Lucifer 1.05 “Sweet Kicks”

The Sandman: 5 Stars Read this first, it’s really good. I’m going to just keep putting this here until you do.

Lucifer – The Comic: 5 Stars, read it, but not before The Sandman: Seasons of Mist because it connects and stuff. Will also keep putting this here, because it’s a good thing. Don’t you want to be informed about good things?

The Rundown: Back to zero Lucifer, you make me so sad. So the Lord of Hell, Lucifer, does a lot of favors for a lot of people, and he’s calling them in to help the LAPD solve crimes. Also, he’s turning mortal, but untroubled by it while he continues to try and woo lady-cop into his bed.

Alright, so this week on Lucifer, the writers decided that we just weren’t intrigued enough by the grand plot tidbits we got last time, so it’s back to another true-crime narrative. A legendary sneaker designer has been shot at, and a girl is dead. It’s up to our intrepid heroes to track down the killer and bring them to justice. At the same time, Lucifer is determined to entrench himself in the LAPD in order to keep a closer eye on lady-cop. Is it bad that it’s five episodes in and I can’t recall her name? Most people on the show, namely Lucifer, just call her ‘Detective’ with no last name. The criminals they encounter range from calling her derogative names for the police, or also call her ‘detective.’

It’s no wonder that I’m unable to dredge up the slightest bit of interest in her or her backstory, no matter how intrigued Lucifer is. They’ve given me nothing to latch on to when it comes to this character or her backstory. Her famous tit-revealing past has already become irrelevant, and now all I know is that she has a great respect for police-procedure.

So instead of focusing on the bad cop-TV tropes, or the wooden acting, this week I’m going to expound on my disappointment with overall story direction. After last episode it really seemed like things were going to start heating up for the Lord of Hell. He was losing his powers, namely invulnerability, Amandiel was putting in a lot of Earth time trying to dredge up dirt, and Mazikeen’s loyalties were called into question. Now while this episode doesn’t ignore those things completely, the progress made seems very small. Mazikeen does give in to Amandiel’s pressures when she sees that Lucifer is not taking his mortality seriously. We get a bit of info as to her role as Lucifer’s watcher and protector. Her power is apparently radar-sense for Lucifer’s whereabouts and the company he keeps. With this power she knows that he’s been seeing the therapist. She reveals this to Amandiel, who waits no time before he makes a ridiculously obvious play for Lucifer’s session records. This kind of ‘skullduggery’ is so far from the awesome conflict we got not one episode previous that it’s difficult to get excited for it, or even see the point.

What I get from this episode is that it seems the writers have no faith in their premise. The premise is what makes the show unique, but at every turn they seem afraid to take it to its logical conclusions. They’ve set up a potential for demons escaping from hell, off the leash now that their master is lounging away on Earth. You have the potential ‘death’ of the Devil, and what kind of power vacuum could be created by taking him out of play. Or hell, just a rehashing of the eternal struggle between Angels and Demons.

All of this is inherent in the show, and doesn’t even touch on the awesomeness of its source material. Yet, even with all that great potential, they spend most of the episode simply tracking down suspects. They spend maybe five minutes setting up that the victim was an artist who makes shoes that cost thousands of dollars, and yet never even go deeper into the subculture they’re clearly pointing at for some ‘interest.’ The gang presence is equally lackluster, we see two very wimpy gangsters, and one small show of force. Not only are the writers afraid of their own premise, it seems clear they’re even afraid to fully explore someone else’s.

If the writers of Lucifer hope to retain what little audience they have, they better start stepping up their game. They’ve written the potential into the show, and I’m still waiting to see where they take it. It’s completely possible they’ll fail to even address any conflict except the ‘crime-of-the-week’ for the rest of the season, which would make me even sadder about the show than I am already. The small silver lining was that they gave us a taste of Mazikeen’s demon form at the very end. I really hope they start letting her shine as the badass she is. She’s definitely getting in some more action, but a lot of it is off-screen or heavily shadowed. Gimme Mazikeen in larger skirmishes, or a war! Let her freak flag fly. Clearly Lucifer won’t be the one to do it, and enough of her potential is intact that she could become the real focus of the show. While I’m sure that won’t happen, a guy can dream.