A woman, Taylor, walks through a poor, run down
neighbourhood looking very nervous and clearly
standing out. When a man asks
her why she’s back there, she says her brother’s funeral is tomorrow. She buys
two syringes of drugs from him.
She leaves, watched by something ominous and as she takes the drug all the electric
lights around her explode in a shower of sparks. That’s probably not a good
thing. A man/monster leaps out and attacks her, injecting her with both
syringes and she dies as her veins turn black.
The cops arrive and examine her body, suggesting she was
beaten to death. But her veins keep moving –and she wakes up, albeit with lots
of shaking and nose bleeding
At the Mill, Zed is using some of the more calming
magical woo-woo of the place to try and get a rest, a break from her visions,
after the being put in hospital by the last attempt to communicate with a soul.
Chas is all for this, John wants her back in the field (which would be kind of
laughable given the number of times she’s been sidelined or left behind).
Manny also drops in because John makes a sarcastic comment about taking a holiday and he decides that they all need reminding of how evil the Burjeria is. John in turns snarks back with how little help Manny is giving; he’s also leery to take cases from Manny because he suspects manipulation. He’d rather use the scrying map – so Manny burns it. The Burjeria is all over, not just in the places on the map; he wants them to rely on signs, instincts and Zed’s visions rather than confining themselves to the map.
So the job is Taylor who has been taken to hospital which
means they need to get into the same hospital – so they injure Chas. They get
Zed to vision-grope the unconscious woman she sees darkness and a light that
looks a lot like an angel that was also intensely painful. Taylor’s pulse drops
causing the usual medical controlled panic.
While they try to resuscitate Taylor, Zed has a seizure.
She’s taken to an MRI while John pretends he isn’t worried to Chas (while clearly being so). John focuses again on Taylor and wanting to examine the body (she died) when a large man comes in with a wound from a bar fight (and missing a lot of skin on his face that he is having treated long term). He gives the nurse a whole lot of attitude and John takes an interest. I assume this will be relevant later
One spell on the body later and they learn Taylor’s
corpse is full of dark matter, which it really shouldn’t be. Back on the case –
though Chas insists John check on Zed first. The doctor tells Zed she has a
mass in her brain, possibly a tumour, which would explain her headaches,
passing out and even her visions (though John is quick to point out her visions
aren’t medical). John and Zed talk and John tries to insist there’s no physical
cause of her visions but Zed is more leery – and just because her visions are
mystical doesn’t mean she isn’t dying
Zed goes to the roof – and meets Manny, cursing the angel for not telling them about Zed’s tumour, demanding Manny fix it and furious that he kept telling Zed to push through the pain and keep having visions. Manny tries the clichéd “it’s not your fault” (John’s blaming you, Manny). Manny says John can’t fix it, nor can Manny – and to get back on the job. And John magically knocks Manny out.
With Manny unconscious, John carves a symbol into the angel’s chest, which fades as he completes his spell. John has decided to take Manny’s advice and “focus on what he can control” so he’s bound Manny to the ground. With Zed down and Chas researching, John has turned Manny into his bound servant; until the spell wears off. Manny isn’t a fan of this and he quickly points out the downside – when Manny possesses a human he loses the heavenly hosts knowledge and all of its power. John’s rejoinder is actually kind of awesome “it’s not like you were using them anyway”. John follows the evilly flickering lights
Now it’s the drunken maintenance guy’s turn to be
attacked by the monster that causes black veins to appear – but drugs don’t
appear to be involved.
John and Manny head into the hospital, Manny checking a
mirror to see he still looks like the doctor he’s possessing. They find the
mangled body of the janitor. And Manny is squeamish – he’s never had to deal
with the smell of death or a human body while looking at the messily dead. He’s
also not thrilled to see John probing the corpse; inside which is a black
heart, part of a whole dark sorcerer legend Manny recites. The evil sorcerer’s
power was turned into a Black Diamond which was then shattered and bits of it
spread across the world. Each fragment causing death and nastiness like this.
John sets Manny to research the victims to see if they have any connection. Manny is not amused. But helpful nurse does flirt with him leaving him all confused – even when she pulls him into a cupboard to have sex. The nurse and the doctor Manny’s possessing are having an affair and Manny is rather stunned by this.
John returns to the Mill for more research and Chas wants
to hear about Zed – despite John desperately trying to avoid the subject. When
he hears the news, Chas tells John someone should be with her, but John focuses
on the case. The Mill has one of these black diamond fragments in storage and John
decides it’d be a great idea to test this on Chas. It’s unpleasant
John goes back to see Manny (and, amusingly, tells him to
not bother feeling embarrassed as it’s a kind of useless emotion). Manny also
feels guilty because he feels he used a woman to combat the body’s feeling of
lust while John mocks him for feeling guilt about two people experiencing
pleasure. John also continues to taunt him about how difficult it is to be
human. Manny asks how John gets anything done “a little bit of denial and a
whole lot of gin.” Yes, John is loving this.
Still Manny has found a link between the two – Taylor and Duncan were both addicts who had kicked the habit but then fallen off the wagon. Manny is enraged at them throwing away their second chance and wonders if the killer feels the same. John again tries to dodge Zed but even Manny sees how wrong this is – “she’s ill John, if you can’t talk to her now when can you.”
Manny also identifies Morris, the angry man with the skin grafts who killed his whole family when he fell asleep when drunk and smoking.
Over to Zed who is in two minds about having the tumour
removed (since it may cause her visions). She also recognises that Manny isn’t
human. He tells her who he is and he can’t give her answers but helps her think
through the good her powers come – and that they’re a gift from god, not evil
which needs punishing with a tumour. We
need far more scenes like this.
John tracks down Morris – to find him being attacked by
the monster when he goes out to smoke. John runs in – and gets thrown across
the room, knocked unconscious. When he comes to, he and Manny see Morris’s body
While Manny tries to convince John, again, that Zed’s
illness isn’t his fault and that casualties are inevitable in war, he lets slip
some things about Zed’s doctor, Gaelin. John puts it together and realises the
doctor is the killer.
Over to Zed who is getting dressed to check out of
hospital – and Gaelin who doesn’t understand why she is throwing her second
chance away. Gaelin gets angry which is when John and Manny arrive to confront
him – the shrapnel in his heart (which he explained earlier he got serving as a
medic in Iraq) contains part of the black diamond. When john waves his own
diamond around, Gaelin loses it, running, slash Manny’s arm in the process
John and Manny chase him, telling Zed to stay behind but
she remembers her vision and follows. As they run through the spooky archive full
of dead ends, Zed hurriedly explains the holy light in her vision: Manny. John
quickly reverses the spell binding Manny (much to Manny’s annoyance because
John told him it was timed and he couldn’t end it early). The doctor is un-possessed
(and faints as the monster appears)
John prays for intercession – and Manny appears, with
full wingspan. John explains to Zed that heavenly light is the only thing that
can fight dark matter. Manny wraps Gaelin in his wings, telling him his time is
over and peace awaits – it’s all very heavenly and awesome. They vanish,
leaving only the shards of the Black Diamond behind.
Epilogue – Zed in church and John joins her. And Manny
zaps in – and Zed can see him. He asks about her surgery and she says she’s not
having it as John taught her magic has its costs. There;s lots of comfort and
meaning between Manny and Zed, John snarks away.
On Manny. See this is where better inclusion in the
series and prominent POC actually appearing as regular characters and doing
things would make this whole storyline better and more fun. Because I would
LOVE to see the ineffectual, constantly judging and chiding angel actually
having to get his hands dirty and seeing what it’s really like. I love the idea
of an angel being squeamish and not dealing well at all to being John’s sidekick.
I love him being so out of depth in the human world. I love turning the tables
on his judgemental self
But I hate that the series only regularly appearing Black
man except Papa Midnite (which is both stretching the definition of “regularly
appearing” and he comes with his own pack of tropes) gets involved in an
episode after being nearly ineffective for months because John, effectively,
traps and enslaves him. I hate that Manny, an angel, finally gets to do
something but has to be completely depowered first. I hate that this all
happens in an episode where Zed, yet again, is shuffled away from the main
action.
It helps a lot that Zed’s vision is the end guide and that Manny is the end solution – but at the same time how often do we see Manny able to act? There’s some cosmic loophole because dark matter it seems. At least there was a last second aversion of Manny’s servitude and a return of his power but the whole thing could have just been so much better if Manny was more commonly involved, or Zed wasn’t so commonly benched.
And this really shows how tropes can be a real problem in media and how we need to work to subvert them and have decent, developed inclusion so we can appreciate the decent parts of a scene like this without the backage that both the media in general and this show in particular has pandered to.
Is it just me or, since we learned about Chas being only LIMITEDLY immortal, they seem to have become much more casual about risking Chas’s life?
John’s starting every day imagining everyone he knows
dead is a nice little moment – it doesn’t need overwhelming or extending, just
that simple story of how John copes with the fact everyone around him dies.
That is a nice moment and very well done – and part of what Constantine could be and is when it is
at its best.
