Tag Archives: TV

Processing Lucifer’s Final Season

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By the standards of today’s binge-watch culture, I’m already a bit late, but I did want to get in some thoughts on the final season of Lucifer — recently uploaded to Netflix — before it completely fades from relevancy.

The official logo for the TV series LuciferI have mixed feelings on the show’s ending, and I think it will be quite a while before I fully decide how I feel about it. I lean towards being more pro than con, but it definitely has its issues.

The main thing making this so difficult is that the sixth and final season is a massive, jarring change in direction compared to the rest of the series.

Lucifer has always been a light-hearted dramedy with a healthy mix of “case of the week” standalone episodes and ongoing plot. Since moving to Netflix, the balance has shifted a bit more towards drama rather than comedy and plot versus standalone stories (to the show’s benefit), but it’s been pretty much the same show at its heart.

Season six pretty much throws out the case of the week format (no great loss in my book) in favour being almost pure plot. You might think that makes for a breakneck pace, but it’s actually a very slow, meditative season. I do think this was the right choice for the story they meant to tell, but it does take some patience.

Similarly, while there are still some laughs to be had, the final season leans far more on emotion and pathos. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but it feels very different from what’s come before. Almost like a totally different series. It’s still good — great, at times — but it doesn’t have that tongue-in-cheek sense of fun that so long defined the series.

Rory shows off her wings in Lucifer season six.Ultimately, this is the season where Lucifer finally grows up. So much of the series had him learning lessons, only to mostly be back to his old immature self next episode. This is the moment where he finally learns the lessons for good and becomes a mature, healthy person. It’s pretty gratifying, but again, sudden. It would have been better to spread his development out more evenly over the course of the series rather than have it all happen at once.

To be blunt, the final season is also contrived, corny, and full of plot holes. It’s very much a story that works best if you don’t think about it too hard.

Now, here’s the thing: The above statement could describe every season of Lucifer, and I’ve generally been fine with it. It’s always just been junk food watching, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not smart, but it’s fun and it makes you feel good. That’s a perfectly valid form of art.

But the silliness of the plot becomes harder to swallow when the show makes the shift to towards straight character drama. You can have ridiculous stories in a comedy, but when you’re trying for something more serious, it’s a lot harder to overlook. You can do one, but not both.

It also rankles that we never got an answer on why God created Chloe. I guess it’s meant to be some “so all of this could happen thing,” but it really feels like they just abandoned that plot thread. Come on, guys, it’s only the single biggest question in the entire series…

Chloe and Lucifer in the final season of Lucifer.However, if you are willing to overlook the over-complicated plot and the various things that just don’t add up, it is a pretty satisfying season emotionally. We get to see Lucifer finally grow up and become the Lightbringer he was always meant to be, and that feels good.

Most of the other characters get really satisfying conclusions to their story too, with the possible exception of Ella, whose story deserved more screen time than it got. But I’m an Ella fanboy, so I’m biased.

Dan especially stands out as perhaps the best part of this season, and in hindsight perhaps one of the best parts of the series as a whole. I’m a pretty harsh person, and redemption arcs often wrankle me because I rarely feel they’re deserved… but this is a redemption arc done right.

Who would have thought Detective Douche would have turned out to be such an incredible character?

All in all, I do think the final season is more good than bad, but it’s not so easily digestible as the rest of the series has been. I suppose in some ways it’s good that it provokes so much thought — I definitely wouldn’t have expected to still be mulling the ending weeks later like I have been.

Pacific Rim: The Black Is Solid Gold

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I emerge from my blogging hiatus because I have something nerdly I need to gush about, and I just can’t keep it in.

A promotional image for Netflix's Pacific Rim: The Black.Pacific Rim is a franchise I want to like more than I do. The fantasy of giant robots punching alien kaiju appeals intensely to my inner six year old boy, but the films somehow never managed to be as fun as that premise should be. They’re decent time-wasters, but largely forgettable.

I’m also not a big anime guy, so when I saw Netflix had produced a Pacific Rim anime, my reaction wasn’t exactly feverish excitement. But there really isn’t a lot to watch right now (I’ve been watching Resident Evil let’s plays on YouTube for lack of anything more interesting), so I figured I’d give it a shot.

The first episode of Pacific Rim: The Black is a bit shakey, but it showed enough potential for me to try another episode. It was then that the show really took off, and my low expectations were completely shattered. This show turned out to be incredibly good.

The Black takes place in the ruins of Australia after the events of both films (though prior knowledge of the films isn’t really required). The continent has been abandoned and left to the kaiju, but pockets of survivors remain.

Among these survivors are teenagers Taylor and Hailey, children of jaeger pilots who left to find help but never returned. Early on, they discover an abandoned jaeger, and… y’know, shenanigans ensue.

The jaeger Atlas Destroyer in Pacific Rim: The Black.In a lot of ways, the arc of the show follows what you’d expect, but there’s enough surprises and twists to keep things interesting, and it’s in the execution of the show’s concepts more so than the concepts themselves where The Black really shines.

Going in, I saw that all the main characters were kids and assumed this was going to be a very sugar-coated, family friendly series.

It is not. The Black is a very intense, dark, and often brutal story that does not pull its punches.

But what really makes it special is that The Black doesn’t fall into the trap so much grimdark media does these days. It’s not all horrible, all the time. It’s not a show where every character is an unlikable monster. The challenges faced by the characters may be harrowing, but the characters themselves are good people who are worth cheering for.

The Black hits the exact tone I want in fiction. It’s dark, but it’s not cynical.

Not much else I can say without spoilers, but I will mention that I love how this show handles issues of abuse and PTSD. There’s some fantastic character work in this series.

My one major frustration with The Black is it’s yet another example of TV seasons becoming ever shorter. Seriously, seven twenty-minute episodes isn’t a TV season; it’s a movie with a bunch of credit sequences jammed into the middle.

Taylor, Hailey, and Boy in Pacific Rim: The Black.I will say, though, that as much as I’m hungry for more of this show, its quality doesn’t really suffer from the shortness of the season, unlike most shows these days. They somehow managed to cram an incredible amount of plot, action, and character development into very little time without it feeling rushed.

I’m just glad season two is on the way. I’m struggling to even remember the last time a new show impressed me this much.

I haven’t been doing numbered reviews as much lately, but this is definitely 9/10 territory. There are a few weird choices here or there, and the short season is disappointing, but there’s so much to love that faults like that are easily overlooked.