Age of the Geek

The Show Won't Go On
     It’s official. Constantine is dead.
     Not the Roman Emperor, he’s been dead for 1,600 years. “Constantine” the television series.
     One of the several new TV shows of last season based on a comic book, “Constantine’s” fate has been uncertain for months. NBC officially decided to not renew the show for a second season last month, leaving Warner Bros. to scramble for another venue. Rumors were abound that the show may move to SyFy or even join its fellow DC properties “Arrow” and “The Flash” over at The CW.
     Sadly, those rumors never panned out. Executive producer Daniel Cerone announced this weekend that the cast and crew have been released from their contracts and that the show will not go on.
     I should be more upset about this, but I’m not. This isn’t a situation like “Firefly,” where the premature cancellation will forever leave a hole in my heart. I liked the show and it’s a shame that it got the axe just as it was hitting its stride, but it’s not like it wasn’t given a fair opportunity.
     The biggest tragedy here is the waste of potential. Matt Ryan was a perfect casting choice to play John Constantine and NBC, the network currently airing the astoundingly dark “Hannibal,” was the perfect place to run a supernatural thriller about a hard luck wizard making impossible choices. “Hellblazer,” the comic book series that “Constantine” is based on, is not a happy book. Like “Hannibal,” it’s a grim and messy examination of humanity, but with literal demons rather than psychological ones.
     Instead, in a market already saturated by “Supernatural,” “Grimm,” and “Sleepy Hollow,” the show runners thought they could get away with adding another sanitized monster-of-the-week into the mix. A show with all the surface elements of “Hellblazer” but none of the substance that made it stand out.
     I can see why they went this direction. “Supernatural” just finished its 10th season. That’s a show that was only supposed to last five seasons, and has done nothing in the next five seasons but repeat the same “one brother wants to sacrifice himself to save the world and the other brother won’t have it,” storyline since then.
     Meanwhile, “Grimm” and “Sleepy Hollow” have both been renewed for a fifth and third season respectively, in spite of the fact that both shows are so creatively bankrupt the only thing either one could think to do with the main character’s redheaded love interest is turn them into a villain. Because we haven’t seen that in every X-Men adaptation since 1980.
     But these shows will continue while “Constantine” gets the axe.
     It’s like a creative game of Russian Roulette. When something is successful, somebody else will copy it and be successful too. Then others will do the same thing until it stops working.
     It’s a shame that “Constantine” misread the market. Particularly since it was in a prime position to rejuvenate the genre with something new. Sure, hindsight is 20/20, but I can’t help but feel that had “Constantine” taken more cues from its source material and less from the shows it was competing with, it may have fared better.
     To the show’s credit, it seems like they realized their error early on. The pilot episode was changed at the last minute, ridding them of an original character and replacing her with a fan-favorite from the book.
     As the show progressed, it gradually became darker, adapting some storylines more-or-less straight from the comic. The studio even eventually stopped sending the show notes about Constantine’s smoking. That may seem like a minor thing, but it’s pretty important for a character whose most definitive story involves terminal lung cancer.
     Sadly, it was too little, too late. I may be upset about the missed opportunity for a great show, but the fact remains is they were given a fair shot and it didn’t work out. Lesson learned.
 
     Travis Fischer is a newswriter for Mid-America Publishing and still wants “Firefly” to come back.