Lucifer: Manly Whatnots

February 16, 2016 5:08 PM - Season 1, Episode 4

Lucifer decides he must seduce Chloe to get over his infatuation with her; a girl goes missing; Amenadiel and Maze discuss Lucifer.
posted by oh yeah! (12 comments total)

That was the worst episode yet. Lucifer's shtick is stale, and it's hard to be enticed by Chloe's growing understanding of what Lucifer really is, or of his apparently becoming mortal, when Lucifer himself just keeps acting like a moron. Plus the whole arc of the PUA idiot redeemed by love while the vengeful woman he seduced is revealed as the true villain (and thus the target of Lucifer's wrath) was a nails-on-a-chalkboard level of annoying. I keep watching because I want this to become a show I like, but I may be out after that.
posted by homunculus at 6:51 PM on February 16, 2016 [1 favorite]

The completely pointless Maze/Amenadiel brawl was surely filmed to use up the remainder of 2015's SFX budget so they wouldn't lose the money from this year's budget. Why are they fighting? Why do they exist as characters? I don't know if the show would be better without Maze and Amenadiel (wait, yes I do know it would be better without him, GO AWAY AMENDY), but the show is being made worse by splitting focus with them for no reason.

Toss-up between most vomit-inducing horror:
- LEO mom tells her small impressionable daughter that boys bully you because they like you
- small impressionable daughter concludes that shooting someone is a method of flirting

Linda the psychologist continues to be the shining star of all her scenes with Lucifer. Damn, this show really IS a reboot of the 1998 Cupid romcom series.
posted by nicebookrack at 7:37 PM on February 16, 2016 [2 favorites]

The ratings are good for a show with a small cast and presumably a relatively small budget, so it's likely to get another season - something about it has clicked happily with people who've never heard of the comic.

The whole episode was dumb except for that moment where she noticed the scars on his back and the scene shifted immediately to actual concern and his refusal to have her touch them. They can be touched clearly as he's having sex naked, but he didn't want her to touch them because the moment was brutally intimate.

There are moments of a very good show submerged in network procedural dreck. It's almost worse than just being a by-the-numbers show! Stop wasting your potential, be crazier, Lucifer!
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 7:55 PM on February 16, 2016 [6 favorites]

"Plus the whole arc of the PUA idiot redeemed by love while the vengeful woman he seduced is revealed as the true villain (and thus the target of Lucifer's wrath) was a nails-on-a-chalkboard level of annoying."

God, yes.

"That was the worst episode yet."

I agree with this, too, except that I've enjoyed the previous episodes quite a bit and even managed to enjoy this one. So I'd frame the same criticism from the "glass half-full" perspective. But I basically agree with your criticism because some of this is getting old already and the mystery of the week was awful in numerous respects at once.

Nevertheless, earlier today when deciding what show to watch from among those available (of those I'm regularly watching), I went to this one first. And I actually asked myself why I was more eager to watch this show than I was to watch about five much, much better shows. The only answer I can give is that a lot of it works for me, despite the parts of it which are so recognizably network vanilla by-the-numbers, and that it appeals to some of the things I enjoy -- and I really really want Chloe to realize that he is who he says he is because, if she does, that would center the show more precisely on what is most interesting to me.

And of course then the show has her become convinced that he is the devil and then fucking walks it back.

I am willing to concede that they managed this in one of the few excusable and interesting ways they could have done so -- it revealed something new, interesting, and unexpected about Lucifer (or Chloe) that had actually been foreshadowed. So it was organic and not a contrived bait-and-switch. Although it still felt to me far too much like the typical bait-and-switch, so I'm not happy about it.

I really want to like this show for some set of mysterious reasons that aren't clear even to me, but if this episode is followed by several more just like it, I won't stick with it. I want something important to happen. I also want to know why Chloe looks like she's just lost two pints of blood and/or hasn't slept in five days.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 9:55 PM on February 16, 2016 [4 favorites]

I agree with dorothyisunderwood: The best part of the episode by far was Chloe's immediate concern about the scars and Lucifer's abrupt and almost scary reaction to her attempt to touch them. More of that, less over the top smarm. We get it. Please stahp.
posted by Justinian at 1:34 AM on February 17, 2016 [2 favorites]

The comic this is based on is in my top five of all time. I think the problem they had adapting it is that it could never be a network show, premium cable, Netflix, maybe. The central plot is still maybe too off putting for that (no spoilers, you should read it).

That being said the sexual tension, cop show angle is so tired. He is lucifer Morningstar, y'all, yes he contains multitudes, but that should be disturbing, not played for laughs.

There was a point to Maze in the books, we shall see.
posted by syncope at 4:44 AM on February 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nevertheless, earlier today when deciding what show to watch from among those available (of those I'm regularly watching), I went to this one first. And I actually asked myself why I was more eager to watch this show than I was to watch about five much, much better shows.

I am in the same boat -- but I don't have an answer. I feel like I am as in thrall to this show much like the various characters are to Lucifer; I have noped out of shows for the kind of misogynist nonsense that this episode was chock full of, but here it just makes me roll my eyes.

I liked that the bit with the security guard established that Lucifer's sex appeal works on men; even if they copped out on the reciprocation, at least it's less heteronormative than how they framed it originally.
posted by oh yeah! at 5:40 AM on February 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

Presumably the sensuous Lord of Hell would be all about seducing any and everyone for his purposes. So being weirded out of the gay bouncer was just silly.

But the show is pretty silly, what with the sensuous Lord of Hell is paling around with a human to fight crime!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:13 PM on February 17, 2016 [1 favorite]

It's a shame this isn't better. I don't know how it could be necessarily, but I think it could be (or could have been). Maybe put us in the dark about Lucifer's true nature along with the cop. Or have the guts to make the devil do some evil things. Or defuse the will they won't they trope in the first episode and never speak of it again!

I'm still watching this for some reason, but probably not for long.
posted by ODiV at 10:29 PM on February 17, 2016

Well it's particularly silly since he's already had a man in his bed. It seems a little silly since he assumes heteronormativity, but when he discovers it, his objection is he's already taken not "ewwwww gays." So he doesn't seem weirded out so much as "Sorry already involved."Or that was my read.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been but I still wish they hadn't gone there.
posted by miss-lapin at 3:32 PM on February 18, 2016 [3 favorites]

I did like that they gave us the moment where Chloe saw his mask fall and his demon face show as well as the moment where the bullet actually wounded him, so that her continuing to be confused/unsure about his claims to the actual Devil make her seem less like an imbecile and more like someone facing something impossibly hard to believe.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:59 AM on April 1, 2016

Lucifer outing Chloe as a cop. Loudly, in public, twice. Announcing to the entire room that she won't sleep with him. Dumbest thing so far. Between that and breaking into her house to make breakfast and of course she has nothing but a towel on....soooo obnoxious and dumb that if it were not a TV show, she'd have dumped his ass and/or maybe pressed charges.

Not that Tom Ellis isn't hot naked, but also hella sleazy. That said, the wing scars thing suddenly made the scene interesting and less squick.

I wonder how Linda feels about him whining about wanting to sleep with Chloe. Does she care? Is it weird for her?

It was a bit of a turn that the pickup artist fell in love with someone he'd already boned and uh, did not notice.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:47 AM on June 19, 2021