Sunday, March 18, 2018

Lucifer, Season 3, Episode 17: Let Pinhead Sing





Let’s set up Lucifer’s inevitable annoying drama for the week… honestly I’m really beginning to find Lucifer’s personality quirks more than a little irritating. Every week there seems to be a whole new reason for why he’s going to act super super weird. It’s like iZombie but without the brain eating excuse.

So he sees Linda who is actually taking a page out of his book and letting her issues with Maze spill on him, thinking about apologising and reconciling with Maze. But with her input, Lucifer decides he needs to stop provoking god in case god decides to kill Chloe (he’s not ruled out this being why the bomb scare happened). And since he can’t keep god’s spotlight off him, he’s decided to pretend he’s interested in other people and doesn’t care about Chloe

Which he doesn’t even remotely pull off, even Chloe calls him out on this (putting it down to fear of losing her) so how he thought he could gool god is something of a mystery. This leads to lots of awkward scenes of Lucifer ostracising Chloe and latching on to every passer by, including bodyguards, extras etc for lots and lots and lots of cringe-worthiness.

This happens throughout the case - the murder of a back up dancer who was stepping in for a popular singer, Axara. Naturally everyone assumes the singer is the real target so there follows lots of investigating to see who would want her dead. We have the obligatory red herrings (three of them, including a dubious depiction of a drag queen complete with very coded language) as Chloe and Ella follow the clues with good police work, dismissing these as they track down the actual culprit. But they largely do this without Lucifer since he’s doing the ostracism thing and fawning over everyone else very irritatingly - but he can barely keep it up when Chloe covers Axara with her own body when someone shoots at them.

One of the things he does is offer to bodyguard Axara and since his penthouse is where no-one would expect her to go, Chloe agrees. He and Axara strike a lot of hostile sparks, fight over smoothies but eventually find some peace. She wants to have sex with him and bewilderingly for the first time ever, he refuses. He is too preoccupied with Chloe - and he doesn’t really like her very much. She does give some good advice about following your passion (in her case, singing) otherwise what is the point of life - for Lucifer what is the point of life without Chloe; despite the threat of his dad

And her passion takes her to his club to sing even though her life is under threat because she’s not giving up or letting anything come between her and what she loves. Lucifer tries to drag her back and they end up singing a lovely hostile duet which is kind of awesome because they can sing.

The performance attracts Cece, a woman with a knife, who has been killing people to scare Axara into not performing or touring any more so they can go back to being closest ever friends (or more, there’s an “I love you” in there as well) and she can have her all to herself. Axara excellently reiterates the point about her passion and no-one taking it from her and Lucifer gets himself stabbed trying to protect Chloe.


At this point I do have to wonder if there’s going to be some kind of police review into Chloe at all? I mean this is what, the third, fourth time her consultant has been injured on the job? I’m sure you get in trouble for that kind of thing

While this has been going on Pierce has been super super depressed because all of his plans to finally die have failed miserably, Lucifer has quit on him and he’s now murdering a perfectly good Kansas song which doesn’t deserve this kind of abuse. Ella tries to make him feel better because she’s Ella but her compliment box just reveals everyone in the office is super obsessed with his arms. So she hands off to Dan on the presumption that Dan has been through some shit and had his own mopey phase so maybe he can snap Pierce out of it

So Dan takes him to Lucifer’s bar (I’m going to assume they get freebies because I can’t imagine either Pierce or Dan would willingly go to Lux and, besides, if this is a luxury club run by Lucifer could Dan even afford to drink there?) and Pierce shows a level of utter bleakness that Dan can’t even touch - so he passes to Amenadiel - except Pierce and Amenadiel aren’t exactly BFFs

Amenadiel is super happy because he passed his test - he stopped Lucifer and Pierce defying god. To which Pierce points out that Amenadiel still doesn’t have his wings back… but Amenadiel is all hopeful and just full of faith, which is more than a little annoying. But he has hope to offer Pierce - he points to Lucifer willing to take a knife for Chloe and points out even he has faith and hope.

I’m not sure how you can compare - Lucifer doesn’t have faith and hope, he loves Chloe. And neither Lucifer nor Amenadiel can really say their experiences are comparable to Pierce’s so their advice or example is… lacking. But then, I’m not sure Pierce’s experiences can constitute hell either.

And we have Linda and Maze - Charlotte actually offers to mediate for Linda and Maze as she is trying to be less selfish. Linda has tried to apologise to Maze, tried to give Maze gifts, has given up Amenadiel but Maze refuses to hear her out or accept her apologies. Linda gets immensely frustrated at Maze refusing to acknowledge any of her own bad acts (though she says she does - but she’s a demon, and holds Linda to a higher standard). Linda does a little slut shaming on Maze’s sex life in pointing out that she wanted one man and she even gave this man up for Maze

Maze is unmoved and walks out - and Linda is done with her. Maze breaks Linda’s gift (a battle axe). Awwww, i really liked Linda and Maze as friends.

In the aftermath of saving Axara she gives Chloe tickets for her concert. Pierce, having a new surge of hope pretty much invites himself to go with her and she’s ok with that because, as she explains to Lucifer, she thought he was still shunning her

He goes to Linda, near tearful, as admits to making a terrible mistake - which seems super melodramatic.





So a drag queen portrayed in less than flattering light and an obsessed woman declaring she loves her and being able to murder - so unstable violent lesbian trope also touched upon. You’re not doing any better here Lucifer.

I did like Axara, the self-aware diva with bags of talent.

I am a little bemused by the tearful Lucifer though… I mean it seems to have come out of nowhere for him to suddenly assume Pierce and she are an item because of one concert? Seems a little extreme… but could it finally lead us to Lucifer and Chloe getting closer and please, please finally telling the big secret.