LUCIFER Recap: “Stewardess Interruptus”

By Chris B.

“I’m afraid this flight is grounded.”

It’s probably the first time that Lucifer turns away a half-naked stewardess, but when she stomps all over the “moment” he was having with Chloe, the girl is sent packing.  The detective stumbles out, claiming to be relieved that the new arrival kept her from making “a big mistake.”

Lucifer makes a promise to Chloe that he’ll never see the stewardess again.  It is a little awkward, then, when they’re called to a crime scene in which Jana is the corpse, the second time she’s had “tragic timing.”  He reassures Decker repeatedly that nothing happened between him and Jana, that she left (alive) five minutes after Chloe had.

Their next stop on the case is to Andy Kleinburg, a rich and scuzzy man who’d sent Jana threatening text messages the day that she died.  He claims to have an alibi, thanks to the two different women he’d been with that night.  Though he’s gross, he’s apparently not a killer.

Another victim turns up, a man named Raj, who also turns out to be one of Lucifer’s conquests.  That makes Lucifer the only known connection between the victims.  Operating on a jealousy theory, they call in every person Lucifer’s slept with in the last eight weeks, creating an amusement park line-up at the police station full of enough beautiful women to make Detective Dan drool and want to take notes as the devil lays out some of the titles of his moves that have his exes raving.  My personal favorite: Gentlemen, Start Your Engines, involving Vaseline and a car battery.

The case then leads to Suki Price, a “creepy weirdo” who would lurk at Lux, watching.  She has an entire wall of her apartment covered in pictures of Lucifer with a startling variety of women, along with shelves of homemade Lucifer dolls with varying arrangements of chest hair.  It turns out she’s an obsessed groupie who thinks of him as her “perfect man, like porn and stuffed-crust pizza and [her] Hello Kitty blanket, all rolled into one.”  Conveniently, she’s categorized all of Lucifer’s lovers, revealing that Jana and Raj knew each other and hung out with a pilot from one of their flights.

They suspect the pilot’s used his work for a small private airline as a cover for smuggling drugs, so Lucifer and Decker stop his flight on the runway, much to the pilot’s relief.  He feels he’s had a target painted on him after a package went missing on a recent flight which belongs to a dealer named Burt.  They stage a sting with Maze and Dan, but Burt still gets Lucifer alone with a gun.  Lucifer easily disarms him, then reveals his true face and glowing red eyes, reducing the killer to a tub of goo.  Case closed.

Or is it?

The package in question has been lifted by Andy Kleinburg.  It contains unusual objects, one of which has broken and made Andy sick.  He is approached by a mysterious stranger who kills him, takes the package, and stalks off into the night.

Worth It

Maze is quite gleeful to show Chloe the headline of Perry Smith’s death, thinking the detective will be thrilled that her father’s killer has met a grisly end.  But she’s not.  “Whoever did this is no better than he was.”  Maze is burned by that critique, so she goes to Dan to show off the headline and collect her check, but he is feeling squeamish about their teamwork to do away with Smith by handing him to the Russian mob.  He blows Maze off and tells her that they shouldn’t be seen together until the heat surrounding the case has subsided.

Maze makes a stop at Dr. Linda’s for advice on how to handle it when you “do something awesome for somebody and they don’t care.”  The doctor’s sage advice is that “self-worth comes from within; you can’t rely on others to validate us.”  She only gets so far with this, as Maze refuses to be pacified until the doctor calls her awesome.  In terms of emotional education, the demon is still a work in progress.

A Moment to Remember

The disappointment over losing his “moment” with Chloe makes Lucifer ripe for his mother’s typical manipulation, now that she’s zeroed in on the detective as a key to getting what she wants.  She oozes in, seeming to take Chloe’s side for a change.  She lauds the detective’s defense of Lucifer in court as impressive, indicating that since Decker has proved herself worthy, it is now time for Lucifer to do the same and prove himself to Chloe.  He agrees.

Chloe, however, still keeps Lucifer at arm’s length.  She compares their definitions of fun; for him, it’s a drink on the beach and his choice of pretty girl, while Decker’s is being at home with her daughter reading a story.  She sees these as incompatible:  “We’re different—too different.”  His counter of “opposites attract” does not gain any traction.  (Guess Chloe’s not a Paula Abdul fan.)

Though Decker swears she’s not interested, as the case forces her to interrogate Lucifer’s massive dating pool, she finds herself inquiring not about the lunatic sexual exploits (though she’ll likely never eat artisan honey again, ever), but about the degree of emotional intimacy.  “Did he do anything special for you?  Bring you a burger and fries?”  This is laughed about by the others, and as they all decry the meaninglessness of their interactions with Lucifer, we see his smile fade and his expression darken.  When it hits home how little he means to anyone else, he sinks from proud to pathetic.

Later, as Lucifer disarms Burt, he unloads on the criminal about his disrespect of Jana:  “You promised her the world and everything she could desire—money, drugs, a life of pleasure—but she deserved better than that, better than you.  Or me.”

This leads Lucifer have a bit of a change of heart where Decker is concerned.  He opens up to Chloe with some real talk:  “From now on, no more attempts at ‘moments.’  I’d be honored to simply continue working by your side, if you’ll have me…You deserve someone worthy of you, and that isn’t me…You deserve someone better because you, Detective, are selfless to a nauseating degree…so you deserve someone worthy of that grace…someone as good as you because you’re special, and I’m not worth it.”

She agrees that he’s probably right.  Then, she kisses him.