Lightbringers: Illuminating the Deeper Meaning of the Crime-solving Devil TV Show

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When you aren’t binging, “Anything Pierce Can Do I Can Do Better” & “All Hands On Decker,” are painful episodes to watch. Lucifer’s obliviousness is torture to Chloe Decker, who simply wants to be seen and loved. 

Tracie gets her Toms mixed up, Emily cannot abide the notion of a 20-min delay in Los Angeles, and the incongruous hair texture of actor and character are once again noticed. We think about #MeToo vis a vis the male water polo team who show up at Chloe’s bachelorette party and agree that undergraduates are basically toddlers. 

As always, the sisters spend some time appreciating the beauty of Tom Ellis, especially as he portrays devastated Lucifer, and as always, they find ridiculousness to make one another laugh (the Pierce/Chloe Decker ship will forever be known as Pecker). There’s also no small amount of brain space devoted to the exploration of what mortality provides humanity and why art so often imagines immortals losing it when faced with the truth of death.

Mentioned in this episode:

Scythe series by Neal Schusterman
The Good Place
Memento Mori

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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“Orange is the New Maze” and the “Angel of San Bernadino” provide some interesting character development for Maze and some reminders that Lucifer is, in fact, the devil. Emily explores the ADHD-esque behavior of both Lucifer and Maze (hyper-fixation, missing social cues, etc) while Tracie appreciates Lauren German’s acting (for once). In true Guy Girl form, the sisters crack one another up talking about Pierce’s TERRIBLE pick-up lines and speculate on whether Chloe and Pierce are never-nudes. 

On a more serious note, Tracie and Emily question the effect of having two immortal beings fall in love with Chloe Decker. Does that make her more special, or less special because she is quite simply a trophy and not a person? We also unpack the rare use of split screen and the tendency of Maze and Lucifer to literally and psychologically pummel one another. But lest you worry we’re too serious, you should know there’s also considerable time spent discussing the realistic response to having one’s sandwich rudely snatched.

Have a listen and overthink with us!

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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“Let Pinhead Sing” & “The Last Heartbreak” make for some satisfying overthinking. Tracie and Emily delve deep into literal and figurative mirroring in the show, the sociological and evolutionary benefit of Tom Ellis’s devastated face, and the need for another character to alert the audience to the so-called romantic chemistry between Pierce (Tom Welling) and Chloe (Lauren German). 

We question the likelihood of a thousands-of-years-old man lugging a rock collection around the world, and acknowledge the fact that if the showrunners were more historically accurate with language usage, it wouldn’t be a particularly enjoyable show. 

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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“High School Poppycock” and “Infernal Guinea Pig” are fun episodes with some serious overthinking potential. 

In conversation about “High School Poppycock,” Emily relates her experience unhinging her jaw and swallowing the Twilight series whole. In fact, that brief conversation on Emily’s thoughts about Twilight became the pilot for the Guy Girls’ other project, Deep Thoughts about Stupid Sh*t. Also in this episode: Chekhov’s photo booth and Chloe’s understandable fangirling on the subjects of the high school drama of the viral novels at the heart of the case-of-the-week. 

About “Infernal Guinea Pig,” the sisters have deep appreciation for the hilarity of Bree/Abel (Lauren Lapkus) and ponder over the likelihood that Chloe would recognize a “blasting cap.” Tracie deeply overthinks the pronunciation of Cain’s name (when said by his brother in a moment of panic) and the sisters laugh about the ways in which Tom Welling is a wild turkey. 

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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“Til Death Do Us Part” and “My Brother’s Keeper” provide some delightful storytelling and some missed opportunities around the world’s first murderer and his relationship with the devil. 

In the first of these paired episodes, Emily notes the similarities to an X-Files episode where Scully and Mulder pretend to be married in suburbia, and both sisters share an appreciation for Tom Ellis in a stars-and-stripes speedo. The sisters agree that some difficult but essential conversations could have avoided murder in the case-of-the-week, and wonder if Fox had a quota for T&A. 

In “My Brother’s Keeper” Tracie reflects on the simple-yet-effective forensic analysis Ella provides at the crime scene, which Emily points out is the To Kill A Mockingbird defense (i.e. the killer was left-handed and the suspect is not). The sisters have each other laughing hard about the uncomfortable attraction between Maze and Charlotte (though not so uncomfortable that Tracie doesn’t invite Lesley-Ann Brandt to recreate the scene), and the likelihood that Hell smells, at least a little, like Axe body spray. 

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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“City of Angels?” and “All About Her” have us thinking a lot about tv writers’ short cuts and senses of humor. The first, a pre-season-1 prequel, provides some believable and some less-believable canon origins for show staples. On the plus side, we get some mostly-naked scenes of Amenadiel (DB Woodside), but there is no interaction between Lucifer and Chloe at all. Bonus: Emily recounts that time she made friends with a Playboy playmate. 

In discussing “All About Her,” Tracie follows a rabbit hole about the nature and historical interpretation of the mark of Cain, and the sisters lament the difficulty of finding good minions these days. We close our conversation with some darn fine overthinking about Lucifer’s power to “turn things on.”

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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Tracie and Emily agree that though there is some satisfying humor in “The Sinnerman” and “The Sin Bin,” these are not two episodes that either like to revisit. 

Not only does the plot in both episodes fail to hang together, but Tracie has a visceral reaction to eye-related injuries, and the sisters struggle with the lack of accountability for Chloe, Lucifer, and Pierce breaking a hardened criminal out of jail. The grim reality of Lucifer being responsible for the torture of a living soul also makes it difficult to root for him, and it’s completely unclear why the “Sinnerman” went to all that trouble (and eye-gouging) for suicide-by-cop. 

The sisters do find plenty to laugh about, including how they are both too old for roller derby (and no one appreciated Emily’s roller derby name of Shayna Punish), why it took six doctors to remove a carpet fuzzy from their father’s eye in the early 70s (and none of that is a euphemism), and the relative effectiveness of Lucifer’s mojo via television screen.

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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“Off the Record” and “Chloe Does Lucifer” provide a pattern interrupt, but keep things moving forward in season 3. 

Emily and Tracie find that “Off the Record” hits some satisfying storytelling notes, including big reveals, dramatic irony, and some meta-commentary about hell loops from within a hell loop. And while “Chloe Does Lucifer” gives us some touchstones of the titular characters’ relationship, it also makes Emily’s insides all twisty with second-hand embarrassment when Chloe tries to follow the advice of Luficer’s female alter-ego, Lucinda.

As so often happens in the sisters’ conversations, the path is circuitous and winding. In thinking about the Chloe’s characterization as the hardboiled, no-nonsense detective saddled with the wily and wild unorthodox partner, we realize the type is a regular–and regularly Guy-Girl-appreciated–version of copaganda, from Castle to Zootopia to X-Files. And that realization brings us to think about a similarly gritty but remarkably emotionally hard-working female character of our youth: Princess Leia.

The sisters laugh their way out of this week’s conversation as they reveal that while Avenue Q taught us the internet is for porn, for Tracie, Twitter is for Tom Ellis.

CW: this episode was recorded just one week after the Uvalde school shooting in which 19 children and 2 adults were murdered, and that backdrop colors the conversation about the culture’s attitude toward police and the cognitive dissonance that leads to conspiracy theories like Sandy Hook denial. 

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 Fan Mail

“Welcome Back, Charlotte Richards” and “Vegas with Some Radish” give us some interesting back story on pre-Goddess Charlotte and card-counting Ella. We also get a nice blend of physical humor and satisfying writing. 

In the episode 305, We see our writers having their cake and eating it too as they critique the over-sexualization of consumer advertising while lingering lovingly on scantily-clad women (and a few men) trying to sell pudding. Tom Ellis really convinces us of Lucifer’s discomfort with Charlotte’s (Tricia Helfer) advances with a scramble up the piano’s keys, melodic tinkling and all. And Charlotte epitomizes the literary definition of cuckoo-bananapants with her attempts to restore the balance of good and bad deeds. 

In 306, there is some really effective fill-in writing about Lucifer’s not-quite-ex-wife, Candy Morningstar, and a really fun musical number with Lucifer on vocals and Ella (Aimee Garcia) in a showgirl’s costume. (Lucifer’s vocals remind Tracie of Michael, the archangel twin we won’t meet until season 4). We also get a not-quite-believable private party for a few of Lucifer’s friends at the penthouse, because hey, a high quality sound system, top shelf liquor, and the best views of the city are hard to pass up. 

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 Fan Mail

These two episodes serve as a pattern-interrupt and then re-establishment of Lucifer’s dickishness in Season 3. Turns out there were very practical reasons for the pattern interrupt (they were filmed out of sequence) and also some storytelling beats that affected their reception (some of the choices and dialogue in 304 make sense only when looking back from later in the season). This leads to thoughts about how the indefinite lifespan of American television can make for some significant trade-offs and the real possibility of characters ending up as caricatures of their initial iterations. 

It wouldn’t be Emily and Tracie if there weren’t some discussion about the absolutely unfair level of attractiveness out of this cast and some strong opinions about peculiar things (Emily has FEELINGS about the appropriate rhyming consequences for snitches).

NOTE: Major Season 3 spoilers in this episode.

Referenced in this episode:

How I Met Your Mother

The Office

The Simpsons

Fleabag

The Good Place

How to Be Perfect by Michael Schurr

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.