Seriously, I hope you didn’t watch this one while eating dinner, that would have been a waste of a perfectly good chicken pot pie, because this episode was as sick as they come. Between the swarms of filth beetles, bug eating, eye removal, raw meat devouring, fevered cannibalism, and almost constant bloodletting, this episode was like a gore hound’s wet dream. If you didn’t gag at least once, you probably should take a long, hard look at your life. Did I mention the hunger demon is disgusting? Like “how did they get away with this on network television” disgusting. The demon is just the right degree of nastiness that the series needed to set itself apart of the crowded supernatural television procedural pack. You want to go on a diet? Just watch this episode as the demon jumped from host to host devouring anything edible in sight. The demon showed just how nasty dark magic can be, that it isn’t glamorous or sexy in an Anton LaVey sort of way, but downright eating rotting meat off a filthy floor nasty kind of way. This is the world I have been burning to see John Constantine in. Lester was a great addition to the proceedings because he was a warning of what John could become. He also is a walking arraignment of Constantine’s past sins as he admitted that he was only in Newcastle because he wanted to follow every whim of the punk rock mage back in the day. So it was Constantine’s hubris and charisma which caused the Newcastle incident and the horrors to poor little Astra, which is why Constantine goes out of his way to help people and fight really gross hunger demons today. As for the battle and origins of the hunger demon, this was not your typical TV beastie in execution or origin. Did we mention he was gross? Well add to that the thing was downright scary forcing its host to become slavering mindless beasts that endlessly devoured anything they found in front of them whether it was popcorn off a theatre floor or a hapless security guard’s face. The origins of the demon were also fascinating as the series took us to the Sudan, giving the series a welcome sense of international flavor, where Lester freed some poor Sudanese soul of the demon to, in Lester’s mind; find some salvation from the Newcastle incident. This sparked the demon getting free in America and Constantine’s hunt for the constantly consuming monster. Constantine’s battles with the demon were memorable and intense, with from the monster causing a possessed girl to do the Bray Wyatt Exorcist crabwalk to the final confrontation with the thing, this episode showed the battles Constantine must face if he is to find forgiveness for Newcastle, battles with the nastiest kinds of demons in the nastiest of places. This is the Constantine I wanted since I heard about the series. But we forgive the warts because the episode was a horror hound’s dream come true, a truly brave and disgusting look into the ultra seedy world of John Constantine. OMG, I just realized, Cookie Monster could be a benevolent hunger demon. Yeeesshh! Those Magic Moments The whole hunger demon and swarm of beetles thing was first utilized in a rather different form in the very first issue of Hellblazer by Jamie Delano and John Ridgeway (1988). A great deal of the imagery was lifted directly from that inaugural issue. If the series wants to keep borrowing from the Constantine classics, you won’t hear any complaints here. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for all news updates related to the world of geek. And Google+, if that’s your thing!
