Lucifer Season 5 Review; there's still life in the old Devil

 

Life is full of tradeoffs.  Taking a job for more money may mean less time to spend with your kids.  Buying something that is more affordable usually means getting something more cheaply made.  Going out and having fun means risking catching a potentially deadly virus.  What to do.

A perennial trade off is that of quality versus quantity.  Let’s take the example of television programs.  Once upon a time, a “season” of a TV show meant a lot of episodes.  For example, the 1950’s half-hour Western “Have Gun – Will Travel” produced 39 episodes in its first season.  At this early stage of network television, the “TV season” started in the Fall and literally ran a new episode every week until it was time for the “summer rerun season” when networks showed repeats.  As you can imagine, the pace was grueling on the regular actors.

The number of episodes in a “season” slowly went down to where, in the mid-1960’s, a season was an episode count in the mid-20’s, such as Star Trek’s third season which produced 24 episodes.  The number continued to fall until at some point an equilibrium set in at 22 episodes, usually an initial order of 11 and then a “back order” of 10 additional episodes if the show was successful.

But then came a revolution when Premium cable started producing original shows but only 13 at a time.  Imagine, a season with one-third as many episodes as a show in the 1950’s!  But here is where the trade off comes in; the shows are higher quality, but there are fewer of them.  It is a lot easier to maintain high quality in scripts if, like The Sopranos, you only have to do 13 instead of 22, or 39.  This is probably why the last network show to win an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series was 24 way back in 2006.  In 2019, Game of Thrones season 8 won an Emmy for Best Dramatic Series despite producing only six episodes.

This is a long-winded way of my getting around to reviewing Season 5 of Lucifer, which was on Fox for three seasons and now resides at Netflix.  Fox gave the show a limited order for season 1, then showed confidence with an 18-episode order in season 2 and a 26 episode order in season 3.  But now that the show is on Netflix, fans have to comfort themselves with a paltry 10 episodes in season 4 and only 8 in season 5.

But here’s the thing—Lucifer has never been this consistently good during its run.  Don’t get me wrong, after a mediocre season 1 the show made some wonderful course corrections and proved to be a source of good-natured blasphemy thereafter.  But there were more than a few episodes where the case of the week seemed a little thin, or the plot twists with lucifer’s backstory seemed a tad arbitrary, or Lucifer’s sexual puns were more lame than usual.  I have seen the first five episodes of season 5, and they have been five of the best episodes the show has produced.

One thing possibly improving the quality is that, before Netflix belatedly decided on a sixth season, this was supposed to be Lucifer’s swan song, and as the saying goes there is nothing like the prospect of being executed at dawn to focus the mind.  The show has shaken up the loose bounds of its formula (Devil solves crimes in Los Angeles) and is having more fun in how it tells stories.  Just as the show’s best episode, Season 3's "Off the Record," broke with its format, the show is now rising to new heights reveling in its new-found freedom.

Gratuitous spoiler alert at this point; proceed no further if you want NO information about Lucifer Season 5 (then why are you reading this?).  Episode 1, “Really Sad Devil Guy,” adopts a wonderfully executed concept where Lucifer, in Hell, decides to investigate the same murder as Detective Decker, only Lucifer can only access the murder victim’s memories.  This means he is recreating experiences that happened about 36 hours before Decker visits the same locations.  The second episode trots out the long-spoiled revelation that Lucifer’s twin brother, Michael, will attempt to impersonate him, with star Tom Ellis doing very impressive double duty (even if his American accent is lame).  Episode 3 gets delightfully meta as Lucifer and Decker investigate the murder of a showrunner for a TV show called Lieutenant Diablo, about a crime solving Devil in LA with an attractive female partner. 

Episode 4, “It Never Ends Well For the Chicken,” goes two places where it is surprising the show has not gone before: a black-and-white filmed homage to film noir, and Lucifer telling Trixie a bedtime story (their relationship is one of my favorite ones since the first episode).  The last episode I’ve seen, “Detective Amenadiel,” teams up Lucifer’s brother with Decker, revealing new sides of him, and also gives us some much-needed back story for Doctor Linda.

The show has never been better at balancing the needs of a large and talented cast, with only Aimee Garcia’s Ella getting some short shrift (made up for by her playing mobster Tommy Stompanato in Lucifer’s retelling of the story of how he got his ring; you have to see it to understand).  But there are three episodes remaining, so maybe Ella gets another visit to the nudist colony she and Lucifer went to in season 4.  D. B. Woodside and Kevin Alejandro both get to flex their comedic muscles, Lesley-Anne Brandt gets more to do as Mazekean than just glower and kick ass (she sings!), and the always wonderful Rachel Harris does more than just look exasperated when Lucifer is in her office.

I still wish season 5 was more than eight measly episodes, but so far season 5 is looking better than the slightly larger (10 episode) season 4, which was mainly notable for the aforementioned trip to the nudist colony (of course Lucifer would be enthusiastic, but who would have pegged Ella as his equally enthusiastic companion; shame about the unfortunately very long [and strategically placed] hair).  Eight great episodes of Lucifer is better than no episodes, but is it preferable to 20 mostly good episodes? 

As Woody Allen said in Love and Death, “It’s not the quantity of you sexual relations that counts, it’s the quality.  On the other hand, if the quantity drops below once every eight months, I would definitely have it looked into.”