The Sandman: 5 Stars Read this first, sorry, yes, do it now.
The Comic: 5 Stars, must read, but not before The Sandman: Seasons of Mist
The Rundown: No Stars… just… no. Hey look, it’s the Lord of Hell, and he’s decided to start… solving crimes? For… humanistic reason? Sentimental reasons? He really wants to bang this lady cop, so like, helping her seems to be his way of trying to do that. Why did they make the devil so frikkin lame?
For those of you just joining me on my journey into the biggest disappointment in TV since Firefly was cancelled, Lucifer follows the story of the retired king of hell and his life in LA after quitting the soul business. Based on the comic of the same name, a spin off the popular Sandman comics written by Neil Gaiman. In the second episode we don’t get that much more actual substance, instead focusing on the crime-of-the-week, which for a premise this juicy is just sad. The crime being the murder of the son of a celebrity. One made up for the show. Yeah, riveting.
Now the tidbits of story we do get this episode arrive in the form of another visit from Amandiel (D.B. Woodside). He delivers another threat, and another demand for Lucifer (Tom Ellis) to return to hell. Here, terminology gets weird, as earlier in the episode Lucifer refers to himself as ‘retired,’ yet later they refer to it as his ‘vacation.’ It’s way more vague than it needs to be, and the crux of the threat is that the demons Lucifer left behind will start to leak onto Earth if he’s not there to wrangle them. Now, not only is this just… eh, we also have seen zero evidence of any demon activity in the show so far. For something they’re setting up as a major plot point, they really are doing a piss-poor job of setting it up. In storytelling, speech exposition should be used sparingly, especially when you could just SHOW us what is going on. It is TV after all.
Now, I can almost begrudgingly understand the decision to remove the entire ‘father, son, nature of religion and free will’ that was present in the original series. It’s abundantly clear from such things as the cancellation of the Constantine show, Deadpool from X-Men Origins, and various other tanked comic adaptations, that the bigwigs in charge of these things sometimes have no respect for their audience, or just have no idea what their audience actually wants. What I don’t understand is that the fallout from Lucifer’s abandonment of hell in the comics is so full of awesome characters and drama that you could have left intact, even with the dumbing down of the overall plot.
In the comics, when Lucifer leaves, G-d leaves in charge two new angels, unfallen. Lucifer hints at this in his banter with Amandiel, and they might still go this way, by mentioning that G-d might put Amandiel in his place. In the comics, however, it is done immediately, and the primary angel sent is resentful. There’s an entire arc of an angel’s torment between being obedient to G-d’s will, and yet his feelings of being punished despite knowing he’s done nothing wrong. Replacing that with a vague threat of demonic retribution is a HUGE missed opportunity.
So, yes, they turned an epic worlds-spanning drama into a story about a policewoman (Lauren German) and her sidekick, the Devil. I think this is my biggest beef with the show, is that Lucifer has been relegated to a side character in his own story. His entire motivation is figuring things out about this ‘mysterious’ cop, and why his seductive powers don’t work on her. The we get even more screen time of just her and her ex-husband talking about the impact of the cop’s former movie career on their daughter. It’s even more disappointing that the cop’s character is clearly supposed to be an example of a strong female lead, but instead is just a mouthpiece for police procedure and stating a need for evidence. Oh, yes, and the occasional denouncement of Lucifer and his ‘evil’ ways. This becomes even more tedious, when the real badass female character, Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt), is relegated to the sidelines to repeat those denouncements, though it’s for not being more depraved.
I think I’ll take this paragraph to describe Mazikeen and how, if the people in charge of the show wanted a strong female presence in their show Mazikeen was all they needed. A woman who does not let beauty define her, but rather chooses her own appearance for her own reasons. She is a renowned warrior, never defeated outright in the entire series. Even when the chips are down for her she has a variety of skills, some trained, and some inherited from her demonic progenitors that allow her to come out victorious. She has a long history with Lucifer, and loves him, but is not owned by him. She has her own agenda, and a loyalty to her people that at one point pits her directly opposed to Lucifer, despite the fact that he could simply wipe out her existence with a flick of her hand.
So yeah, episode two is pretty much as painful as the first. Lucifer continues to be a wreck of a character, insecure, puntastic, and overall ridiculous. Also there’s an entire diatribe in the comics about how Lucifer was an angel, and yes he fell, but he never became responsible for humanity’s many evils. He rails against ‘the devil made me do it’ because why would he, a nearly infinitely powerful being, care at ALL what the small parasitic creatures on this planet get up to. Instead of a disdain for humanity, he is ‘fascinated’ by it. Oh, and in this episode we get a little bit of ‘the Earth is changing you Lucy’ (Amandiel’s pet name for Lucifer. I can’t even…) and his response of ‘You’re right, and I like it.’ So yeah, stay tuned while I continue to suffer so you don’t have to!
No one should watch this, don’t do it.