That was a pretty crappy adaptation of "Hunger" and "A Feast for Friends." I know they can't do the story exactly, but there were a lot of piss-poor changes that went beyond simply keeping continuity with the rest of the show and appeasing standards and practices. Example:
Spoiler:
They almost had tv John completely **** Gary over, but it was spoiled by tv Gary being noble and heroic and self-sacrificey about the whole thing. The script (and Goyer) continues getting it (and John) wrong by having tv John sit with tv Gary and hold his hand as Mnemoth devours him and devours itself. Another chance for tv John to be the prick he should be and they blew it. I can see taking out the part about giving Gary one last hit to get him through it a little and also taking John's cigarettes away, again, but I can't see any good reason that tv John couldn't have still gone off to drink himself into a stupor and try to shut himself off from his friend's fate. Drinking is clearly okay on network television, and there are protagonists all over Network television these days who are real bastards sometimes (or most of the time), but for some reason they really don't seem to want tv John to be one of them.
Anyway, the screen writer and show runner could have easily preserved more elements from Hellblazer #1 and #2 and kept its essence but clearly chose not to. It's disappointing for a fan, and it made for some pretty mediocre television, even to someone with no affinity for the books or the John Constantine character like Mrs. Griffin, who looked at me at the end and said, "That was almost as bad as the second one." I've noticed that Manny serves no real purpose. He just shows up and kills a little time, which is a shame because Harold Perrineau is a great actor, and he still does a fantastic job with what little he's given. While I disliked Liv, I'm now pretty sure that I hate tv Zed. There was an interesting dichotomy going on within this episode: Considering how poorly written it was, it was really well directed. Also, while I was personally disappointed to not see anybody from Justified show up this week, I was pleased to see Charles Parnell (better known to Venture Bros. fans as Jefferson Twilight) appear as Nommo.
I'm starting to dislike this show for those reasons Griffin and I'm totally loss of what they need to do in order to improve on it. Too many issues and I just don't know where to begin ... if this show doesn't improve in the next 2-3 shows - I'm thinking about not watching it anymore.
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This was why I hated hearing it would be on NBC. I think Hellblazer could've kicked ass somewhere like Fx or BBCA, but the big network need too much generic, mainstream conformity for something like this.
"Somewhere in a lonely hotel room, there's a guy starting to realize that eternal fate has turned its back on him. It's 2 AM."
I'm not entirely convinced it's (all) NBC. I mean sure, it's the reason why we don't see more gore, see John smoke, and why we didn't see Gary curled up in a bathtub while jonesing for a fix, but there are still significantly edgier shows than Constantine on NBC. If the network can have shows like Hannibal and characters like Red Reddington, I genuinely don't see why this show has to be required to be as tame as it's proving to be, especially at its core.
Finally caught up, and not only do I quite agree, that's a sad but hilarious good alternative title for the show so far, but I also don't see why as mentioned before, NBC has shows like Hannibal get more "daring" than Constantine with its character behaviors and content. Also, that ending to me was disappointing. Sure I don't read Hellblazer but it was much too obviously sappy and heroic.
I have three (technically four) guesses as to what is happening, and all seem equally plausible: -This is NBC's only comic book based show and execs are demanding it be heroic, "We want a hero! Screw the comics, make John a hero! And tone some of this stuff down, too." In other words, some high mucky muck at NBC doesn't get it. -WB execs are squeezing Goyer because this is one of only two comic book shows they've sold to mainstream networks, Fox is supposed to be edgier than NBC, therefore it's not allowed to have the teeth that it should for fear of scaring off NBC execs or the people who watch the network: In other words, some high mucky muck at Warner Brothers doesn't get it. -David Goyer just just doesn't ****ing get it. This is by no means implying that Goyer doesn't know how to do dark and edgy, as he's proven time and again that he does, but it may be that Goyer doesn't know how to do dark and edgy for network tv...he may just not be fully aware of what he can and can't get away with on NBC. Or he just plain doesn't get John ConstanTINE and Hellblazer.
Wow I haven't seen this episode yet. I have it PVRed. Going by the fairly unanimous opinion that it wasn't a great showing really doesn't give me a lot of hope.
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