Fun facts about the Salvage Dawgs
Black Dog Salvage is where the Salvage Dawgs of DIY lore hail from. Black Dog Salvage is located in Roanoke, Virginia

When asked what the weirdest thing is that they’ve ever salvaged, Mike Whiteside responded: “One of the coolest things that we did is the Eiffel Tower in Columbus, Ohio. That’s not something that you do every day. Here I am hanging on top of an Eiffel Tower with a couple of ropes and I look like King Kong up there. You’ve gotta start laughing at yourself like, ‘This is not normal.’”

Fun facts about Parkville, Maryland
Parkville’s located just northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and in fact falls within Baltimore County. Every year, a Czech and Slovak Heritage Festival is held to celebrate the heritage of those from those respective locales, according to Wikipedia.

Fun facts about indoor skydiving
I went indoor skydiving once in southern California. It was kind of fun but at one point I messed up and started skyrocketing toward the top of the enclosed indoor skydiver-y area. Luckily, our guide was quite skilled and launched like a bat out of hell and grabbed my ankle just in time, perhaps saving me from serious indoor skydiving injury or worse. In short: stay frosty out there, indoor skydivers.

Viewing Info
Salvage Dog’s “Parkville Farmhouse” airs on October 22nd, 2017 at 9/8c on DIY. 

And now we have SYFY’s Superstition, in which the town of La Rochelle – located on the outskirts of New Orleans, where we’re told that “superstitions, ancient myths, and legends are true.”

Our entrée into this world is the Mosley family, who run a graveyard and funeral home, which as luck would have it puts them in prime position to both do normal post-life services that we’re all familiar with, but to also perform “afterlife care” for folks knocked by the “infernals,” or demon-y creatures of the dark and such.

So basically sounds like a Hellmouth type situation (see: Slayer, Buffy the Vampire) with a goodly dash of Cajun spice with a Six Feet Under-like kicker with the funeral home bit. Sounds like a good time to me .

Superstition preview video for “Taking Care of Business”
You know things are going to get cray on a show like Superstition. How cray, you ask? You’re in luck, as we portray the cray (yes, I just coined that phrase and expect full trademark and credit from here on in) in a video preview served up just for you:

Mario Van Peebles has been in a lot of stuff
Did we mention that Mario Van Peebles, the MVP himself, is in Superstition? He plays a character called Isaac Hastings. Yep, best believe. Peebles has been in lots of stuff over the years, of course. Recently, he was quite good as a prosecutor on the mostly quite good Bloodline, on Netflix. He also stood out on the sorely underrated Damages a little while back. Probably have to go back to 1991’s New Jack City, though, for Peeble’s all time iconic role, playing a character called Stone.

Superstition question
Have you ever heard of a family-run graveyard? I mean I guess that could be a thing, but just doesn’t really seem like a thing, right?

Viewing Info
Superstition’s series premiere, entitled “Taking Care of Business,” is on Friday, October 20th, 2017 at 10/9c on SYFY.

What did y’all think about the Superstition premiere?
Let us know in the comments section! 

In Galveston, Texas, down there on the Gulf Coast, eleven teenage girls were murdered over the course of the 1970s. Now, according to Wikipedia[EB1] , the population of Galveston hovered in the 62,000 range between 1970 and 1980, meaning that roughly one out of 5,636 people were murdered over that period of time. Not pretty.

The murder cases are still open, but the basis of The Eleven ties to the discovery of a confession letter of one Edward Harold Bell, who is in prison for a 70-year bid for yet another murder. Apparently this letter gets super specific-y and gruesome-like in terms of Bell explaining his involvement in all of these murders. But now, many years later, and with Bell up for parole soon, he’s denying the confession.

So we’ve got a real life mystery that’s a little too close to True Detective Season 1 for my liking in terms of this is some real stuff going on. In essence, it could be the grist for some riveting reality series / docuseries storytelling, and retired police detective Fred Paige and Journalist Lise Olsen are on the case to reexamine the murders and try to make sense of it all.

The Eleven sneak peek
Thanks to the YouTubes!

The Eleven Fun Fact
Okay, so not so fun fact for a not so much fun show: the voice over narrator’s voice on The Eleven creeps me the hell out.

The Eleven Fun Fact 2
Eleven, the character from Netflix smash hit Stranger Things who is a cute little girl that also has freaky superpowers and also has some connection with the Upside Down and stuff, takes part in no way, shape, or form in the reality series, The Eleven.

Viewing Info
The Eleven series premiere, “Paradise Lost,” airs on October 19th, 2017 at 9/8c on A&E. Additionally, the second episode, “Russian Roulette,” airs right after at 10/9c.

What’s doing in this episode?
Strange as it may seem, “Pizza” centers its concerns on… well, come on, you get it. And, what’s more, in this installment of Man’s Greatest Food, host Roger Mooking goes around the great nation of the United States on a hunt for the top fifteen offerings country-wide. We’re talking New York thin slices, we’re talking Chicago deep dish, and everything in between.

But come on, there’s no real contest here right? We gotta go Hawaiian style out on the remote isle of Kawaii, am I right? What, no? Is this thing on? Hello?

Who is Man’s Greatest Food host Roger Mooking?
Most reality hosts, you want to find out stuff about them, you learn they like to fish, the have 2.5 kids, they once got busy in a Burger King bathroom, whatever. But Man’s Greatest Food host Roger Mooking? Man, you check out the about page on his personal website and you learn a lot. Maybe too much, depending on how your mileage varies.

As quick example, we learn that Roger Mooking is “a sucker for the punishment.” He has had eight lives. He resolves to defeat “isms.” A list of future projects that “NO ONE” has seen. A loud laugh. An army of small daughters. And so on.

Seems like quite an active and positive bloke, actually, punishment-seeking fetishism aside.

Viewing Info
Man’s Greatest Food’s latest episode airs October 18th, 2017 at 8/7c on the Cooking Channel. 

What’s doing in this episode?
In “Curse of Osiris,” the series premiere, we get camera footage of someone who theoretically spontaneously combusts. Meanwhile, we’ll also get a statue that comes to life at night at a museum (calling: Ben Stiller, Robin Williams, and crew), and some kind of swamp beastie alien-like creature lurking in the sewers. No doubt you’ll need to tune in to get the full reality TV lowdown.

Go deeper
“These aren’t paranormal occurrences, but they are real mysteries captured on surveillance cameras that warrant further investigation,” said Wyatt Channell, Executive Producer of the Science Channel. So there you go!

Strange Evidence not at all associated with Strange Evidence
One time I woke up late at night due to a series of noises downstairs in my house. Pretty shaken up, I went into kitchen, whereupon I was most surprised to see Elvis Presley, Jack Kerouac, and Jim Morrison hanging out in kitchen nook, eating Captain Crunch cereal and swapping tales about life on the road in the good old days (some involving King Cobras). True story.

Viewing Info
Strange Evidence’s series premiere airs tonight, October 17th, 2017 at 10/9c on The Science Channel. 

Lucifer is trying to get back into the swing of therapy. He actually wants help and acknowledges that he needs it, which is already so much progress, but Dr Linda, though she's made up with Maze, is still stunned and processing the whole Devil thing. Lucifer wants to know what the sandwich Chloe made for him means--he seems to get that there's some sort of intimacy involved, but he totally misses a) that the sandwich was actually made for Trixie and he took it before Chloe made one for him, and b) that after the sandwich, the important part of the morning was that he said the right thing and made a real connection with Chloe. After all his trying to be better last week, he managed it without trying because he actually cares about her and she needed the comfort.

He wants to talk about it, but Dr Linda only wants to know how Hell works. How was Hitler punished? Is there a dictators wing? Is her bad uncle there?

Which, to be fair, are all good questions to ask the person who could actually answer them

But it means Luci gets very little attention for his issues, which makes him cranky. In another show of progress, though, he admits to Chloe that he thinks he broke his therapist and he's worried about her. Chloe offers again to listen if he needs to talk. He says that he can't talk to her about this stuff, and she says:

"I've seen all your ugly parts by now."

"Not even close, I'm afraid."

Sooner or later, Chloe's going to have to challenge that, but this time, they're coming up to a crime scene and there's a body to investigate.

A lady was chased down and stabbed nineteen times in broad daylight. Someone caught a picture of the murder happening, and Lucifer sees that the weapon is Azrael's blade--which means it's kind of his fault this happened, and he can't let Chloe find the thing: it not only stabs like a normal blade and obliterates the souls of celestial beings, but it also has, like, and influence. It wants to be used. Humans are a lot more maleable and a lot less able to resist it, and it'll just keep getting passed around, causing a swath of destruction all across the world.

If Chloe gets it, not only will it warp her into a murderess, but her room mate is a celestial being (and, implied sort of, a child). Also implied: Lucifer doesn't want her to get warped like that.

Luci isn't pleased.

Chloe finds out that the woman belonged to a yoga group that was semi-cultish, and starts her investigation there. Lucifer enlists Ella to help him find out who stole the blade--while getting her to not tell anyone about how this looks like a dug up grave. Even though it totally is, Amenadiel and Maze moved the body somewhere safe already, so there shouldn't be anything that sort of incriminating around.

At least, not anything important to this case. Ella has been shown to work on multiple puzzles at once...

She discovers a burned note with directions to the grave site written on Mama Morningstar's letterhead. Turns out, she wanted the blade out in the world, causing havoc. She wanted to make enough trouble that Dad would have to take notice and come talk to her. She says it's because they should mourn as a family.

I still don't buy it.

So Chloe gets a list of names of people who might have had a grudge against the murder victim and Lucifer gets a list of names of people Mama gave the directions to, and there's only one name in common. That leads them to the leader of the cult, who didn't do it because he's a scammer and wasn't there, and to more dead bodies, because the blade is still out there. It's like that cursed coin from Sleepy Hollow two season ago (or, the cursed coin from Dresden Files which was handled better); it moves to the next wielder as soon as it's dropped.

All this time, Chloe has noticed that Lucifer is spending a lot of time with Ella. She says she's not jealous, but she's totally jealous, and Dan calls her on it. He wants to gossip, but she says it's all about partnership and not keeping secrets. But Lucifer has to keep the secret because Ella has discovered that the shoeprint from whoever dug up the grave matches the shoe of one of their victims, meaning the cases are linked--which leads Ella to Lucifer's loft, where she hugs him as part of a proof of her leap of faith, and Chloe walks in and sees it. Because of course. And also of course, she assumes he's sleeping with Ella because that's the sort of person Luci is most of the time.

Later, she tells him not to sleep with coworkers, and he tells her he's not, and that it's a point of pride for him that he's never lied to her, which calms her down. Pretty quickly, too, because she obviously wants to believe him. He makes it saucy with the offer to gladly mix business and pleasure if she's ever up for it and she leaves annoyed but feeling better, and Lucifer gets that goofy heart-eyes look again. He noticed that she was jealous and it made him all squishy.

SO. They figure out that the only yoga person not accounted for was the first lady they talked to, because that's usually how it goes. The guy who founded this semi-cult was being investigated for harassment, but when Lucifer gets to their latest perp at the dude's house, he finds out that it's not just harassment that the creep is guilty of. She's already stabbed him, but Lucifer sticks up for her when the cops arrive, saying it was self defense. Out of all the petty issues the blade made into murderous urges, she's the only one who had a real reason to want him dead: "I said no, and he kept going!"

But in the rush, the blade goes missing. So while Chloe and co are handling the crime scene, Lucifer has to go find the blade before the mess continues, and has to do it while cops are all over the place. 

He finds it by the pool...with Dan.

Who blames Luci for ruining his marriage.

And stealing his family.

And messing up his job.

And eating his snacks.

I don't know how this show does it, but this scene was silly--trying to stab him for eating his pudding--but also super intense. Dan manages to slice Lucifer across his belly, enough to draw blood but not enough to kill him forever. Which is good, because when he gets Luci cornered, he manages to fight off the blade's influence enough that Lucifer has an in. Dan is stronger than he realized, and once he knows that, he can lay a patented Lucifer-whammy on him and get him to speak the truth: His marriage was failing and they were separated before they even met Lucifer, and his job was ruined when he decided to cover up a crime, again before they met.

Lucifer did eat his snacks though.

Lucifer gets the blade, Dan doesn't remember trying to kill him and feels better than he has in weeks for having gotten all that off his chest (despite not remembering it happening), and everything is cool. Except that Chloe is mad that the murder weapon went missing.

Ella wanted to do the favor without asking for one back, but Lucifer doesn't like owing people, so she asked him to go to church with her. He goes, and apparently doesn't burst into flames. No word on whether he makes contact with Dear Old Dad there yet.

Dr Linda finally realizes that Lucifer, despite being the literal, actual devil, is just a messed up guy from a dysfunctional family like all her other patients, and decides to get back to work.

Mama and Amenadiel confront Lucifer about everything that's happened. Ama says none of them should be on earth, that all of this that's been happening is because they're here, and he wants everything to go back where it belongs--the blade and the family. Mama, though, wants to shift things around some. She wants back into Heaven, but with her whole family, Lucifer included.

Which is too far for him. He tells them, point blank, that Hell was awful, but Heaven was worse, and the only place he has ever felt like he's appreciated and understood is on earth, so he's not going anywhere. He gets mad enough that creepy white flames start crawling up Azrael's blade, which he's still holding in his angry fist. It makes Mama back down and call off Amenadiel--but while they leave Luci looking like he just realized something bad was narrowly averted, Mama says they just got a new opportunity.

Again, I ask: what is she up to??

This show has really turned up the everything this season. The snappy sassiness was always there, but everything is cleverer and tighter this season. The emotions run deeper. Lucifer going through therapy isn't just a prop or a joke anymore, it's a vital part of his emotional and character development--this week, amongst everything else, he was trying to figure out why he cares whether people get killed! It never mattered to him before, it was a lark, a way to stay around Chloe. Now it's actually something he cares about!

Everyone has their own point of view, and seeing everyone work together, or seemingly work together, while dealing with all their own wants and needs is such a joy.

Next week, Mama Morningstar decides to go after Chloe because she's what ties Luci to earth. How long before she realizes that's a really bad idea if she actually wants him to team up with her? Or will we find out that that was never her goal to begin with?

More notes on Lucifer 2.8 "Trip to Stabby Town":

What did you guys think of this week's Lucifer?

After kinda-sorta accidentally killing his brother last week, Lucifer is falling apart this week with a concerted effort and no one is hugging him nearly enough. Amenadiel is grieving in his own way, Mama Morningstar is dealing with him, and Lucifer is left all alone to stew in his guilt and sadness. The one person who wants to help him--Chloe--he won't let in because he doesn't want to tell her what and who he really is, and the one person who is supposed to help him--Dr Linda--won't take him seriously enough to make a difference.

It's all the feels in Luciland this week.

The case is a woman murdered at her wedding and a food truck chef murdered when they go to question him about a napkin left at the scene. There's no connection between the two, but the foodie's wife and the bride's husband worked together on medical malpractice cases. Which leads them, at the end of the ep, to the doctors who led the clinical trial that killed the killer's wife. He's making them all feel what he felt when he lost his love. It's sad, but it's pretty straight forward.

Most of the story is Lucifer flailing around and making things worse. 

Chloe wants to know what's up, but he won't talk to her; in fact, he's convinced that she absolutely can't understand, and even though it looks like it pains him and frustrates him to push her away, he thinks there's no point in trying because she won't get it. I think he's selling her short; she gets him even if she doesn't have all the details. Lucifer doesn't even tell her that the problem is a death in the family. This is a perfect time to show that deep compassion she had for his wing scars from the beginning of S1, but he's not giving her a chance and she hasn't reached the end of her rope / the top of her worry for him yet.

He shows up to the wedding scene drunk, and gets a lead by seducing the first bridesmaid he sees. He harasses the suspect that lead brings them to until he's crying on the floor. He breaks into the snack machine in the middle of the police precinct. He steals the medical files they need so they don't have to wait for a warrant. And then, at the end, he saves the last victim sort of accidentally by trying to get the sniper to shoot him, because he feels like he deserves it. It was done so well: funny, but also heartbreaking all through the episode.

Because, even while he's self destructing and worrying Chloe to death and pushing everyone away, he's also still helping. Chloe asks if he even wants to help her, and the way he says he does sounds like punishing wrongdoers is the only thing he has left. Like it hurts that she'd question that. He drastically overpays for the snacks he takes from the machine. And he gets the files because Chloe needs them and he's even less patient than ever. 

But then he also punches Dan in the face (which was awesome, but probably unneeded), and breaks the law, so Chloe kicks him off the case. After that is when he really flips out. There's a great piano number, which we all love, but he can't even finish the song, and he kicks everyone out of the club, before he goes and tries to get himself shot.

It doesn't work, because the guy doesn't think Lucifer deserves it. That's probably what Lucifer needs to hear, but he's not ready to hear it and so he doesn't believe it. Especially after Dan says that he never does anything he doesn't want to do, which just confirms his idea that he deserves to be punished, despite his protests that he's had to do lots of stuff he doesn't want to do. It's a deep problem for the one who usually does the punishing.

At the very end, after he almost makes Chloe cry by being so mean to her when she tries to get through to him, he finally goes to see Dr Linda. He actually tells her everything that happened, but she cuts him off and says she needs absolute real honesty. She's tired of metaphors and thinks all her work has been for nothing.

So Lucifer takes a chance.

He shows her his real face. The red one with the glowing eyes that still look sad. Not the one with the sharp teeth and horns, just the non-human one.

And she freaks out. Quietly, but totally.

And he's even more sure that he can't just be who he is, and no one will ever understand him or what he goes through. He was smiling a little, hopefully, when she said she'd like to see, but when she froze up and her lip started wobbling, the smile just fades and it's even more heartbreaking than all the self-destruction.

Poor Luci.

Meanwhile, no one is hugging him because they all have other stuff to do.

Amenadiel is busy with Mama Morningstar. She takes him to where Lucifer buried Uriel under a nice big tree in what looks like a state park...though it doesn't look really remote or anything. Will someone stumble across an angel-body and make things worse? But before that, Mama takes the opportunity to make sure Ama doesn't blame himself for everything that happened--because he totally does, since he's the oldest and the strongest and was sent down to put an end to everything long before now.

And she also takes the chance to push what sounds like an agenda. She seems to be quietly cultivating rebellions while she reinforces her childrens' ties to herself...

Chloe and Dan are working together as partners again, since Lucifer gets himself kicked off the case, but they mostly seem to be keeping it professional. It's sort of nice seeing her getting to just be a cop, like a glimpse of how things must've been before she knew Luci and before the two of them broke up.

And because the case keeps Chloe from getting home to go trick-or-treating with Trixie, Maze goes with her. This is the part that keeps the episode from being too dark, because Maze and Trixie together are always golden. It's the best friendship that's developed on this show. Trixie doesn't want to be a princess again, so Maze builds her a President of Mars costume. And then intimidates everyone into giving her lots of candy and some money.

Trixie says she wishes Maze had a costume, and Maze, torture-demon and people-hater, takes a risk on a little girl and shows Trixie her real face. Which is to say, how half her face is missing. 

Trixie, in contrast to the reaction Lucifer got for the same thing, loves it. When Chloe gets home late, there's hundreds of candy wrappers everywhere and Trixie and Maze (with her whole face back on) are sleeping all snuggled up on the couch together. 

As I said at the top of this post, it's probably the best this show has been yet. The case didn't matter as much to the plot, and when it did, it played nicely with what's going on in the characters' emotional lives, which is how the show works best. It's not really a crime show, it's a show that uses crime as a framework to get people into the same spaces together. The contrast between Maze's reveal and Lucifer's was heartbreaking as much as anything else that was going on with him this episode, and we can only hope that he can either come out the other side soon, or that Chloe can break through and bring him back, because it can't be good to have the Devil literally trying to ruin himself.

And what, exactly, is Mama Morningstar up to?

More notes on Lucifer 2.6 "Monster":

What did you guys think about this week? Share in the comments!

The episode starts with Jane and Weller having dinner and smiling and kissing and being super adorable. Roman shows up, and they all have a great time...until the door flies open, everyone disappears, and pre-mind-wipe Remy shows up and literally beats herself up. She says Jane can't have any of this; it's not her's and it's not for her. Then she stabs her in the heart and she wakes up terrified and confused.

Back at the office, Things are Happening.

Rich Dotcom hacks the whole FBI system to get them to arrest him and take him into custody, so that this legendary assassin known as The Winter Soldier--I mean, The Accadian--who everyone thinks is a myth or a boogeyman, can't get him. That doesn't work for very long, though.

Rich manages to sneak back out of holding and into their offices again moments after they left him down there, and while he's still explaining how he did it, they realize that holding has been attacked and the guards they just saw are now dead. The Accadian is in the building, and the only reason Rich is still alive is because he fled the second he had a chance. The assassin got in by replacing a security guard, but quickly kept shifting around who's access card he was using so they were always a little behind and he could use the lead to find Rich.

He uses stuff from their own supplies closets to build a bomb that takes out Patterson while she's trying to defuse it. He gets the best of both Zapata AND Reade in the lockers, and kidnaps Zapata so he can poison her and make them leave Rich to get the cure.

See, Reade and her had just had a big fight. The cop in charge of the case of his old coach's murder and the lawyer who dropped the case against him showed up in the office right before everything went south. They wanted to apologize--and to make Reade help them decide who of the victims was the killer. Reade won't "pin the crime on a survivor", which Zapata just thinks makes him more suspicious since they don't know he should be on that list, too. She's convinced that they're here because they think he did it, even though they give no signs of that being the case; then her guy at the cops calls and tells her that they found a knife in the sewer, so she's sure that it'll be Reade's missing kitchen knife and that doesn't help any.

When she and Reade go to clear the floor and find the Accadian, Reade tells her to stop helping; he didn't ask for her involvement, it's not needed because he didn't do it, and he thinks she's only invovled at all because she's still an addict: she's not placing bets anymore, but she still needs the thrill of risk. So they're not working well together when the Accadian finds them, and that's when he knocks them out and kidnaps her.

Every time they say "the Accadian" I think of the Scorpion King, but this guy is more like fighting Jet Li; he's fast and quiet and a better hand-to-hand fighter than anyone else.

While that's going on, Weller confronts Nas about bugging everything, and she says that she needs to know every single thing going on in Jane's mind, so she can see it coming if she turns on them. Weller doesn't think she'll join up with Sandstorm, but he does think Nas will push her away and they'll lose her--especially now that she wants to turn Roman and use him as a resource against Sandstorm. She tells Jane that she trusted her inside man as well as she trusts Roman, and he killed a bunch of her people before getting himself killed, and she doesn't want Jane to make the same mistake.

Jane doesn't take being put off like that very kindly, and Weller's mad at Nas and refuses to talk about what happened between them last episode because of it. Rich drops hints of something called Omaha so Nas won't send him away instead of keeping him safe, and that is just one more thing for Weller to be suspicious of.

So when they split up to go help Zapata, everyone is on edge. 

They do leave Rich alone to draw out the Accadian, but only for a few seconds; they let Rich handle the computers to put the surveillance on a loop so they don't actually have to leave the room. While he's there, he messes around with other things, too, because famous deep web hacker, so of course. 

Jane and Weller corner the assassin, and they're not doing a very good job of incapacitating him until Jane has a moment with her dream from this morning, and uses the moves her other self used against her to take him down--but Weller accidentally kills him before he can tell them which of the vials he left is poison and which is cure. Which means Nas and Reade have to guess, and they almost guess wrong before Reade figures out that Zapata's hand isn't just twitching, it's using morse code to tell him which is the right one, since her throat is closing up and she can't speak, but her eyes were working just fine when the guy was talking about the vials earlier.

Everything looks better, and they send Rich back to jail...but his boyfriend Boston, the one who he said had died in his arms to get them to believe he was telling the truth, answered the call instead of whoever was supposed to, and Rich gets escorted to freedom instead of jail.

Except that Patterson wasn't in the hospital because of that explosion like they told Rich she was. She was checking for exactly the sort of other hacks that Rich Dotcom would totally put into their computers given half a chance, and so she was prepared for their call to be intercepted. They let them get just far enough away to think they were free, but then caught both of them for the price of one. But at least Rich managed to get the FBI to kill the actual assassin that was actually after him, since he actually ticked off Kim Jong Un by coming on to his wife, like he said!

Once the case is wrapped, Reade and Zapata apologise to each other, and she promises not to mess with the evidence...and then totally goes and messes with the evidence. But the knife wasn't Reade's kitchen knife; it was Freddie's pocket knife, which means she's not only stolen evidence, but she also knows who did it!

Nas tells Jane that she can't approve her bringing Roman over, and Jane isn't happy with that.

Jane goes on a date with her Australian non-profit guy, but when he asks her where she's from, does she have siblings, what's her job, and is so sweet and normal about those very loaded-for-her questions, she freaks out and leaves. "This doesn't belong to me," she says, just like the dream told her. Is she starting to crack up? Is Remy actually trying to come back for real, not just in scattered memories? Will she be able to integrate both personalities, or will the tension be too much? Weller better keep an eye on her.

Weller is home fixing the door that got busted down when they went to go pick up Rich from his living room at the beginning, and Nas shows up and tells him that she's always had a hard time letting people in, but she kind of wants to change that now...and then they're kissing again and I'm questioning Weller's sanity again.

And then Roman gets a message that their FBI mole left something in the dead drop for him. The guy he's working with half-suggests that Jane maybe can't be trusted, and he almost strangles the guy, defending her by saying she's done everything they asked of her. But he also says they're not going to say anything at all to Shepherd until he sees what's in the drop. 

It's a note. All it says is "Jane's loyalty is with the FBI" and then a few pages of code. From that chip, which they still don't know what it's for? Roman goes all vein-poppy about that news; even if Jane wants to turn him now, he probably won't go. But maybe this also means that she can stop living a double life? And maybe it means that he'll go rogue to confront her instead of bringing Sandstorm into this, since he's taking all of this very, very personally? She might still be able to get him arrested and work on him that way...

Who was the mole? Nas would know now that Jane really is with her team, and the whole thing with Weller could be specifically to keep him distracted. Borden wasn't even in this episode, so it would be strange if his info changed unless he's also listening in. Patterson had access to the code, but why would she be a mole? What if it's not even one of the people they showed the first time they mentioned the mole, and we're just meant to keep being paranoid as everyone inside the show is?

This was a big, full, awesome episode. So much happened--this recap is super-long this week!--but they managed to keep it from being muddy or confusing. In fact, it's probably more morally clear than the show has been in weeks, and with everyone on the team in one place, doing the same things, it's much easier to keep the story straight then it's been since it was split up!

Rich Dotcom is so much fun--the whole first few minutes of the episode, where he keeps poking at the tension in the team, calling out the wonky chemistry between them now, telling Jane Weller is still obviously in love with her but confused, blaming all the weirdness on Nas--it was great. Like a little bit of letting the fans speak, while also being a quick and easy way of broaching all those subjects in the show itself! And he really should join the team; it'd be so much fun if they just decided that he's less trouble where they can keep all their eyes on him. Every show needs an arrested and indentured hacker to keep them company! Where else would we have gotten Birkhoff from Nikita? Or Reily on MacGyver?

And it's so nice to have the storylines knitting together! Everything matters to everyone on this show, and that's great.

More notes for Blindspot 2.7 "Resolves Eleven Myths":

What did you think of this week's episode? Tell us in the comments, or come talk to me on Twitter @pirategirljack!

This week, it's all Nightingale all the time!

In Frank's time, a nine year old girl is found wandering in the street after the killer takes her mom. In Raimy's time, the same girl, now grown, disappears for three days and is found wandering again, saying she just escaped from the same killer. A few months ago, she'd published a book on her experience as a child and what she knew of the Nightingale Killer, did she make him mad and catch his attention?

That would be so Red John of him.

Raimy works the Adult Ava case, and Frank works the Young Ava case, and there's a series of awesome back-and-forths as they exchange information. In the past, Frank takes Ava and her dad to the park with Raimy to see if she'll talk to another kid easier than she talks to an adult, because she won't tell him anything. While there, she confesses to Raimy that she saw the man's face, but when they try to talk to her again, her father gets mad because the thought they were being friends and now he feels used, and she clams up again.

But adult Raimy goes to talk to Adult Ava and manages to get her to admit that she saw he has a scar on his hand. Raimy tells her not to talk to anyone, but she immediately goes to the press and tells them exactly what she just told Raimy, in almost the same words, like it's been rehearsed.

HMMM. Totally not suspicious. Sure.

Since kid-she won't talk, and adult her isn't being super helpful either, Frank and Raimy get the description of Nightingale that one of the other witnesses gave, and Frank records it and gets his own sketch artist to draw it up. Then he leaves it in a crawlspace in the house, so that Raimy can find it now and compare it to the sketch her artist made. It's a near perfect match! Good job sketch artists! Frank then takes a copy of his sketch back to Ava, and she finally admits that she saw him because her mom used to take her to the park and then leave her there while she went to have an affair with a guy who lives nearby--meaning Ava saw Nightingale as he stalked her mom before taking her. She saw him seven or eight times, with and without the hood up, and she knows what his car looks like.

With that information, Frank stakes out where Young Raimy and her mom are hanging out, and he sees the same car--but when he approaches the guy, he floors it and leaves, without anyone seeing his face or catching his licence plate. And as it turns out, it doesn't matter because he now knows he's been made, and he burns the truck to the ground.

If only they could cross over with Bones; the Squints could still get usable info off that wreck!

So once again they almost had him--or, at least, someone who does the grabbing for him. If it's a him. I mean, this show is just getting started, it could be anyone. But once again, they lose him because of finding him; it's going to make actually catching him hard, and I wonder what Raimy's files are going to say in the morning about any changes that've happened because of this week's case!

In 2016, Adult Raimy is also hitting a dead end: Ava wasn't kidnapped by the killer, it was all staged. She was double messed up by her childhood experiences, both so traumatised that she couldn't move on, and so addicted to the attention that she couldn't give it up, so she recreated the experience. Raimy gets her to tell everyone what she knows in exchange for not getting her sent to jail, because she thinks she's suffered enough.

Meanwhile, relationships!

Gordo tells her, drunkenly, that he set her up with a Tindr account because he's tired of seeing her existing only for work, and he misses how she used to be fun and would sometimes have boyfriends and such. But it turns out, she doesn't need that; no-fiancee-timeline Raimy recently had a hookup with a hot fellow cop, who she then didn't remember because she apparently hasn't spent a lot of time comparing notes on the changes in her memory, and HAS spent a lot of time missing Daniel. That is, until her case makes her meet Kyle again, and remember their night together!

He thinks they had a good thing going, and he's confused, but he's also nice about it when she says that she has a lot to deal with and doesn't have time for that stuff. But talking with Gordo gets her to admit that it's really Daniel that's holding her back; she can't explain that it feels like cheating or why, but Gordo tells her that she needs to move on. So at the end of the night, she asks hottie mc also-a-cop out, and he accepts.

And Frank is still trying to get Julie to believe him when he says she's in danger, but she spends half the episode mad that he used their daughter to get info on a case--she doesn't want the "darkness" that surrounds him messing up Young Raimy's life the way it's messed up his. And she still doesn't believe that she's anymore at risk than any other nurse in the city...though she does admit that she carpools to and from work now, and doesn't go out alone anymore. That'll have to be good enough for Frank until she has a better reason to believe him.

Frankly, I'm just happy she's taking some precautions, even if she doesn't believe they're needed.

Another good episode, and I think the characters are finding their grooves nicely. Frank and Raimy make a good team, even if they can't meet for real, and they're working out ways to get information back and forth, which is amazing and clever! Not to mention fun to watch. No huge changes in time this week, but potentially some small ones they haven't thought to look at yet, which could be super interesting, since they'll undoubtedly crop up at the worst possible times when Raimy thinks she knows what's going on and hasn't realized that things have changed around her again. It's also neat seeing them tie seemingly unconnected cases together in unexpected ways. They're gonna be stars of the force by the time this is all done.

More notes on Frequency 1.4 "Bleed Over":

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Chloe does fine from her car accident, but we learn how it happened--Uriel, the angel who can see the patterns in everything, set it up so that she'd get hit by a car but not killed as a warning to Lucifer. He tells Lucifer that he has 24 hours to turn over Mom, or he'd make sure that Chloe dies.

Lucifer flips out. He spends most of the episode being adorably concerned with Chloe's wellbeing, removing anything from her vecinity that could possibly hurt her--including things like pens, sandwiches, and the slideshow-clicker from when she's talking about the case. He's still not telling her why, and she has no real reason to believe him when he tells her she's in trouble because of it, but it's adorable all the same. And even though they don't get to the point where he talks about feelings at all because of the constant distractions, it looks like those days aren't so far away.

The case is the death of Lucifer and Dan's favorite action star. Since they both love these cheesy overblown films, it's the first time they've ever been on the same page about something, and even Chloe mentions how cute it is to see them bonding. And it IS cute, them quoting parts of the movie at each other, and reenacting scenes.

Tracking the star's life, they find out he was broke despite making millions, that his wife married his competitor who was also broke now, despite being in even more popular movies, and was now breaking legs for the mob because he didn't want her to know how poor they were, and that they both still had the same business manager despite how little money they were making. But lately there had been a resurgence in popularity of the franchise, the action figures were selling like hotcakes, and Kimo was starting to do signings again.

Checking into how they could be starting to get attention again and still be so broke, Dan notices that their contracts were flubbed: their copies say they get 1% of merchandising income, while the ones their manager has say they get 10%: he's been keeping the other 9% of everything for himself! 

While Lucifer is busy keeping Chloe safe, he sends Ama to deal with Uriel, but Uriel isn't fooled; he beats the tar out of Ama, because he'd suspected that the patterns of their behavior would lead to him losing his power. Maze is PISSED at that turn of events and tells Luci to clean up his own messes...though she then goes to get Mama Morningstar herself and convince her that turning herself in is the best thing to do. Mama agrees; she's going to do it to stop her kids from fighting, but Lucifer points out that none of them actually know what Dad wants, they only know what he shows them, which isn't much. Lucifer only saw an open door: does that mean to get her back? Or does it just mean Hell is getting drafty?

Uriel's plan comes together with domino-tricks precision! Chloe's time runs out and Ama didn't stop Uriel from collecting Chloe, so Lucifer is late getting to her because he thought she was safe by then. She goes to the hotel where the wife and the business manager are meeting at the same time as Kimo shows up and sees them making out--the first hint he had that his wife was cheating on him. He pulls a gun on them, and Chloe, being a cop, puts herself in the way of the bullets.

It should have killed her.

But Lucifer backs off when she tells him to because he trusts her. It's amazing to see, because he was obviously distressed, but one ask from him and he stands down to let her work. And Chloe tells Kimo that she's terrified of everything she doesn't know is happening, but all they can control is their own actions--which gets through his anger and grief and stops an angel's plan from killing her. 

It was so good, you guys.

But Uriel isn't done yet. He's still going to take their mom back or he's going to kill Chloe. Lucifer, after his speech about how no one really knows what's going on, goes alone to confront him, and finds that he's stollen Death's blade that can kill even immortal beings like angels and keep them dead. His real plan is to kill Chloe AND Mama--he doesn't care about Lucifer's favorite human, but he knows that Luci cares about her "a little more than you care about mom", and he's using the threat against her life to make him do what he wants. And he wants to kill their mom because he sees patterns. He knows it's only a matter of time before she makes it back to heaven and Dad takes her back, and then she'll destroy him.

Lucifer thinks he's overreacting and taking liberties with what God wants and needs. They fight about it. Uriel spares Lucifer because he says he'd never kill a brother, but when he goes to hit the key that'll start the pattern to kill both women, Lucifer stabs him with Death's blade...apparently without thinking about it, out of sheer desperation. Maze, who came to defend him like she always does, says he deserved it, but Lucifer is horrified: this was his brother and a fellow angel, and he killed him with his own hands. 

Covered in Uriel's blood, he goes back home, distraught and damaged, and the preview for next week looks like he's going to totaly fall apart. The feels! Cheerfully debauched Luci, broken and crying because he had to make a terrible choice and now he has to live with it--it's the most serious this show has ever been! And he did it for the two most important women in his life, backed up by the third, but one of them doesn't even know that it happened or why!

The whole third act of this episode was So Good. Lucifer fighting back against the idea of fate and divine will, and giving us a peek inside the world they come from. Uriel talking about all the patterns and how he sees everything that's going to happen and has decided to take it into his own hands--another rebellion in Heaven? Ama dealing with his loss of power and what it means to him. Chloe admitting that she's afraid and then standing up and doing what's right anyway, so she can go home and read Coraline to her daughter. Man, just all of it. This season is getting so good, so rich and complicated and emotional.

Lets hope that when Luci falls apart next week, Chloe can get through to him before something really bad happens! If ever there was a time to let Chloe in on what's been happening around her, this might be it; how can she help her partner if he won't tell her how he got so messed up? Maybe we'll get to see that compassion from the first (or second?) episode again, like when she saw his wing-scars; maybe her compassion will stop him from self-destructing.

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Last week, Raimy got the chance to talk to her mom over the magic ham-radio and convince her that all of this timey-wimey was real...and didn't take it. Because breakdown. Even though it was her idea to warn her about her imprending death. So this week, Julie doesn't believe a thing that Frank says, since this crazy being unsubstatiated just makes HIM look crazy.

In 2016, everyone wants Raimy to handle the memorial service, but she's not answering calls and has no intention of doing anything like that. She hasn't given up on her mom, and she sees no point in memorializing her when they're going to fix time and bring her back with no one remembering it being otherwise. Thankfully, while she's focusing to the point of being a bad cop on the case, Gordo handles it. Satch, her dad's old partner and her stand-in father, wants her to go, but she refuses and he's disappointed in her for being, basically, delusional and stubborn from his point of view.

In 1996, Frank gets the information about the Goff case from Raimy and goes to check out that shed and find Maya, the girl who escaped it last episode. In Raimy's time, Maya was never found, but she thinks if they can save her, she can give them information they need to make sure Goff is the killer. Which she does. Frank rescues her and she confirms who it is who took her and what he told her about being the Nightingale Killer, so now they can go collect him legally. Even though checking out the shed was basically illegal, and Frank blames it on thinking like a criminal for two years.

Frank finds out young Goff is on the run in 1996 while Raimy interrogates his waspy and delusional mom in 2016, and in a really neat parallel chase scene, they both catch up with Goff.

But because of that, they change time again.

Just as Raimy is beating the guy and trying to get a confession out of him like this is the 70s, Frank catches the kid Goff on the street. Raimy is about to execute old Goff for being a killer when young Goff jumps in front of a car and gets himself killed twenty years ago--which means there's no one for her to shoot. Now, there never was. Even though she's still standing there with her gun out and her head bleeding from their fight. It'd be more interesting if she'd just appeared somewhere else, confused, since she couldn't have gotten involved in the fight to begin with now, but I guess we're going with the idea that she's a fixed point; for her, the fight happened before the timeline changed and so she's still got the evidence of it after.

At least, though, she realizes what she was about to do and how narrowly she was saved from being judge, jury AND executioner instead of the good cop she's supposed to be.

She and Frank agree to keep each other in check from now on, and to be smart about what they do and how they do it: because Goff is dead, but her mom didn't come back. That means someone else is the one who killed her, and they can't question Goff now about what he might know on the subject. Was Goff never the Nightingale Killer, or was he not the ONLY one?

After the case, she goes out to a bar with Gordo. She needs a night off, and he needs a rest from being a new father, and he knows that she's been having a rough time the last few days. They're almost relaxing when her no-longer-fiancee walks in. Because this is the bar where they'd go together, and even without her in his life, it's his spot in this reality, too. He accuses her of stalking him and she tries to convince him that she's not, that she always goes here, but he knows he's never seen her before and leaves. So much for winning him over, if that was her plan.

While all this is going on, Frank is trying to reconnect with his younger Raimy. He's been kicked out of the house, but he still has custody, so when Julie goes to work, he gets her. They're having a great time and are supposed to go see The Nutty Professor, but he gets a break on the case and has to reschedule. Julie takes him leaving her with Satch's family like he's abandoning her and basically tells him that he's been a cop long enough and needs to be a dad now; which is at least a little unfair, since she's as much a nurse as he is a cop and she hasn't given that up to be a mom, so...

And Raimy is struggling in both times.

Young her just wants people to tell her the truth and keep their promises to her, but the adults keep trying to shelter her and (of course) won't take her on cases with them.

Now her doesn't seem to have a partner to work with in her own time, she's missing her fiancee, and Gordo is trying, but she's not giving him much to work with. That leaves her totally alone for a really crazy case that is mostly off the books and almost entirely off the usual definition of reality. All she has is Frank, and he can never be in the same room with her. What they should do, is agree to let Satch in on the mystery; he exists at both ends of the time-shift, and he can help them both! Barring that, let Gordo be your emotional support, Raimy, before you go crazy.

One of the best things about this show is that it doesn't warn you when time changes. They actually do it twice this episode: once when Frank finds Maya in the woods and saves her from exposure-death, and Raimy watches the files change in real time; and once when Frank loses Goff and he jumps into traffic. It's unclear whether that's two separate changes or two changes in one timeline, but neither one had any warning. There's no flashing lights or wobbly camera, no nosebleeds or headaches, no effects at all--except that Raimy remembers before and after the change. How many timelines can she hold at once in her head? Will she go crazy trying to remember too many mutually-exclusive versions of events? She's already pretty high-strung and prone to breaking down, and this is a very emotional problem she's stuck in; how will she handle it long-term?

More notes on Frequency 1.3 "The Near Far Problem":

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Does anyone else feel like Sandstorm is dragging the story sideways when it's trying to go forward now? Everytime anything happens, Nas tells Jane to do whatever it takes to get the info, but there's no info to get: every single question to anyone is just met with blank stares, and it's starting to feel like the writers are stalling. Hopefully, they'll start answering questions soon, because we're only six episodes in and it already feels like it's been a questionmark for too long!

Anyway, the plot.

Team Are We Even Still A Team At This Point figures out the encoded picture from last week--and it's mostly junk emails, but hiding in the mail is a message that leads them to several things: it's about a guy who's been on the run for years for leaking sensitive emails and paperwork, and he's in Bulgaria, and they know his hotel now. Team Weller is a go...but Reade and Zapata are on personal time, Patterson is staying in her lab, and Jane gets a beep, again, just in time to keep her from getting to talk to anyone.

She and Roman are going to go and get that chip that the other guy was going to get for them before he punked out and Roman killed him. They have to pose as OSHA people doing a routine inspection to get inside the lab where their mysterious chip is. Roman has it all worked out, and they're going in the morning; he had her picked up early just so he could test and see if Remy is back yet, and when he saw she wasn't--when she couldn't open a puzzle box only she knew how to open--he gets all mad at her again and says he's not going to cover for her anymore.

So while Weller and Nas are posing as a couple (ew) and running into the new head of the CIA, Jane is breaking into a lab. Patterson is working both sides.

See, the traitor Team Weller is after says that he's a patsy, that he was framed and never actually leaked anything; he tells them a story of people barging into his house, using his laptop to send the files, and telling him to get out of the country. And he has it recorded. Patterson works overtime to get the voice-scramblers scrubbed from the file so they can hear what these two attackers actually sound like. 

And Jane, once inside the lab and in posession of the chip, asks her to find out what's on it. While Roman is ensuring their exit (too early, because the guards found the body Jane and Roman left), Jane plugs in the chip and Patterson tries to get the data off it. The code, though, is crazy-big, and she only gets a percent or two before Jane has to go rescue her brother from certain doom. What sort of huge-code-needing thing is this a chip for?

See, Roman says he's ready to die for the cause, and no matter what happens, Jane should get the chip out. But she isn't Remy anymore; when it comes to letting him get killed and running, or saving her only real family, she chooses to save him. They do get out anyway--through the wall because they're BAMFs--but he's ticked that she came back. Remy wouldn't have.

Jane says that if that's the sort of person Remy was, she hopes she never comes back.

This is the first real moment of her choosing to be herself this year, and I almost cheered! Screw Remy! She chose to have her memory wiped, which has done nothing but make everything in her own plan harder, and she was a sociopath who apparently, according to Roman, made him a sociopath, too. Her also saving him and preserving his sanity in the soldier factory doesn't make up for all the bad she did and was before.

In the end, she gets through to Roman: she remembers that she loves him, and she remembers some of their childhood--including how to open the puzzle box, what the coin she has means, and how Roman got the scar on his face (because she wasn't yet strong enough to save him from psycho bullies with razors). He cries, she holds him, and I have sudden hope that his loyalty to her is stronger than his loyalty to Sandstorm so she can win him over and get him on their side! Think what an asset the leader's second-in-command would be!

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria, everything is dumb.

Their not-really-a-traitor says he knows Mayfaire, but it comes out pretty quickly that he's just good at jumping on people's weak spots, and they get him to a safehouse but Weller is all uncharacteristically shaken up by it. He misses Mayfaire, and he feels like he's not nearly as good at the job as she was, that she always knew what everything meant and how to handle it. He's also still freaked about Sandstorm secretly spying on him for twenty years. It's great that he is actually expressing something...but then he sleeps with Nas.

She's pretty and they get along when they're drinking and not working, but she's also constantly undermining him, spying on the team without their knowledge, and, at least some of the time, intentionally keeping the team half-fractured. She's shifty, she can't be trusted, and it doesn't sit well.

It shouldn't sit well with him, either.

Also, it wouldn't have happened if Jane or any of the rest of the team was there, so it just makes Weller look like he's easily manipulated when off on his own, and that seems out of character. I don't believe for a second that Nas didn't intentionally seduce him for some plan; she hasn't done or said anything since we met her that wasn't for a purpose.

It makes me miss these days...

Anyway, their safehouse is taken down by the CIA dude, who makes the mistake of taunting Weller by admitting that he's one of the guys who tortured Jane. It's great that they're admitting that this was actual torture, and that there's still bad vibes because of it; Weller tries to choke him to death in a fit of rage. He may have just slept with another person who wasn't Jane, but he's not going to take it lightly when he's being taunted like that. But they need to get their perp to safety so he can testify that he's been set up and all that stuff.

While they're on the way back to safety from overseas, though, Patterson happens to look up and sees the bug in Borden's office, which, as it turns out, wasn't even all that well hidden. She calls Weller, tells him that it's transmitting to Nas, and he doesn't immediately flip out or run them off the road or something. He just very calmly acts like she didn't just ruin a budding relationship that none of us wanted anyway, and hangs up. Did he intend to get seduced? Was he already suspecting she was up to something like this?

While all this was going on, Borden was trying to be cute and kept getting put off by Patterson who had to keep what she was doing from him because he didn't have clearance--and then she called him David. Who is her dead boyfriend. Apparently Borden's first name is actually Robert. They manage to make up by the end of the episode, but in a show steeped with paranoia, should we we suspicious that he didn't go home sooner? Or is he actually just that willing to get any time at all with Pats?

And also while all this is going on, Zapata goes after Reade and finds him over the body of the guy who potentially ruined his life (despite him not remembering it), and immediately goes into "save partner by erasing all evidence of him at the crime scene" mode. Which, like, you can see where she's coming from, but they both know is a bad idea. We learn that she's a nasty one to get on the wrong side of, threatening the security guard who saw Reade with deporting his pregnant girlfriend if he talks, and very coldly and efficiently doing stuff like burning clothes and stealing evidence.

What happened to them all sharing what they know? Four episodes is too long to keep to that plan?

Reade's story is shifty, and he says he didn't kill the guy, but it sure seems like he did. Zapata is probably damning them both to jail trying to help. Jane is isolated and doesn't even go on this case with the team. And Weller is an emotional mess that's potentially really messing with his decision-making skills.

I don't like it, guys.

But there's a light at the end of the episode: Patterson cracks the sound file and Jane identifies one of the voices as Roman--meaning that the whole leak-files-and-exile-the-patsy plan is actually part of Sandstorm's Big Plan, and tying these two stories that have been drifting apart back together! Yay! And then the other voice. Jane tells them it's Shepherd, meaning it was important enough that the head of Sandstorm herself went on the op. But more than that, Weller recognizes the voice. Who wants to bet it's from those military school days when they started watching him?

Everything started out unsteady this season, but the last episode or three, it seemed like the unsteadiness was taking over the plot. Reade is totally off in another world, and Zapata is now out there with him, probably making things worse by trying to help him. Weller is separated from his team and their collective pro-con balance for his decision-making. Jane is practically in a different show, and is getting no time to relate to her team in any way, and despite being told over and over that Sandstorm is her family, not being given much chance to relate to them, either. If it's not revealed that all of it was intentional from Sandstorm's point of view, it's going to look like "we don't know what to do with Jane, quick, shuffle her off somewhere else!" 

Which is lazy writing.

In a show that's amazing because it's NOT lazy.

But the fact that things are finally starting to come together makes it end on a less frustrating note, by far! Instead of splitting everyone up, make it all part of the same mystery--and maybe if they DO just talk it out like functional adults, it'll start falling into place! They need to realize that all this fracturing only helps the enemy, and to make sure it doesn't keep happening in the future, because The Big Plan is about to go down, and they need to be a united front if six-ish people are going to beat a whole international terrorist conspiracy on their own turf.

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This week is all about how tense everyone is, and how that messes with their lives!

The case is of a girl found dead in the woods, poisoned, and with a club stamp on her wrist. It's Lucifer who notices that the stamp means a club, but he doesn't know which one--because, as it turns out, it's a roving underground club, where rich guys go to pick up escorts. Her roommate is also found dead of the same poison, and their friend says that she hasn't seen them all week.

Ella figures out that the poison was mandrake, and would have taken at least 90 minutes to work, which rules out their first suspect. 

Lucifer convinces Chloe that if these girls were in some underground situation, the best way to figure it out would be to go out and retrace their path. With a ladies night. Because she could use it. He gets Ella, Maze, and Dr Linda to show up and they basically drag Chloe away from her work, since she's fixating on it to the point of obsession. She goes to far as to show up at Lux, ruining Luci's attempt to get two girls up to his room, and tries to get him to talk over the case with him even though they're supposed to be off for the night. Chloe, however, doesn't know that the night out is a setup.

While at one of the bars they know the two victims were at, after finding no real leads, they decide to give it a rest and just have fun. Bond. Do ladies night right. They share secrets:

Dr Linda: To put myself through medical school, I worked as a phone sex operator.

Ella: I used to steal cars.

Maze: I was forged in the bowels of hell to deliver eternal torment.

And that's when Chloe admits that she's freaking out about actually finally getting divorced from Dan. I'd thought they were already separated enough that she's basically living the divorced life anyway, but apparently not. She worries about being a single mom, about having to move into a new place and how she's going to afford it, how it's going to affect Trixie, and everything else that it could mean. It's why she's been drowning herself in work.

The girls rally around her, they all get raging drunk, and Chloe feels like she's got supportive lady friends for the first time in her life--like a normal person. Since she was a teen star, daughter of a movie star, even though the show doesn't really talk about it much there's the hint that she's been lonely for a long time. And it was amazing seeing the women band together for themselves and each other, without work or men or anything else getting in the way. I hope they keep getting into Chloe's headspace other than just her being annoyed at Lucifer and worried about Trixie!

It's great fun. So of course they get into a barfight with the girlfriend of a guy Chloe notices has the same stamp on his wrist: a clue, finally!

Once they've trashed the place, the dude tells them how to find the sex club, and back at the precinct, Chloe decides that Dan should take Lucifer--because Dan can't NOT look like a cop, and Lucifer knows his way around these sorts of things. Lucifer brings Amenadiel. They talk enough for him to figure out that his big brother is going through something, but Luci is so determined to distract himself from his own problems that he doesn't quite hear what Ama is trying to say; he takes him out on the town to blow off some steam, assuming that that'll help.

For the first time, I really felt sorry for Dan, having to herd these cats. Lucifer is enjoying himself maybe a bit too much, Amenadiel goes crazy with dancing and boozing until he falls asleep in a chair in the middle of the party, and everyone can see that Dan is a cop. Somehow, though, they do work it out: the bartender says that the girls' drinks were clean when he gave them to them, so he doesn't know how they got poisoned, but he does know who the two were with, a guy named Yuri. And a third girl.

Lucifer and Chloe track down Yuri and find him sick to his stomach and sleeping in his car. He says the girls didn't know they were supposed to be dates, they thought it was just a party; they left without even finishing their drinks, so he did. He got the same poison! Not enough to kill him, but enough that he's been sick since then. There's a nice moment here where despite everything that's going on, Lucifer and Chloe fall into mutual partner-speak and figure out the story. He's still an enormous child, but watching Luci slowly become not just invested in the cases and the job, but also naturally and non-braggingly good at it is such a fun thing. He's becoming the partner and the emotional support that Chloe needs...though still in fits and starts.

Yuri's phone has a picture of the third girl--their friend who claimed she hadn't seen them in a week!

Back to her house. They find her packing up for a hasty trip back home to the midwest. When they push her, she attacks Chloe with a boxcutter and tries to cut her throat, but she also admits that she went off the rails because she's always wanted to be a star and she's been in LA for years with nothing! Then her two friends from back home show up, wanting to know all about the city and the life. She tried to get them into the escort business because that's what she had, and she poisoned them--but that was an accident. She thought it would loosen them up and make them better dates, like an herbal roofie. So she meant to be a prostitution-abetter and wound up being a murderer.

Chloe gets the better of her when Luci's phone distracts the girl, and they arrest their perp. They also solve the problem of where Chloe can live now, since having a murderer in the house's history should give them the ability to haggle a price she can afford. 

Meanwhile, Charlotte, Mama Morningstar, is not handling being a human well. The kids gross her out, recipes keep thwarting her, she doesn't like her husband, and Maze keeps showing up to gloat. But it's better than Hell.

After all is said and done, Amenadiel finally finds out about Lucifer's deal with their dad. Specifically, that in exchange for protecting Chloe's life, Luci will take Mum back to Hell. Ama thinks that their dad will be more literal than Lucifer's "loophole"--that he'll want her literally back in literal Hell, not sitting in a human life that's like Hell. If he thinks Luci has reneged, might he not reneg in turn?

Lucifer says that's not likely, but he's already panicking, you can see it--and then somewhere across town, just as Chloe gets the news that she got the apartment, someone rams their vehicle into the side of her car, knocking her off the road!

The previews for next week show Luci as close total flip-out as we've seen him over her, so it should be really good! Lots of potential for them to face what they're starting to mean to each other and what they want out of their partnership...though in reality, the show probably won't be that deep.

This week was neat. Everything played well together and made perfect sense, and there was lots of little character stuff that made everyone feel more real and solid as people. Everyone's lives are changing, and that gives us a chance to see who they really are outside of wherever they started last season. Plus, they're mostly (cough - Amenadiel - cough) not wallowing in it, which is nice; that'd drag down the fun of the show!

Lucifer's attempts to keep his mind off his deal and his mother led him to randomly study botany and realestate, one of which helped the case and the other of which helped Chloe with her apartment hunting--and it's super adorable that he doesn't even realize that his boredom-driven random new hobbies both were Chloe-directed. Or that his trying to keep her off his back about what's bothering him came out as a basically sweet concern for her wellbeing. Can we hope that the ton-of-bricks realization of what she means to him will come next week, or is it still too soon in the series for that?

Dan is being super gracious and polite about what Chloe's going through and keeping out of her way as she figures it out, which is the most reasonable and adult he's ever been. And seeing him at a loss dealing with two partying angels is adorable!

Maze is putting her foot down and making a real effort to define herself as equal and useful to the people around her--she even apologises to Chloe when she finds out that going out was a set-up, and admits that she likes these ladies and it wasn't all faking. Plus, during the half hour Chloe doesn't remember because of booze, she agreed to be Chloe's room mate since she has money, likes Trixie, and there won't be any threat of her stealing Chloe's clothes. Chloe isn't exactly thrilled, but it says something about them both that neither decided to forget their drunken mutual soution to their problems.

I really want to know more about Ella's days stealing cars now. When will THAT talent and skill come in handy?

More notes on Lucifer 2.4 "Lady Parts"

Roman takes Jane to see a lake "halfway to Canada" where the government covered up an ongoing chemical contamination issue that ruined hundreds of families in the area by killing a large percentage of the people who lived around it. She's confused, because that's her current default condition, but he says that he wants her to be mad, he wants her to remember why they're doing what they're doing. "We're not attacking the country," he says, "we're saving it."

It's a pretty good argument.

Meanwhile, one of Jane's tattoos--the honeycomb on her hand--is a binary code that gives them the ID of a government employee and the name of a notorious hacker, outing him as using his gov cred to attack said gov. They track him down, stop him from burning up his servers, and stop Reade from beating the guy to death. He does manage to fracture his eye-bone, though, and it means everyone is worried he's breaking down.

This week, it's Nas who wants someone to sit it out, and it's Reade she wants to bench, but Weller insists he's fine, going all papa bear on her for saying his team isn't up to it. Which, you know, coming a week after he was the one who wanted to bench Jane for less, seems a little two-faced, don'tcha think? Jane always was his particular blindspot tho. (get it? blindspot?) But he does go and confront Reade later, after he goes off on someone else, and makes him talk to Borden.

His fear and upset over these missing memories is getting to him and making him unstable.

Meanwhile, Patterson, being awesome, uncovers what the hacker has been doing: he takes popular shooter games and retools the levels to make them identical to actual places in the world, right down to number of exits, security cameras, and other such stuff people in the real world might need to carry off heists. Several of them already worked, but Patterson IDs one that's coming up soon and hasn't happened yet: a local art gallery show.

Undercover time! And this time, the whole team gets to glam up.

Weller helps Jane zip up her dress, which we all know is TV shorthand for "I love you", and for a second she thinks they're going to be going as a married couple again and looks sweet and hopeful. He doesn't quite shoot her down, but it has the same effect, and later she calls him her brother when they're talking to the guy who's running the event, which gets a nice annoyed-wounded-WTF look out of him.

They really need to just hug and make up already. But, you know, that'd require them to actually get half a minute to talk about something.

Anyway, the event is to raise money for clean water, which is interesting since this all goes back to a polluted lake, you know? But they discover that it's not that their attacker is after--or anything else in the displays. She's killing specific people in the audience at the party. 

One lockdown, awesome fight in fancy dresses that destroys a lot of priceless art, and escape later, they figure out that the woman is an African terrorist and trick her into an ambush...where she reveals that she's actually CIA! 

The CIA is nothing but trouble on this show, and apparently, they are even to their own people. She was deep undercover to bring down the terrorists, discovered corruption in her own ranks and tried to expose it, but her handler exposed her, burned her and purged every hint of her records instead. He even went so far as to have her family killed so she'd have nowhere to go. She wasn't acting as a terrorist, she was half getting revenge and half getting rid of her corrupt former-cohorts who were using the party as a way to move stuff around illegally.

So she's maybe not a badguy. But her handler is.

They track him down and find out that the daughter the agent thought he'd had killed was actually still alive: HER daughter was actually HIS daughter, not her husband's because they'd had an affair as agent-and-handler fifteen years ago, and he was kidnapping her back. The daughter had been told her mom was dead. He used the same trick on both of them.

So they get him, and he winds up shot in the process, but the daughter pulls a gun and Jane has to talk her down by doing one of her double-talk speeches: you can lie to people and still love them, she says, all while looking at Weller, since she still hasn't had a chance to tell him that she was being lied to and used and she was trying to save his life. She sort of said that, but no one got to process it before other important things came out, and they certainly haven't talked it over.

The daughter backs down, they reunite her with her mom, and they set her up for a better life with her grandmother.

Weller talks about how hard it must be for her to not ever be able to trust anyone, since the people she cared about the most lied to her. Jane jumps on that as a poke at her, and says she's exhausted being stuck in the middle. Weller tries to protest that he didn't mean that, but she gets a beep from Roman as if he's specifically trying to keep them from talking anything out and getting back on good terms.

Which, actually, wouldn't be surprising.

When she arrives where they're meeting, Shepherd tells her that the lake Roman showed her was where she grew up. She lost both parents and a brother to the poisoning, and she survived, but they had to take both her ovaries to do it, so she could never have kids of her own. "When I found you two, I thought I was saving you, but you saved me" she says. Really hard to fight your mom when she says stuff like that.

The whole of Sandstorm started because she wanted someone to pay for what happened to her family when she was a kid. And she says it's going to end soon. Jane doesn't know about the enormous amount of C4 that Roman brought in early in the episode, but even that amount was half of what Shepherd ordered, so whatever they're planning, this is going to be a huge deal; will it be the mideason break or the season finale when they get moving, though? The speed this season seems to be going at, it wouldn't be surprising if they start earlier than that and have a more drawn-out attack plan, though!

While all this is going on, Zapata is getting meddle-y with Reade's life. Freddie was crashing at his place for a while, and Zapata made him leave because she was sure he was up to something; he left without a fight, but he's so broken down that it probably won't be a good move for him. Then, after everything is wrapped up, she goes to see the beat-up hacker in the hispital and hires him for something!

The last few minutes of every episode are where everything always gets turned sideways, and this week, it's sideways for Weller. Nas shares a drink with him, looking like she's making friends after they were fighting over Jane as if she wasn't standing in the room with them, and then once they're nice and loose, she drops a bomb on him. The last bit of info they got from their informant inside Sandstorm is that they were watching Weller as far back as his graduation from the military academy, twenty years ago. But why???

Four episodes into a full-length season, and everyone is hitting the ends of their ropes. Jane doesn't want to be trapped between the FBI and Sandstorm (not to mention the threat of going back to the CIA), Weller just decided to be part of his kid's life and then found out he's a bigger part of the mystery than ever, Reade is cracking up under the pressure of his missing past, and Zapata is keeping secrets and moving around behind people's backs again. Patterson almost got garotted this week. Nas is still hard to read and shifty in her motives. Everything is bad.

But it could also be an opportunity. Jane and Reade both have missing memories; maybe that can bring them together. Weller is softening at the thought of family; maybe that can help him pull his team back into one. He's also potentially another pawn of Sandstorm; maybe that'll finally reconcile him to Jane's point of view. If they go wrong, though, and keep being so mistrustful and horrible to Jane, they're going to lose her right back to Sandstorm where she came from, and right back to the terrible person she was before she was Jane--then she's really lost to them. Jane only exists because her mind was wiped and her new personality was created by her interactions with Team Tattoo; without them, her only influences are the people who want her to be who she was before. And right now, Sandstorm is giving her more reason to join their side than the FBI is, and is seeming less corrupt, even if they're more violent about it.

Another bonkers-crazy episode of our show! It's hard to predict how any of these tangled plot points are going to go, and that's why the show is both so tense and so exciting--you can't call everything before it happens!

More notes on Blindspot 2.4 "If Beth":

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Mama Morningstar wakes up in a series of recently dead bodies, all asking where Lucifer is, until she lands in Tricia Helfer, who is a lawyer currently laying dead in a hotel room with a screwdriver in her neck. She gets up, pulls out the screwdriver, and goes wandering through LA covered in blood until she walks into Lucifer's living room. He really should have more security in that luxe penthouse, though, right? 

She swears she's just lost and scared and newly free from millenia of torment, and all she wants is to reconnect with her kids. Lucifer doesn't trust her at all. She tries to prove her story by showing him where she woke up, but while they're there, they find that there's another body she hadn't mentioned, a 19 year old kid dead on the bed, and Luci automatically wants proof that she didn't kill him.

Conveniently, that's the case that Chloe catches next, so he stashes Mum at home with Maze to watch her, under strict orders not to torture her, and goes with his favorite detective to see about this murder--and the other one, too, when they discover the maid also dead in the bathroom. Lucifer, of course, has been there already. It makes him look really impressive to Ella, but it annoys Chloe that he's still trying to pin every murder on his mother.

Since the cops have no idea that Charlotte the lawyer is now Mama Morningstar, or that she actually did die and it was someone else who got up and walked away after the fact, it looks to them like she escaped a murder scene, making her a witness who can help their case. They find out that she's been sleeping with a coworker who claims they're in love. They also find out she's married to someone else.

When they go to talk to the husband, Lucifer is dismayed about how much of a wreck he is--he's been taking care of their sick kids for three or four days, but Lucifer says this is more of a disaster than that warrants, and goes to give him a makeover...which results in him finding a huge stash of cocaine hidden in their closet, that the husband didn't know about.

And that leads them to the FBI, and the identity of their other dead body: he was a mole in the local drug cartel, working with Charlotte and the FBI to bring down the baddies that no one else has been able to get at. It's nice that the lawyer was actually basically good for once! But that means that it's probably the cartel that hired the hit on them...except the local drug king tells them that the signature way they were killed belongs to a well known hitman, who's currently dead, and that he knew the kid was a mole and has been feeding him bad info for months.

Which means that the actual killer was someone who knew the hitman's MO well enough to make it look like he did it, but didn't know that he was dead, which rules out the whole of the cartel--and rules in Charlotte's coworkers. They find that her protege knows too much about the case, making him the main suspect, but Lucifer pushes too hard and he lawyers up, further upsetting Chloe. She thinks they've been working together long enough that he should be able to follow the rules and not endanger her cases by now, and she doesn't like how he's making everything so hard on her lately.

Meanwhile, Mama Morningstar tricks Maze. Despite being told not to torture her, Maze still wants to break her, and now she has a body that can be broken. She taunts her with how Lucifer made a deal with God to take her back to Hell, and she acts like that really upsets her long enough to get Maze close enough to headbutt unconscious. In one go! Must've been one mean headbutt. 

But that means that she has no reason to come back now, since she thinks Lucifer's place isn't safe anymore. It also means that she's still wearing a body that seems to be alive and is now the target of their killer again, since Luci also let slip that she wasn't dead when they talked to that protege. If he kills her again, she'll jump to some other body, and they'll have no idea at all where she is, what she looks like, or what she's up to, and that means they have to find her before that guy can.

Which, of course, he doesn't tell Chloe.

So he follows the protege, Chloe follows him, and he stops the guy from killing Mum, but has to stab her himself to sell the escaped-but-injured story, and has to convince her to play along that they've never met while Chloe handles the perp. He says that it might be too much for Chloe to handle if she knew who Charlotte was now, but at that moment Chloe is taking down the dude on her own and Mama points out that she looks like she can handle herself. There's a nice moment where Lucifer looks all dreamy and impressed about that and Mama takes note of the reaction, looking like she thinks he's gone totally nuts. I'm just happy that they haven't fallen into just bickering and annoying each other, that there's still that hint that he's totes in love with her even if she doesn't realize it. Even if HE doesn't realize it.

So the bad guy is taken care of, and Lucifer takes Mama home, where she insists that she didn't do anything wrong. See, she didn't stop Lucifer from getting banished because it was her idea to send him to Hell--to save him, since God wanted to totally destroy him after the rebellion in Heaven. She did it because she loves her children, and she does want her home and her family back, but if she can't have it in Heaven, she'll be okay with it here.

Luci is swayed. He says she can stay until he figures out what to do about it. She's tearfully grateful, and he doesn't go to talk to Chloe about it even though she says she's always there for him if he wants to, but he does leave Mama alone in the room to go brood on his own. Which is when she stops crying all at once and looks up at the sky like she's won some sort of battle and her plan is going perfectly.

What're you up to, Mama Morningstar??

Meanwhile, other stuff!

Amenadiel doesn't come when Lucifer calls him to take Mama back to Hell, because he's busy researching what it means that his power is failing. Dr Linda finds him in his old office and calls him on all the lying and manipulating he did at the end of last season, and later he sincerely apologises for it, but making up and being friends again doesn't make him feel better.

Because it's not just that he hurt his first human friend and is losing his time-controlling power, it's that his wings are dying. They look really gross, the feathers falling out, the bare skin scabby and infected-looking, and it looks like it hurts. And he has no idea what to do about it, and hasn't told anyone else that this is happening to him, so he's all alone with it.

What can make an angel's wings die like that? Did Lucifer only avoid the same fate by having his cut off while they were still whole? Because Ama hasn't been in town all that long, and he's already losing his power AND his wings, but Luci had no ill effects until he started working with the cops...

And Trixie and Chloe are in a battle of wills. Trixie wants a new doll like the one that her friend had, and to get it, she ruins the one she has--but Chloe says trying to manipulate her like that means she doesn't get a new one. It's nice that Trixie seems to be okay after all that she went through in the finale last season, but that doll is a mess; I hope she actually is okay. Maybe she'll get to go see Dr Linda too. Or maybe Maze can help her work through it; that'd be fun.

Anyway, Lucifer buys the doll for her anyway, since Chloe won't--as well as a play set and accessories including a toy chocolate cake because he knows that's Trixie's favorite--and a) fails to see how this is more proof of his soft spot for Trixie that he insists isn't there, b) fails to see how he's undermining Chloe's authority with her own child, because he thinks he's just helping her be a better mom by giving her kid what she wants, and c) almost has a personal realization when Chloe points out that sometimes what's best for the kids, the kids don't like. That's probably what finally got him to believe what his mom said when she told the story of how he got cast out. But that means that Lucifer could blame Chloe when things go sideways, which is unfair since she didn't know anything about this stuff since he woundn't tell her about it, and could damage their friendship.

So a pretty good second episode! Mama Morningstar is a walking plot complication, she doesn't understand humans or have a human sense of almost anything, and when she's mad she can cause plagues and floods--or, at least, she could before she had a body. And she's definitely up to something. How much of her power came with her into this human form?

Is it her presence that's causing Ama and Luci to lose their powers? Or is it that they're acting and feeling more human like we thought before? OR is all of it because of whatever allowed her out of Hell to begin with--are they blaming humanity for all this when something else is meddling in the background and these are just the side-effects? This season feels like it's barely getting started, and there's already so much going on!

More notes on Lucifer 2.2 "Liar Liar, Slutty Dress On Fire"

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1. Westworld - In a remote futuristic immersion theme park made to look like the Old West, things get weird.

2. Aftermath - When literally all the apocalypses happen at once, one family has to try to keep themselves together and alive.

3. Conviction - There's a group that has five days to prove that people wrongfully convicted don't deserve to be in jail, and these are those guys.

4. Timeless - A soldier, a scientist and a historian go after a lunatic who steals a time machine to change history how he wants it--and to take down America that way.

5. Frequency - A cop finds out she can collaborate on crimes with her dead dad, also a cop, through their old HAM radio, but meddling with time has unforseen side effects.

Another good week of new TV! What did you guys think about this week? What else did you watch? Share in the comments!

We're three episodes into the season and all I can think whenever they're not running around and shooting things is "man, literally everyone on this show needs a hug before they snap!" How long can they go on like this? Is it possible for a whole team to have heart attacks in their thirties? The paranoia alone is getting to me, and I'm not even in the show!

Jane wakes up in some undisclosed location and finds out that Sandstorm has heard from Kade, who has been out of town in Venezuela for longer than she was kept in the CIA hole, making her story void. She holds her own in the argument, but Shepherd wants her to prove her loyalty, and she hands her and Roman a hit order: kill this guy who pre-mind-wipe Jane had gotten to fall in love with her so they could steal some microchip they need for Phase Two. He's balking, and he's not an asset anymore.

They go. Jane talks the guy out of his panic room, because she's been gone for months and the second he sees her and her "psycho brother", he knows something is up and he locks himself in. They beat him up, beat up the security guards activating the panic room brings in, and take the dude into the woods. Nas told Jane to do whatever she needed to do to keep her cover, and everyone keeps telling her she's a cold-blooded killer, but Jane doesn't feel like one, despite having that deep-down body-memory that makes her want to shoot everything whenever she raises her gun.

She's doubting who she is BIG TIME, but Dr Borden tells her to trust her instincts. So far, her instincts have made her really good but not a monster; she's obviously having issues believing that that's not what she is, though, and Zapata says she's off her game.

Anyway, in the woods, she doesn't want to have to kill the asset. She wants to set him back on track to get them the chip they need, but Roman says that's not the mission, and he shoots the guy when she won't. He's disappointed and says she failed the test; he takes her back to the FBI and tells her to wait for a beep on her pager (because Sandstorm is both super high tech and also straight out of 1992?) and where to meet when it goes off.

She's sure she's been burned.

Meanwhile, everything is literally and metaphorically exploding around them.

There's a mad bomber blowing up people related to a weapons teasting ground where the local population has been getting insanely high numbers of cancer deaths. Two guys who lost loved ones--a sister from one and a daughter from the other--are trying to force the government to stop it, publically admit to and apologise for what they've been doing, and shut down the program for real. They get two locations before Jane gets back from her loyalty test (Weller was flipping out that she was missing but Nas insisted that she's fine and this is what they want).

Weller was also flipping out because of the news that he's going to be a dad, when all he can think about is his mom saying "you're just like your father" in light of what he knows his father did. They track the bombers to a park where they take out one, and while Zapata and Reade literally shoot a bomb to pieces to make sure it doesn't explode, Weller catches up with the other bomber and goes into a hostage situation unarmed and actually puts on the suicide vest when the guy tells him to. 

See, the stress is already making them insane.

He's talking the guy down, telling him to think about all the family that would miss his hostages the way he misses his sister, and he's almost through to him...when Nas sharp-shoots the guy in the chest with a sniper rifle. Like a boss. Or like a creepy weirdo we can't trust, who keeps steering the team in directions they don't like while insisting that they're a vitally important unit and can't be broken up. Is she insisting on that too much now? She wanted Jane in the field regardless of her mental state, but after she comes back from the test, Weller told her to sit this one out, so she wasn't there when Nas shot the guy who might have told them more about...whatever is going on. Was she silencing someone who could clarify some of the stuff she's obsessed with so that she can maintain control? Is she the mole?

Who knows!

But her methods are pretty brutal and her motives are fuzzy at best, and we know for a fact that she's spying on everyone and they don't have a clue.

The B-plots are also going bonkers.

Zapata is back to being mad at Jane all the time, even though she sort of apologised to her at the end of last episode. But she's turned her constant questioning on Reade this time, who is sympathising with Jane because now he knows that he too has a chunk of missing time in his memories. Freddie told him he was one of the kids their old football coach molested, too, and he doesn't remember it--and doesn't want to, because he's terrified of what it means if he does. He finally admits all this to Zapata and she hugs him, and man, do these people need more hugs. But his problem is still there, and he doesn't know if he wants to go into the heavy therapy it'd take to get those memories back. Does he want to be the best witness for the case that's falling apart for lack of witnesses, or does he want to maintain his mental and emotional balance?

And Borden and Patterson are both being adorably terrible about dating. Patterson agreed to go out with him, but the closer it gets the more she freaks out, and she cancels twice before he just brings the food into the office and she kisses him. They're super cute together; if Nas isn't the mole, I really hope it's not him--or that the team's collective awesomeness can make him switch sides and be THEIR mole to help Jane out, because DANG she needs some relief.

After the bombings are taken care of, Jane tells Weller that she's being pulled in too many directions; he and Nas can't keep giving her opposite and mutually exclusive orders. And he agrees with her. With some of his old tenderness, he asks her what she needs to make this work instead of making excuses or promises or continuing to punish her for not being who they both thought she was. It's kind of beautiful, and it takes her off guard. And this is what makes Kurt Weller such an interesting character. He's got that alpha-male mess going on, but he's got an equally large amount of this need to take care of people, and he still cares about Jane, and he's super worried about this whole situation she's trapped in even more than the rest of them are.

He tells her that she knows who she is, and says what Borden did, that she should trust her instincts. But before things can get more emotional than that, the pager goes off. She meets the Sandstorm driver who puts her in the trunk to take her to another undisclosed location where she's ready to fight, like, everyone, only to find out that Roman covered for her. He said she killed the guy even though he did, and it's obvious that he's lost faith in her. He tells her about the rabbits their old murder-factory orphanage gave them and had them kill, and how he couldn't kill his so they made it bleed out slowly to punish him for his weakness. He says he can't cover for her again, things are about to get very serious very fast, and if she can't find the "real Remy" fast enough herself, he's going to "find her rabbit and make it bleed."

And we all know her rabbit is Weller (and maybe the team). Everyone always threatening Weller, and he doesn't even know it. If he wasn't such a BAMF, he'd be the damsel in distress in this story.

So they're convinced that she's on their side now, but Roman knows the truth and is both super brutal and super unstable, so she can't count on him to hide it for long. Nas wants her to just gleefully kill people if that's what Shepherd wants her to do, but she grew a conscience when she became Jane and she doesn't want to be a killer again. Weller wants to help her but doesn't know what to do, and is still weirded out by not knowing her like he thought he did. No one has yet told Jane that they didn't turn her over to the CIA willingly. The team is together--but it's not on even ground and everyone has their own things to deal with. There was only two bright points: Zapata pointing out that they need to not keep secrets from each other because that only caused trouble last season, and Patterson and Borden being super sweet.

Shepherd has Jane say some words over a memoral for Oscar, since they still don't know that it was Jane who killed him, and there's a really neat intercutting as she speaks so that we're clear that she's talking about Weller and the team, not about Oscar and Sandstorm, but what she says sounds like a loyalty speech to her so-called family. She's getting good at double-speak, despite still being so unhappy about the whole thing.

This show will be the death of us, guys. The emotional pitch is high enough to shatter glass, no one can be trusted but everyone wants someone to trust, and the who's-good-who's-bad-ness is entirely in the grey areas where nothing is clear. Our poor team in stuck in the middle, trying to do their best, and not even trusting their own best mission--the tattoos--because they all come from the same enemies they're trying to take down.

Bring on next week!

More notes on Blindspot 2.3 "Hero Fears Imminent Rot":

1. The Good Place - Eleanor wakes up in The Good Place (sort of heaven, but all earthly religions only got 5% right), despite being low-grade terrible her whole life. Not evil, but selfish and petty and thoughtless from beginning to end. She's given a house, matched with a literal soulmate--Chidi, from Senegal--and convinces him to help her learn how to be good so that she can stay, since her being there by accident keeps causing instabilities in the perfect balance of her "neighborhood".

Thoughts:

2. Lethal Weapon - Murtaugh is just getting back to work after having a heart attack and open heart surgery the very day his wife delivers their unexpected last baby, and finds himself teamed up with crazy new import from Texas, Riggs. They hate working together, have wildly different styles, but Riggs needs family and Murtaugh has enough to spare, and by the end of the pilot they've solved a big case and made a truce.

Thoughts:

3. Designated Survivor - After the capital is bombed during the state of the union, only the Housing Secretary lives, and he becomes the new president while they're still trying to put the fire out--less than 24 hours after he'd been asked to step down from his position and take up one far away from the capital. No one is taking responsibility for the bombing, no one believes in him, and his family has no idea what to expect.

4. Bull - When a case needs to be won, there's a group who can figure out exactly how to make sure it is, using "mirror juries" and high-tech computers and psychology.

5. MacGyver - Previous to the original MacGyver show, this is young Mac at the very beginning of the Phoenix Foundation. This week, they save the world from a paleolithic virus that's been weaponized, and is being sold off to the highest bidder of the US's meannest enemies.

6. Van Helsing - Three years after a vampire apocalypse, human survivors are barely hanging on, but there's a legend of a human warrior who will save them. Meanwhile, the title character has been in a coma for the whole apocalypse, her Marine guard is basically a shut-in, the doctor taking care of her has been turned, and when new people take shelter with them, things get unstable.

What did you think of this week's shows? What other shows did you catch this week? Share in the comments!

Lucifer and Amenadiel have been looking for their escaped mother, and coming up empty, though it does seem to mean they're accidentally stopping crimes in their usual time-stoppy / childish-humor co-style. They assume that she was in Hell for being bad, and therefore must be out for nefarious purposes. They also assume that since she has no physical body, she must have jumped into one that was recently vacated by it's original owner.

Cue the running gag of Lucifer calling all sorts of random people "Mum" and then being embarassed when it's not her and they're confused.

He gets distracted from this failure to find her by Chloe's new case: a body double for the star of a famous teen show is found dead on set with rebar shoved into her head to look like devil horns. Lucifer automatically thinks it's a message for him and that his mom is out to kill him, who was in charge of punishing her and never spoke up when she was cast out. Much to Chloe's endless annoyance, he thinks every clue is about him.

That case is moderately ordinary; the starlet has a secret drug problem, and her double was also her sober companion. She was meant to keep her clean, but they were both bad at the job. Turns out that it was the landlady all along! She was mad because she was previously the main drug dealer for the starlet, and she got replaced. 

What's really fun is all the stuff that happens along the way.

Lucifer thinks that the starlet is secretly his mom, and when it becomes obvious that she's not but she's super ready to jump his bones anyway, it's doubly terrible for him--because he thought his mom was coming on to him, THEN he realized it was actually a teenage girl for real doing it--but it was so funny for us! Probably the only time Lucifer has ever been so flustered to have a girl throw herself at him! Whenever Lucifer isn't the suavest thing in the room, I'm a happy viewer.

They find the drugs in question and there's a devil emoji as the dealer mark, so Lucifer thinks it's another message. Even though the last one was a mistake. They track that to a Narcotics Anonymous meeting where a) Lucifer does his usual trampling all over everyone's feelings to get to the person they're looking for, but also b) he almost has an actual breakthrough of his own. See, earlier in the episode, Dr Linda asked him if their sessions are actually helping at all, or just giving him an excuse to ignore the conclusions she tries to lead him to. When he gets in the meeting and they ask what his lowest point was, he almost gets to where he realizes that he's been hard on his mom and wonders what she'd think of him, proving that he actually HAS been making progress in therapy, and that he's been learning how to do this self-honesty thing for real...

So of course that's when they find their guy, he isn't Mum either, and Lucifer loses the thread of that insight.

And when it gets to the part where they have to solve the crime, he and Chloe both come to the same conclusion of who it's got to be through their own different means in a nice scene where they're paralleled. Even when they're not working together, they belong as a team; heck, he even sat down at her desk and helped her sort through paperwork for half a second this episode. Lucifer doesn't need to be involved in the end, but he goes to figure it out anyway, because it's his job now; he's invested in solving these cases. Also, he's totally caught the feels.

His showdown with Bobbi-B, the landlady-drug-dealer-murderer was pretty hilarious, too. She kicks his booty big time, and we learn that Chloe's sphere of no-power-whammy is getting bigger; he doesn't even know she's come to the same conclusion and is getting near the house, and he loses his invulnerability before she even knocks on the door!

Meanwhile, lots of other stuff.

There's a new ME called Ella, which is great because every cop show needs a cool ME, and it adds a nice new level to the team. She's deeply faithful to her religion, but she's also cheerfully not judge-y about it; she has no problem with Lucifer claiming to be who he is, and when Chloe asks her if she thinks all this religious stuff is real, she gets excitedly philosophical. She also says that if it needs proof, it's not faith, which sticks with Chloe.

See, she's bothered that she saw Lucifer gut-shot and bleeding out, and then saw him walking around fine, and she can't explain it. Lucifer is annoyed that she STILL doesn't believe him, but she's closer than she's ever been--which is also why she's more suspicious than ever. She's got a sample of his blood and she's going to have it analyzed in the crime lab...but it's been two days and she still hasn't sent it in yet. After her talk with Ella, she throws it away instead.

But Amenadiel doesn't know that she won't actually do it, and he takes matters into his own hands, because they can't have proof of divinity running around in a cosmology based on faith. While Lucifer is taking his job seriously and / or dealing with Maze, Ama goes to convince Chloe that Lucifer is a con artist. He says the two of them were adopted, which is how they look so different; he uses a blood pack and a bulletproof vest to show her how he faked getting killed. He also says that they had a really bad childhood and that all of this is a self-defense construct to allow him to act even a little sane, and that he doesn't mean to lie to anyone but himself. Which is great, because Ama is a holier-then-thou pain, frequently, but he also loves his brother and doesn't want to defame him. And he's not trying to chase Chloe away, just make her stop asking certain important questions.

Chloe now has a perfectly reasonable excuse for everything that she's seen...and she doesn't buy it. She also doesn't buy it that he's crazy. Which really only leaves that he's telling the truth, but she's not ready to face that yet, and she settles for accepting him how he is because "You make me a better detective". There's also a whole thing about a joke with the punchline "I need the eggs".

Maze meanwhile, has been missing for the whole two days. Lucifer says he isn't worried and he blames Ama getting all emotional on her, but he's totally worried; he's just also still mad at her, and definitely still a child in dealing with stuff like that. As it turns out, that's fine, because she wants to find out who she is as an individual person. She comes back when Lucifer's life is in trouble--after someone comes at him with a knife--but she's not ready to step back into how things were. She is, however, forging what looks like a real friendship with Dr Linda!

Also, Amenadiel is losing his powers now. He tries to go steal the blood sample and gets caught because his time-trick wears off and he has to leave it, and then at the end, he tests it when no one is around and it does the same thing. Is it maybe NOT Chloe that's causing it for Lucifer, but something bigger? Or is it something else for Ama, a different way to lose your powers?

Also also, Dan is back on the force with no charges and a demotion, and he keeps sending sad looks at Chloe but she's still mad at him.

And then, right at the end, after they've given up trying to find their mother because obviously she's not actually out to kill them so they have no idea where she'll pop up, she shows up in Lucifer's loft on her own. In Tricia Helfer's body. Holding a bloody knife and asking for help before passing out in Luci's arms.

Plot!

It was a pretty great return to the show, and it's great to see that, so far, it's as irreverrent and saucy as it's always been. Fox doesn't have a great track record with, like, any show ever--the scant handful of shows they haven't canceled lately didn't go well in season two (cough - Sleepy Hollow - cough), so it was a little tentatively that I tuned in. But if it can keep up the way it is, deepening the story and the worldbuilding without going off the rails or compromising it's characters, it might be okay. This ep was fun and exciting, and didn't abandon any of the character growth that happened last season, so yay premier!

What did you guys think?

More notes on Lucifer 2.1 "Everything's Coming Up Lucifer":

The first episode of the season goes right for the gut, opening on a sort of montage of three months of torture Jane has endured at the hands of a CIA black ops team in some secret base that technically doesn't exist. The CIA grabbed her right after Weller arrested her at the end of last season, and they've been looking for what happened to her and getting nothing but brick walls the whole time--but Jane doesn't know that. She thinks her friends sold her out to a whole summer of people literally trying to break her.

But her training holds up: She remembers being trained to survive exactly this sort of treatment, to not drown when they dunk her, to not break when they electrocute her. 

Guys, it's frikken brutal.

But Jane is resourceful as well as tough. The second she gets a chance, she takes out the whole team with less stuff than MacGuyver would need to do it, and gets free.

Meanwhile, Weller and co overreact to chasing down counterfitters and Zapata says she misses their more important cases tracking down the clues in Jane's tattoos. Think how bored Patterson must be.

Then, the plot thickens in seconds with the arrival of a new contact, Nas. She knows where Jane is--in Camden NJ, working as a maid to earn some working money and buy time for research. And she knows the group that made Jane: she calls them Sandstorm, because they're the only thing since an experience with an actual sandstorm as a child that has scared her that bad. She's tracked them to a series of terror attacks that looked unrelated until they got someone inside the organization and figured out the links, but Sandstorm discovered them and killed them. Jane's arrival in Times Square was one of the ops they managed to trace, though. She thinks Jane was meant to be a mole, except that she wound up bonding with the people here.

Probably because of the still-not-quite explained memory-wipe that seems to be the main thing messing with the whole plan anyway. Everyone in Sandstorm keeps acting like they know Jane, but so far none of them are willing to get to know who she actually is now, and see how she's different--because it's the differences that made her fall for her team and fight back.

Nas wants to use Jane against Sandstorm, and she thinks Jane is angry enough at what happened that she'll do it.

First, though, there's the whole probem that the team doesn't trust her anymore, that she thinks they're to blame for her torture, and that she doesn't want to go back any more than they want her back.

Weller goes into the hotel she's working at alone to see if he can talk to her and keep her from bolting. They wind up beating the tar out of each other in a pretty impressive fight scene that somehow manages to be really bada** as well as sort of tragic--she's hurt and terrified, he's hurt and trying not to hurt her but also not pulling any punches because she isn't. It winds up being his sheer size that lets him win--and really, that says something about how tired and beatdown Jane is, because that wouldn't have stopped her before.

So. They take Jane back, and she finally gets to tell everyone the truth she didn't get to tell them before because they arrested  her. They all had been hoping that Mayfaire was still alive, only to find out she's dead, and that Oscar did it. Also that Oscar is dead, so they can't bring him to justice. And that Jane also thought she was Taylor Shaw, because that's one of many lies they told her to get her to do what they wanted her to do: frame Mayfaire and be their pawn and their patsy.

It makes Reade feel sorry for her. It makes Zapata even more mad at her--although you'd think she'd be more understanding since she was, herself, a pawn and a patsy for part of last season. It makes Weller super conflicted about everything, because he likes to collect inner turmoil.

Jane agrees to go along. They come up with a story that she was kidnapped by Kade and held hostage for three months, and only just escaped. It works because she'd already blamed some stuff on Kade before the end of last season, and because she really does want to find out the answers the FBI wants her to find out: who's Shepherd, what's up with their plan, why is all this happening.

Weller doesn't like it because there's too many what-if's: what if Sandstorm knows that Kade is dead, or what if he's alive and already went back to them? What if they don't believe her story? But Nas insists that this is the only lead they have. Jane calls her contact and finds out she's got a new dude answering the phone, but he sets up a meet anyway. Jane says they'll never believe she got away from Kade unscathed, so they have to shoot her--Weller is horrified at the idea because he still loves her no matter what he says, but Zapata is angry enough that she does it while they're fighting, and cool-headed enough to make sure it's a clean shot that won't clip any organs.

Dang, Zapata.

Nas has a tracker inside one of Jane's teeth, but she ditches it; she knows they'll scan her. Weller believes they can trust her to want justice if nothing else, so they have to wait and believe that even off the grid, she'll come back to them. Jane meets the dude from the phone, he sees she's shot, and they go to fix her up but get stopped by cops doing cop things, and one of them sees the blood, so the new guy, Roman, kills all of them. Easily and quickly and very quietly while Jane looks on in horror with the realization that she may be in over her head.

But he gets her to a hospital and patches her up. He's the guy Jane remembered from her training, the one who taught her how not to die.

Finally, he takes her to get some answers, after a long drive full of not answering any questions at all. Sandstorm must train their people how to be infuriatingly oblique as well as deadly. They meet with Shepherd--who is a lady.

Not just any lady, but Jane's MOTHER.

Not just any mother, but the special forces military agent who liberated her from a child-soldier farm in South Africa and adopted her when she was determined to be too dangerous to go to a regular orphanage after her training. 

And this guy who taught her not to die? Her actual blood BROTHER.

Jane has a family! A family made of terrorists and ex military operatives! The memories she has of being in a room with lots of other children who are being trained like soldiers are separate from her memories of training for this weird no-memory undercover op that she's now stuck in. Two separate crazy training camps. But what happened in between?

Poor Jane, she just keeps being someone else's weapon. When does she get to be her own weapon?

But these Sandstormies don't know everything either. They know that Oscar is dead, but not that she killed him, and they vow revenge. They don't know that she also (apparently) killed Kade, and buy her story that he's the one who had her. They don't know that Jane is fed up with their secrets and lies and doesn't believe in their cause (again, because of the memory wipe), and is working against them now. Shepherd is glad to have her back, but she won't answer any questions: all she says is that soon she won't have to live a double life anymore.

Jane goes back to the FBI and Nas is pleased with all this progress on her pet case. Weller softens a little when she tells him she wanted to be Taylor and not a spy and a turncoat. 

Roman believes that Jane is still his sister somewhere inside, but Shepherd tells him, once Jane is gone, that she's not so sure. She says she's going to let it play out, though; she's got a mole in the office, but she doesn't want to expose them too soon, so she's going along with it.

And we get to the end of the episode at top speed that somehow made the hour feel like about three minutes! One hour a week isn't enough of this show--it'll be so great to mainline the whole season once it hits Netflix after it's done airing!

Last season seemed dense with story and full of crossing and double-crossing, but if this first episode is any indication, it's going to be even more so this season! So far, it's in the best possible way: the facts we already have are clarified and expanded on by new facts that were cleanly and easily added in one scene, changing the whole context of what we know, and proving how much there is that we don't know. And even better, the emotional trouble everyone is going through is even stronger than ever. Jane wants to make it right but feels like she has no one to rely on; Weller is hurt that she got close to him on a lie, but also knows that he has really strong feelings for her still and that she didn't even know how much she was lying because she was lied to, too. Reade and Zapata are having opposite reactions to the whole issue, and both of them and Patterson want more than ever to take these jerks down. Their new lady is motivated and knowledgeable, and so far seems to be level-headed and willing to care about this team that is giving her the leads she wants on her case.

Plus, they're back on their perferred mission of figuring out the puzzles of the tattoos, which even cranky and vaguely hypocritical Zapata implied made their lives and their work more meaningful.

We are in for a treat this season, guys.

More notes on "In Night So Ransomed Rogue":