Lucifer - Season 2, Episode 2: "Liar, Liar, Slutty Dress on Fire" Review and *SPOILERS*

Mother May I

Created By: Tom Kapinos
Directed By: Louis Shaw Milito
Written By: Ildy Modrovich
Starring: Tom Ellis, Lauren German, Tricia Helfer, Lesley-Ann Brandt, D.B. Woodside, Kevin Alejandro, Aimee Garcia, and many more
Air Date: October 3, 2016
Channel: FOX

*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*

Well, this show took what I assume is a much needed break after they stumbled out the gate with the first episode of the new season. Not sure if it was because they actually needed it, but I certainly did. Honestly, there are a couple things about this show that I do like but every time I start to get invested, the show does something that I dislike. Here’s the thing, there are dozens of cop procedural shows on television right now and there are so many that do very little to distinguish themselves. However, due to decent show runners, these shows are able to thrive. There’s clearly an audience for these types of shows. So when a new cop procedural like Lucifer comes along with a new twist that should distinguish it apart from all the others, it shouldn’t be too hard to attract an audience and have one hell of a hit. However, this show just seems to be doing the bare minimum and even as far as cop procedurals go, it doesn’t find itself anywhere near the top. However, this is just the beginning of the season, it could still be finding its stride. Could the show raise its game this episode? Let’s find out.

We start with a scene of an overweight man lying in the middle of the sidewalk dead. People are calling the police and wonder if he’s suffered a heart attack when his eyes open up. The man gets up and starts calling out for Lucifer. He wanders into the street asking if anyone has seen Lucifer before he is stricken by a passing bus. Across town, there seems to be a shootout between two different gangs. One dead body lays on the ground with a bullet in his head when the wound heals and his eyes open. He tells the man above him that he is looking for Lucifer to which the man says that he thought he killed him already and puts a bullet in the man’s head. Across the city once again, we find a woman who wakes up on the floor of a hotel room. She hears a phone ringing and answers it. A child asks for her mother on the other end but the woman freaks out and dumps the phone into a bucket of ice. She walks over to the mirror when we finally see her back. There is an ice pick sticking out of the back of her neck and her back is covered in blood. She removes the ice pick and her neck heals. The woman then speaks a name: Lucifer.

We cut to the woman who is the same one that we saw in the previous episode enter Lucifer’s apartment, and now she is sitting on his couch telling him that she then went looking for him. She is his mother and her soul had traveled from vessel to vessel in an attempt to find him. She keeps talking about how members of the male sex had been eyeing her on her journey and she even comments about her body’s ass being great. Lucifer doesn’t believe her though about her “wounded bird” story and her journey to find him. Lucifer begins praying for Amenadiel and tells his mother that he will take her back to hell so she stops him and protests. They talk a bit and Lucifer confronts her about doing nothing when he was cast out of heaven. She claims to have a good reason but says that he won’t understand. Lucifer agrees to look into her story but he believes that she had been spreading carnage and if he finds proof, he will send her back to hell.

Lucifer and his mother then show up at the hotel room that she claims to have started in. She is now wearing different clothes since the others were covered in blood. While looking through the apartment, Lucifer finds another body. This one has a hole in his neck. Lucifer suspects his mother is the killer but she protests saying that whoever killed the body that she now inhabits must have killed this person as well. This is when there is a knock at the door and voice yells out “Management!”. The two decide to flee the scene. Lucifer’s mother simply expects him to fly them out of there but Lucifer explains that he no longer has his wings. They take a different exit instead and once they are out of the building, Lucifer explains that he cut off his wings much to his mother’s horror. As the return to their car, a man stops the two and asks Lucifer how much he has to pay for a “turn” with the lady. They push him off but considering the way she is dressed Lucifer decides that they might do better if she wasn’t wearing those clothes. He decides to go back to his place when he looks up to see his mother, completely naked. He is horrified by the sight and covers her up before they drive off.

Lucifer returns home to find Maze collecting a few things when he asks her to do a favor for him. He reveals his mother and asks Maze to watch her while he investigates her story. He isn’t sure whether he can trust her or not. Maze is thrilled that his mother now has a physical body so that she can better torture her but Lucifer asks her to hold off, at least for now. We then cut to Chloe and Dan who have their daughter Trixie in an interrogation room. Turns out that Trixie had ruined one of her dolls and they are trying to get her to fess up as to why. Lucifer interrupts them and Chloe tells him that she is trying to manipulate her and Dan to buy her a new doll by ruining her old one. Lucifer simply believes that she should buy her the doll but Chloe tells him that wouldn’t teach Trixie anything good. This is when Chloe gets a call about a new case and they drive off to the hotel that Lucifer was previously at.

While there, they investigate the room but of course Lucifer already knows most everything about it and uses that knowledge to further the case, which impresses the new C.S.I. Ella. However, there seems to be one thing that Lucifer missed the first time around. In a room he didn’t check, they find the body of the maid, who was killed by strangulation. Back at the police station, they go over the evidence and Lucifer attempts to determine that the killer is a woman but Ella doesn’t agree at the moment. They are able to link the phone that they found to a law firm in the area though. Lucifer goes off to call for Amenadiel again which Ella notices and gives him a little advice about talking to God. (Of course, she is ignorant about his whole situation). We cut to Amenadiel who is in his former office at the doctor’s office where he is conducting research. Linda comes in and the two argue since Amenadiel lied to her and used her to get information on Lucifer. When Linda eventually leaves, we see a feather fall down in the air and Amenadiel grabs it, clearly troubled by it.

At the law firm, Chloe tells Lucifer that they should handle the situation discreetly but Lucifer decides against that and calls upon the attention of the entire room where he asks if anyone recognizes the items belonging to the woman that they found. One man recognizes her shoe and comes forward. They talk in his office and he reveals that he and Charlotte (the firm’s owner) had been having an affair and that they were supposedly in love. He even mentions that she wasn’t even sleeping with her husband anymore. Lucifer and Chloe then go to visit the husband at his home. He is a stay at home dad who takes care of his child but by the looks of him, he struggles and hasn’t been taking great care of himself. They are able to rule him out as a suspect pretty quickly but while Chloe talks to his child, Lucifer tries to help the man out a bit by helping him shape up. While going through his closet, he attempt to open a suit bag and a white powder is released all over Lucifer, he immediately recognizes it as cocaine.

Back with Charlotte (Lucifer’s mom) she is watching television and sees a commercial about a mother making her children macaroni and cheese. When she attempts to move though, Charlotte is hindered by some rather oversized shackles. Maze is still in charge of her and it would seem that she isn’t satisfied with listening to Lucifer. She has gotten out her torture tools and plans to use them on Charlotte but she tries to make her suffer emotionally first. She reveals that Lucifer had made a deal with God to send his mother back to hell when he found her but Maze gets too close and Charlotte is able to head butt her, knocking Maze unconscious. Back at the police station, Chloe and Dan go over some of the evidence but a package has arrived for Chloe. She opens it and finds the doll that Trixie wanted. Chloe immediately thinks that Dan had something to do with it but Lucifer quickly shows up and reveals that he was the one that ordered it. However, not surprisingly, Chloe isn’t too happy about it. They then find out that Charlotte had been working to take down the cartel and the young boy whose body they found was his informant. The way that they were killed is also determined to be the work of a known hitman who kills people with a screwdriver, not a simple ice pick.

Back at his apartment, Lucifer talks to Maze about how he thinks his mother might actually be innocent when she reveals that Charlotte has escaped and that she told her about his deal with God. They realize that they have to work fast or they might lose her forever. We then cut to Lucifer walking into a tanning salon and defeating several guards as he finds his way to the leader of the cartel. We finally get some awesome Lucifer moments as he is not hindered by the presence of Chloe Decker and he puts the a guard through the wall to find that the business has been secretly holding a large amount of cocaine in its walls. Chloe and some cops then show up and arrest the man, despite Lucifer having already dealt with him. During the interrogation, the leader reveals that he was feeding his snitch false information so he didn’t want to kill him yet. He also reveals that the hitman that they suspected of the murder has been dead for a while.

Chloe realizes that since the cartel wouldn’t have had them killed the only option they have left is to investigate people at the law firm. While there, they talk to a man who they believe worked on the case with Charlotte against the cartel. They have no proof of course and thus are unable to bring him in but Lucifer lets slide that Charlotte is alive and that they are looking for her. Chloe berates him for giving out privileged information but Lucifer has a plan. We cut to Charlotte who is walking out of a grocery store with quite a lot of cheese in her basket. This is when the man from the law firm shows up and questions why she isn’t dead. She, of course, doesn’t know who he is as the body of Charlotte is now being used by Lucifer’s mother. However, the man doesn’t care that she seems to not know him and attempts to kill her when he is interrupted by Lucifer who seems intent on doing the same to him. However, Chloe Decker shows up just at the last second and asks him what he was going to do. Lucifer, of course, lies. While Chloe is arresting the man, Lucifer harms his mother with the screwdriver and tells her what to do and what to say so they can get out of this mess. While talking to Chloe afterwards, they talk about the doll once again and she tells Lucifer that sometimes a parent has to do stuff that their child won’t like but that is for their own good.

Back at Linda’s office, Amenadiel walks in and ends up finally apologizing for what he did to her. He had his reasons but he was wrong to do that and he is sorry. He then returns to his own office across the hall and reveals his wings. They are losing their feathers and seem to be very damaged to which Amenadiel screams out in pain. Back at Lucifer’s apartment, his mother walks in with a bowl of macaroni and cheese and she talks with Lucifer. She says that she wants things to go back to the way they were but she also knows that it isn’t possible anymore. However, she still wants to fix her relationship with Lucifer. He tells her that she can’t because of what she did before and allowed him to be cast out. This is when she reveals that she was the one that decided to cast him out of heaven but that she did it because the alternative was to let his father kill him. She didn’t want him to be cast out but she didn’t want him to die either. Lucifer accepts this explanation and agrees to not take her back to Hell, at least for now. The episode ends with Charlotte on the balcony looking up, presumably at God, and smirking.

I will say this, this episode was a step in the right direction. We finally got badass Lucifer back in several scenes when he uses his powers. That is what makes the show watchable and to have missed that in the premiere was awful. In addition, there are new storylines that I find legitimately interesting now. Was Lucifer’s mother lying to him in order to get in his good graces? Or does she have more nefarious plans than she let on? In addition, I’m incredibly interested in why Amenadiel is losing his wings. Finally, I find the character Ella to be a real breath of fresh air in this cast. Most of the characters seem to act similarly and thus having a character like her is a wonderful change of pace. I really hope she becomes more intertwined with the cast and story so that we can see more of her. However, this episode was far from perfect. The dialogue is often very clunky, the “crime of the week” was a very loose storyline and its only purpose was to link different scenes together in a coherent way and finally the humor. My God! The humor that they keep trying to slide into this show is very bad. It’s terribly written and horribly delivered. The show needs to decide what it’s going to do about humor in this show because if it doesn’t improve drastically, it may be better to scrap it altogether.

Bits and Pieces

While many problems from the first episode exist and brand new problems rear their heads, this episode does something that the first episode did not—entertain me. Granted, I wouldn’t say that this is a great show or even a great episode but when I finished watching it, I didn’t feel like I had just wasted an hour of my life. What’s more the episode gave me hope for the future of this show but I wouldn’t exactly hold my breath.

6.0/10