Constantine Goes To NBC

[Tango X]

That was a reaaally fun episode.

[AcidDragon]

I thought so, too. I like the direction of this episode. It had the taste of monster of the week but a lot of the early issues I read were like that. Kind of a simple story and the supernatural element wasn't very scary, but it worked well for me for entertainment value.

[Tango X]

Zed is great too. Lady is nice to look at and they play well off each other I think.

[S. Griffin]

I found it really dull and very light on horror, despite using several horror elements that had potential but weren't well utilized (the scene in the truck was the exception).
I think like Zed more than I liked Liv, but I don't really think she's any better.
It's nice that John mentioned Liverpool, I guess, but it was weird to hear meandering bits of a Liverpool accent for two to five seconds at random intervals throughout the episode, which I swear only began to happen after he said that in the pub, as if he remembered he was supposed to be from there and then couldn't maintain talking that way for any real length of time.
The story was also really procedural and layered with cliches and little else...I expected more when I saw "written by Rockne S. O'Bannon" in the credits.
As someone who's read Hellblazer consistently from the early '90s to the demise of the title last year, I want to like this show a lot, but I just couldn't connect with it this week.

[Webslinger]

Just keep in mind they can't give you everything you want in one episode, and considering this was the 2nd one they are proceeding at a nice steady pace. If they tossed in all the bells and whistles it would make for a very boring TV show... Look what Smallville gave us and I still watched that for 10 seasons, granted Smallville could have given us a little bit more but overall it was a fairly decent show. So I think Constantine will start to pull things together by the end of season one, all first seasons start off a little slow then build up the finale.

[Princess_Amethyst]

I was kind of expecting something really horrifyingly scary for Halloween but it wasn't scary at all. The episode itself was alright, I thought. Tame.

Acid, I get what you mean that the monster of the week is a bit like the older issues but at the same time, it lacked the grotesque and macabre elements that made the books set a much more visceral environment for me. The crazy angles and creepy way the panels were framed. I thought Zed wasn't bad and I do like her thing with John more than Liv's. I was half expecting the first season to be filled with horror cliches but that didn't do much for me in the way of making it any easier to accept them when they're present. I still thought it was okay, though, and I liked it enough to keep watching!

[Tango X]

Very polarized opinions on this episode tonight... Yeah I agree it wasn't scary. The wife being the villain was pretty obvious too. I still liked the story (and Zed) though. I guess I just wasn't expect much tonight or I was kind of expecting it to be a lot worse for some reason.

[Webslinger]

Also it is on NBC, not like they can get away with the kind of stuff AMC's Walking Dead can you know...

[S. Griffin]

Just keep in mind they can't give you everything you want in one episode, and considering this was the 2nd one they are proceeding at a nice steady pace. If they tossed in all the bells and whistles it would make for a very boring TV show... Look what Smallville gave us and I still watched that for 10 seasons, granted Smallville could have given us a little bit more but overall it was a fairly decent show. So I think Constantine will start to pull things together by the end of season one, all first seasons start off a little slow then build up the finale.

If this is a response to my post, you're misreading it. And everything I want from one episode is good writing, good acting, good direction (it doesn't have to be by Neil Marshall every time) and with that a solid and appropriate atmosphere for the subject--none of this is too much to ask for, and a many shows do it consistently from week to week. I don't think anybody here is asking for the producers, writers, and directors to toss in "all the bells and whistles;" what does that even mean? (Yes, I know what it means, but I don't know what you mean by it here). Also I don't see anyone here asking for this show to get away with the kind of stuff The Walking Dead does, and last week proved that it doesn't need to do so.
There's also a difference between starting off a little slow, as most shows do, and being dull or "tame," as Princess Amethyst put it; I don't think you're talking about the same concept we are. The other problem I have, unfortunately with slow or tame or dull is that can push away viewers. Constantine on NBC hit the ground running last week, and this week's episode felt pretty stagnant. A show like this can't afford to lose viewers, as its ratings are inherently so low, anyway, since it's put on Friday night. It'd be nice if it could be given time to find its footing (something that theoretically should be easy to do pretty early on given thousands of pages of source material to inspire and pull from and the fact that Goyer and Cerone know have produced and ran shows that in the past have done that almost right away), but that's not always something a television program can afford to have these days.

[Webslinger]

To be clear... I wasn't referring to your post, just pointing out that not every episode will be a winner unfortunately. If people are fans of the comics or movie then they will have to realize that not every episode will translate directly from the comics etc... It happens to pretty much everything, something will always get lost in the translation from print to media. It is just a fact of life. I'm just happy to see so many comic related shows on TV this season, four of them being DC shows and one from Marvel with Agent Carter coming in a mini series next year.