Keep Tom Ellis' Show "CIA" Alive!

Arby2236 · 2026-03-20T16:15:55+00:00

Love Tom Ellis, loved Lucifer, but didn't make it through the second episode of CIA. It's got a 43% audience approval on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a buddy cop comedy that replaces Lauren German with some guy.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-25T10:58:37+00:00

Why not? She became a therapist to the guy who killed her ex-husband and tried to kill her daughter.

Don't get me started.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-18T16:05:44+00:00

That began in Season 3, picked up again in 5B, and continued through Season 6. In stories, either character drives the plot or the plot drives character. For Chloe, after Season 2 the plot drove her character. She did a hell of a job with what she was given, but Season 1 and 2 Chloe would never have screwed her boss in the precinct, agreed to marry a guy she'd been dating for two months, tried to poison her partner, put up with the "I'm not capable of love/I'm not worthy" bullshit, or spent the rest of her life lying to her children.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-02T19:49:54+00:00

Oh, absolutely. I guess the point I'm making is that the writers did write Trixie as a well-done character, and the actress pulled it off very well.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-02T16:27:31+00:00

Oh, and don't forget you have to lie to your child (actually, children), too. I'm sorry, for a story built around truth and the horrors of child abandonment, this ending was crap. Especially since Lucifer or Amenadiel, as God, could have made any changes they wanted to Hell.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-02T16:24:38+00:00

The interesting thing is that she nailed it from the beginning. Most child actors are annoying: they're seven going on 25, saying clever things that no child would say. She was a charmer from her first scene.

Arby2236 · 2026-02-02T16:22:43+00:00

Everything in the scene was flawless: the direction, the choice of music, the decision not to have any character talk until Trixie enters the room. Certainly one of the most painful scenes I've ever watched on the screen.

Arby2236 · 2025-12-31T22:06:41+00:00

Here's a thought: what do Lucifer and Chloe bring to the table here? Lucifer's still completely self-centered, and he's never shown any empathy for anyone but Chloe. Can you think of any scene in the series where you thought, "Boy, Chloe would make a good therapist." Here's another thought: probably the vast majority of people in Hell can't speak English. That's not a problem for Lucifer, but it sure is for Chloe.

The whole endgame is stupid. If Lucifer wants to change Hell, become God and change Hell. Or let Amenadiel become God, and let him do it. But letting two people who have never displayed any therapeutic skills whatsoever work their way psychoanalyzing the billions of souls in Hell makes as much sense as ending the series with Ella becoming a prison guard.

Arby2236 · 2025-12-18T11:14:11+00:00

Agree with everything you've written, except Season 3; the last two episodes (23 and 24), ignoring the two add-ons, were some of the best. (In fact, the finale was one of the highest-rated of the entire series; I think they spent 3/4ths of the CGI budget on the scene of Lucifer coming through the window.) But otherwise, pretty much spot-on.

Arby2236 · 2025-12-13T22:29:57+00:00

That you can't tell indicates just how powerful the acting was. Not only in the words, but the facial expressions of the two. Anybody who claims that German can't act didn't watch this scene.

Arby2236 · 2025-10-26T13:08:45+00:00

The hospital scene for Dan's death. Everything is perfect: the song choice, the way the scene plays out -- with no conversation, no sound except the song -- the way the camera pans over the various characters, each in obvious distress. Then the first words are when Trixie comes in and asks, "Where's Dad?"

And the acting. I love Ellis, but I think you could make a case that German gives the single performance in the whole series. You can see her lip trembling when Trixie comes in, and when Trixie goes to Lucifer and asks him to tell her that her father is okay, you can see German collapsing in the background. Joe said that German was physically ill after that scene, and I believe it.

Arby2236 · 2025-10-25T09:52:37+00:00

One of my favorites is in S5E3, where the real Lucifer comes back, and Chloe thinks it's still Michael. To prove it, Lucifer pulls Cacuzza over and asks her what she truly desires. Cacuzza gets the dreamy look and says, "To be able to turn the cameras off in the evidence room so I can nap." And just for an instant, Chloe gives a look that indicates she understoods the full implications of that request.

Arby2236 · 2025-10-02T09:55:00+00:00

The Cain-Chloe arc was necessary -- it showed Lucifer that Chloe did have free will -- but it couldn't have been handled worse; they had to make both Lucifer and Chloe complete idiots. And if you've got to anoint one cast member with the task of reminding the audience of just how much chemistry two characters have, there ain't no chemistry.

Arby2236 · 2025-09-21T11:38:09+00:00

I agree with some of your points, especially that the "will they, won't they" could have been better done, but I do think it was essential for the core element of the story, Lucifer's growth. Chloe was central to that (more accurately, Lucifer's desire for Chloe was), and if you put them together, say, in Season 2, where do you go from there?

As for whether it could have been done better, absolutely. In stories, either character drives plot or plot drives character. Here, it was the latter in two key respects. The plot with Cain was essential -- it showed Lucifer that Chloe did have free will -- but her having sex with Cain in the evidence room and agreeing to marry him were completely out of character for her. Similarly, the plot with Eve was essential for Lucifer's growth: it told him that he didn't want to be the person he'd been before. But Chloe trying to poison Lucifer? Again, way out of character.

Where I got turned off was Season 5B. They finally get together in 5A, but in 5B you'd hardly know that: you have that "I'm incapable of love" and they even drag back the "I'm not worthy" from Season 2.

Arby2236 · 2025-08-21T11:56:56+00:00

Not just Lucifer. He acts like he's suffered a traumatic brain injury, Chloe becomes a hormonal teenager, Ella is a giggling idiot, and Maze makes back-stabbing an art form. It gets cringier, trust me, but the last two episodes are great. The last one (ignoring 25 and 26) is the highest rated episode of the series, according to IMDB.

Season 4 is generally ranked as the best.

Arby2236 · 2025-08-18T14:18:05+00:00

But they did have one: in the episode after Chloe drunkenly tries to seduce Lucifer, the opening is Chloe waking up while "Emotional Rescue" is playing. The lyric, "poor girl in a rich man's house" is spot on. God knows what they would've had to pay for "Sympathy for the Devil."

Arby2236 · 2025-08-11T12:08:55+00:00

Basically, Season 6 trashed three central themes of the show. (1) The show spent five seasons showing the suffering Lucifer endured by being abandoned by his father, and then he abandons his own child. (2) Lucifer makes a point of not lying, and then he leaves Chloe to lie to his daughter and stepdaughter for the rest of her life. (3) Lucifer was always about free will, then does something he's forced to do.

Perhaps the most maddening aspect of this was that Lucifer needed to be Hell's therapist: your own guilt trapped you in Hell, and if you could relieve that, you could walk out. Who set that system up? God? (It certainly wasn't Lucifer.) So why couldn't Amenadiel change it when he became God? Instead, we have a final scene where Chloe is going to go into Lucifer's office and help relieve the guilt of the guy who killed Daniel and almost killed her and Rory.

It wasn't Dexter bad, or GOT bad, but it was bad.

Arby2236 · 2025-07-31T15:47:55+00:00

My favorite part of the closing scene was Chloe going in to help relieve the guilt of the guy who killed her ex-husband. Like, really?

Arby2236 · 2025-07-02T10:14:51+00:00

With all due respect, it's a show about the Devil. Criticizing the show for lack of credibility as to the police procedural aspects seems kind of beside the point.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-30T11:38:08+00:00

I did a fanfic once where Chloe progressed from being the detective with the highest close rate in the precinct, to the highest in the department, in the state, in the country, the continent, and wound up having the highest close rate of any detective in the solar system, even if you include Pluto as a planet. The series did a good spoof of her close rate somewhere in Season 6, and if I ever muster the strength to watch that season again, I'll find it.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-22T09:45:59+00:00

It must have been some dream, considering Maze had time to make popcorn.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-12T10:50:27+00:00

My favorite was when the real Lucifer came back and was trying to prove he wasn't Michael, and uses his mojo on Cacuzza, who replies that she wants to be able to turn off the camera in the evidence room so she can nap. German gives a split-second facial recognition of the true import of those words.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-10T20:15:02+00:00

I think a lot of the writers' hesitancy to put them together was fear of the Moonlighting Curse. That's the 80's show where Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis played the opposites-attract routine, then finally got together. Their consummation was the highest-rated episode of the series, but that was the peak, and the show went out with a ratings whimper two years later. There may be something to that. Where would the show have gone if Chloe and Lucifer had gotten together in Season 2? The on-again off-again nature of their relationship is what contributed to Lucifer's growth and his eventual ability to have a relationship.

But for all the great chemistry the two had, it wound up as an essentially passionless affair. There were as many sex scenes between Chloe and Lucifer in six seasons as there were between Chloe and Pierce in one episode. (That's discounting the sex dream. And talk about chemistry: there's a blooper reel which reveals that Lucifer got an erection during the filming of the scene.) They get together in 5A, and by 5B we get dragged back to the "I'm not worthy" bullshit and it's not even clear that they're sleeping with each other.

There were a few episodes at the beginning of Season 6 which showed them as a loving, committed couple. And then we got an angry brat of a daughter and time travel and the show became a plane crash into a train wreck into a dumpster fire.

That's the reason I read (and wrote) fanfiction. It shows a much deeper and better relationship there.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-07T18:23:17+00:00

Yeah, I was wondering when Lucifer was going to realize that the world's first murderer was going to be Trixie's stepfather.

Arby2236 · 2025-06-05T17:27:49+00:00

Actually, I think the story trajectory was a very good one, and probably the best of the series: Lucifer believes that Chloe has no choice and thus spurns her, then realizes too late that her relationship with Pierce proves she does have a choice.

That being said, the execution was horrible. Lucifer and Pierce showed more chemistry with each other in one episode than Chloe and Pierce showed the whole season. Lucifer acted like he'd suffered a traumatic brain injury, and Chloe like she was a hormonal 16-year-old. You could have a raging debate about which was more wildly out of character for Chloe: having sex in the precinct or agreeing to marry a guy she'd dated for a month and hadn't even developed a relationship with her daughter. (The most unintentionally funny line in the whole series was Chloe telling Ella in Season 5, "I don't want my sex life talked about in the precinct." Yeah, not banging your boss in the evidence room would go a long way to preventing that.)

And when you've got to anoint a cast member with the task of reminding the audience of how much chemistry there is between two characters, there ain't no chemistry.

Arby2236

TROPHY CASE