This episode may be one of the turning points of the
season as it has some excellent realisation moments from Lucifer
Last episode Lucifer made it clear to his mother,
Charlotte, and his brother, Amandiel that he doesn’t want to go back to heaven
and he doesn’t want to go back to hell – he wants to stay on Earth. He wants to
stay in Los Angeles, this is his home, this is what matters to him. And it
matters to him a lot
This is all expositioned extra clearly by Linda his
excellent therapist. Ok, normally when a show or book manages to find a way to
Tell everything, especially character development, so expressly it’s usually
convoluted or doesn’t make any sense at all or is generally made because the
author seems to think their audience are so terrible lacking in intelligence
that everything needs spelling out
But Linda is excellent, she helps grow Lucifer not by
just expressly pointing out his growth and feelings but prodding him every step
of the way. And I love her all the more now she has both learned the truth
about Lucifer and managed to at least partially got past that. There’s one excellent
scene that covers this with Linda meeting Charlotte. She’s both in awe that
Charlotte is the ex-wife of god (and respectful of Charlotte’s excellent
rebuttal that she isn’t defined by her marriage) while also ferociously
refusing to share any information about Lucifer with her. Respectful, even in
awe, but still very aware of her professional ethics. Linda is awesome
Actually I’d love to see a series all following Linda, the therapist to the supernatural.
Anyway, this realisation of how vital Los Angeles and the
sense of home is to Lucifer – the first place he has ever felt at home – he also
faces a threat to that. This week’s murder victim was Lucifer’s corrupt landlord
and his son is now selling Lux, Lucifer’s home, out from under him. And he
buyer is a gloriously awful wealth real estate mogul who is just wrecking
everything to spite her enemies. I kind of love her, I always have a soft spot
for people who are gloriously awful and revel in it – I call them Magnificent
Bastards and I kind of love them for it.
While the murder investigation goes on, Lucifer tries to
scrabble up some way to save his home – with parties blocking the place from
eviction (because of course he does) often not focusing on the case because of
it. And here we see the wonderful relationship between Chloe and Lucifer – even
as he endlessly frustrates her and his inability to follow the rules clearly
exasperates her to no ends – she still deeply cares about Lucifer and his
plight. Not enough to do more than to provide some legal distraction during
Lucifer’s fight because she’s still Chloe and the law matters to her – but still
there to offer real support. She knows how much Lux means to Lucifer which in
turn makes it important to her. I think moments like this show the connection
(not necessarily romantic) between characters more than anything else – forget kissing,
sex and dramatic proclamations of love: simply making someone’s priorities your
priorities is the most powerful depiction I can think of.
Unfortunately Charlotte is also in on the game. I’m all
kinds of torn about Chaerlotte. In and of herself, I kind of love her, because
she is the utterly perfect Magnificent Bastard. Charlotte is the Honey badger,
she wanders through life Not Giving a Shit. And I think for this character to
be awesome we either need a major storyline to focus on her (which I don’t
think we have the space for here because we’re focusing on Lucifer and Chloe)
or give her no real goal and just have her wander around causing chaos and
being generally hilarious – let’s have a season of establishing her as this
utterly powerful, confused, lost, sociopathic character finding her feet and
dropping the occasional body and snarling and Mazikeen (hey we could make far
more room for Mazikeen then – a character who really really really needs more
attention. Or more room for Amandiel which makes him more than moving through Charlotte’s
orbit. Hey couldn’t we have a 3 part story of Lucifer, Amandiel and Charlotte
all adapting to the human world separately. Oh the storyline we could have).
Anyway, Charlotte wants to get Lucifer duly on side
helping them go back to Heaven. Mazikeen is suspicious of her and despite his
original objections, Amandiel joins her in some stalking of her
And Charlotte is definitely plotting. She realises how
upset Lucifer is about losing Lux so plans, through lawyering and murder, to
bomb the night club full of people – sadly her bomber has a shred of
conscience. Though I do wonder how much this amorality is going to drive
Amandiel off. Plan B comes when she makes the same realisation we do:
Lucifer loves Chloe. She promptly seduces Dan (and they’re
kind of fun together – her brutal honesty is cruel and fun) to both have fun…
and learn more information. It also puts Amandiel and Mazikeen off the plot because
Amandiel draws the line at stalking his mother when she’s making out with a
guy.
Charlotte now has another plan – blowing up Chloe. Chloe he
manages an awesome scene of saving Lux for Lucifer by having it declared a heritage
spot, leaving Lucifer moved and confused, lost at the idea of someone doing him
a favour – and doing it without any expectation of reward for this. This is so
far from the way Lucifer operates that the whole thing bemuses him
But before she does that we have the crime of the week
un-resolved because 2 people are identified as potential suspects. And they
both confess to protect the other. With this example of pure, stupid, love
alongside the generous favour Chloe just did for Lucifer allows Linda to prod
Lucifer into realising his quest for a home wasn’t about Los Angeles or about
Lux or even about people – in general – but that it’s about Chloe. His love for
Chloe
This revelation…. Makes Lucifer stand Chloe up, staying
home while she waits in a restaurant. And I can see this – not much shakes the
very foundation of reality for an immortal archangel. This is complete
re-evaluate your entire reality level thinking: and he’s run away from it. And
isn’t this Lucifer’s modus operandi that we’ve seen for the last 2 seasons? The
whole reason why he is going to Linda for therapy in the first place is because
of how utterly avoidant he is about everything – he completely runs from,
ignores or denies any uncomfortable truth. Linda’s awesome work as a therapist
is less to analyse him and more to grab the truth about him and make him
actually confront it.
Unfortunately this leaves Chloe alone – for Charlotte to
target.
