By Jarrod Jones. This is what happens when the decisions are left up to unrepentant, irrepressible morons.
In a move that should surprise absolutely no one, NBC has decided to pass on a second season of Constantine, the perfectly fine Vertigo/DC Comics property that starred a casually formal (and casually hunky) Matt Ryan. That’s right, after three consecutive months of picking their noses considering the ultimate fate of the series, it’s been decided that the show will have to fight to live on elsewhere. Because life is a hollow, empty lie.
Showrunner Daniel Cerone confirmed this distressing turn of events on his Twitter page Friday night.
NBC a “no” for Season 2. Warner Bros working hard to find #Constantine new home. Stay active. Stream. Tweet. #SaveConstantine#Hellblazers
— Daniel Cerone (@DanielVCerone) May 8, 2015
While there’s still a possibility that Constantine could move to NBC’s sister channel Syfy, the bitterness that comes with the network’s decision is that it was an utterly avoidable outcome. Airing the show exclusively on Friday nights since its premiere — a time slot so notorious for killing tv shows that somebody actually made a Wikipedia page about it — NBC struggled with finding an audience, mostly because even comic book fans have to go out and get sloppy just like everyone else.
The issue of Constantine‘s dwindling ratings perplexed the network in spite of the massive popularity of comic book television shows, to say nothing of the series’ rabid fan base or how easy it would have been to just fucking cancel Chicago P.D. already. The only excuse to forfeit such a potential cash cow would either come from the fact that 1) everyone at NBC was too busy watching The Flash to take a moment to consider what they were doing to their own DC property, or 2) NBC cynically jumped on the comic book bandwagon because it looked like so much fun. Wait, what? Oh. Uh-oh.
Speaking to IGN back in January, NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt revealed that the latter was the case, because who the hell would believe him otherwise. Says Greenblatt:
“We got on the bandwagon of these shows based on comic books and maybe there are too many of them. It’s a popular series of comics, but it’s not The Flash, it’s not Batman. So maybe it suffers a little bit there… We love Matt Ryan, who’s the star of it. I think we did right by the fans who didn’t like the film that was made of it.”
Ostensibly, this whole thing is your fault, America. Much like the grandfather who bought you a model kit of a space shuttle because you liked “The Star Trek”, NBC picked up Constantine because of you damn kids with your hula hoops and Arrows and Special Agents of S.M.E.R.S.H. Not like any of you ingrates ever appreciated a goddamned thing old man Greenblatt did for you anyway. And now dinner is ruined for everybody.
