Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: C- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT One Flea Spare
By Jacob Clifton | Season 4 | Episode 11 | Aired on 03.29.2005
Constantine was obsessed with grunge, of course. Back in the nineties, I mean. Glad he's over that. Grunge is over, right? So take a shower. As if to prove that he's over the music if not the hygiene ethic of grunge, he sings…I can't believe what I'm hearing, but the song starts with some pretty distinctive broken chords, so…yeah, it's "I Can't Make You Love Me," perhaps the most perfect song of all time, by Bonnie Raitt. Man. I am angry before this shit even starts. He begins seated and pensive, staring directly into your soul with his very dramatic eyeballs twitching. He runs the Angela Chase fingers through his teenage girl tresses again, and then some kind of tic happens in his left eye where he looks like he's stroking out. Anna's convinced this is on purpose because he thought it somehow made him look more sincere or something, which I totally buy because it's him, but I can't even consider any of this because it so totally looks like he's about to pass out. He stands up just in time to miss his lower register by like a fifth, and then he's making all these fuck-me faces with one leg up like he's just clubbed and killed the Seal, and…he's very rubber-faced. It's all over the place. It's gross. He "feels the power," in particular, quite fiercely. It's really creepily aggressive and crazy and theatrical.
If he weren't on a stage, I guarantee you'd be so upset right now. Like, imagine if he were singing this way to you in the caf in some kind of crazy dramatic love maneuver. Say you're fairly-to-very popular, and you know very well that he is in scary stupid love with you, but you've tried to be nice, and now here comes fat stupid Constantine with his gross dirty hair and he's going to sing to you about how he can't make you love him. Where do your eyes go? Do you laugh? Cry? Look panicked at your friends? Flee? No, you're nice, so you have to sit there and look somehow both touched and resolute at the same time. And he hands you a rose towards the end, and it's like mashed up because he had it in his book bag, and you have to act like it's the most perfect rose of all time, while still maintaining a no-nonsense aura of not being open to dating him. And the song won't end, and his feelings are so deep and impressive and amazing that his face is doing all this scary unintended shit, and all around you people are making these school shooting faces like they can't believe what's happening and have been paralyzed by fear and shame. Even the lunch ladies are like, "I knew he was erratic and a drama queen, but damn."
And in the movie of your life, this would be where the cute Australian transfer would wander in and take your hand and Constantine would realize that you're taken and make a graceful exit, but no, because we're all trapped in his movie, and it's totally indie and slow-motion right now, and nobody can move, and he's trying to reach inside your head with this creepy unwavering stare and force you to love him through the power of song. The electric passion running through his veins is so intense that his eyes keep rolling around in their sockets and sometimes he makes a fierce, mean, bitey kind of face, because that's just how intense this is, baby. This thing between you and Constantine. Welcome to your hell and mine.