LUCIFER Recap “Love Handles”

By Chris B

Life’s a gamble, or a game.  Sometime’s it is both.

Just ask Rick Cormier, Lucifer’s latest corpse.  He’s not a typical college drunk; he’s been poisoned by a substance that “tore through his body like it was burning him from the inside out.”  Nothing weird had occurred on campus, save the visit of an actor named Johnny Cane, supposedly researching a role.  When Johnny conveniently stumbles into the building with a large butcher knife, he instead drops a bomb:  “It’s my fault.  He’s dead because of me…I couldn’t do what the man said.  The man said he would kill that kid if I didn’t cut my face.”

Is that what they call “saving face,” Johnny?

The actor shows Lucifer and Decker the video he had received via email, a cheesy Batman-inspired deal with a psycho in a lab coat and plastic mask who first compliments Cane on his acting success, then suggests the experiment of slashing up his money-maker or letting an innocent kid die.  He chose the latter.

The trail leads them to the library, where they hear shrieks of a woman and burst into a back office—just in time to interrupt a kid in the midst of his audience-participation porn film.  Chloe throws him tissues, Lucifer offers him hand sanitizer, and they demand answers; as Lucifer says, “Come clean now—pun intended.”

However, Porn Boy claims he has an alibi:  he was TA in a class at the time the email was sent.  As he logs into his account to prove it, the message is there, along with another sent an hour before to a Dr. Gwendolyn Scott, a surgeon.  This time, the masked figure tells her to destroy her hand or another college student, Ashley Corbett, will be poisoned within twenty-four hours.

Dan goes to Dr. Scott, who is quite conflicted about her dilemma, since she is a professional who has sworn to do no harm to others.  While she agonizes, Lucifer and Chloe track Ashley to a campus party, at which Lucifer marvels, “These are our future leaders of America, Detective, engaging in sex, drugs, and lecherous behavior.  It makes me proud!”  They comb through the Congressional Training Ground of the frat house, each fending off drunken advances until they finally locate Ashley in an upstairs bathroom.  She is alert, but her nose will not stop bleeding.  The poison has been administered.  Her life is on the clock.

To make matters worse, when Dr. Scott learns that Ashley is in the hospital and the manufactured antidote is not working, she excuses herself from Dan and goes into the kitchen.  Then, he hears the metallic scraping of the garbage disposal.  Though he pleads with her to stop, the doctor plunges her hand into the sink drain, completing the cycle of destruction.

As Dr. Scott lies bloody on a stretcher, she receives a delivery:  an antidote to Ashley’s poison.  Meanwhile, Ella has tracked down the first victim of the poison, a John Doe (a.k.a., Andy Kleinburg), who died simply from having the poison spill on him.  She calls it a “designer poison, engineered from controlled substances, each one just a little bit different.”  Thus, each one requires its own designer antidote.

A break comes when Ashley reveals that she had gotten a flu shot that day, just like Rick had done the day he died.  It was administered in a university health van by Dr. Jason Carlisle, a man whose life and career had tanked when a video went viral that showed him climbing from a car wreck, stopping to save his dissertation, then sprinting away while the young driver of the car perishes when the vehicle explodes.  Now, it seems, he’s trying his “experiments” to prove that everyone would make the same choice as he—choosing to save their careers over the life of another.

Lucifer suggests they “get a big stick and poke the bear” to draw Carlisle out of hiding.  He is convinced that if they threaten the man’s inflated ego, he’ll be unable to resist responding.  Lucifer is right.  No sooner does Chloe send out a belittling email does she get a response.  Carlisle opens a video chat with her to show his latest version of the experiment:  two students captured in his lab, one getting the poison on a drip, the other given the option to sever his own leg for the antidote to be administered.

The duo track Carlisle to a lab at a rival university.  There, he gives Chloe a final dilemma to debate—should she enter the room to get the vial of antidote, despite the poisonous gas present that will kill her if she enters?  Lucifer persuades her to let him get the vial, sending her out of the building after the professor.  When Chloe is far enough away, Lucifer has his immortality back, and enters the room unharmed.  While he saves the boys, the detective traps Carlisle, who makes a convincing speech to her about how choice is a mere illusion; then, he slices his own throat.

This time, he chooses death.

What’s Love Got To Do With It

I guess last week’s beach scene worked its magic on Chloe—she’s having passionate dreams about her and Lucifer, so much so that even Maze is drawn into her room to “watch the show.”

The fun may have to wait, however.  Lucifer consults Dr. Linda about the kiss, typically blind to his emotions.  He claims to want to take things slow as Chloe must be overwhelmed, but the doctor deduces that he is stalling due to the obvious complications that exist in their relationship.  He is baffled as to why Decker would kiss him, unable to fathom the obvious that the detective simply likes him.  He’s convinced she must be ill, or no longer “immune to [his] charms.”

As he and Decker interview Johnny about his creepy blackmail video, Lucifer goes down another rabbit hole; he thinks that perhaps Chloe is being manipulated, thus “showing affection when it made no logical sense.”  He sulks out of the room to confront his darling mother, who “sadly can’t take credit.”  He confesses that he is upset because he doesn’t know if it is real.  Mommy tells him to follow his heart.  [What a relief—I thought she might say something cliched!]

They stumble about during the investigation, Chloe trying to “throw caution to the wind” as Maze had advised her, but it comes out as a series of awkward, out-of-character moves, like slapping Lucifer’s ass or making lewd jokes.  Lucifer tries to get advice from a group of coeds, who assure him that the love is real if Chloe and he are “two halves of a whole, if you’re stronger together than apart.”  Harlequin Romance novels, clearly you have served us well!

There actually may be something to the sorority girls’ words, however.  After Lucifer emerges from the poisonous lab unscathed, Chloe is so relieved, she gives him a tight hug, noting, “I guess we make a good team after all, don’t we?”  At this point, Lucifer must acknowledge that the feelings are, indeed, real.

Mommy Morningstar pays a visit to Dr. Linda’s office to seek her help in breaking some news to Lucifer, “a revelation that might send him over the edge against his father.”  Dr. Linda refuses to tell Lucifer anything on his mother’s behalf, claiming her loyalty is to her patients—“Doctor/Devil confidentiality.”  The doctor is far too bright to have an interest in being the messenger of horrible news.  Charlotte, every bit as introspective has her kids, takes away this message from the conversation:  “So what you’re saying is I need to find someone he’ll trust who is foolish enough to help me deliver the news.”  Good call, Mom.  Kudos.

Charlotte chooses Maze to be her information mule.  She tries to flatter the demon about how Lucifer trusts her, blah blah blah, but Maze isn’t buying her crap.  Then, Mommy tells her about Chloe’s “miracle” status, catching Maze’s curiosity.

They invite Lucifer to their party, a “supernatural intervention,”and he reports that he is too happy to worry about their shenanigans; he feels “invincible.”  Maze can’t do it, then, and Charlotte tries to stop her from leaving.  As they quibble, Lucifer notices a picture on the bar’s wall, one of Amenadiel and Penelope.  Then, Charlotte finally spills the beans:  “This is your father’s doing; Chloe is your father’s doing.  He put her in your path.”

Lucifer is devastated.  “So, none of it was real?”

He races over to Chloe’s house to confront her:  “Did you know?  This whole bloody time, did you know?”

But ‘bloody’ is the operative word here.  Chloe has a nosebleed that won’t stop.  She’s apparently been poisoned, too.

And the only person who can make an antidote for her is dead.