Saturday, November 18, 2017

Lucifer 3.07: “Off The Record”

“I’m responsible for a lot of things Reese, but not your soul, not your actions and not the poor girl downstairs.”
- Lucifer

At the outset, this is a confusing episode. We meet Reese, a journalist who had a brush with death and he thinks that is the wake-up call he needs to reconnect with his wife. Only problem, Lucifer is sleeping with his wife. So, he follows Lucifer to Lux and ends up chatting with him until Chloe shows up for a case. But it seems that it is set in the past (like season one timeline) and now Reese wants to write an expose on Lucifer. This is going to end horribly.

Our dynamic duo is now going to be an awkward triangle as Reese tags along on a case. They are investigating a potential serial killer who is killing people that act like they want to help people and the environment but are actually hypocrites. Clearly, Lucifer doesn’t catch on that Reese is pushing this angle as he’s observing their work. The latest victim is an all-natural beautician who had work done. Reese follows Lucifer after hours to a sketchy warehouse but before he can do any further investigation, Maze shows up and warns Reese to leave Lucifer alone. Of course, he’s not going to listen. He heads back to his office to have someone search the address but he’s got a visitor: his wife: Linda. Well, they’re separated and she wants him to sign the divorce papers. He begs her to give him one day (presumably to prove Lucifer isn’t who he says he is) and she agrees. So, he goes to Lux to try and get the duffle bag that he saw Lucifer carry out of the warehouse. What he finds is a woman tied up in bed (of her own accord) and Lucifer quite mad about the interruption. But in typical Lucifer fashion, he manages to calm Reese down. The money he paid to a cop was for the duffle bag because he needed something for his edible sex toys.

As Reese is trying to process all of this, he and Lucifer go meet Chloe who has a lead on the case. He’s in kind of a daze as they arrest the person responsible for selling expired medical goods. Reese decides he’s going to drop the story since it seems that Lucifer and Chloe actually do work well together and all Lucifer really does is charm people. But then Chloe gets called to talk to the Lieutenant and Lucifer goes in to chat with the seller (who is not the killer) and uses his devil face (another clue this isn’t taking place in the current timeline of the show) and Reese sees it. So, he goes to Linda to warn her to stay away from Lucifer. But she’s not having any of it. She just wants him to sign the divorce papers (which he does).

But Reese isn’t done with Lucifer. He’s going to find proof that Lucifer is the devil and we see him frantically putting together a timeline of all the important people in Lucifer’s life, taking us up to the present. He’s totally a mess when Chloe and Lucifer show back up. They’re still working the old case and they discovered that his paper’s Style section ran articles on each of the victims before they were killed and they want access to user comments that have been deleted or removed for inappropriate content. Seeing Lucifer again prompts Reese to rush off to see Linda again but she’s in a session with Lucifer. Reese shoots Lucifer (which does nothing more than ruin Lucifer’s suit and annoy him) but Linda confirms she knows the truth about Lucifer and sure it rocked her world for a minute when she saw his true face but she’s over it and he’s her friend. Reese can’t believe that she knew all this time and didn’t care. I also can’t believe Lucifer still hasn’t put it together that he’s the guy Reese is trying to punish. Lucifer can be kind of an idiot sometimes. Like when he makes the off handed comment that Reese is lucky Chloe wasn’t there when he was shot because there’d be blood everywhere. So of course, this prompts Reese to seek out Chloe and Lucifer together to seek his revenge. I also don’t know why Lucifer didn’t show off his wings to prove he’s not evil incarnate but I guess they used their CGI budget for the episode on the devil face scene.

It turns out that Reese has figured out the killer’s identity and he approaches him at his home. He wants to point this crazy guy at Lucifer and it almost works. They are both at Lux when Lucifer and Chloe are (so that the poison the guy uses will actually affect Lucifer). But, the killer doesn’t end up poisoning Lucifer. Instead, an innocent girl dies and this sends Reese off the deep end. He grabs a knife and threatens Lucifer in the penthouse. Lucifer uses his mojo to pull out of Reese that he just wants Linda to love him. At this point, Lucifer realizes that Linda was the woman he was talking about a year ago. Oops. Lucifer also makes an interesting point that he’s not responsible for who goes to Hell. Humans do it to themselves. Reese goes to Linda to try and open up about his feelings (Lucifer had suggested that perhaps Linda forgave him because he was honest about who he was) but it devolves quickly. He admits his part in the girl’s death and Linda threatens to call the police. Only after pushing Linda and hurting her does Reese say he’ll turn himself in. The killer is waiting at Reese’s office and poisons him. Chloe and Lucifer arrive just in time to arrest the killer. Reese even gets a last few words with Lucifer before he wakes up in the same scene we found him in at the start of the episode. I should have picked up on it sooner but I didn’t that this is his personal Hell. Which makes me question whether the entire thing actually happened or if this is all in his head, as it were.

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