“And dear old Dad strikes again. I mean… It’s not funny… you’re not the one being taunted are you? Oh God this, Oh God that. He’s popping up everywhere and spoiling my favorite things!” – Lucifer
So do to the Supergirl/The Flash crossover happening at the same night as this newest episode of Lucifer, titled “Pops”, I ended up spilling out all my creative juices on a review for that show and neglected this one; which is a sin in my book. So I apologize for anyone reading this late, but treat this as a refresher before this Monday’s episode, as Lucifer has been on short break since “Pops” aired. This episode was extremely well written. While it wasn’t the best episode of the season, “Favorite Son” probably won’t be topped, this episode is a good contender for 2nd or 3rd in my list. While it didn’t have as powerful moments as “A Priest Walks Into a Bar”, the comedy and lightness in this episode really made it enjoyable. So sit back, enjoy the Mexican food and resummon episode ten with me.
Warning: SPOILERS Will Follow!
Movie Star
So the biggest thing to happen in terms of story building this episode was that we finally got to meet the infamous Penelope Decker; Chloe’s movie star mom. It was extremely well thought out to have Chloe (Lauren German) dealing with mommy issues in an episode centered on daddy issues. Mama Decker has been teased throughout the season, so having her arrive and cause the stir that she did was actually a pretty big event in terms of world building. We finally get to see who Penelope is and why Chloe harbors such negative feelings towards her. Rebecca De Mornay does a fantastic job as Chloe’s mom and also doesn’t give us any reasons not to take Chloe’s side on things. Penelope has the typical movie star attitude and ends up dressing up Trixie the way that she must have dolled up Chloe when she was a child. While Chloe’s relationship woes seemed so silly when compared to Lucifer’s or this week’s suspect Junior’s (Manny Montana) daddy issues, they did a good job at paralleling the two major storylines this episode. I loved the conclusion of this specific plot. Penelope comes to terms with all of her overbearingness and apologizes to Chloe for making her childhood difficult. She just wants Chloe to be happy, and Penelope is obviously a very happy person as a famous actress. She teaches what she knows. It was a really sweet scene as Chloe lets her mom off the hook and seems sad that she’s going so soon. In the end, she tells Chloe to take a leap sometimes, which Chloe does in this episode with a text to Dan and later a drunk visit to Lucifer (Tom Ellis), but I hope they bring this back and have Chloe take a more significant leap later in the season.
Making Friends
Anytime Trixie (Scarlett Estevez) is in an episode, it immediately gets a full point in my review due to how darn cute she is. I think this episode is Trixie’s best yet as she ends up running away from Chloe and Penelope fighting, only to seek out Lucifer for comfort. This is not only hilarious, given how we all know how Lucifer feels about kids, but also because she manages to find his high rise bar LUX. I had heard that Maze (Lesley-Ann Brandt) and Trixie were going to share a scene together, but I let my suspicions of Maze get the better of me. I ended up loving this bar scene. Maze obviously feels the same way about kids as Lucifer does, but she also doesn’t understand them at all as she pours Trixie a glass of alcohol. With Maze going to Dr. Linda Martin (Rachael Harris) for therapy, which is amazing by the way, Dr. Martin suggested that Maze might try making some friends. When Chloe finally comes in and Trixie tells her that Mazikeen is her new friend, I smiled at the way Maze’s demeanor immediately changed. I honestly believe that I was wrong about Mazikeen now. It seems like she’s at least trying to cope with her situation being stuck on Earth, and she’s making an effort to follow Dr. Martin’s advice. With Trixie saying that she is her friend, I think it’ll give Maze a small bit of light inside that will keep her from turning against Lucifer in the end. Maze then went back to Dr. Martin to share her success and you could see how excited she was about the progress. I also love that she wants to hang out with Dr. Martin. Honestly, if they gave us an episode where the main plotline is just Dr. Martin and Maze having a girl’s night out, that would be hilarious and totally fine with me. Tweet the Lucifer writers if you want this too. Also tell them we need more Trixie. I love that she wants to be the first person on Mars. Also, I love that Dan is still keeping up his end of the bargain with the chocolate cakes.
The Bad Guys
So Amenadiel (D.B. Woodside) doesn’t appear in this episode, but we do see his hired gun throughout. This plotline was rather interesting. So Malcolm (Kevin Rankin) begins by trying to convince Dan (Kevin Alejandro) that killing Lucifer is the right thing to do. The fact that Dan doesn’t like Lucifer makes this plotline work that much better. I honestly wasn’t sure if Dan was going to help Malcolm or not, and I don’t think Dan knew either. He spent the majority of this episode having unpleasant interactions with Lucifer and learning things, like Lucifer trying to get Chloe to sleep with him, which probably doesn’t make it a hard choice for Dan. I loved the line where Dan tells Lucifer “I wanted one reason to stick up for you… just one.” To the other characters it might have been suspicious and questionable if the whole dinner hadn’t been such a mess of emotions. Lucifer ends up giving Dan that one reason when he saves Chloe’s life, so when Dan met up with Malcolm in the end I was a bit surprised that Dan told Malcolm no. One thing that I find interesting, which I hadn’t noticed in the previous episode, was how much crap Malcolm eats during his scenes. This is rather telling. Malcolm is literally eating burgers and meat wraps in the majority of his scenes this episode. Along with his super cocky attitude, this can be trying to show us that Malcolm is no longer scared of death as long as he’s on Amenadiel’s payroll. A man who isn’t afraid of death is a dangerous man indeed, which Dan finds out at the end of this plotline when Malcolm beats him down and chokes him out. I honestly thought Malcolm was going to kill Dan here. I think they made it obvious that Dan is just put to sleep, but man I was worried that there was going to be a neck snap at the end of that fight. The question remaining is: Why didn’t Malcolm kill Dan?
Sol De Javier
This week’s weekly case was a pretty fun one. I honestly wasn’t sure who the killer was until our characters figured it out as well. I was on #TeamLucifer for a while and suspected Junior in the killing, or maybe even his drugged out girlfriend Naomi (Alessandra Torresani). I think the fact that the sous-chef Anne (Tara Summers) got poisoned as well in a pretty nasty way ended up throwing me off my guessing game. I still don’t really get when the sous-chef poisoned herself though. Did she know that the evidence was too thin so she just did it to avoid suspicion? I mean… it worked… but it seems a bit lucky that she spit up blood right when she needed to. As someone who has worked in several restaurants and also loves to cook, I liked that the story revolved around those themes. Lucifer’s immediate distrust of Junior, followed by the immediate relating to him and trusting him, was a pretty fun mix to throw into the plot. Lucifer and Junior actually had quite a bit in common. During my rewatching of this episode, it seemed silly that I suspected Junior so much in my first go round. When Lucifer does his “deepest desires stare” all Junior says is that he wanted one last meal with his dad. If that’s not a good guy then I don’t know who is. There was also the connection of the last thing Junior’s dad left him. He mentions that his dad left him a knife, which I immediately tried to connect with Lucifer’s wings, but in the end I think that comparison works best with the restaurant. We learn that the sous-chef tried to kill Junior because his pops was going to leave him the restaurant even though Junior didn’t seem to want it. But the sous-chef didn’t know Junior was a vegetarian so pops ate the poisoned dish on accident. That was a pretty good twist. The fact that the sous-chef didn’t want to kill Javier also made her motive less revealing. So the restaurant is actually another thing that Javier left his son, which ended up burning like Lucifer’s wings. With the burning of the restaurant Junior decides not to mourn the loss, but to take it as an opportunity to make it better, or make it how he would want it. I like the idea that Lucifer may learn that since he burned his wings, he’s now allowed to be who he wants, and not dwell on who he used to be. One curious thing is that Lucifer ended up getting pretty burned during his rescue of Chloe and himself. This still supports my theory that he’s not really losing his powers though. I think Chloe being in his arms somehow nullified his mortality again. I mean, Lucifer isn’t losing his super strength, so why would he be losing just one aspect of his powers… speaking of Chloe’s mystery…
All in all this was a very good episode for me. The promos for this episode tricked me into thinking that we were going to get some super-hot #Chlocifer scene. While we almost did, we were left in a pretty interesting spot with our two main characters. Malcolm breaks up Dan and Chloe, which causes Chloe to take the leap and attempt to seduce Lucifer. The mysterious part about this final scene is the fact that Lucifer “can’t” take what he wants at this moment. Is it Lucifer’s real feelings for Chloe that are keeping him from finally getting to sleep with her, or is it that Chloe’s mysterious nullifying of Lucifer’s powers also keep him from having carnal relations with her? I think he’s realizing that there is a very strong and real feeling inside him regarding Chloe, and he would rather his first kiss with her to mean more than just a drunken rendezvous. I think the writers are setting up a great start to what could become a really great romance between the couple in season two. What’s that? Oh Hell yeah! Another benefit to writing this article late is that I can add that Lucifer just got renewed for a second season!
I wish I could congratulate the cast and crew of this show for an insanely good first season (so far), and I really can’t wait to see where they go next. Now that the second season is ordered, we can stop worrying about the fate of the show and begin the theory spiraling about where this show might head and how it will end. More of that next review. Until then, keep watching and telling everyone else to watch this show. It’s too damned good to not know about.
Let me know what you thought of this article and your thoughts on some of my questions! I’d love to hear them! Find me on Twitter @TheEverwritten.
Check out the promo for next week’s episode below: