A man brings back an artifact from the Sudan and a place officer breaks it, unleashing a whole bunch beetles which kill the officer. The man, Gary Lester, visits Constantine and tells John he exorcised a hunger demon from a man and put it into the artifact. The demon is inside the police officer and he's on an eating bender, but the host dies and the demon moves on. However, this demon is too strong for John to trap.
Zed finds something deeper and darker within Gary. This leads her to finding some clues about what type of demon this hunger demon is. John meets Nommo who can lead him to some answers that it is Mnemoth. They both learn where the demon came from and that it was purposely contained in the boy Gary found in the Sudan. In the end, John has to sacrifice Gary for the greater good in order to stop the demon.
Fans of the series HELLBLAZER will recognize this as the first story of the series, with a bit of a tweak. Originally, it was Papa Midnight who helped out John with figuring out what this demon was. This time, we have Nommo, a shaman. The change works fine, as Papa Midnight has been set up as more of an antagonist than anything else. Nommo is a pretty cool addition to the cast, especially if the character is who Justice League Dark fans think he is: Doctor Mist. Maybe we're seeing the early days of this character? This show teases characters and ideas, so far, a bit better than Gotham. They don't say the character's names over and over again and I don't feel smashed over the head with Constantine mythology. It's subtle.
It's refreshing to see such an iconic HELLBLAZER story line on the show. This is one I really was excited to see play out, even though it was very different from the original. The changes made to the story worked though and all-in-all, while it is just another villain (demon) of the week story, it provided a lot of fun.
John may not be as smarmy as he is in the comics, but I loved the moment when John walks into a eat locker and sees two dead bodies and changes the number of days before last incident. It's a fun little moment while he's surrounded by a much larger problem.
The series really is developing who John is though, rather than jumping into something larger, which fans new and old will appreciate. He's not the most powerful exorcist around and he is going to come up against forces he can't stop. He can merely contain them, for now. The writing team is giving us great moments of success and failure with this character. Here, Gary tells Zed the story of Astrid and what happened at Newcastle. John has demons in his past, no pun intended, and it's making his a more well-rounded character.
The only thing I'm not fully digging on is Zed. She feels like a brick wall in John's way. Chas is more of his post to lean on, but he's vacant from the episode. Sure, Zed growing as some form of mystic is a pretty cool feature, but her dialogues with John seem like moral battles that she refuses to back down from more than anything else. As of right now, she is the weakest link on the show.
A part of me and probably everyone else, wonders what this season is building towards. All we know is that there's a lot of crazy demon action happening around the city, but there haven't been too many clues to where this is going to lead John. However, being that it is the first season, there's still a lot to set-up, so there is a conflict there for fans.
NBC and DC throw some fun little Easter eggs into the show to keep fans happy. In one scene, there's a metal skull aka Pandora's Box that makes a cameo as John scratches some containment spells on a bottle. In previous episodes, we saw Doctor Fate's Helmet, and I have a sneaking suspicion that John's sanctuary is the House of Mystery.
All-in-all, "A Feast of Friends" is a great episode. This and last week's "The Devil's Vinyl" were the biggest hits of the season, but I'd probably put this episode a bit out in front because it was so heavily tied to that iconic opening HELLBLAZER story. It may not be the show fans of the comic want, but what Constantine, the show, does incredibly well is pull in that Sleepy Hollow crowd by giving them a horror-mystery show that's not actually frightening. Sadly, as I've mentioned on the Comic Vine Podcast numerous times, this show is in the time-slot of death, which doesn't show the network has a lot of faith in it. However, Constantine proves for a second week in a row that it is a fabulous show and it's truly capable of bringing these characters to life and reaching a larger audience. We're getting some emotional moments that really hit home to the viewers and its characters, and that's what's making this show a hit.
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