Lucifer (2016-2021) is a drama about Satan being exiled on Earth, forced to live in Los Angeles to expiate his sins. Hey, I lived in Los Angeles for twelve years. It wasn't heaven, but it came close. I reviewed Episode 5.15: "Is This How It's Really Going to End?" Uh-oh, sounds Apocalyptic.
Scene 1: God is retiring, and the angels have to vote for either Lucifer (Tom Ellis, below) or the Archangel Michael (also Tom Ellis) to take His place. Luce's chances are limited by that war-in-heaven thing, but he argues that his years of penance on Earth have changed him, given him the skills necessary to be successful in the job. He needs his siblings, including Jophiel (Miles Burris, top photo), to campaign for him.
They meet in a night club of some sort -- all we see is the bottom halves of girls' bodies. Jophiel gazes goofily at the boobs of the invisible girl bringing them drinks. He is wearing a suit coat with no shirt, so he can flex his pecs to impress girls.
Lucifer claims that Michael has been doing a Wormtongue-thing on the Big Guy for milennia, making him think he's losing power in order to grab the Throne for himself. What is this, Succession? But Jophiel can't decide -- Luce is a lot of fun, but is he a good administrator? "Michael's kind of a dick, but he keeps the trains running,"
Scene 2: Luce offers a female friend or girlfriend a job as consultant, but she doesn't want to move to heaven in the middle of a school year. "Well, hold off until I can convince my siblings to vote for me." He calls her the future "Mrs. God," so they're romantic partners.
Scene 3: At a bloody crime scene, Dan (Kevin Alejandro, left) wants to fix up the forensic photographer (a lady) with his old cop partner Carol. Lesbians? No:
"He's a guy, and a good one," Dan continues. Do you mean "a good guy," as in "nice," or "good at being a guy," as in "not a fruit"?
I'm a little impatient today, and we've already seen a ton of heterosexism in the first five minutes. One more homophobic comment, and I'm out.
Why doesn't Dan want her for himself? Maybe he's gay, and has a boyfriend waiting at ho,e.
Photographer thanks Dan for the thought, but with all the horrible tragedies she has lived through recently, she's not ready to start dating yet. This must be a regular character.
Lucifer and Girlfriend enter, and hear about the corpse: Jonathan Donnelly, 53, a medical techician, tied up, forced to drink wine for several hours, and then shot. His phone reveals a nasty argument with a guy named Mo. So Lucifer's day job is police detective? I thought he liked crime.
(Top photo: Mo Anouti, who plays an evil Arab guy. No connection to the "Mo" sending the texts.)
Scene 4: Girlfriend addresses the cops: she's put in her two-week notice, because she's retiring. Dan congratulates her, but wonders why she didn't tell him. "You'd be too jealous, since you're secretly in love with me." The Photographer is irate: "I can't solve crimes without you! Is this really how it's gonna end." Hey, that's the episode title!
Girlfriend notes that Lucifer is retiring, too. "We're going to move to Heaven...um.. I mean Florida...so Luce can run the univers...I mean his Dad's business." Now Photographer starts screaming in Spanish and threatening to kill them both. "I'll kill you if you leave me" ? That's classic toxic relationship. Did this episode come with a trigger warning?
On to the case: the threatening text was sent by a woman named Odetta. Hey, she texts using a boy's name, Mo. Shouldn't Photographer get all disgusted? No, she's still busy being obsessive and creepy.
Scene 5: Lucifer and Girlfriend interrogate Odetta, a psychic -- presented as a fraud, of course. The Dead Guy was her con partner: he would steal valuables from corpses, and Odetta would advertise a psychic ability to find them -- for a substantial fee. They were very successful, so why murder him?
So who else would want to kill him? When the families didn't take the bait, Dead Guy fenced the items with someone named TJ. Check him out. (Left: Shemar Moroe, who I thought was in this episode. I can't find any photos of the real guy).
This is a police procedural. I expected Lucifer -- the actual Devil -- to show off some powers -- at least levitate now and then. Have an office in Hell with a fiery desk or something. This guy might as well a regular human "black sheep" of a rich family.
Scene 6: Dan playing cards with his preteen daughter. Not gay. And Jophiel does not appear again. I'm out.
Beefcake: None here. Acording to the Lucifer Wiki, Luce takes off his shirt a lot, but not here.
Gay Characters: None here. The Photographer may come out as lesbian later.
According to some very critical articles in Medium and Bi.org, Luce is outed as bisexual during Season 2, when someone starts killing off a lot of women; Lucifer notices that they are all former sex partners. When the next victim turns out to be a man, Girlfriend triumphantly exclaims that his theory is wrong. Men don't have sex with men! She lives in Los Angeles, but has no idea that gay or bi men exist.
Fortunately, when Lucifer explains it to her, she does not seem particularly disgusted; she just didn't know that such things happen.
In the rest of the series, Lucifer is absurdly hetero-horny. Depending on the writers' whim, he makes an occasional quip about being bisexual or asserts that he finds men's bodies repulsive.
My Grade: With heteronormativity, homophobia, no beefcake, and no supernatural powers? Granted, I only watched half the episode, but D-.
Bonus butts and a dick in the NSFW version.
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