1. Relaunch rather than full on reboot
Alright so I was pretty down on what I thought was going to happen last week with Lucifer’s new plan to help Cain die. I thought that Lucifer and Cain were gonna get some angel time travel doohickey and go back to biblical times and stop Cain from killing Abel and boom that’d be that. Turns out, I was wrong. No Lucifer’s plan was to fly into hell, grab Abel’s soul (cause of course he’s in hell) and put it into some dying human’s body so that he could be alive and Cain could never kill him or something? I’m still not entirely sure what they were going to do after he came back. But whatever. The point is that this is way more clever than the convenience of time travel, and was executed really well this week as Abel came back as that one guard who was only on the first season of Orange is the New Black. The idea was a solid one, most of the execution during the episode I thought was pretty great.
2. Walking King James: Meet Abel
Speaking of Abel, the guy came back as walking talking version of archaic English mixed with much misogyny. If you’re in to women making boob jokes and trying to bone down with everyone then this is your episode. The parts where Abel was genuinely afraid of Cain though were pulled off really well and Lauren Lapkus did a really great job selling the being tortured for thousands of years thing. I’m not quite sure why she shot that drug cartel guy and then that plot point was never mentioned again, but the cases have ceased to matter in this show, and sometimes that’s ok. Although again, why is every celebrity or Hollywood-type a criminal in this show? Anyway, most of the Cain and Abel schtick was good, I like seeing the show lean into the supernatural and mystical stuff and they definitely did that for a good chunk of this episode.
3. Angels and demons
The way that Maze felt about Abel, talking about him as “her first” or the person that they all practiced torture on was really funny and probably the best part of the episode. He is the “infernal guinea pig” after all (love it when you mention the title of the episode in the episode)! What still continues to suck is the weird relationship that Maze and Amenadiel have. It struck me as odd that Amenadiel showed up to Abel before anyone else while she’s checking people out on a rooftop. Especially since the explanation was just, “I’ve been tracking you Lucifer so yeah I just know everything going on in your life.” I thought this might give Amenadiel though a chance to partner with Abel and then continue to antagonize Lucifer and Pierce the rest of the season. We’ll get to point 5 here soon though.
Anyway, Maze and Amenadiel’s fight, while fine, seems unearned. The whole love triangle thing with him and Linda and Maze just isn’t working for me. Especially since his whole arc this season is to try to get back on God’s good side. Nonetheless, it’s good to see him in conflict with everyone as he works better when he’s being a jerk.
4. Giving up control
Now on to the good sideplot. Charlotte and Linda finally making good on their therapy session was a real emotional highlight for the week. For an episode that was all about control, Charlotte and Linda sold it better than any of the other pieces that were going on. Watching Charlotte tell Linda at the end about what it was like to be in hell was really solid, and did a lot to add to the emotional scarring she is still dealing with. Likewise, having that partnered with Linda’s guilt, and the underlying knowledge that Linda knows she was in hell and was a goddess should make this ramp up quite well. For being two of the characters the show has struggled figuring out what to do with this season, putting Linda and Charlotte together is as good a call as any.
5. You had me until the end
Continued belowAlright here’s where I got pissed. You had Abel get hit by a forking ambulance?!?!?!?!!?!?! (Sorry I’ve been watching a lot of The Good Place.
You had such a great plot device to follow a few episodes, Cain and Abel had sort of weirdly reconciled, Lucifer just told Cain he’s out and he’s done all he can because this whole thing is putting Chloe in danger and you just have Abel walk out in traffic and be unceremoniously killed? What the actual fork. It just seemed so abrupt and unearned, and having Abel stick around and partner with Amenadiel, or make life hard for Chloe, etc, would have been a cool edition. Now what’s going to happen is Cain is pissed at Luci, he’s going to have sex with Chloe, they’re going to fight, Lucifer is going to cozy up and apologize to Amenadiel, then boom they both defeat Cain somehow, and then season finale plot twist. Mark my words.
Anyway that’s all for this week folks. Sound off in the comments, and come back next week as Abel will definitely not be back unfortunately.
