Lucifer, S2 E14: “Candy Morningstar”
Written by Jenn Rao
Directed by Claudia Yarmy
“Her bra size equals her IQ, huh.”
A relationship either progresses or it regresses. The same could be said of TV shows. After the long hiatus since the end of January, Lucifer chose to regress. Instead of going forward with the developing relationship between Decker and Lucifer, the show rebooted back to factory settings. Disappointed!
Lucifer not only ghosted Decker, but disappeared entirely for two weeks. The series resumes with Decker and Detective Douche called to the death of a local guitar player, named Ash Corrigan, in an up and coming band. As they begin their investigation, Lucifer reappears out of the blue. Decker’s face lights up when she sees him – until he introduces his wife. It seems that Lucifer met a stripper in Vegas, and married her. To add insult to injury, he tells Decker that he wants things to just go back to the way they were. Decker fires his ass.
The dead man’s bandmates point Decker and Douche in the direction of Corrigan’s ex-wife, who was arrested for domestic violence twice. After the ex-wife and Decker commiserate about immature, infuriating men, the ex suggests that their divorce mediator was shady, and probably took a kickback to award a favorable settlement to Corrigan. Contrary to Decker’s wishes, Lucifer keeps trying to help with the investigation. His vapid and annoying new bride, Candy, helpfully points out that the police photographs show the mediator standing in the background at the crime scene, as if her presence wasn’t irritating enough already. Despite their help, or because of it, Decker insists that she doesn’t need or want Lucifer around anymore.
A partial explanation for Lucifer’s sudden marriage emerges. With Candy in tow, Lucifer explains to Dr. Linda that everything he felt for Decker was illusion, and their relationship was created by manipulation. Since their relationship was engineered by Dad, also known as God, and encouraged by Mum, also known as the Goddess of All Creation, what developed between them wasn’t real, so Lucifer couldn’t go forward with it.
Completely ignoring Decker’s wishes in every way, Lucifer keeps trying to prove that Decker needs his assistance, and proposes that he and Candy go undercover to the divorce mediator to suss out whether he was crooked. Instead, Decker dolls herself up to look just like Candy and she and Lucifer pretend to be man and wife. Why Decker would want to do this, and why she needs to tart herself up to do it remains unclear. Maybe the absurdity of Decker’s character tarted up is supposed to be funny, like the archaic comedic device of men dressing up like and imitating women. The mediator turns out to be a dead end anyway. Lucifer does the Eyeball Thing to him, only to find out the mediator was some sort of rabid fanboy for the band, and was hoping to become the band’s manager. He and Corrigan had bought up all the band’s recordings in order to inflate the band’s success. The mediator does send them off in search of the next suspect, the band’s bassist, who constantly fought with the dead guy. Further, Exceptional Ella discovers that the tuning knobs on the bass guitar match marks on Corrigan’s head and some of his blood was found on the instrument.
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In another totally contrived situation in an episode overflowing with contrived situations, Decker follows the bassist to a nightclub just in time to see Lucifer take the stage. He makes a big show of dedicating a song to her, before breaking into an insipid rendition of “Eternal Flame”. Somehow this actually wins Decker over, and she decides to resume working with Lucifer. I guess it takes more than a female writer and female director to generate a believable female character. Maybe a female producer, too?
Amenadiel confronts Lucifer and demands to know what the hell Lucifer is doing. Lucifer confesses that he’s trying to protect Decker. Decker doesn’t know that Daddy threw Lucifer and Decker together, so she never really had a choice in the matter. By distancing himself from her, Lucifer is trying to save her from her feelings for him, thereby giving her that choice. Of course, Decker not knowing about the maneuvering means that she exercised free will in the first place.
While interrogating the bassist, it comes out that the last person to handle the bass was the band’s drummer, Doug. Decker and Lucifer go to Doug’s house, where Doug gets a cable around Lucifer’s neck and tries to garrote him. He admits he killed Corrigan because Corrigan planned to leave the band and go solo. Decker pulls her gun, but Lucifer tells Doug he might as well kill him, since Decker doesn’t need him anymore. Decker says she does need him. This totally artificial and unnecessary back-and-forth finally ends when Decker shoots Doug in the shoulder. It also wraps up the week’s murder mystery.
Always on the lookout for a way to get back to heaven, Mum tells Lucifer that he would have prevailed in his rebellion against God if he had had the right weapon. She tells him that the flaming sword that protected Eden can also cut through the gates of heaven. She says that the flaming sword is actually Azriel’s blade; with that, she and Lucifer and Amenadiel can all return to heaven. And do what, kill God, get kicked out again, eat a taco bowl?
The end of the show reveals the big twist. Lucifer and Candy aren’t actually married: Candy pretended to be Lucifer’s wife so that she could find out for Lucifer what Mum was planning. Lucifer lets her keep the wedding rings as a kind of payment. Candy thanks Lucifer for saving her life in Vegas, and advises him not to mess it up with Decker.
So instead of moving Decker and Lucifer’s relationship forward, this show moved it back to square one, presumably so we can watch it develop again, this time based solely on their feelings and not Daddy’s manipulations. It feels like a cheap shot. In addition to the overly long wait from the winter finale in January (which followed the fall finale in November) and the near death of Decker, this seems like manufactured drama in a show that needs to work out its trajectory rather than grasping at faux cliffhangers every other week to keep viewers interested. There are five episodes left this season; let’s hope the creators get their mojo back before the finally final finale.
Grade: B-
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