Lucifer - S3E15 - High School Poppycock

Previously on Lucifer, “My Brother’s Keeper”

Uninspired

Lucifer returns from its brief hiatus with a pretty by-the-numbers episode. Full disclosure: I looked up the episode list for this season and Lucifer is slated to have a total of 24 episodes. Frankly, I think that’s absurd. The first season of this show was 13 and the second was 18. Although the show has stellar acting, nothing in the arc for this season requires an additional six episodes and this episode is a treading water moment that is only saved by the actors’ performances.

The case-of-the-week is the murder of a YA novelist whose futuristic, high school series is based on her high school classmates. Lucifer has run out of ideas for how to kill Cain and get back at his father and he becomes obsessed with finding the killer so he can read the book’s afterword and see how the novelist got over her writer’s block. Chloe, on the other hand, becomes infatuated with the characters in the book (and their real-life counterparts) because as a teen actress, she never really experienced high school.

BFFs

While Chloe and Lucifer are playing around in high school, Maze sets up Dr. Linda and Amenadiel for a torture session since they are still lying about dating each other. Maze sets Dr. Linda up on a blind date and then shows up with Amenadiel and puts the moves on him until they both crack. It’s a pretty funny set up that turns sad when Dr. Linda blows up at Maze asking why she can’t be selfish this once and Maze sadly replies that they were supposed to be friends. Though they genuinely seemed to be getting on, Dr. Linda isn’t the type to keep doing something she knows will hurt her friend and she and Amenadiel break things off.

Meanwhile, Chloe and Lucifer attend the author’s high school reunion looking for her killer, but Chloe is too busy being frivolous for once and Lucifer ends up doing all the investigating. It’s funny to watch the tables turned. Eventually they realize it’s not any of the reunion attendees; instead it was the author’s agent who was displeased with the ending for the series. Lucifer flies off the handle trying to find out how the author broke her writer’s block, but the agent doesn’t have any words of wisdom. The final scene is a sweet moment as Lucifer accepts his lack of inspiration and instead focuses on giving Chloe the prom moment she never had in high school.

This was the first time I’ve felt Lucifer was treading water and if it weren’t for the strength of this cast this would have been a complete dud. Lucifer’s final moment of inspiration foreshadows him trying to rewrite history and I wonder what that means for the show. Is it time travel? Going back to heaven? The show has yet to go fully celestial like the comics, and honestly, I’d rather have a smaller number of episodes with the budget to do some great special effects. It feels like Lucifer is bursting at the seams to go supernatural and I want them to take a leap of faith (pun fully intended).