Lightbringers: Illuminating the Deeper Meaning of the Crime-solving Devil TV Show – Details, episodes & analysis

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In the final episode of Lightbringers, the Guy girls still manage some significant overthinking. The storytelling leads them to some questions about how people who don’t feel remorse might be tortured in the Lucifer universe (in other words, what was the magic behind Lucifer’s whispered words to Lemec?). Additionally, the confines of telling a story with actors on a small screen lead to musings about the role our age plays in our identity (and a detour into Star Trek the Next Generation and the Matrix). 

We enjoy the acting of Rob Benedict as he portrays Vincent Le Mec and then Dan Espinoza inhabiting Vincent Le Mec’s body. We also have some deep appreciation for the visual storytelling used to portray the silver city and the tight writing that gave us the series of events leading to the appearance of Mr. Meowgi the lion and Le Mec’s escape from prison. 

At the same time, we both were a bit less than satisfied with the writing that would characterize (or at least not significantly distinguish) righteous anger as monstrous, allowed saviorism to flavor the attempt at anti-racism in Chloe’s role as Lieutenant, and left us with the impression Trixie wasn’t present for her.

We wrap up the journey with a few thoughts about recommendations for binge-worthy shows that might scratch the Lucifer itch.

Mentioned in this episode:
Our Lucifer episode of Deep Thoughts about Stupid Sh*t
Good Omens streams on Amazon
Dead Boy Detectives is on Netflix
The Sandman is on Netflix
Dead End: Paranormal Park is on Netflix
Owl House is on Disney+
Miranda is on Britbox or Amazon
The Good Place is on Netflix

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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In this penultimate episode of Lightbringers, the Guy sisters continue to notice the moments and threads of season 6 that seem to point to a rushed (and self-amusing) writers’ room. From the unprofessional move of Linda’s book (why didn’t they just make it fiction?) to the disappointingly milquetoast Carroll, there are story and character beats that felt forced. At the same time, we deeply appreciate Chloe-as-audience-proxy in the conversation about how some people don’t have the choice to walk away from the fight against racism.

We spend considerable time thinking through the casting and writing choices surrounding Adam. What are the implications about the human species if the first man is guilty of toxic masculinity? Why cast a white dude as the first man? In the end, we realized regardless of our analysis, the choices the show made about Adam will have pissed of the right people (probably the same ones who boycotted Netflix because of Good Omens, even though the latter streams on Amazon Prime).

Regular listeners will be comforted to know that our appreciation for Tom Ellis’ looks has not faded over these many seasons, and in fact, Emily is adamant that Tom in a tuxedo shirt with suspenders is all she needs on her tv screen. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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“Detective Amenadiel” and “Blue Ballz” are the only two episodes in this whole experiment that the sisters watched while in the same room, and they contain some of their most beloved and most reviled of the whole series. 

In their meanderings, the Guy girls think about the metaphor of reflection as used both visually and rhetorically in “Detective Amenadiel.” They ruminate on the badassery of Maze bounty hunting the object of Linda’s angst and thereby come up with the premise for a new book series featuring Emily’s best friend Erika as a bounty-hunting priest. Tracie is also deeply bothered by the reverse engineering of the storytelling required to get Lucifer’s phone into Michael’s hands.

The sisters try to find universe-complilant justificaiton for how some people see proof of divinity and are driven to distraction by it while the villain in one of these episodes is repulsed. At the same time, Emily loses her ability to word when thinking about the sexiness of the final five minutes of “Bule Ballz” and also the inadequacy of Jed’s nose (it’s simply too small). 

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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The layers of meta-commentary in the episode about a TV show where the actual devil is a consultant with the LAPD is lots of fun, and has the sisters wondering if Lucifer would have been more offended on Chloe’s behalf by turning her character into a stripper-turned-detective who doesn’t seem to be particularly bright. 

And the return of Lilith in a 1946 black-and-white mystery episode invites some exploration of the mythology of Lilith, the first human woman who became a monster. The Egyptomania and Orientalism in the same episode lead to a long tangent about the ways in which humans tend to ascribe literal magic to anything they don’t fully understand (e.g. Ancient Egyptian mummies in the early 20th century, computers in the 1990s, or bitcoin in the last 10 years). 

As always there’s some breathless appreciation of the beauty of this cast (Tracie admits Tom Ellis is her sexual orientation) and the evidence of their skill when the same actor plays different characters.

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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In our conversation about “Really Sad Devil Guy” & “Lucifer! Lucifer! Lucifer!” we think a lot about the tropes and short cuts that come from soap opera storytelling. And we don’t hate it. 

Both sisters are impressed with Tom Ellis’s ability to make us believe he is, in fact, his own twin (even down to his butt cheeks!). Tracie picks apart a key plot point in the case of the week, and Emily uses some very graphic metaphors to describe her reaction to Ellis’ American accent as Michael.

It is exceedingly clear that this episode was recorded more than a year ago, because though the angel-is-not-good and devil-is-not-bad twinning comparison to Good Omens is clear and obvious, we do not make it, raising Satanic Verses instead.

We also spend some time appreciating Lee, aka Mr. Said-Out-Bitch (Jeremiah Birkett), and his charm and emotional intelligence, even if he never fully lived up to his potential in life.

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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“Save Lucifer” and “Who’s da New King of Hell?” allow the Guy Girls to overthink everything from acting vs. directorial choices, to the nature of sin and guilt, to the possibility of a “happy ending” for an immortal being in love with an all-too-human one. 

Tracie couldn’t wait to start the episode with her frustrations with Lauren German’s delivery of the emotional range required for Chloe’s (good, not great) dialogue, and we also spend significant time pondering the in-universe veracity of souls going to Hell immediately post-confession. We wonder over the seeming paucity of therapists in Los Angeles (is Linda really the only one?), and Emily is really into Kevin Alejandro’s beatboxing. 

These two episodes were meant to be the final of the series when they were produced. Have a listen to the Guy Girls’ overthinking of whether or not they stuck the landing. 

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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“Devil is as Devil Does” and “Super Bad Boyfriend” give some hints that the writers were wrestling with their copagandistic vehicle. However, there were also moments in these two episodes, especially in Chloe’s voice, that oversimplify the “rightness” of human justice. That they made these explorations around the death of a Black teenager is all the more topical (and will be returned to in season 6).

These two episodes also tackle the experience of self-hatred that both sisters find heart-breakingly relatable. From Lucifer’s bat-like wings, to Dan’s attempts to externalize his self-loathing in a beating from Maze, to Maze reacting to a would-be date who is remarkably like she is, our writers invite us to think about self-perception again and again. 

As always, the sisters investigate the story structure and writing, lingering over the ways the dialogue and the acting communicate the story, and teasing out the meaning of specific glances and blocking. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Helen Rosen “ How Apples Go Bad” https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-gastronomy/how-apples-go-bad

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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“Expire Erect” (Die Hard, get it?) and “Orgy Pants to Work” turn out to be fantastic fodder for the Guy Girls’ particular brand of overthinking, and we did not hold back.

Tracie had some THINGS to say about the mythology of Lilith (Maze’s mom), which led to some questions about who (and how) Lilith even is, and whether or not Lucifer could have been Eve’s “first time.” To answer those questions, we actually got a copy of the Bible off the shelf to check the chronology of what happened in and after the garden of Eden.

Also in this episode, we dig into what’s going on with the writers’ manipulation of our feelings by making the bad guy super reprehensible. We unpack the use of female archetypes of maiden, mother, crone, whore, and witch (and why Eve can’t be maternal because Chloe’s got the lock on that one), which leads to Emily reassuring her sister, “oh honey, you can still be a whore if you want to. 

There’s also some speculation as to whether or not “punchable face” is an acting choice and the stamina-inducing powers of acai. 

If you only ever listen to one episode of LIghtbringers, this should be the one. 

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

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“O, Ye of Little Faith, Father” and “All About Eve” bring some of Emily’s favorite moments of the whole series. The first provides deeply satisfying dramatic irony through Father Kinley’s (Graham McTavish) web of deception, the whole of which, only we the viewers see. The second gives delicious comfort to a devastated Lucifer (Tom Ellis) who fears he is unlovable but is embraced–in his devil face–by the biblical Eve (Inbar Lavi). 

There are also significant opportunities for overthinking, from Eve’s name (with a correction and apology from Tracie at the beginning of the episode) to just how much the murderer knew of the whole plot to reveal Lucifer’s face, to how and when Linda acquired her house. As always the storytelling, including visual storytelling, gets the sisters’ attention. 

In what might be called a theme, Tracie spends a little time complaining that Lauren German’s delivery as Chloe somehow doesn’t sell the dialogue, and both sisters get a chuckle over Maze’s condolences over the sex of the baby. 

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.

Send us a text

“Everything’s Okay” and “Somebody’s Been Reading Dante’s Inferno” contain one of the sexiest scenes in the whole series, some really comprehensible character behavior, and some mediocre delivery of that behavior.

The sisters spend a disproportionate amount of time gushing over the first several minutes of “Everything’s Okay,” only to ease into an almost grudging appreciation for the task the writers set themselves by requiring the details of the cases in the procedural to map to the drama of the central characters. 

Because of Chloe’s (Lauren German) instance to Father Kinley (Graham Mctavish) that “you just don’t know him like I do,” Tracie has the painful realization that Lucifer (Tom Ellis) has been (arguably?) emotionally abusive to Chloe. 

In a series of duck-related tangents, the sisters reference the Marx Brothers (Why a duck?), a song about a duck who wants a grape, Duck Tales, and Darkwing Duck (the latter of which may show up on a future episode of Deep Thoughts about Stupid Sh*t).

CW: Abstract discussion of abusive, co-dependent relationships.

Originally published as a YouTube show with different theme music. 

Our theme song is "Feral Angel Waltz" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

To learn more about Tracie and Emily and our other projects, to support us, and join the Guy Girls' family, visit us on Patreon.