Devil-may-care attitude when bingeing works
REPEATS, so common on Dstv, are an indifferent pleasure when imposed (the norm) or desired (truly unusual). But sometimes one feels a need to re-experience a series from the past. A character, a location, a twist in the plot, each and all of these things play tunes on memory. Well, what do you know. Some of my former favourite shows are available on Netflix, which additionally provides the muscle-wasting and consciousness-debilitating service of The Binge. While clearly indicating moral failure on the part of the viewer, there is a strong, illicit hedonism in bingeing, with a straight four carriageway dopamine highway from the remote to the brain. And so it was for this dazed pleasure seeker a couple of nights ago.
The binge was spread over two nights without end and contained the entire 13 episodes of Lucifer, Series 1.
Lucifer Morningstar is a Los Angeles resident and owner of an expensive club, Lux. We soon discover that he is the devil, having gone awol from hell since hell is a bad place where he was sent by his father as a punishment. So sad. Once the brightest of all the angels, now a grimy prison warder in Hades. Having escaped he is having a wonderful time surrounded by beautiful half naked women and drinking superior dop without any of the usual mortal consequences. Oh, and he drives a vintage Corvette. He is dogged by his brother, an angel sent by the landlord of heaven to get the celestial miscreant back to work. He declines and continues the good time on Earth, assisted by his demonic bodyguard,
Maze. Maze doubles or triples or quadruples as the bartender in his club Lux. So far, so normal until murder most foul enters the plot. With this acceleration in tempo, comes Detective Decker who is very beautiful, fully clothed and carries a Glock.
Events unfold. Desire, massaged by a clinical psychologist, enters the frame and there’s a whole lot of faintly wobbly reinterpretation of the New Testament.
So, looking at the Big Picture, a true benefit of bingeing, what do we get? First off, we get a good chance to identify the holes in the story, the flaws in the characters, the wild wobbles in performance and direction. There are cartoonish aspects to the narrative, an inevitable consequence of the necessary amelioration of the original story. Satan – take my word on this – is a bad dude, while Lucifer is just slightly elevated above the level of charming and delightful. It is at this point that we realise that the series is really and truly a sideways swipe at the entertainment shtick of Marvel with heroes and heroines with superpowers. Lucifer has all these qualities in spades, with a couple of layers of powerfully irritating modes, gestures and accents. For some reason he’s cursed with a British accent and a foppish British manner full of allied bits of eye-rolling creaky humour.
The good stuff that the Binge produced was a closer look at production values such as the transitions between shots. These were often aerial shots of LA, detailed and marvellous to behold, each one of which suggested that someone very important was up in the sky and keeping a handle on things below. Comforting, I guess. Yet the real moral leader, the secular priestess so to speak of the whole endeavour was the psychologist. So modern don’t you think?