LUCIFER “My Little Monkey” Recap

By Chris B

The hazy opener for this episode shows a proud Officer John Decker handing out tickets to the hot-tub film debut of his “little monkey,” just before he is gunned down.  This man was Chloe’s father, and sixteen years later, his killer, Joe Fields, is getting family leave to attend his granddaughter’s christening, a benefit that was never granted to his victim.

Chloe, outraged, follows Fields in his police transport from the prison, only to find that he and the driver have been gunned down in an obvious hit.

The transport reveals prints for a Rodney Lam, an ex-con who’d served time with Fields.  Lucifer and Douchey bring him in, and he confesses freely, but his facts do not match up with the crime scene details, begging the question, why would he do this?   The answer is simple: he’s been paid to confess, and needs the money for his family.  As it turns out, the same occurred with Joe Fields, with both men paid from the same account connected to the Russian mob

Chloe is greeted at her own door by gun-toting Tina Fields, ready to take revenge for her own father’s murder, which she assumes has been accomplished by Decker.  When Chloe disarms her, she shows a video that was sent by a lawyer, one that is a confession of Joe’s innocence to the murder of Officer Decker; Chloe realizes that the video was recorded on the night of her father’s death, three minutes before it happened, and on the other side of town.  Conclusion:  Fields was indeed not the killer, and whoever was had gotten away with it.

We get a quick flashback to Chloe’s first day on the job, admiring her dad’s name on the plaque of the wall of the fallen.  Her reverie is interrupted by the deputy warden at the prison, who brings her Joe Fields’s personal effects.  Ella helps her go through it, along with records of Officer Decker’s in the months leading up to his death to try to find overlooked clues.

Chloe gets a hint from hit-man Boris that her father had been killed for “sniffing somewhere he wasn’t supposed to.”  Apparently the “robbery gone wrong” which ended John Decker’s life had been a set-up.  Good thing she finally caught on, as this fact was glaringly obvious to the audience from the outset.

Later Chloe suspects that when Joe Fields was being let out of prison, his evil smile had not been directed at her, as she’d assumed, but at the person standing next to her—the deputy warden, Harry Smith, who’s been working in the prison system for 20 years, originally as a guard.  He seems to be the link they’ve been seeking.

Before Chloe and Lucifer can get to the prison, the warden’s gone missing, leaving Decker to feel like a failure; Lucifer, though, is quick to bolster her:  “…you’re nothing of the sort.  For the first time in sixteen years…justice is within your sights.”  He’s right.  As soon as she enters her apartment, she finds the fugitive tied to a chair in her living room, a gift from Maze.

Lucifer encourages Decker to “order off menu” and exact some justice of her own, and when the man gives her a cheeky answer to her angst about having her family torn to shreds, she pulls her gun and shoves it in his face.  He offers names, money, but these mean nothing to Chloe.  Eventually, she realizes a worse punishment for this man is to be incarcerated in the very prison he’d presided over:  “We’ll see how you do in the prison you ran.  I bet your inmates will treat you real nice.”

Desperate, Smith offers Chloe whatever she wants, but her needs are simple:  “All I want is for you to know that John Decker’s kid got you.”

Mission accomplished.

Desperately Seeking Dan

Lucifer is shocked to discover that Detective Douche is able to read people, so he sets upon the task of trying to be just like Dan:  “People like you; they find you helpful, like duct tape or a trusty socket wrench.  I want you to teach me your secret; I want you to show me how to be a tool.”  Who could pass on that loving offer?

Chloe asks that Dan and Lucifer put aside their differences and work together on the Fields case, which both agree to do.  Thus, Dan and his new protege set about the business of tracking the killer.  This first requires a costume change for Lucifer, who acquires his own hoodie and, to his dismay, skinny-fit jeans.  (Damn, Wiseman, is there ANY Sleepy Hollow shtick that you won’t recycle?)

The next stop for Douche-ifer is to track down Boris Sokolov, the mob soldier who frequents a bath house that is a mob front. They claim to want the man to kill someone, specifically Lucifer Morningstar, as “he hurts people, and not just his enemies; he hurts the people he’s closest to…most of all.”  While I’ve no doubt Lucifer means every word of this, it is a ruse; when he agrees to take the contract, he’s arrested.

Lucifer chums with Dan through the case, even adopting his speech pattern and accent (which, I have to say, is a horrible way to drain the music right out of Tom Ellis’s voice.)  Still, he finds himself baffled at what makes his “twinsy” so “frustratingly you.”  Therefore, he surveils Dan, tailing him to discover his participation in something more hideous than “human centipede or clown porn”; yep, you guessed it—he does improv.  This session: he is Lucifer Morningstar.  The devil gets to hear his accent parroted (quite well, too) and have his casual demeanor mocked, not unlike the long-suffering detective has.

Lucifer, though, is not amused by “this pathetic caricature.”  He interrupts the session, then confronts Dan afterwards, flustered and outraged at being made the butt of a joke, all while ironically using the term Detective Douche.  Apparently “do unto others” is one of Daddy’s phrases that Lucifer never quite grasped.

Lucifer, however, insists his behavior was more a grudging admiration as Dan is everything he is not:  “boring, helpful—you’re life is simple.”  Dan is baffled by this as Lucifer is the one who would seem to have it all:  “You’re rich, you’re handsome, you drive fancy cars, you date hot girls, you have no kids, you have no responsibilities—how much more simple could life get?”

Lucifer does not wish to tell him, since the last person that he opened up to (Dr. Linda) he hurt, and he’s “hurt” his own flesh and blood as well.  Dan commiserates, knowing he’s hurt Chloe deeply or they’d not be divorced.  The improv class is his distraction from his troubles, “a way to step out of [his] own skin for a while.”  So, while Lucifer was engaging his “Dansification,” Detective Espinoza was trying to un-Douche.  The jealous man always thinks the grass is greener under the other man’s feet.

Later, Lucifer offers to Chloe that he is certain that her beloved father would be proud of the woman that she is.  This causes her to well up with tears, and he is quick to apologize, fearing he’d hurt her, too.  Again.

But he hasn’t.  These are just the words Chloe needed to hear, and she embraces him tightly.  Lucifer seems at once anxious and oddly soothed by this.  Apparently, it is just what he needed as well.

Phases of Friendship

Maze is going in search of a job, part of her ongoing task to find her own way in the world. First, she tries preschool aide.  How could that possibly go awry, right?  She stops at Dr. Linda’s office for a reference, but the doctor is not seeing anyone—at all.  She’s barricaded herself in after last week’s debacle of seeing Lucifer’s real face.  She’s terrified of her friend who she now knows is a demon.  She sends Maze away, repulsed.

Maze next tries topless maid (“You still have to clean; screw that.”) before finding her bliss: bounty hunter.  When the deputy warden eludes authorities, she tracks him and delivers him to Decker, bound and gagged, only missing the big bow on the top of his head.  With this vocation, she’s finally found her earthly vocation.

Maze returns to Dr. Linda, eager to share her news and make amends.  She shoves her first paycheck under the door, ecstatic:  “Hunting humans is a job!  Who knew?”  All she wants is to celebrate with her friend, but the doctor slides the check back to her, a seeming rejection.

But then she opens the door, literally and figuratively.  She peeks out and implores, “Maze, how can we be friends.  You’re a demon; Lucifer is the devil.  How am I supposed to get over that?”  Maze insists that her knowing changes nothing; they are still the same as they had been.  She offers to buy Dr. Linda a drink, or “maybe I’ll devour your soul or something.”

Humor and sincerity wins.  Linda comes out and the healing begins.