TV Review: Lucifer season 4

TV Review: Lucifer season 4

What an age we live in!  In days of old, when a TV series was cancelled, that was it.  Finito.  Oh sure, a few shows switched to another network, but it was rarely successful (JAG being the major exception).  But now when a niche genre show bites the dust, and a popular streaming service just might bring it back from the dead.

So it is with Lucifer, FOX’s adaptation of a graphic novel about the Price of Darkness getting bored and solving murders in Los Angeles (as the Devil says in the pilot episode, where else would the Devil go for a vacation?).  I wrote a favorable review of the pilot episode, but the rest of season one was hit and miss.  Then, surprisingly, things improved dramatically in season two.  There was a murder case to solve each week, but they gradually got less important as the show’s theological musings got more entertaining.  The show’s producers read the Bible and found lots of references to Lucifer’s Father but none for his mother, so they created one.  Better yet, they put her in the form of actress Tricia Helfer, better known from Battlestar Gallactica.  Helfer was a great addition to the cast: well known inside the SF/fantasy genre, smokin’ hot, and a very good actress.  The show got better, but FOX thought it ran out of steam after season three.

Based on the 10 episodes produced for Netflix, FOX was wrong.  The Netflix incarnation of the show delivers the same bawdy humor, off-beat theology, and entertaining musical numbers that made the show so irresistible (the season four finale begins with a music video set to Kenny Loggins’ “I’m All Right” that ranks with this fight in an Asian drug den as Lucifer’s best set piece).  

A quick recap: The Devil (Tom Ellis) got bored and decided to spend some time in LA, where he runs the nightclub Lux as Lucifer Morningstar.  He met an attractive homicide detective named Chloe Decker (Lauren German) and so he decided to become a consultant to the LAPD and share his expertise on the dark side of humans with her.  She works with her ex-husband Dan (Kevin Alejandro) and a forensic expert named Ella (Aimee Garcia).  Lucifer spends his time, when not engaged in orgies or other debauchery, with his brother, the angel Amenadiel (DB Woodside), and his protector, a demon named Mazikeen (Lesley-Ann Brandt).  Because it’s LA, Lucifer also has a close relationship with his therapist (Rachel Harris).

The good news is that the Netflix version of Lucifer is successful in keeping the team together, with all of the cast members (except Tricia Helfer, whose character died at the end of season 3) returning.  Often when shows are resuscitated a few minor cast members are sacrificed for budget, but everyone is back (well, Chloe’s daughter Trixie is absent for most of the episodes, but with the episode count reduced to 10 there is less time for Decker’s home life). 

The major addition to the cast in Inbar Lavi, who plays an old crush of Lucifer’s.  A VERY old crush, as she plays Eve, as in Adam and. . . .  This follows the show bringing back Lucifer’s mother in season 2 and Adam and Eve’s son Cain in season 3.  While Lavi is no Tricia Helfer, she does an excellent job of portraying Eve as a party girl who means well but has been out of circulation for a few thousand years. 

If there is a down side to the Netflix reincarnation of Lucifer it is that the homicide “case of the week” (I guess that is a non-sequitur in a binge environment instead of a weekly network show) are given even shorter shrift than they were when the show was on FOX.  The cases always served mostly as a tent-pole to hang Lucifer’s antics on, but the Netflix version makes almost no effort to portray any of the murder investigations as the least but interesting; in fact, I’m pretty sure at least one case was solved with no explanation as to what the killer’s motive was. 

The upside of being on Netflix, as Tom Ellis mentioned in a Hollywood Reporter interview, was a slightly more permissive Standards and Practices attitude.  Mostly it is the language, which gets a little saltier, but there is a visit to a nudist colony in episode 6 that shows off aspects of both Lucifer and Ella that had previously been unseen.  It’s hard to do a show about the Devil without some cursing and mild nudity.

The returning actors are all at the top of their game.  DB Woodside, as Amediel, manages to be the stern, humorless big brother of Lucifer and also the funny fish-out-of-water interacting with humans on Earth.  Brandt, who generally got to do little more than look menacing as a demon, gets a chance to shine as she slowly falls in love with Eve, even as Eve only has eyes for Lucifer.  Mazikeen always solved all of her problems with violence, so watching her deal with unrequited love is something new.

The one actor who doesn’t come off well is Alejandro.  His character, Dan, reverts to his uninteresting “Detective Douche” mode from season 1, when he was just a bad cop and Chloe’s ex, before he started doing improv and getting into a relationship with a woman whose body was possessed by Lucifer’s mother (you have to follow he show to understand).

The arc of the 10-episode season 4 mainly deals with the tension between Lucifer and Decker, who saw Lucifer in his persona as the Devil for the first time at the end of season 3.  With them on a break, Eve enters as Lucifer’s old flame, and they pick up where they left off; the problem is, while they both are fond of the other, neither feels good about themselves in this new relationship.  Oh, there is also a fanatical Vatican priest determined to send Lucifer back to Hell.

If you were a fan of Lucifer when it was on FOX, then by all means check out season 4 on Netflix.  If you are a fan of the graphic novels, probably skip it as I understand the TV show is significantly different.  If you are unfamiliar with Lucifer, go to Netflix and either start at the beginning or, maybe better, pick it up at the start of season 2.  Season 4 is good enough to work your way through seasons 2 and 3 for.