Constantine - Season 1

[DWF]

Luckily I never read the comics, so I have no baggage going into the show.

I've never read the comics in question either, so my criticisms have nothing to do with "baggage." They just cast a truly awful actor in the role of Corrigan, and I would've found him just as dreadful if he were playing an original character.

You didn't seem to complain about him on Atlantis. I had no problems hearing him and he did seem to hide his Irish accent.

 

[JD]

I think this was the best episode yet. I didn't mind the guy who played Corrigan.
The Papa Midnite/Constantine team up aspect was fun. We also got some interesting hints about Zed's past, and saw Chas heal.
I also got a kick out of the Zed's vision or Corrigan's future.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Well it appears Constantine is dead, unless the ratings pick up before episode 13 airs.
http://uproxx.com/gammasquad/2014/11/nbc-constantine-halts-production/

 

[Christopher]

Well, it's "on the bubble," but it isn't necessarily doomed. What I read was that, since it's a late premiere, NBC has less information on its performance than it does for other shows, so it's holding off on the decision to continue beyond the first 13 until it sees whether the ratings pick up. And apparently the ratings for episode 4 did pick up.

 

[Captain Craig]

Overall I really enjoyed this past Friday's episode of Constantine. Likely the best one to date and that's saying something as I can't say I was overly thrilled with Corrigan. I warmed to him over the course of the episode but feel either this guy could've been directed better in his portrayal(I gotta believe that asked for that low talking kinda slurred dialogue from him) or a stronger character actor gotten.

I'm not entrenched in Specter lore so take that for what it's worth, maybe he was spot on, but I didn't like how our first impression of him is as a drunk cop pissing in an alley(off duty or not) especially if he was on duty.

Glad to see the ratings uptick and hopefully that will continue. However, they are showing a new episode on the heaviest shopping day of the year, Black Friday. So I'm thinking not only will the episode show a dip back to where it's live ratings were before this past Friday but that it could be worse. They should'v skipped a new episode this week. It's going to wipe out this weeks gains.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I'm just watching now, I'm not having any issues understanding Corrigan. I was expecting it to be bad from this thread but it seems perfectly intelligible to me.

 

[Christopher]

^It's not that I found the actor's dialogue unintelligible, just that its intelligibility was more a testament to the sensitivity of the microphones than to the actor's ability to project. It's not that I couldn't understand what he was saying, it's that I couldn't understand how the performer could possibly have beat out anyone else in the audition given what a lazy, uninvolved performance he gives.

 

[theenglish]

Overall I really enjoyed this past Friday's episode of Constantine. Likely the best one to date and that's saying something as I can't say I was overly thrilled with Corrigan. I warmed to him over the course of the episode but feel either this guy could've been directed better in his portrayal(I gotta believe that asked for that low talking kinda slurred dialogue from him) or a stronger character actor gotten.

Corrigan has had a number of personalities because it really depends on the writers and he hasn't been essential to the Spectre in many versions of the character.

Personally, I like him as a classic noir Sam Spade style detective from the forties....

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if tonight's episode was meant to be the second episode. It's set on Halloween, which would've been a week after the pilot aired, and there's no mention whatsoever of Zed, who certainly would've been useful if she'd been around. And it seems to be setting up a lot of basic exposition about the Rising Darkness and Manny the Angel, stuff that we could've used much earlier in the series.

I checked Wikipedia's episode guide, and it lists the previous four post-pilot episodes as episode numbers 3J5553 through 3J5556 -- which suggests that this one might have been 3J5552. (The pilot's number doesn't fit the pattern, though.)

 

[O'Dib]

I thought immortal guy mentioned something about Zed being off taking some classes.

 

[Forbin]

^He did.

 

[Christopher]

I didn't notice the reference to Zed. Was Chas visible onscreen with his lips moving when he said it? It sounds like the sort of line that could've been dubbed in after the fact to make an earlier episode "fit" later in the sequence.

Indeed, Wikipedia's list has been updated, and the episode number for this one is indeed 3J5552, meaning it was filmed as the second episode.

 

[Dr. Funkenstein]

I didn't notice the reference to Zed. Was Chas visible onscreen with his lips moving when he said it? It sounds like the sort of line that could've been dubbed in after the fact to make an earlier episode "fit" later in the sequence.

No, he said it clearly and it was a natural part of the conversation they were having.

 

[Christopher]

^By "clearly," do you mean you could see his lips moving as he said it? Filmmakers often dub in lines smoothly enough that we remember them as if they were spoken on-camera even when they weren't. And you can do a lot with editing and dubbing to change the structure of a conversation. If it feels like a naturally flowing conversation, that doesn't mean it wasn't altered, just that it was altered well.

Given the episode number, this was most likely scripted and produced as episode 2. That would also explain why Chas seems so naive all of a sudden, needing things explained to him -- probably they reassigned him lines that were written for Liv before she was dropped. If the line about Zed was spoken on-camera, it could've been a reshoot inserted into the final edit.

 

[Caretaker]

I checked Wikipedia's episode guide, and it lists the previous four post-pilot episodes as episode numbers 3J5553 through 3J5556 -- which suggests that this one might have been 3J5552. (The pilot's number doesn't fit the pattern, though.)

Whoever puts up the information for Constantine at Epguides seems to agree with you - giving the 3J5552 number to last night's episode.

 

[Forbin]

I didn't notice the reference to Zed. Was Chas visible onscreen with his lips moving when he said it? It sounds like the sort of line that could've been dubbed in after the fact to make an earlier episode "fit" later in the sequence.

I have the same suspicion. Such a thing is not uncommon.

I always think this when a character says something blatantly expository either off-camera or with their mouth not visible. Some suit somewhere must think "But the stupid viewers won't understand if we don't spell it out! Dub a line in."

 

[Christopher]

I always think this when a character says something blatantly expository either off-camera or with their mouth not visible. Some suit somewhere must think "But the stupid viewers won't understand if we don't spell it out! Dub a line in."

Yeah, I've been noticing that a lot lately, particularly in the '70s TV I've been watching. Although it isn't always pointless. Sometimes writers or filmmakers lose track of the difference between what they know and what the audience knows, so they leave out something important and have to add it in later. And sometimes a dubbed line of exposition is needed to compensate for the deletion of a scene that would've explained it.

One noteworthy example of a dubbed-in line is from Star Trek 2009, the rather odd line where Pike says, "You understand what the Federation is, right? It's important. It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada." It wasn't in the script, the novelization, or the pre-release clip of that very scene, and it was spoken offscreen while the camera was on Kirk. I figure someone decided late in the game that they hadn't adequately defined the Federation and its value for novice viewers, so they slapped that line into the film, and the haste of it is what led to the Federation, rather than Starfleet, being referred to as an "armada."

 

[Mr Light]

Being the second episode filmed would explain a lot. This was a completely forgettable episode I just did not care at all about. My friend almost dropped the show because of it.

 

[Dr. Funkenstein]

^By "clearly," do you mean you could see his lips moving as he said it? Filmmakers often dub in lines smoothly enough that we remember them as if they were spoken on-camera even when they weren't. And you can do a lot with editing and dubbing to change the structure of a conversation. If it feels like a naturally flowing conversation, that doesn't mean it wasn't altered, just that it was altered well.

Given the episode number, this was most likely scripted and produced as episode 2. That would also explain why Chas seems so naive all of a sudden, needing things explained to him -- probably they reassigned him lines that were written for Liv before she was dropped. If the line about Zed was spoken on-camera, it could've been a reshoot inserted into the final edit.

Why does it matter?

It's not like this episode required Zed or Liv, nor was it relevant to any of the other stories so far. So who cares what order it was filmed in? It has no bearing on anything.

 

[Forbin]

I always think this when a character says something blatantly expository either off-camera or with their mouth not visible. Some suit somewhere must think "But the stupid viewers won't understand if we don't spell it out! Dub a line in."

Yeah, I've been noticing that a lot lately, particularly in the '70s TV I've been watching. Although it isn't always pointless. Sometimes writers or filmmakers lose track of the difference between what they know and what the audience knows, so they leave out something important and have to add it in later. And sometimes a dubbed line of exposition is needed to compensate for the deletion of a scene that would've explained it.

Yup. And on the other hand, sometimes it's such a blatant "Captain Obvious" line that I feel embarrassed for the actor who had to go back into the studio to loop it.