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Five Thoughts on Lucifer‘s “Someone’s Been Reading Dante’s Inferno”

By | May 20th, 2019
Posted in Television | % Comments

The devil is back! Welcome to round 2 of Lucifer‘s Netflix escapade. After being cancelled by Fox and picked up by the streaming giant, Lucifer dropped a ten-episode fourth season, which picked up where we left off with Chloe and Lucifer coming to terms with their relationship after she has learned he’s actually the devil. We’ll be making this journey for the next ten weeks, but like I said last week, if you wanna binge the series all the episodes are on Netflix. I, too, sometimes barely care about my own thoughts.

But, if you’re still here we’re going to dive in. It’s boutta get real Catholic.

1. International Association of Exorcists

This is a real organization by the way within the Roman Catholic Church. They got a real Wikipedia page and everything. We get more flashbacks to Chloe’s time in Europe at the beginning of this episode as she walks and talks with Father Kinley to start off the episode. She’s reading Dante, she’s asking questions about if that’s her Lucifer, and Kinley tells her it is. I mostly add this beat in to say that this is another really serious opener to an episode, undergirded by serious-sounding music that is immediately undercut by a turn to precinct nonsense. Last week it served as a way to remind us that while this show is on Netflix, and now has the opportunity to be twisted, it’s still the same show with the same amounts of silliness and fancy LA crime. This week it’s a little of the same, and it doesn’t seem like emotional whiplash at all. It seems tighter as we pan from shots of Chloe and Father Kinley in Rome, to Ella describing to Chloe all about her chicken that she’s adopted now that she no longer believes in God. Between this and the way that the show has now been able to utilize it’s cliffhangers properly, there’s just a lot more solid and tight-knit transitions going on. This is a much, much better show.

2. Very very on point

Now I say all that and then I’m going to point out that with the sort of tighter continuity bits, the case of the week far more directly mirrors what’s going on in Lucifer and Chloe’s relationship in a way that is far more on the nose than in epsiode’s past. The conflict and driving drama of the show is Chloe trying to get close to Lucifer to drug him so that Father Kinley can perform an exorcism on him and send him back to hell. She’s having a hard time deciding whether to do that because she knows Lucifer and doesn’t think he’s responsible for the Chicago Fire, Nazi Germany, murders and other things like Kinley seems to have circumstantially concluded. Not without good reason though, after all he is actually the devil, it doesn’t not make sense.

But the case of the week, solving the murder of a Survivor knock-off contestant, paralled really strongly and heavy-handedly the arguments that Chloe and Lucifer were having at different points of the episode. Chloe tries to arrest this asshole jock without any proof because she’s coming off Father Kinley telling her Lucifer is the devil and there’s no nuance there. Then Lucifer tries to arrest the executive producer because he’s the one pulling all the strings and it mirrors Chloe talking to Kinley about her doubts and him telling her Lucifer only thinks of himself. He’s speeding through the case at that point to get on with his and Chloe’s date. The lover setting the building on fire is Chloe dealing with her guilt, which she confronts Lucifer with afterward. And then, finally, the cameraman who did actually murder the woman gives Lucifer another reason to throw himself in front of Chloe and for her to freak. It just felt really choreographed, and like the conflict was dragging the murder case along with it. And again, the show is still stronger in this iteration, there’s just less time to explore some more of the nuance of the cases, which I guess was the biggest thing slowing the show down before.

3. Divine pregnancy

Cool so Linda faints when her and Maze are hanging out and Maze tells her to call her doctor. She does, and, it turns out she’s pregnant and Amenadiel is the father. All of that is fine, but it comes after sort of this really odd side plot with Amenadiel trying to figure out exactly what his purpose is going to be going forward now that he’s decided to stay on Earth and him just being really bad at it. I was really happy with how they treated him last episode and some of this felt odd, but the resolution seems fine. They’re pregnant, they seem alright about it, Linda is gonna have an angel baby which seems like a horrible idea, but oh well. It actually seems like it’ll give them something to do that is related thematically to what Lucifer and Chloe are going through, and will potentially be really special. So cool, can’t wait to see more.

Continued below

4. Answerable questions

The ways in which Chloe is trying to come to terms with Lucifer being the devil in this episode come back still to questions that this show has been asking since season one, and it references all those things in really fun ways. Chloe is asking if Lucifer has killed other humans before, eaten humans, is just an all around hellish dickhead, hence him making a joke that is the episode’s title. It also centers really heavily on the problem that Lucifer has had since season one with the fact that he can be hurt when he is around Chloe. He can walk out of burning buildings fine, almost kill people, but when he’s with Chloe and gets hurt even a little bit he bleeds, and could die. She still doesn’t get it because that particular detail still doesn’t track with her experience. He throws himself in front of a freakin axe and she finally believes it and they have a cute “I’d take a bullet for you or whatver” schtick. I just am excited that we’re calling back to some of these ongoing conflicts and questions about the relationship that Lucifer and Chloe have to each other and why he is the way he is with her. Season 2 almost answered some of these questions but held off. I’m glad we’re getting all the threads tied together.

5. Can you really know the devil?

So finally, here’s the question we are left with: can you really know the devil? Chloe really seemed she was going to be the season long antagonist, and with the amount of build up we’ve had in her and Lucifer’s relationship, I am actually glad that we have put the question of whether she will hate him and inherently oppose him all season to bed. She still loves him. Even if he is actually the devil and she doesn’t know how to handle that. She filters everything Father Kinley said through her own experience of Lucifer, and that isn’t her Lucifer. And while we know that the pair still are probably going to be kept apart these next few episodes, and with the cliffhanger that Father Kinley is going to screw it up for them, it’s good they won’t be at each others throats. I know that Chloe will still be working through her trauma, but it’s good that she’s able to actually see Lucifer for who he is. Which is really what this whole show has been about, that the devil doesn’t make us do anything, that hell is a punishment even for Lucifer, and that humans are screwed up, but it’s because we’re screwed up not because there’s a cosmic puppet master or Manichean good/evil war taking place in a higher reality. We’re left to deal with our own choices, which is a hell in and of itself.

That’s all we have this week folks. Sound off in the comments below and come back next week as we whittle away at another episode.


//TAGS | Lucifer

Kevin Gregory

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