two are attempting to recombine.  Gaelen wounds Manny and makes a run for it.

Zed has another vision of the same angel silhouette against a bright light, and runs after Constantine.  Constantine and Manny track Gaelen to the basement, and Zed soon joins them.  Cornered with nowhere to run, Zed tells Constantine about the holy light she saw in her vision.  Constantine figures it out and opens Manny’s shirt and paints the same bloody symbol he used to trap him.  Caroll returns and screams at the sight of Gaelen, now as the ghoulish figure, chasing after them.  Caroll faints soon after.  Constantine raises the Black Diamond to Gaelen, but has it slapped out of his hand.  As a last resort, Constantine asks God for assistance.  Manny appears in a ray of light with his wings outstretched.  He calls out to Gaelen, ready to bring him to Heaven.  Gaelen approaches Manny, and is embraced by his wings.  As both of them disappear in a bright light, shards of the Black Diamond fall to the ground and combine with each other — storing itself back into the glass case.

In a church, Constantine reveals to Zed his deepest secret — every morning he spends five minutes imagining everyone that he cares about being dead.  This lessens the blow if he fails at his duty.   Manny appears, but this time, Zed can see him too.  He asks why she elected not to have surgery.  Zed learned from Constantine that all magic has a cost, and if that cost is pain, then she’s willing to pay it.  He compliments her on her bravery.  She asks him again where her visions are from.  Manny replies, “I’m here aren’t I.”

“Hell” Yeah! Moments

  • More like a “hell-arious” moment.  Chas finding out what the screwdriver was being used for.
  • When Manny regains his angelic powers and saves the team.

The Devil is in the Details (References)

  • The Black Diamond, in the comics, was used by the supervillain Eclipso to turn souls evil.
  • The character of Morris is most likely a reference to Samuel “The Family Man” Morris — a serial killer who battled Constantine in the comics.
  • Manny mentioned that the Black Diamond was shattered by an angel’s fiery sword.  Later, when Constantine and Chas clear a table in preparation of opening the box that contained the Black Diamond, we see a twin-bladed sword.  Whether this twin-bladed sword and the angel’s sword are the same is up for debate.  But there’s no question that the twin-bladed sword, officially called Twin Blade, is the one from the comics — the one that contains the remains of The Second of the Fallen and The Third of the Fallen.

Final Thoughts

A very introspective episode.  Constantine, Manny, and Zed all learned something about themselves tonight.  It’s episodes like this one that elevate Constantine to the quality of other top-notch DC television shows like Arrow and The Flash.

I think we reached quite a pinnacle tonight with Constantine in terms of him divulging his feelings and fears at the end.  Like I said in my last review, this Constantine deviates from the comics because the writers have chosen to make him sentimental.  Throughout the episode, we can see Constantine perform a balancing act with solving the case and caring for Zed.

I think the rule now is “if you want some comedy, make an angel human.”  Manny being trapped inside of Dr. Caroll was the source of a lot of comic relief tonight.  But it wasn’t all fun-and-games because it served a purpose.  Finally seeing what Constantine has to go through, Manny becomes much more straightforward at the end.  He actually speaks like a human.

Though we’ve seen bits and pieces of Zed’s past leaked throughout this short season, we never got an idea of how she truly felt about her powers.  One minute she’s embracing it, and at some other times, she questions them.  Tonight, she comes to terms with her fate and the cost of her abilities.

If the final episode of the season (I’m still hoping it’s a season finale and not a series finale) has the whole team battling the Rising Darkness, Angels and Ministers of Grace is the perfect lead-up.  Showing how each character has grown gives the audience a feeling that more is at stake.  There’s an investment in our team of fighters.  I’m Looking forward to what Constantine has in store for us for the big finale (again, hoping it’s a finale that will continue with a premiere next season).

More from Bam Smack Pow

Home/TV