Constantine: Manny Walks A Mile In Another Man’s Shoes

A dark entity in what appears to be human form savagely tosses around an adult woman, ultimately jamming two syringes in her chest.

John follows a string (in the Mill House) that leads to a door. On the other side of the door is a pleasant view as if it were outside. Very similar to the Star Trek Holo-deck. Inside, Zed is meditating. Her facial expression says she’s hiding from something. Could be the effects of the last big vision. John gives her the ‘ol suck it up, we’ve got work to do standard.

Manny appears as John sarcastically suggests they all take a holiday. Sarcasm not being a nuanced part of language that Manny cares to indulge in. Manny tells John about a woman who is about to be admitted to a specific hospital and her ‘situation’ is worth paying attention to. John gets smart with Manny and heads towards the scri-map. Then Manny bursts the map into flames. The entire landscape is too big for the scri-map now. When Manny leaves Chas’ meat suit, Chas asks, “how did I get over here?”

At the hospital, John stabs Chas in the thigh with a screwdriver to create a distraction. Within arm’s reach of this woman Manny spoke of, they notice blackness in her veins. Never a good sign. Zed touches her hand which sends her into a full on vision. In the vision the woman in question lunges at her awake and in the distance we see a silhouette that resembles Manny. She snaps out of the vision. A few moments later, Zed falls into a full on seizure.

While John waits for Chas to get out of his hospital gown and into some pants, a very large and intimidating man walks into the ER. He is rude and angry, but clearly a regular. Can’t really place his importance yet, but there’s something there.

John and Chas make their way down to the morgue. The victim lies motionless on a metal table. John starts an incantation. When the spell is complete, the woman appears to be black as paint. Her inner darkness is all-consuming. Normally some humanity will shine bright enough to be noticed. Here, nothing.

A doctor enters Zed’s room. He’s there to deliver an update. Her cat scans came back. She has a small mass on her temporal lobe. First impressions are that it’s a tumor. A diagnosis that John rejects on spec. Zed is concerned. As is John, but he refuses to show it.

A janitor that was sipping from a flask in the morgue is now on the main floor. He makes his way to the supply closet and walks past the fluorescent bulbs he needs to fix a light. Instead he reaches for a large brown bottle and proceeds to drink. Inside the supply closet, another dark form ravages the janitor.

A doctor walks out to the rooftop John is smoking on. He asks to borrow a cigarette. When he hands one over, the doctor is no longer the doctor. Manny flicks the unlit cigarette over the edge. Before Manny can get a word out, John physically attacks him yelling, “FIX IT”. John’s emoting over the prospect of potentially losing Zed in almost any capacity. John told her to push through, ignore the pain. Of course believing that the pain didn’t come from some mortal illness. Manny gets back in his face but in a constructive way. Or so he thought. Manny suggests that John only focus on what he can control. John agrees. Then drops a vile of what looks like red gas (a vile of air from Hades) , then stomps on it. This knocks out Manny cold. John then says a few things (we assume in Enochian) while carving what looks like a bird’s-eye view of the Starship Enterprise into his chest. When Manny wakes up, he is in human form. Whether he like it or not.

For all of our Supernatural viewers, this should play out like an early Castiel situation. For those uninitiated, Castiel is an angel to take control of a willing body. The discovery phase of an angel experiencing life through the lens of a human is much different and takes some getting used to. It’s also generally very entertaining to watch play out.

John follows the flickering light to the supply closet almost pulling Manny along. Inside they find the janitor mauled to death. The smell as opposed to the visual is too much for Manny. The sensations afforded humans is often too much for angels on their first go around. Manny is no different, who pops vomit in the corner. Inside the man’s carcass, John finds a ‘heart of darkness’. The man’s organ is visible but looks out-of-place. Blacks, purples and blues. Manny tells a story that John knew as a myth, Manny knew as actual events that he was present for. A great battle to take down a sorcerer. In the end the evil was contained in a black diamond of evil. The stone’s pieces were intentionally broken so no one man could wield its power. The great flood (yes, Noah, the arc the whole bit) spread the pieces of the black diamond all over the earth.

John goes back to the Mill House where Chas has been looking into Jasper’s research on this very issue. Chas has shown real concern for Zed since early in this episode. He asks John about her and John wants very badly to just ignore his questions. Eventually Chas physically turns John around and demands to know what John knows. As it turns out, John by way of Jasper has a box that contains one of the fragments from the Black Diamond of Evil.

Manny is at a nurse’s station trying to print out files on our to Jane and John Doe’s. The nurse is very pleased to help. Very pleased. So much so that she suggests getting Manny the actual active files, more updated. Manny is ill-equipped to handle or even understand why this nurse is touching him and staring deeply when the situation does not call for it. They walk down the hall and suddenly she throws him into another supply closet, forcefully having her way with him. I’d go into greater detail (as a laugh literally out loud at my television) but for recap purposes, we like to keep it family friendly.

At the Mill House, John’s big plan is to remove the black diamond shard and get Chas to hold it. This will show John just what it does. It will probably kill Chas, but we now know why that’s perfectly acceptable. The only question mark comes between what it does and Chas dying. At first nothing happens. Then the evil surges through Chas’ body. He can’t or won’t let go of the stone. He is endowed with great power. Enough that he throws John across the room. A cattle prod to the abdomen stops him though.

John: You see that there (gestures to Manny), what you’re feeling? That’s embarrassment. Its socialized and it’s not worth it.
Manny: I feel…guilty. The man’s body had all of these feelings and I used a woman to extinguish them.
John: So you made two poor sod’s feel pleasure? A momentary relief from the tragedy of everyday living.
… …
John: All those chemicals, swirling around. Your heart aches, your head hurts, make it hard to concentrate doesn’t it?
Manny: Yeah, I don’t know how you get anything done.

Once they get back on track, Manny goes over the two respective files. Both have addictions. Both had second chances that they squandered. Manny actually gets angry at the notion of throwing away a second chance. Then possibly, the killer feels the same way. Maybe that’s how he chooses victims. Morris, the large man with burnt skin that gives the nurses flack, could be next. Then John suggests that he look into Morris while Manny checks on Zed. Manny then asks, “She’s ill, if you can’t speak to her now, then when can you?”

Manny walks into Zed’s room where her actual doctor is not really getting anywhere putting her at ease. When he leaves, she looks a Manny and asks, “who are you?” Not in a curious way, but in a ‘I can tell you’re not a doctor’ sort of way. Manny explains that John has trapped him in this body and he just wanted to check up on her. She’s disappointed that John didn’t come. But then she charges into question about her ‘gift’. Concerned that they may be evil and not a gift from God. With Manny trapped in the human form, he is disconnected from his angelic powers. But he is able to reassure her based on what she’s said. “It seems to me, you have all the answers you need”.

John does not find Morris, who is out attempting to smoke a cigarette, the thing that ultimately killed his wife and daughter by his own reckless behavior. The lights flicker and the dark man runs towards him. We actually get a decent shot at the killer’s face. Very strange.

During an attempt to get John to open up about his feelings for Zed (and we are not assuming they are of the romantic variety) they have an epiphany. Zed’s doctor is the killer. He served and almost died in Baghdad. The name of the Black Diamond of Evil loosely translates to “Baghdad”. Now the doctor comes into Zed’s room to confront her about rescinding her consent for the tumor removal procedure.

At just the right moment, John and Manny enter the room. At first glance, it almost seems as if the doctor doesn’t know that he is the killer. John removes the black diamond shard and extends it (in the protective case of course) towards the doctor. He feels the effects immediately. He slashes Manny’s arm and throws John before running away. They give chase. Zed gets the vision again. An angelic silhouette and a radiant white light. She tells John it is a divine holy light. They both look at Manny who is momentarily confused.

John: Manny.
Manny: What?
John: You need to open your shirt.
(John rips his shirt open)
John: I’m reversing the spell I cast on you, mate.
Manny: Are you telling me…
John: I could have released you at any time.
(Manny growls at John)

The moment Manny is released the killer (whatever it is) finds them. It knocks John to the floor and John begins begging for Manny’s assistance. Manny appears in all of his angelic majesty. The creature responds and walks slowly toward Manny and his light. Manny assures him that his work here is done and its time to go home. Manny wraps his wings around them creating a ball. Eventually, the light brightens and they disappear leaving only John’s box with a black diamond shard and out of the thin air the doctor’s shard falls to the floor. Then the shards (broken from impact with the floor) levitate and fuse with John’s piece.

John walks into what looks like a church were Zed is praying. John tells her a story that he hasn’t told anyone else. Every morning, John wakes up and spends the first five minutes of his day meditating to the idea that everyone he cares about is dead. Then when that is not how the day ends realistically, it’s a good day.

Then Manny appears. John tells Zed that Manny has arrived, but she didn’t need him to tell her. She can see and hear him as clear as John. His presence answers her question about where her visions come from.

Courtesy of NBC