That trope of defense attorneys being evil and forsaking ethics for money is so common I was surprised when I played my first Phoenix Wright game and realized Phoenix is a defense attorney
There's a huge cultural difference. The way the Japanese judicial system works is that the prosecution almost *always* wins. Being a defense lawyer who wins is super rare so when it happens it's somewhat of a big deal.
So basically, when two groups of people have an equal chance of winning and equal power, they have equal opportunity to be corrupt. When two people have unequal chances of winning and unequal power, they have an unequal chance of being corrupt. I want to say that "absolute power power corrupts absolutely," but if someone desperately scrambles to have power, then they are already corrupt.
@R Hamlet Nah. Nah, you don't get it. The conviction statistics for Japan are insane. Be mad at the US judicial system and criticise it, please. But don't just make false equivelencies because they're easy, do it cus they're accurate.
its anchoring it... either you like shows being more grounded in reality or you like escapist fantasy. Lucifer does a nice spin on cops without as much questionable activity from the cops.... which, if you know anything about humans, they are flawed... hoping cops would be perfect is like expecting you to be perfect. its impossible... the show doesn't have time to focus on Chloe decker being a bad cop because it spends that time showing how Dan was a crooked cop and the important character is Lucifer (how strange that the titular character, his family and their relationship dynamics be the main focus of a story).
The actor said the character is British because when he tried it differently, the character just seemed like a jerk. He's right. Plus the actor is actually British, so...
@@ianpitzerds Also, using "trunk" instead of "boot" is also a choice. American English is not more neutral than British English for a cosmic being. Coming from a complete different culture and language, this complaint seems egocentrical.
the british/american english part of the video is the only one i disagreed with kjgkfg;lfdkg;lfdk as a progressive linguist, i reject the idea of a "standard english", so i'm not even going to go there (though lots of traditional linguists are gonna tell you that what is essentially "queen's" english is the "standard" or even "correct" version of it). however, even without the standard, which lucifer could potentially turn to while speaking, choosing to say certain words is as much of a choice as picking a posh british accent over any other accent. and it actually makes a lot more sense for him to speak lexically with the same dialect as he chose to speak phonetically. so "boot" makes much more sense for him than "trunk" does.
the problem with Lucifer's hell is that good people who feel guilt over small deeds are punished eternally , whilst sociopathic & psychopathic serial killers with no remorse would not be there at all. Update: I love that this philosophical debate is still being added to 3 years later, and is mostly a kind yet challenging space to hang out for a while. Very cool.
That was my first thought!! Do you think Derek Chauvin feels guilty about what he did? What about the other Killer Cops who never got caught/sentenced? Or members of the KKK or other hate groups? What about Ronald Reagan and his pals who ignored the HIV/AIDS epidemic because it was "gay cancer", or the politicians who are currently not giving a frick about COVID? A guilty conscience seems like a terrible way to determine if someone has done something "worth punishing"
you could make an interesting story about the system of those with guilty consciences going to hell and those without go to heaven, but youd have to be yknow, critical of that system.
It goes with the premise that everyone thinks they are good and is aware of what bad they do will eventually catch up to them. It's a pleasant fantasy, at least.
Fun Fact: Neil Gaiman, creator of the Lucifer comics, specifically asked that Lucifer had to look like David Bowie, so when creating the show instead of casting someone who looked like Bowie they instead made Lucifer a Bowie Fan, that's why at several scenes The Lux is playing Bowie songs
@@tana-beth TBF his Lucifer is not quite like this show, and the Lucifer comics even less so. Lucifer is not at all concerned about being good or evil there, he's more... a force of nature. His conscience is always clear, because killing billions is just nothing that matters to him.
I know it's a small part of the video, but as a criminal defense attorney, I'm glad you touched on the trope that criminal defense is amoral and prosecutors are the real good guys. Because that is another form of copaganda. Prosecutors are also cops. And when Jack McCoy does something blatantly unethical on Law & Order, which is a lot, there's usually an ends justify the means feel to it. It's like the idea that someone "got off on a technicality". That "technicality" is often the 4th, 5th, or 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (or the equivalent in a state constitution). The amoral, scumbag defense attorney didn't do some fancy footwork to bamboozle a judge; they just pointed out that the police, prosecutor, or lower court judge violated a person's rights.
It's like kangaroo courts are a bad thing, and that if the whole process isn't followed though properly it somehow becomes illegitimate, if not meaningless.
Yes, the creators of the show seem to dislike the fact that defendants have a right to a fair trial, which imho can be interpreted as hating the Bill of Rights. I’ve watched the show off and on for years, but the anti Constitution gets old after a while
i think it might be the most bought into lie of all of copaganda. above all else, people seem to fucking despise even the concept of criminal defense in america to a ridiculous degree
That also explains why Lucifer speaks with the accent: his only interaction with humanity for most of history has been through the people in Hell, so he picked up the most common accent.
In terms of Hell being a self-made prison, I always got the impression that Lucifer himself never thought it was a good system. Season 5’s depiction of God is just *so good,* and we really get the sense of someone so out of touch and entirely up his own ass that he’d assume that “guilt over anything = bad person” and “no guilt = good person”. That form of justice is nonsense, and I feel like the show agrees. But, when examining the US penal system, the it definitely errs on the side of copaganda.
i feel like your optimism is clouding the pattern. lucifer doesnt want to examine the structure of current society, only condeming the current popular negative aspects. i think your interpretation is much more interesting, but extremely unlikly to be the direction the show goes in
i rlly hope that they head into that direction, i think lucifer’s greatest weakness is his cynicism. he’s seen what guilt does to otherwise good and decent people and figured the system of hell despite being flawed is some inherent function of the world that can’t Actually be changed. Its very much like how ppl view the justice system, and convicted criminals. it would be scarily tone deaf to show someone actually overcoming the guilt to get to heaven and then have lucifer carry on with hell as it currently functions
@@Bemused247 exactly. Serial killers don't see themselves in the wrong. Mentally disturbed criminals and sociopaths will end up not having guilt. So does Manson and domer just end up in heaven? It's sadly a large plot hole. Hitler feels guilty about losing the war and not making the master race successful, I highly doubt he cares about or feels guilt for millions of dead Jews.
Tom said he tried doing his reading with an american accent but he sounded like a jerk, and apparently the directors liked his take and left the accent and the writers just ran with it. I mean, the whole lucifer singing thing only happened because he went to a karaoke bar with the crew and they found out he could sing and wrote it in to the show
this sounds odd because most actors would have singing as a skill in their resume if they can, or at least in the states. there even used to be a trope of putting skills you dont have, including singing, on a resume to get ahead of the competition
@@caraziegel7652 I have but I am not talking exclusively about this series. I mean, just the idea of Lucifer being a jerk in any entertainment medium kind of makes sense? He is Lucifer, after all. Even if he is not evil or is more complex morally being a jerk seems understandable.
Honestly the funniest parts of the show are when he uses his charm on a suspect and they blurt out a desire unrelated to the case. Comedy gold every time 😂
As a children's librarian I'm super invested in how youth media can sway the opinions of kids and the importance of expansive, truth-first texts throughout media to allow them more autonomy as they grow. Which is a longwinded way of saying "agreed."
@@JayHankEdLyon Yeah im a Junior Primary teacher. I have students who love paw patrol and also want to be cops. Theres a real narrative for children that cops are the 'good guys' and are safe people.
There's always a tone of people thinking Chloe is so upright and deeply moral because she has an eyeroll and a scoff for anyone who indulges in excessive violence or corruption.
In the real world, there's no way he would be allowed to work with the police after the second episode. He constantly gets evidence without warrants, which would cause it to be thrown out, and gets confessions through intimidation, which is inadmissible.
@@daniusschratzius yh but is it really that innaccurate? the police is a mess so im not even suprised but the thing is i actually sort of like lucifer.
@@daniusschratzius If the DEVIL came to the real world and would use SUPERNATRUAL POWER to procure evidence without warrants,WHILE BEING IMMUNE TO BULLETS he would be surely thrown out of the police force. Brah
i have the opposite problem with chloe. i find it really weird that she is a gift from god, so "good" that lucifer falls for her, but like... she's just not a total piece of shit? does things by the book, doesn't advocate for human rights violations (which uhh, sometimes she does but whatever). which you know, i feel like is the bare minimum?
I think this should have been held on until season 6. Throughout the show, I think they have been hinting that Lucifer misunderstood his role in hell, and rather than punishing those who fell, he is meant to redeem them. I would be surprised if that is not where the next season leads.
Following up a year later, this is EXACTLY where it led with Lucifer understanding that his role in Hell was supposed to be as a Healer as opposed to a Torturer.
@@oremfrienI saw this video today, having seen season six months ago, and found myself mostly agreeing but occasionally going ‘I seem to remember they kinda addressed this’
As a male Lucifer fan, this was a fun watch. One minor correction. Lucifer didn't kill that human trafficker. He crippled him. They also mention in the show that people who have done awful things, are in hell even if they don't feel guilt.
They're in hell, but they aren't actively being punished because Hell has nothing to build off of. They're functionally on the "just visiting" tile, which really isn't that bad.
I love Lucifer to bits but saying that it's not copaganda is insane!! I love the nuanced take you have on the show and I 100% agree with everything you said about the show - the main appeal of it is absolutely characters and their evolution and relationships and not the cop part. It's really interesting how the show itself is just... bored of its criminal aspects? It focuses so much more on drama than on the procedural and that's what drew me to it in the first place. Anyway, great video!! Wanted to comment because you certainly deserve more views
Calling it copaganda isn't helpfull. It destroys the nuanced view that gets across in this video. I know that us humans love categories we can put stuff into but it's not helpfull. Calling it copaganda will disturb many who might agree with you on a lot of the issues but still identify strongly with the show. It's a lot more helpfull to show what's problematic, to highlight what's good and to stimulate critical thinking in other people. Categorizing it as copaganda won't help in the long run, talking about the problems in nuances will.
@@robertschneider8808 I agree with what you're saying, but the show does have elements of "copaganda" in it, and that's what I was trying to say! Sorry if it wasn't clear.
yeah it has elements in it that you could call copaganda but I think it's important to make the distinction between a show that's just pure propaganda and a show that has some blindspots and isn't critical in every way we would like to see. Pointing out the flaws is far more helpfull than branding it with a label.
Oh that is pretty funny when you see how different lucifer is compared to the comic. Where they only used like the first 3 issues to make the show. Ignoring everything else
This was great but I think you might have missed the point of Lee going to heaven and Lucifer being shocked by it. The fandom has LONG picked up on the hints about hell being deeply. Deeply unjust. About how Lucifer was forced to punish and be the jailer, and his journey is also about breaking free of that. But with Lee gaining his freedom from hell by confronting his guilt, they are acknowledging the unfairness of Hell, and I think that's going to be a major point in the next season. Also. Amenadiel joining the police is absolutely going to lead to more examples of the corrupt system as a whole.
agreed, but idk how well theyre gonna write the amenadiel storyline, but his character has been used super well to point issues at unfairness, i guess a naive new to the world character suits those stories well innit
@@connorbovingdon8563 I agree. Do you think Amen will change his mind and become God?? Because we all know that Lucifer is going to pull a Hercules and become mortal for his love
I think the big issue with his analysis is that he wrote it before the last season finishes. Thematically, any television show really ties itself together in the last episodes. *shrugs* We don't know what the show is going to do with these storylines, really...
I always thought Lucifer's cultural Britishness was commitment to the bit. Like, the writers write him like that (and Tom Ellis plays a much posher RP accent than his native one) because it's a common persona to have a kink for, which would be exactly why Lucifer would pick it (while feeling like it had been picked for him by god's will or humanity's expectations).
Lucifers accent in the show isn't RP - it is closer to Estuary English (eg a mix of high class RP and lower class cockney) - now spoken by most middle/working class white natives in London and the SE of England.
The phenomenon of people thinking that it is impossible for non-cop shows to be a copaganda is not surprising. Because there still people who blatantly think that CSI isn't a Copaganda.
@@jonsmith9838 persona 5 counts as one and persona strikers basically one of the main threats in those games are cops and they do a lot of terrible stuff and shown to be corrupt...
@@GermanLeftist Something like Blue Blood, where the dinner table scenes is them paratoing talking points and sometime they strawman the other side. Or stuff with rouge cops, where some leftis lawyer preventing them from GETTING THE JOB DONE. and maybe the hero cops bending the rules a lot to get the Job done.. Stuff like that
On top of that Lucifer's actor Tom Ellis is British; so it makes sense that Tom uses his natural British accent while in character. From what I have observed the reason why a lot of women enjoy watching "Lucifer" is because they think Tom Ellis is handsome. There's an episode of "Thirst Tweets" by BuzzFeed where Tom Ellis read thirsty tweets from equally thirsty fans.
I’m about half way through this but I think it’s interesting that he’s talking about Lucifer’s role as the “Punisher” is representative of the Police/Justice System and the show ends with him becoming a Therapist
Lucifer probably calls it a boot, not a trunk, because he was visiting Britain when cars were invented. Or living there, I'm not sure how long ago he quit hell.
In the very first episode, they made it clear he just quit but, they elude throughout the show that Lucifer has visited Earth before. It's actually weirder that all the angels have New England accents instead. Since the English accent had been around since mideval times and the angels are as old as the earth itself if not older.
@@rainmirron Well, yes, but actually no. Sure, there were English accents in medieval times, but it was not what you'd now call an English accent. A modern English accent is _much_ closer to a New England accent than it is to a medieval English accent. You probably couldn't understand medieval English. You could make out some things on occasion, but that's true of, say, German as well.
So apparently a few years back... lucifer leaving hell and settling on earth with a jazz club was actually part of the storyline in Neil Gaiman's sandman comics.
True, but he does constantly assault suspects that are supposed to be questioned, and then decker's like '' nu Lucy pls don't do that' but then doesn't intervene or anything, I feel like after the first few seasons they treat it as a given that he's gonna physically assault people
@@iamlaura02 You're right....but also what is she gon do to him? He's literally the devil. The only reason he's vulnerable around her is like he said in the video, if she say - tried to shoot him and he didn't want to be shot, it would work about as well as it does otherwise. Same with subduing him. I think they lean into the eyeroll trope partly for comedic purposes yknow too like "here goes lucy again"
Also with the case of a guy who was able to get to heaven from hell. He was only been able to do so after talking with Lucifer about it. And that tells us that this whole time Lucifer could've helped people in hell to redeem themselves through what is basically a therapy session. And instead he chose to torture them as a "fuck you, dad, and your precious little humans" kind of statement. This precedence turns a lot of previously thought to be true philosophy about punishment and hell upside down. And The Good Place reference there as you kindly pointed out is no coincidence. To sum it up, Linda is the best.
First off, Linda is absolutely the best. And secondly, that’s literally what I always thought the second I heard how they described hell in this show!!! I can’t count the amount of times I was like “well your hell is bull shit because it doesn’t matter what level of “bad” you were, as long as you have a little bit of guilt over something in your life, you get dragged down with no hope of escaping by relieving yourself of guilt, because you’re constantly in a loop of getting tortured by the guilt that sent you there in the first place.” Like the very concept is unreasonably cruel. Kinda like how in *THE GOOD PLACE (spoilers)*, it was essentially impossible to get sent to the good place because the inter workings of the world is so complicated that no matter how hard you try to be good, your good acts could have some connection to bad actions, which negate your score far more than the good act effected you positively. So I was literally constantly asking Lucifer why he wasn’t doing anything to help coax people out of their guilt (when their guilt wasn’t bad enough for them to be tortured for… well… ever…), ESPECIALLY after he himself got trapped in a hell loop, and after he willingly returned to hell to protect earth, after realizing that humans were much more than the scum he thought they were, and after many many many many helpful sessions with Linda. So that’s why I was so ecstatic in the season 5 finale when we found out that Lucifer actually helped that robber, who he kept stripping naked, out of his hell loop while he was trying to prove a point. I was literally screaming like “YES!!! YES EXACTLY!!! YOU COULD’VE BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG!!!”. He had this whole journey of self discovery about how he wasn’t a truly evil person, but he never applied that to how he ruled over hell.
The thing I love most about Lucifer was how, post-season 1, every single episode felt like a cliffhanger. If something bad happens, you're wondering "oh no, how are Lucifer and the gang going to deal with this???". If something good happens, you're wondering "oh no, how is Lucifer going to screw this up???".
I actually got to Tom Ellis at a con a while ago and told him making this a cop show was awful but that he and his character made it impossible not to love and he got super serious, stood up and shook my hand. I think he agreed.
Lucifer is a Neil Gaiman character and in Good Omens Aziraphel and Crowley are also extremely British (in the book I know that the actors are Welesh and Scottish) so I think it just fits the humor of Neil Gaiman that Lucifer is super Brithish for no reason
Honestly, the fact that it uses the police procedural as a framing device, rather than it just being "police procedural but with angels," is its biggest strength. Cuz it can kind of get away with some of the bad tropes, because it falls into "well, theyre getting away with shit because Lucifer and all the angelic shit is making things weird," rather than "theyre getting away with shit because its the good guys."
i like the show cause it's goofy a lot of the time but when they made amenadiel decide to be a cop in the new season part that came out a little while ago, it just felt really tone deaf in all honesty, while yes i saw it coming way before it did it still was really weird to watch
If Amenadiel (who is largely still very niave about the human world) joining to police doesn't lead to a brutal destruction of his vision of the system being good, please come remind me how wrong I am.
@@fiction- my expectations are like non existent considering this is a show that eye rolls police brutality committed by their characters and this being the final season means they're probably going to spend a lot of time with like nostalgia and typing up things, but if they do have the guts to pull off something like that it would be interesting to see
And Amenadiel is confronted with the futility of reforming the police from the inside, instead becoming God and restructuring heaven itself to try to better humanity
The redemption in hell thing is literally what I always thought the second I heard how they described hell in this show!!! I can’t count the amount of times I was like “well your hell is bull shit because it doesn’t matter what level of “bad” you were, as long as you have a little bit of guilt over something in your life, you get dragged down with no hope of escaping by relieving yourself of guilt, because you’re constantly in a loop of getting tortured by the guilt that sent you there in the first place.” Like the very concept is unreasonably cruel. Kinda like how in *THE GOOD PLACE (spoilers)*, it was essentially impossible to get sent to the good place because the inter workings of the world is so complicated that no matter how hard you try to be good, your good acts could have some connection to bad actions, which negate your score far more than the good act effected you positively. So I was literally constantly asking Lucifer why he wasn’t doing anything to help coax people out of their guilt (when their guilt wasn’t bad enough for them to be tortured for… well… ever…), ESPECIALLY after he himself got trapped in a hell loop, and after he willingly returned to hell to protect earth, after realizing that humans were much more than the scum he thought they were, and after many many many many helpful sessions with Linda. So that’s why I was so ecstatic in the season 5 finale when we found out that Lucifer actually helped that robber, who he kept stripping naked, out of his hell loop while he was trying to prove a point. I was literally screaming like “YES!!! YES EXACTLY!!! YOU COULD’VE BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG!!!”. He had this whole journey of self discovery about how he wasn’t a truly evil person, but he never applied that to how he ruled over hell.
i dont wanna be a buzzkill, but i think that lucifer is going to ignore that aspect of the world they built, and just focus on the characters having endings. I feel as if that guy will be the only example the show gives of redemtion, to give the implication that its possible. i think i might have been burnt a couple too many times by shows with these really interesting dilemas being swept away because the writers stumbled into complexity and stumble right back out
@@PropheticShadeZ Maybe if it was another show, but Lucifer always makes moments like these important later on, especially if it happened in the finale. They have a whole season to develop stuff like this. They wouldn’t just explicitly have a previously hell-punished character show up in heaven, explicitly say “YOU Lucifer helped me come to terms with my guilt, and YOU are the reason why I was the first soul to ever make it from hell into heaven.” And then just not do anything with it lmao. If it’s Lucifer, or if it’s someone else ruling over hell, I think the new process of souls going to hell is that they’re going to see if they’re able to overcome their guilt through basically hell therapy (like what Lucifer did with the robber), and if they can, they’ll be granted access to heaven. The show wouldn’t just drop something that’s clearly an important historical event. The first human to make it out of Hell, after Lucifer helped them on accident, and now knows it’s possible when their given the right push? Yeahhhh that’s only gonna happen once lmao. This show has never shied away from complex scenarios.
I know it might not entirely fit with the theme of this series, but honestly I'd be super interested to see you do a more in depth look at the good place, seeing as I've seen a lot of people interpret it as an allegory for prison reform and the need to replace retributive justice with restorative justice
You say it's not important but Charlotte Richards move was important - she was defending white collar rich corporations who were getting away with murder and she changed, she became moral - that was significant.
But it's still positioning defence attorneys as the bad guys - she doesn't change so she joins a non-profit defence organisation, for example, she just switches to prosecution and we're told that's instantly more moral.
I never thought about it like that! Based on the show, the main problem with restorative justice is that once you're done, you have no villains left and you have to go look for new ones every season, each worse than the previous one, yet each eventually seeing things your way.
@@tommihorttana860 which seems like more of a writing problem than a justice problem. I’d have loved to see them take it in the direction of “ok, so I lured my aunt here for therapy, please help she won’t stop making ice castles” “I take it that’s why there’s an ice castle at my summer camp?” “Yes, and… why is she feeding children? Where did she get ice cream?”
I got into Murdoch Mysteries a while back and it's been fairly interesting watching it through a copaganda-aware lens. It's set in 1890s Canada so the police almost never use guns, which gives it a different vibe than most American shows, and it definitely has its fair share of "are we the baddies?" moments, but ultimately it's still copaganda. It's also 15 season so I wouldn't ask you to review it... but you could if you wanted to.
i would love to see at the very least an episode on cop shows that are also period dramas-not sure if there are other shows besides Murdoch Mysteries, but if there are, it would be really interesting to see copaganda merge with pre-modern policing.
When I was a kid, my mother abused me. But, because punishment is the only kind of justice anyone seems to understand, the only way I could have gotten out of the situation is if I had video footage of my abuse. Then, my mother could have been charged and I would have been rehomed. Of course, a child in the '00s doesn't have access to a camera unless their parents buy it for them, and my mother isn't that dumb. I ended up leaving home at 13, not finishing highschool due to financial reasons, and having nothing useful to put on a resumee. I want to live in a world where justice focuses on helping victims, rather than punishing criminals. I don't care what happens to my abuser, but I know I deserved more of a chance at life than I got.
me getting super mad at 15:40 when he starts ranting about why Lucifer is British. like, fair enough that doesn't make sense, but then he says "so why is he calling it a boot instead of a trunk". my Aussie ass will have none of that U.S. centrism mentality. if it really were to make sense, Lucifer should have no bias towards any language or country - boot or trunk, cookie or biscuit - and just choose words at random, removed of any cultural context. good video, though
@@theloveandcookiesgal because why would he need to, he knows being british in america will add to his appeal, he wants to stand out not fit in perfect
@@connorbovingdon8563 im not saying he needs to nor do i care, its obviously a stylistic choice that enhances his characterization in the show. it just doesnt make a lot of sense in the world of the show
@@theloveandcookiesgal I'm literally explaining why it makes sense in the show tho, it's his character, he went British so he would stand out more in America, if he was just another American in a suit he wouldn't have the same appeal 🤷♂️
I would love to see an episode on consultant shows generally where the main character is someone that works w the police, like monk, psych, elementary, castle, bones, etc
In all fairness, Psych is basically anti-copaganda. Yeah, there's the comedy element of the police being incompitnent, but overall it's clear: Shawn should NOT be working with the police and is only kept around because the department enjoys the results. Also the whole thing about Shawn's dad abusing him to try and mold the "perfect detective", which - while it pays off and the CHARACTERS are clearly okay with it - is never suggested as a good thing to the audience.
YES. This is such a phenomenon. There are SO MANY shows like this. And most of these were a little before my time but I think Bones enjoyed a big viewership for many years?
You should do a follow-up video about the final season now that it's out. It tried to handle corruption in the force and Amenadiel's new job as a cop and things like that in a way I've never seen in any other cop show. There are flaws, no doubt and I'm not sure how well they pulled it off. But you can tell that they were trying.
And that is may the reason why they were cancelled the first time around, because they basically they double down and triple down in the theme of police corruption, corporations and the police really not like when shows speak about that issue, when that happen, either the police get a slap in the wrists or get flagged as red apple, since the beginning, Chloe was a pariah in the Police Department because she was against corruption, no one wanted be paired with her, until Lucifer come along.
Speaking as an Irish person - the devil is definitely British. Some say the devil is dead, some say the devil is dead, some say the devil is dead and buried in Killarney. More say he rose again, more say he rose again, more say he rose again and joined the British Army.
I'm interested in hearing what you think of The Andy Griffith Show and other small town sheriff shows as they relate to Copaganda. After all sheriffs are often just cops we elect.
Who is the "we" who elect the sheriff? And between what options do we choose? Not that I wholeheartedly disagree, but there is no democracy when civil society is owned by the bourgeoisie, the poor are excluded (either de jure or de facto) from voting, and the options are inherently limited by our basic notions of what a sheriff's job is.
@@Makarosc Many voter ID laws are a combination of de jure and de facto barriers (de jure in that the law creates the barrier to voting, de facto in that poor people struggle to meet that barrier) and the fact that poor people often don't have the time and energy to vote (let alone vote carefully) because they have to constantly work to survive is a huge de facto barrier to voting. There are also other issues like the criminalisation of poverty, crimes of survival, and nonviolent vice crimes (along with unequal enforcement of the last against poor communities, and especially poor communities of colour) which may lead to having voting rights revoked (again, a combination of de jure and de facto barriers). Historically, the law has been less subtle about it, as well (eg. property requirements for voting, so-called literacy tests, voting fees, and disenfranchisement of disproportionately poor communities). There are probably other sneaky ways, but these are the obvious ones I was thinking of when I wrote that comment. That said, I think the worse offence is the way that our options are culled before we even get to cast votes. When elections are won and lost in an arena owned by the bourgeoisie and our very notion of who should run for office and what the office entails are shaped by bourgeois media, then it really doesn't matter who gets to vote.
@@Salsmachev most states don't have those and most of the ones who do aren't strict like most will except a valid driver's license also yeah usually candidates are limited to the two major parties but under your system it's just one and there's still an aristocracy in the form of the Vanguard
20:00 imagine thinking you should only punish the feeling of guilt that represents a person has realized what they did is something that needs amended for
@@aidschbe that isnt the worst part. deciding to not punish people at all for things they can't be expected to understand as wrong isn't unreasonable. It is unreasonable to punish people who can't help but think they did something wrong when they objectively didn't. See doctors blaming themselves for failing to save a patient as an example. Or unhealthy people committing suicide that likely underestimate their self worth and blame themselves irrationally. This would swipe in people with PTSD and mental disorders that distinctly aren't violent or resulting in a person that is destructive
I always took the show as being a sly and sometimes loving satire of police proceedurals, given that the main character can more or less just ask the murderer if they did it. In that respect I think is taking the tropes of that genre and trying to have fun with them, more than commenting on the real world applications of police work. Is it copaganda, yes, but mainly because of the work it doesn't do.
I think the story behind Lucifer being English due to the fact that he tried an American accent and came off like a jerk is hilarious because that's exactly how they wrote the twin character he played. Michael's entire character was that he was a giant knob.
Just realized why I felt weird about WB taking the concept from the Lucifer, the anti-authoritarian role model of angsty teens everywhere and turning into a cop show.
As some others have mentioned, this fails (because it was made over a year ago) to take Season 6 into account, where Lucifer comes to the understanding that his role in Hell was supposed to be as a Healer as opposed to a Torturer.
Commenting for the alg*rithm! This is the type of series that RUclips should be promoting more (through visibility and ads) and I hope more creatives pursue this line of analysis on their channels!
If we have to reform the entire Judeo-Christian concept of sin and punishment as well as the American criminal justice system this is going to be a long struggle indeed.
4:00 I can say for the record that my girlfriend is absolutely obsessed with Lucifer, mostly because all of the characters are hot. I thought its finale (spoilers ahead) with Lucifer becoming Hell's therapist instead of a cop was particularly nice.
20:00 - Classic cop interrogation technique: Convince someone they're actually an evil, evil, evil, evil person and there's no such things as accidents. Except all the times police officers make them 🤔
I love this series, it is the perfect combination of fun and informative. I think that you should consider doing 24/Homeland/Alias, they may not be about cops but spies and special agents are law enforcement and share so many similarities with cops and these shows will provide really rich material
I’d love to see this covered, as someone who grew up in the 2000s on a steady diet of spy-related media (Alias, 24, Chuck, Burn Notice, Covert Affairs… which are pretty vastly different shows. Never got into Nikita but that would count as well). The topic easily ties into some of the subjects he touched on in the superheroes episode with regards to the US as a global police force.
I hate how defense attorneys are shown to be bad guys all the time. If there weren’t defense attorneys, then anyone could be jailed for life for nothing. Defense attorneys make sure that people can prove someone is guilty before that happens.
Lucifer did not kill the human trafficker, he broke his back and left him like a broken doll, which was the term that the trafficker used to define the merchandise he trafficked, "they were already broken dolls." I think the punishment Lucifer gave Julian (the human trafficker) was perfect.
I would love to see Pushing Daisies included on an episode about private investigator shows. It’s silly and over the top but the concept of poetic justice is pulled to its absolute limit in it
just commenting because i love this series but youtube refuses to recommend new episodes to me. hopefully this helps but i turned notifications on to be safe! keep it up!!
Not gonna lie... Im struggling to see how a show where a police department can't accomplish anything without employing literal devil for help is a copaganda
13:26 CHILLING. I'm sure many defense attorneys get into it to "protect the innocent" but that's not really the job; even if someone in the US does a crime, they still have rights, and they're still innocent until proven otherwise. Insert long rant about the rise in plea deals here, but at least in theory defense attorneys are meant to be a checks and balances system with the State--making sure rights are respected and that prosecutors do their job properly. Already pretty telling that they're a traditional bad guy in cop shows, but "you're just as guilty as the criminals you represent"?? HOLY COPAGANDA BATMAN.
This series is always great to see in my feed, as I was... somewhat strangely obsessed with cop (and cop-adjacent) shows as a teen. From CSI: NY to Criminal Minds, Castle to Veronica Mars, I watched them all. Even as I held progressive views?? Anyhow, I love every episode of this, and digging into the ways in which these shows influence the public psyche.
i think your past of being attracted to problematic things can be used as a way to empathise with those who fall further into ideas that appeal to their emotions.
For many people convicted of crimes, there is no path to redemption and a restoration of liberties. They have a record which follows them around forever and denies them opportunities for work, housing, and social participation. And we act like it's on them to rise above those challenges and make better, more socially acceptable choices than they did before. Live a better life in spite of greater adversity. How can we expect people to improve their behaviours and their lives when our system of justice only makes their circumstances worse?
15:29 there actually is a logical point to this. Lucifer learned brtish english before he learned american english (for obvious reasons), and therefore has a closer connection to it. At the end, he is neither a native american nor a native british citizen, he learned the languages. And given that american english is just a dialect born from british english, he obviously is more like a british citizen living in america, than the other way around (atleast from a language perspective).
Two minor errors in this video: 1)10:44 sorry, but he said that its unrealistic that whisteblowers are believed.... they were never believed in the show. Chloe was ridiculed and shamed for stating that Malcolm was corrupt, and the precinct was turned against Lucifer for a while when they were trying to bring down pierce. 2) 18:04 Lucifer didn't kill the human trafficker, the only human he ever kills is cain. 3)
The best way I've been able to think about the contradiction I feel between knowing punishments like prison sentences don't help things, typically make things worse, and just generally result in lots of abuses of human rights and dignities; and still having a strong gut sense that there are people who "deserve" punishment; is that I dont feel like our justice system should be based on anyone's gut feelings or wants. Do i think [insert horrible person] should go to jail/be attacked/die? Maybe! But i don't think there's a system in existence that should be trusted to enforce that.
Your point at 29:26 is perhaps the most poignant and accurate description of the systemic issues that are faced in the modern-day. Especially in the case of the justice system. I give you 1 million billion trillion gold stars. Like that genuinely clicked so well in my mind, and made me really happy.
I'd love to see a similar analysis on Psych's relationship to copaganda. It's there, but between Shawn actively choosing not to be a cop, and some recurring pokes at the cop characters come together to create a weird undercutting of it all
Lucifer was a fun show but the fact that some of its fans think that it accurately represents "good" cops proves it's copaganda. Also it's entire idea of justice and forgiveness is incredibly, incredibly Christian (logically) where you don't need to apologize and make amends to your victims, only to yourself and God.
Shame you didn't wait a month to do this video. A lot of the developments and resolutions in the final season would definitely impact a lot of the discussion points here.
some people do like the storyline but as someone who did the very same thing well don't expect too much from that storyline..... it's.. well not very fleshed out and they do not spend much time on it either. just saying cause it can be disappointing especially if you're gonna watch so many eps for it
@@lecherouslibrarian9924 The cute moments are extremely cute though, Eve. I broke your heart? That's awesome. Maze: gives her a look. Eve. I meant... That's awful.
So about the British thing, the writers had to make him British do to the jokes he had to give. This video somewhere said they tried making Tom speak in an American accent but he sounded like a real douchebag so they let him keep his British accent 😅. I don’t remember if this was after he booked the role or during the audition process
Really, and who’s to say what Lucifer’s accent is anyway. I don’t think delving into accents of supernatural beings has anything to with his whole premise of copaganda
@@rachelgarber1423 He didn't delve into it and it doesn't matter if he did. The video is primarily about copaganda but that doesn't mean we can't talk about things related to the show.
Lucifer has given me some amazing bangers in the soundtrack so I forgive everything. also yes it's much more interesting when it's being a melodramatic biblical soap opera
15:00 you get into the topic of his Welsh accent. His American accent was too unsettling for the charming Lucifer. Hence why his evil twin Michael was given the American accent when season 5 came.
Was watching this series because it was excellent. Now that you've added a Bojack reference, I am morally obligated to love this series and all involved with its creation, good day.
These just keep getting better and better. The conclusion reached at the end of the video is absolutely what people need to hear, think about, and discuss, if ever this mess can stand a chance of meaningful reform.
Lucifer is a show that does some good and some bad when it comes to the police. One thing I really wish you touched on more was Dan and his History as a corrupt cop. Not only does it point out that Dan just getting away with his crooked history is bad, there's even an episode where once again, Dan just gets away with shit. It causes Dan to have a meltdown where he actually gets angry with how much he gets away with. Its a moment that not only says a lot about his character, but really just points out... how much cops get away with just for being cops.
I've been asking myself this question as long as I've been watching Lucifer, so thank you for the nuanced analysis! The conflation between punishment and justice is something that I think I've had in my brain, but never put into works. Well done! Looking forward to your take on Criminal Minds and Hannibal, too! Now to watch the back catalogue :)
This series sticks in my mind all the time when watching series. For example, I'm rewatching Star Trek TNG and I look at it from a _very_ different perspective now, in part thanks to you.
@@arnoldfreeman2885 In general, the whole military-run "exploration" vessel which coincidentally also does a lot of fighting (or, if you will, policing) just sits a lot less comfortably with me now than when I was a child. Although I generally agree with Picard's actions, I can't help but think of how concentrated the power is within Starfleet and how much power Starfleet holds within the Federation, making a terrifyingly militaristic society. Most contact with other planets is done via Starfleet and disobeying a superior officer's orders is an extreme offense that requires an ironclad legal justification, which is hard as officials have a _lot_ of leeway to do as they please. This means a lot of power within the Federation is held within a small group of admirals that were not elected and generally keep their position for life. And iirc although TNG does have a few episodes dealing with officials giving bad orders, usually this is either an alien incursion or a bad apple. The system as a whole is rarely critiqued and never to the point where they come close to considering changing it. In fact, Starfleet is often put on a pedestal as a morally good organization. Let me also give one example that sent shivers down my spine. In Datalore (season one, where Lore is introduced) Riker ordered Wesley, a literal child, to spy on Data before anything bad or suspicious has happened. Wesley says, "Yes, sir!" and walks off with a huge smile on his face, happy to have been ordered to spy on his close friend, as the camera pans to show an extra who is also smiling as if it's cute. That's a thoroughly indoctrinated child and the show doesn't even realize it. I'm nowhere near finished yet, so I'm curious to see how my thoughts change. It's still a lot of fun to watch.
Something my husband and I liked about the early seasons is it never showed his devil face. The best you got was a blurred glitch. It felt much more supernatural. Like the face that was scaring people was a nightmare of their own creation. Once they started showing the face it stopped being scary. It kind of just looked like bad stage make up in comparison to trying to imagine it.
one correction about the human trafficker, he doesnt actually kill him, he only injures him _really really really_ badly. like, the guy is in basically a full body cast and is so terrified that he tells the cops he just fell down a hill (said with the most fear possible) despite it being very clear he didnt. its notable because the only person lucifer kills is cain. in fact, the trafficker is so terrified that he begs to confess his crimes so that he goes to jail because he feels jail is safer for him than being free where lucifer has easy access to him. make your own conclusions about that correction, because i cant tell you what to think about it, mostly cause i dont know a good conclusion to make. i love this show (even if the last season was awful), but that doesnt make it any less of a cop show with its same cop show flaws. also... to bring up a conversation i dont think anyone wants to have (because no one ever has it with me,) this show was blatantly made by christians for christians. its in the writing, its in the interviews, and its especially clear in stuff like the final season where their ultimate message at the end is "you should accept whatever fate god made for you" or whatever crap. im not the best at explaining what i mean but... if you know about how "justice" is in christianity, doesnt it make it a bit more clear when it comes to lucifer, and maybe even... other cop shows? all or nothing, us vs them, blah blah blah. funnily enough that plays into how the best media ive seen that includes heaven and hell and god and stuff wasnt written by christians, because its by people who have the ability to see it from the outside. anyway uh, haha funni devil fall in love with human woman cop show
I second others in the comments for a revisit to Lucifer after the 6th season. Lucifer goes from Punisher to Therapist/Healer, helping people to heal and go to Heaven. They go from retributive justice to restorative justice.
Just to comment on what's probably the least important part of the video, Lucifer probably calls it a boot instead of a trunk because even if you adopt an accent rather than have one as a result of where you grew up you also adopt the vocabulary said accent typically comes with. I'm not a native English speaker and have been more exposed to American culture than British culture but I too still say boot rather than trunk because I've adopted a British accent.
4:01 something that sticks out to me about that reddit gender poll that says that most of it's participants are not male is that it's a reddit gender poll that says that most of it's participants are not male. Reddit is like 4chan but less bad, it's known for having a lot of toxic men on there, so seeing that most of the poll's participants are not men makes me wonder if the number of non-male fans is even higher than that
That trope of defense attorneys being evil and forsaking ethics for money is so common I was surprised when I played my first Phoenix Wright game and realized Phoenix is a defense attorney
There's a huge cultural difference. The way the Japanese judicial system works is that the prosecution almost *always* wins. Being a defense lawyer who wins is super rare so when it happens it's somewhat of a big deal.
The japanese got it diff since phoenix is always fighting an uphill battle against the prosecutor who is always favored to win
So basically, when two groups of people have an equal chance of winning and equal power, they have equal opportunity to be corrupt. When two people have unequal chances of winning and unequal power, they have an unequal chance of being corrupt. I want to say that "absolute power power corrupts absolutely," but if someone desperately scrambles to have power, then they are already corrupt.
In Japan they have something like a 99% conviction rate, and it sure as fuck isn't because their police are "just that good".
@R Hamlet Nah. Nah, you don't get it. The conviction statistics for Japan are insane. Be mad at the US judicial system and criticise it, please. But don't just make false equivelencies because they're easy, do it cus they're accurate.
It seems like the show is more held back by being a cop show rather than like... an angelic soap opera
Which is what it should had been all along, but I take what I can get.
Agreed. The cop part holds it back.
its anchoring it... either you like shows being more grounded in reality or you like escapist fantasy.
Lucifer does a nice spin on cops without as much questionable activity from the cops.... which, if you know anything about humans, they are flawed... hoping cops would be perfect is like expecting you to be perfect. its impossible... the show doesn't have time to focus on Chloe decker being a bad cop because it spends that time showing how Dan was a crooked cop and the important character is Lucifer (how strange that the titular character, his family and their relationship dynamics be the main focus of a story).
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Yeah honestly the cop heavy episodes are pretty boring. That's why the second half of season 5 is so much better than a lot of the show.
The actor said the character is British because when he tried it differently, the character just seemed like a jerk. He's right. Plus the actor is actually British, so...
I think it fits really well in the fact that he's a Neil Gaiman character and that in Good Omens Celestial Beings are just super British for no reason
In the 5th season he gets to play "Lucifer's twin", who's American and a total jerk.
@@ianpitzerds Also, using "trunk" instead of "boot" is also a choice. American English is not more neutral than British English for a cosmic being. Coming from a complete different culture and language, this complaint seems egocentrical.
the british/american english part of the video is the only one i disagreed with kjgkfg;lfdkg;lfdk
as a progressive linguist, i reject the idea of a "standard english", so i'm not even going to go there (though lots of traditional linguists are gonna tell you that what is essentially "queen's" english is the "standard" or even "correct" version of it). however, even without the standard, which lucifer could potentially turn to while speaking, choosing to say certain words is as much of a choice as picking a posh british accent over any other accent. and it actually makes a lot more sense for him to speak lexically with the same dialect as he chose to speak phonetically. so "boot" makes much more sense for him than "trunk" does.
He's Welsh.
the problem with Lucifer's hell is that good people who feel guilt over small deeds are punished eternally , whilst sociopathic & psychopathic serial killers with no remorse would not be there at all.
Update: I love that this philosophical debate is still being added to 3 years later, and is mostly a kind yet challenging space to hang out for a while. Very cool.
That was my first thought!! Do you think Derek Chauvin feels guilty about what he did? What about the other Killer Cops who never got caught/sentenced? Or members of the KKK or other hate groups?
What about Ronald Reagan and his pals who ignored the HIV/AIDS epidemic because it was "gay cancer", or the politicians who are currently not giving a frick about COVID?
A guilty conscience seems like a terrible way to determine if someone has done something "worth punishing"
you could make an interesting story about the system of those with guilty consciences going to hell and those without go to heaven, but youd have to be yknow, critical of that system.
It goes with the premise that everyone thinks they are good and is aware of what bad they do will eventually catch up to them. It's a pleasant fantasy, at least.
I think thats the point Lucifer often says that he didn't make hell he just works there when people complain.
yea it just sorta,,,ignores those people’s existence on purpose lol
Fun Fact: Neil Gaiman, creator of the Lucifer comics, specifically asked that Lucifer had to look like David Bowie, so when creating the show instead of casting someone who looked like Bowie they instead made Lucifer a Bowie Fan, that's why at several scenes The Lux is playing Bowie songs
I had no idea Gaiman created Lucifer holy shit how many things was this man involved in
He isn’t the creator of the Lucifer comics. He created the character in the Sandman, but Mike Carey expanded Lucifer.
@@moisuomi damn, my bad, dk why I mixed it up
@@luisjesus8668 It’s okay
@@tana-beth TBF his Lucifer is not quite like this show, and the Lucifer comics even less so. Lucifer is not at all concerned about being good or evil there, he's more... a force of nature. His conscience is always clear, because killing billions is just nothing that matters to him.
I know it's a small part of the video, but as a criminal defense attorney, I'm glad you touched on the trope that criminal defense is amoral and prosecutors are the real good guys. Because that is another form of copaganda. Prosecutors are also cops. And when Jack McCoy does something blatantly unethical on Law & Order, which is a lot, there's usually an ends justify the means feel to it. It's like the idea that someone "got off on a technicality". That "technicality" is often the 4th, 5th, or 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (or the equivalent in a state constitution). The amoral, scumbag defense attorney didn't do some fancy footwork to bamboozle a judge; they just pointed out that the police, prosecutor, or lower court judge violated a person's rights.
I did wince a little about that aspect of Charlotte's "redemption arc".
It's like kangaroo courts are a bad thing, and that if the whole process isn't followed though properly it somehow becomes illegitimate, if not meaningless.
Yes, the creators of the show seem to dislike the fact that defendants have a right to a fair trial, which imho can be interpreted as hating the Bill of Rights. I’ve watched the show off and on for years, but the anti Constitution gets old after a while
That trope really leans into the idea that ‘bad people don’t deserve respect’ - i.e. human rights don’t count for people perceived as criminals
i think it might be the most bought into lie of all of copaganda. above all else, people seem to fucking despise even the concept of criminal defense in america to a ridiculous degree
“Some say the devil is dead and buried in Killarney, more say he rose again and joined the British Army” is, I believe, the canonical reason
That also explains why Lucifer speaks with the accent: his only interaction with humanity for most of history has been through the people in Hell, so he picked up the most common accent.
@@trianglemoebius 💀💀
@@trianglemoebius 💀💀
@@trianglemoebiusomg took me a min
@@trianglemoebius ur diabolical lol
In terms of Hell being a self-made prison, I always got the impression that Lucifer himself never thought it was a good system. Season 5’s depiction of God is just *so good,* and we really get the sense of someone so out of touch and entirely up his own ass that he’d assume that “guilt over anything = bad person” and “no guilt = good person”. That form of justice is nonsense, and I feel like the show agrees. But, when examining the US penal system, the it definitely errs on the side of copaganda.
Yeah… seems like the worst people are the ones that don’t feel guilty for terrible deeds
i feel like your optimism is clouding the pattern. lucifer doesnt want to examine the structure of current society, only condeming the current popular negative aspects. i think your interpretation is much more interesting, but extremely unlikly to be the direction the show goes in
i rlly hope that they head into that direction, i think lucifer’s greatest weakness is his cynicism. he’s seen what guilt does to otherwise good and decent people and figured the system of hell despite being flawed is some inherent function of the world that can’t Actually be changed. Its very much like how ppl view the justice system, and convicted criminals. it would be scarily tone deaf to show someone actually overcoming the guilt to get to heaven and then have lucifer carry on with hell as it currently functions
@@Bemused247 exactly. Serial killers don't see themselves in the wrong. Mentally disturbed criminals and sociopaths will end up not having guilt. So does Manson and domer just end up in heaven? It's sadly a large plot hole. Hitler feels guilty about losing the war and not making the master race successful, I highly doubt he cares about or feels guilt for millions of dead Jews.
Yeah there was an opportunity for comparison there that the show just never saw
Tom said he tried doing his reading with an american accent but he sounded like a jerk, and apparently the directors liked his take and left the accent and the writers just ran with it. I mean, the whole lucifer singing thing only happened because he went to a karaoke bar with the crew and they found out he could sing and wrote it in to the show
this sounds odd because most actors would have singing as a skill in their resume if they can, or at least in the states. there even used to be a trope of putting skills you dont have, including singing, on a resume to get ahead of the competition
@@Matty002 Apparently in the UK you either train for musical theater or for plain acting - they dont have crossovers like we do
He is.....Lucifer though. Like, the devil. So why is him being a jerk an issue?
@@Sellot91i'm thinking you havent seen the whole series
@@caraziegel7652 I have but I am not talking exclusively about this series. I mean, just the idea of Lucifer being a jerk in any entertainment medium kind of makes sense? He is Lucifer, after all. Even if he is not evil or is more complex morally being a jerk seems understandable.
that “i wanna build a cat sanctuary” line was genuinely funny. Gave me a bit of interest in the show ngl
Honestly the funniest parts of the show are when he uses his charm on a suspect and they blurt out a desire unrelated to the case. Comedy gold every time 😂
that happens every epsiode, i promise lol, its a bit that you think would get old but most times it doesnt
Man, I'm hankering for that Paw Patrol episode.
As a children's librarian I'm super invested in how youth media can sway the opinions of kids and the importance of expansive, truth-first texts throughout media to allow them more autonomy as they grow.
Which is a longwinded way of saying "agreed."
How did you comment 3 Days ago👁👄👁
@@christiana5453 patreon probably
@@JayHankEdLyon Yeah, that. Also, I wanna have an excuse to watch cute animated puppies.
@@JayHankEdLyon Yeah im a Junior Primary teacher. I have students who love paw patrol and also want to be cops. Theres a real narrative for children that cops are the 'good guys' and are safe people.
There's always a tone of people thinking Chloe is so upright and deeply moral because she has an eyeroll and a scoff for anyone who indulges in excessive violence or corruption.
In the real world, there's no way he would be allowed to work with the police after the second episode. He constantly gets evidence without warrants, which would cause it to be thrown out, and gets confessions through intimidation, which is inadmissible.
@@daniusschratzius yeah but he uses his charm or whatever
@@daniusschratzius yh but is it really that innaccurate? the police is a mess so im not even suprised but the thing is i actually sort of like lucifer.
@@daniusschratzius If the DEVIL came to the real world and would use SUPERNATRUAL POWER to procure evidence without warrants,WHILE BEING IMMUNE TO BULLETS he would be surely thrown out of the police force.
Brah
i have the opposite problem with chloe. i find it really weird that she is a gift from god, so "good" that lucifer falls for her, but like... she's just not a total piece of shit? does things by the book, doesn't advocate for human rights violations (which uhh, sometimes she does but whatever). which you know, i feel like is the bare minimum?
I think this should have been held on until season 6. Throughout the show, I think they have been hinting that Lucifer misunderstood his role in hell, and rather than punishing those who fell, he is meant to redeem them. I would be surprised if that is not where the next season leads.
Yeah that’s the general arc I’ve been seeing too. Not sure what the point of any of it is if that isn’t where they are going
That would be nice. Hopefully they watch this video.
Following up a year later, this is EXACTLY where it led with Lucifer understanding that his role in Hell was supposed to be as a Healer as opposed to a Torturer.
@@oremfrienI saw this video today, having seen season six months ago, and found myself mostly agreeing but occasionally going ‘I seem to remember they kinda addressed this’
They address it, but poorly in my eyes, the redemtion of lucifer doesnt appear to be well thought out
As a male Lucifer fan, this was a fun watch. One minor correction. Lucifer didn't kill that human trafficker. He crippled him. They also mention in the show that people who have done awful things, are in hell even if they don't feel guilt.
They're in hell, but they aren't actively being punished because Hell has nothing to build off of. They're functionally on the "just visiting" tile, which really isn't that bad.
@@trianglemoebius just visiting for all eternity
I love Lucifer to bits but saying that it's not copaganda is insane!! I love the nuanced take you have on the show and I 100% agree with everything you said about the show - the main appeal of it is absolutely characters and their evolution and relationships and not the cop part. It's really interesting how the show itself is just... bored of its criminal aspects? It focuses so much more on drama than on the procedural and that's what drew me to it in the first place. Anyway, great video!! Wanted to comment because you certainly deserve more views
You put into words how I have felt about the series. Great take
Calling it copaganda isn't helpfull. It destroys the nuanced view that gets across in this video. I know that us humans love categories we can put stuff into but it's not helpfull. Calling it copaganda will disturb many who might agree with you on a lot of the issues but still identify strongly with the show. It's a lot more helpfull to show what's problematic, to highlight what's good and to stimulate critical thinking in other people. Categorizing it as copaganda won't help in the long run, talking about the problems in nuances will.
@@robertschneider8808 I agree with what you're saying, but the show does have elements of "copaganda" in it, and that's what I was trying to say! Sorry if it wasn't clear.
yeah it has elements in it that you could call copaganda but I think it's important to make the distinction between a show that's just pure propaganda and a show that has some blindspots and isn't critical in every way we would like to see. Pointing out the flaws is far more helpfull than branding it with a label.
Oh that is pretty funny when you see how different lucifer is compared to the comic. Where they only used like the first 3 issues to make the show. Ignoring everything else
This was great but I think you might have missed the point of Lee going to heaven and Lucifer being shocked by it. The fandom has LONG picked up on the hints about hell being deeply. Deeply unjust. About how Lucifer was forced to punish and be the jailer, and his journey is also about breaking free of that. But with Lee gaining his freedom from hell by confronting his guilt, they are acknowledging the unfairness of Hell, and I think that's going to be a major point in the next season. Also. Amenadiel joining the police is absolutely going to lead to more examples of the corrupt system as a whole.
agreed, but idk how well theyre gonna write the amenadiel storyline, but his character has been used super well to point issues at unfairness, i guess a naive new to the world character suits those stories well innit
@@connorbovingdon8563 I agree.
Do you think Amen will change his mind and become God?? Because we all know that Lucifer is going to pull a Hercules and become mortal for his love
I think the big issue with his analysis is that he wrote it before the last season finishes. Thematically, any television show really ties itself together in the last episodes. *shrugs* We don't know what the show is going to do with these storylines, really...
I don't think he missed the point, I think he just identified what the story says, as opposed to what the story was TRYING to say or WANTS to say.
Coming back to this comment after season six aired just to express my contentment with being right
I always thought Lucifer's cultural Britishness was commitment to the bit. Like, the writers write him like that (and Tom Ellis plays a much posher RP accent than his native one) because it's a common persona to have a kink for, which would be exactly why Lucifer would pick it (while feeling like it had been picked for him by god's will or humanity's expectations).
100% agreed! :)
Lucifers accent in the show isn't RP - it is closer to Estuary English (eg a mix of high class RP and lower class cockney) - now spoken by most middle/working class white natives in London and the SE of England.
@@DJHyperreal regardless, he does sound like the stereotypical British accent that a lot of people fetishize.
@@DJHyperreal Tom's Lucifer definitely sounds more RP to me. As opposed to like, famously, Adele.
1° Bad guy is always a british accent
2° If Lucifer were to visit Earth before the show takes place, my bet is London...
The phenomenon of people thinking that it is impossible for non-cop shows to be a copaganda is not surprising. Because there still people who blatantly think that CSI isn't a Copaganda.
well the question is it possible for a show about crime fight be it cops, superhero, monster hunter, hard boiled detective to not be copaganda
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persona 5 counts as one and persona strikers
basically one of the main threats in those games are cops and they do a lot of terrible stuff and shown to be corrupt...
pffffft. the delusion
@@jonsmith9838 I know, over a year old comment, but I'd like to ask what in this circumstance you'd classify as "copaganda"?
@@GermanLeftist Something like Blue Blood, where the dinner table scenes is them paratoing talking points and sometime they strawman the other side. Or stuff with rouge cops, where some leftis lawyer preventing them from GETTING THE JOB DONE. and maybe the hero cops bending the rules a lot to get the Job done.. Stuff like that
Well, he’s probably British because in the comics he was based after David Bowie. Like looks, accent, demeanor, all based after David Bowie.
That's what I thought..but the comic and the show couldn't be further apart.
As a British person, I can reveal that demons are all British. Specifically, English
On top of that Lucifer's actor Tom Ellis is British; so it makes sense that Tom uses his natural British accent while in character. From what I have observed the reason why a lot of women enjoy watching "Lucifer" is because they think Tom Ellis is handsome. There's an episode of "Thirst Tweets" by BuzzFeed where Tom Ellis read thirsty tweets from equally thirsty fans.
The Riverdale Industrial Complex is real and it's coming for us all!!!
What the hell IS the "Riverdale industrial complex"??
@@pyromaniac2104 exactly what it says on the tin
@@Gloomdrake ...this doesn't help
@@pyromaniac2104 you're welcome
@@pyromaniac2104 now you are starting to get it.
I’m about half way through this but I think it’s interesting that he’s talking about Lucifer’s role as the “Punisher” is representative of the Police/Justice System and the show ends with him becoming a Therapist
Lucifer probably calls it a boot, not a trunk, because he was visiting Britain when cars were invented. Or living there, I'm not sure how long ago he quit hell.
In the very first episode, they made it clear he just quit but, they elude throughout the show that Lucifer has visited Earth before. It's actually weirder that all the angels have New England accents instead. Since the English accent had been around since mideval times and the angels are as old as the earth itself if not older.
@@rainmirron Well, yes, but actually no. Sure, there were English accents in medieval times, but it was not what you'd now call an English accent. A modern English accent is _much_ closer to a New England accent than it is to a medieval English accent. You probably couldn't understand medieval English. You could make out some things on occasion, but that's true of, say, German as well.
He stopped by Earth in the 60s or so, according to the episode covering his first week or so in the present day
@2ndBookofLaughter yup! But he had a previous visit, however brief
So apparently a few years back... lucifer leaving hell and settling on earth with a jazz club was actually part of the storyline in Neil Gaiman's sandman comics.
I would like to point out that while Lucifer's antics are often helpful, they're always portrayed as being the wrong way to do it.
True, but he does constantly assault suspects that are supposed to be questioned, and then decker's like '' nu Lucy pls don't do that' but then doesn't intervene or anything, I feel like after the first few seasons they treat it as a given that he's gonna physically assault people
@@iamlaura02 You're right....but also what is she gon do to him? He's literally the devil. The only reason he's vulnerable around her is like he said in the video, if she say - tried to shoot him and he didn't want to be shot, it would work about as well as it does otherwise. Same with subduing him. I think they lean into the eyeroll trope partly for comedic purposes yknow too like "here goes lucy again"
Also with the case of a guy who was able to get to heaven from hell. He was only been able to do so after talking with Lucifer about it. And that tells us that this whole time Lucifer could've helped people in hell to redeem themselves through what is basically a therapy session. And instead he chose to torture them as a "fuck you, dad, and your precious little humans" kind of statement.
This precedence turns a lot of previously thought to be true philosophy about punishment and hell upside down. And The Good Place reference there as you kindly pointed out is no coincidence.
To sum it up, Linda is the best.
First off, Linda is absolutely the best. And secondly, that’s literally what I always thought the second I heard how they described hell in this show!!! I can’t count the amount of times I was like “well your hell is bull shit because it doesn’t matter what level of “bad” you were, as long as you have a little bit of guilt over something in your life, you get dragged down with no hope of escaping by relieving yourself of guilt, because you’re constantly in a loop of getting tortured by the guilt that sent you there in the first place.” Like the very concept is unreasonably cruel. Kinda like how in *THE GOOD PLACE (spoilers)*, it was essentially impossible to get sent to the good place because the inter workings of the world is so complicated that no matter how hard you try to be good, your good acts could have some connection to bad actions, which negate your score far more than the good act effected you positively. So I was literally constantly asking Lucifer why he wasn’t doing anything to help coax people out of their guilt (when their guilt wasn’t bad enough for them to be tortured for… well… ever…), ESPECIALLY after he himself got trapped in a hell loop, and after he willingly returned to hell to protect earth, after realizing that humans were much more than the scum he thought they were, and after many many many many helpful sessions with Linda. So that’s why I was so ecstatic in the season 5 finale when we found out that Lucifer actually helped that robber, who he kept stripping naked, out of his hell loop while he was trying to prove a point. I was literally screaming like “YES!!! YES EXACTLY!!! YOU COULD’VE BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG!!!”. He had this whole journey of self discovery about how he wasn’t a truly evil person, but he never applied that to how he ruled over hell.
Well, people go to hell for a reason, that's why it's there, to punish people
@@jeagerkej3171 not everyone deserves to be punished for all eternity. Even we don't send every criminal in prison for life.
Damn that's a good point
In Lucifer's defense, he didn't know people could redeem themselves and get to Heaven.
The thing I love most about Lucifer was how, post-season 1, every single episode felt like a cliffhanger. If something bad happens, you're wondering "oh no, how are Lucifer and the gang going to deal with this???". If something good happens, you're wondering "oh no, how is Lucifer going to screw this up???".
And then its the exact same thing every time.
I actually got to Tom Ellis at a con a while ago and told him making this a cop show was awful but that he and his character made it impossible not to love and he got super serious, stood up and shook my hand. I think he agreed.
Lucifer is a Neil Gaiman character and in Good Omens Aziraphel and Crowley are also extremely British (in the book I know that the actors are Welesh and Scottish) so I think it just fits the humor of Neil Gaiman that Lucifer is super Brithish for no reason
He is canonically culturally British (specifically posh British) because he got the accent from the most likely people to be in hell, dead torries.
Honestly, the fact that it uses the police procedural as a framing device, rather than it just being "police procedural but with angels," is its biggest strength. Cuz it can kind of get away with some of the bad tropes, because it falls into "well, theyre getting away with shit because Lucifer and all the angelic shit is making things weird," rather than "theyre getting away with shit because its the good guys."
In Lucifer, Dan will say something like; “sucks cause we need a damn warrant but the judge wants evidence *eye roll*”
i like the show cause it's goofy a lot of the time but when they made amenadiel decide to be a cop in the new season part that came out a little while ago, it just felt really tone deaf in all honesty, while yes i saw it coming way before it did it still was really weird to watch
If Amenadiel (who is largely still very niave about the human world) joining to police doesn't lead to a brutal destruction of his vision of the system being good, please come remind me how wrong I am.
@@fiction- my expectations are like non existent considering this is a show that eye rolls police brutality committed by their characters and this being the final season means they're probably going to spend a lot of time with like nostalgia and typing up things, but if they do have the guts to pull off something like that it would be interesting to see
@@faithh2366 damn y’all blood thirsty
But why? 12% of police officers are black.
@@faithh2366
I hope they don't give Amenadiel too hard a time.
It would be sad to see him lose his innocence and sweetness.
SEASON 6 SPOILERS:
so the ending is literally lucifer deciding to help reedem the souls in hell. sounds alot like restorative justice. i think.
Rehabilitation over incarceration. I like it.
And Amenadiel is confronted with the futility of reforming the police from the inside, instead becoming God and restructuring heaven itself to try to better humanity
The redemption in hell thing is literally what I always thought the second I heard how they described hell in this show!!! I can’t count the amount of times I was like “well your hell is bull shit because it doesn’t matter what level of “bad” you were, as long as you have a little bit of guilt over something in your life, you get dragged down with no hope of escaping by relieving yourself of guilt, because you’re constantly in a loop of getting tortured by the guilt that sent you there in the first place.” Like the very concept is unreasonably cruel. Kinda like how in *THE GOOD PLACE (spoilers)*, it was essentially impossible to get sent to the good place because the inter workings of the world is so complicated that no matter how hard you try to be good, your good acts could have some connection to bad actions, which negate your score far more than the good act effected you positively. So I was literally constantly asking Lucifer why he wasn’t doing anything to help coax people out of their guilt (when their guilt wasn’t bad enough for them to be tortured for… well… ever…), ESPECIALLY after he himself got trapped in a hell loop, and after he willingly returned to hell to protect earth, after realizing that humans were much more than the scum he thought they were, and after many many many many helpful sessions with Linda. So that’s why I was so ecstatic in the season 5 finale when we found out that Lucifer actually helped that robber, who he kept stripping naked, out of his hell loop while he was trying to prove a point. I was literally screaming like “YES!!! YES EXACTLY!!! YOU COULD’VE BEEN DOING THAT ALL ALONG!!!”. He had this whole journey of self discovery about how he wasn’t a truly evil person, but he never applied that to how he ruled over hell.
i dont wanna be a buzzkill, but i think that lucifer is going to ignore that aspect of the world they built, and just focus on the characters having endings. I feel as if that guy will be the only example the show gives of redemtion, to give the implication that its possible. i think i might have been burnt a couple too many times by shows with these really interesting dilemas being swept away because the writers stumbled into complexity and stumble right back out
@@PropheticShadeZ Maybe if it was another show, but Lucifer always makes moments like these important later on, especially if it happened in the finale. They have a whole season to develop stuff like this. They wouldn’t just explicitly have a previously hell-punished character show up in heaven, explicitly say “YOU Lucifer helped me come to terms with my guilt, and YOU are the reason why I was the first soul to ever make it from hell into heaven.” And then just not do anything with it lmao. If it’s Lucifer, or if it’s someone else ruling over hell, I think the new process of souls going to hell is that they’re going to see if they’re able to overcome their guilt through basically hell therapy (like what Lucifer did with the robber), and if they can, they’ll be granted access to heaven. The show wouldn’t just drop something that’s clearly an important historical event. The first human to make it out of Hell, after Lucifer helped them on accident, and now knows it’s possible when their given the right push? Yeahhhh that’s only gonna happen once lmao. This show has never shied away from complex scenarios.
Lucifer in the show itself explained why he uses a British accent, it's what people are attracted to.
I know it might not entirely fit with the theme of this series, but honestly I'd be super interested to see you do a more in depth look at the good place, seeing as I've seen a lot of people interpret it as an allegory for prison reform and the need to replace retributive justice with restorative justice
You say it's not important but Charlotte Richards move was important - she was defending white collar rich corporations who were getting away with murder and she changed, she became moral - that was significant.
But it's still positioning defence attorneys as the bad guys - she doesn't change so she joins a non-profit defence organisation, for example, she just switches to prosecution and we're told that's instantly more moral.
This needs a revisit after the final season. It was all about how punishment wasn't the solution but rather helping people to overcome their problems.
I’m curious what you think of the show Once Upon A Time.
The main character’s a cop but the show is about restorative justice.
yes!
Absolutely!
I'd love to see him do that.
I never thought about it like that!
Based on the show, the main problem with restorative justice is that once you're done, you have no villains left and you have to go look for new ones every season, each worse than the previous one, yet each eventually seeing things your way.
@@tommihorttana860 which seems like more of a writing problem than a justice problem. I’d have loved to see them take it in the direction of “ok, so I lured my aunt here for therapy, please help she won’t stop making ice castles”
“I take it that’s why there’s an ice castle at my summer camp?”
“Yes, and… why is she feeding children? Where did she get ice cream?”
A revisit to this show now that Season 6 is done would be nice. It almost feels like the final season was direct response to the criticisms.
Why is "redemption" and becoming a cop such a permanent theme, though?
Bc that’s basically the whole point of the show?
@@ifuckedurmom I mean in general, not for this show in particular
yh i never thought about that. as if taking part in a horrible system will make your problems go away.
I got into Murdoch Mysteries a while back and it's been fairly interesting watching it through a copaganda-aware lens. It's set in 1890s Canada so the police almost never use guns, which gives it a different vibe than most American shows, and it definitely has its fair share of "are we the baddies?" moments, but ultimately it's still copaganda. It's also 15 season so I wouldn't ask you to review it... but you could if you wanted to.
i would love to see at the very least an episode on cop shows that are also period dramas-not sure if there are other shows besides Murdoch Mysteries, but if there are, it would be really interesting to see copaganda merge with pre-modern policing.
I love that show
When I was a kid, my mother abused me. But, because punishment is the only kind of justice anyone seems to understand, the only way I could have gotten out of the situation is if I had video footage of my abuse. Then, my mother could have been charged and I would have been rehomed. Of course, a child in the '00s doesn't have access to a camera unless their parents buy it for them, and my mother isn't that dumb.
I ended up leaving home at 13, not finishing highschool due to financial reasons, and having nothing useful to put on a resumee.
I want to live in a world where justice focuses on helping victims, rather than punishing criminals. I don't care what happens to my abuser, but I know I deserved more of a chance at life than I got.
me getting super mad at 15:40 when he starts ranting about why Lucifer is British. like, fair enough that doesn't make sense, but then he says "so why is he calling it a boot instead of a trunk". my Aussie ass will have none of that U.S. centrism mentality. if it really were to make sense, Lucifer should have no bias towards any language or country - boot or trunk, cookie or biscuit - and just choose words at random, removed of any cultural context.
good video, though
i think its more "why wouldnt he adopt the the accent/words of the country hes staying at"
@@theloveandcookiesgal because why would he need to, he knows being british in america will add to his appeal, he wants to stand out not fit in perfect
@@connorbovingdon8563 im not saying he needs to nor do i care, its obviously a stylistic choice that enhances his characterization in the show. it just doesnt make a lot of sense in the world of the show
@@theloveandcookiesgal I'm literally explaining why it makes sense in the show tho, it's his character, he went British so he would stand out more in America, if he was just another American in a suit he wouldn't have the same appeal 🤷♂️
right, like he's not British but he's not American either, he's not from Earth, why would he adopt a specific dialect as the "default"
He's culturally british because the comic book character is based on David Bowie
So in the adaptation they were going to keep the least important aspects of the series?
I would love to see an episode on consultant shows generally where the main character is someone that works w the police, like monk, psych, elementary, castle, bones, etc
laughing at the naming style of these shows
Sherlock too
In all fairness, Psych is basically anti-copaganda. Yeah, there's the comedy element of the police being incompitnent, but overall it's clear: Shawn should NOT be working with the police and is only kept around because the department enjoys the results.
Also the whole thing about Shawn's dad abusing him to try and mold the "perfect detective", which - while it pays off and the CHARACTERS are clearly okay with it - is never suggested as a good thing to the audience.
@@gil5885 tinker, sailor, soldier, psych, monk, castle, bones
YES. This is such a phenomenon. There are SO MANY shows like this.
And most of these were a little before my time but I think Bones enjoyed a big viewership for many years?
You should do a follow-up video about the final season now that it's out. It tried to handle corruption in the force and Amenadiel's new job as a cop and things like that in a way I've never seen in any other cop show. There are flaws, no doubt and I'm not sure how well they pulled it off. But you can tell that they were trying.
And that is may the reason why they were cancelled the first time around, because they basically they double down and triple down in the theme of police corruption, corporations and the police really not like when shows speak about that issue, when that happen, either the police get a slap in the wrists or get flagged as red apple, since the beginning, Chloe was a pariah in the Police Department because she was against corruption, no one wanted be paired with her, until Lucifer come along.
Speaking as an Irish person - the devil is definitely British.
Some say the devil is dead,
some say the devil is dead,
some say the devil is dead and buried in Killarney.
More say he rose again,
more say he rose again,
more say he rose again and joined the British Army.
I'm interested in hearing what you think of The Andy Griffith Show and other small town sheriff shows as they relate to Copaganda. After all sheriffs are often just cops we elect.
Who is the "we" who elect the sheriff? And between what options do we choose? Not that I wholeheartedly disagree, but there is no democracy when civil society is owned by the bourgeoisie, the poor are excluded (either de jure or de facto) from voting, and the options are inherently limited by our basic notions of what a sheriff's job is.
@@Salsmachev how are poor people excluded from Voting?
Barney!
@@Makarosc Many voter ID laws are a combination of de jure and de facto barriers (de jure in that the law creates the barrier to voting, de facto in that poor people struggle to meet that barrier) and the fact that poor people often don't have the time and energy to vote (let alone vote carefully) because they have to constantly work to survive is a huge de facto barrier to voting. There are also other issues like the criminalisation of poverty, crimes of survival, and nonviolent vice crimes (along with unequal enforcement of the last against poor communities, and especially poor communities of colour) which may lead to having voting rights revoked (again, a combination of de jure and de facto barriers). Historically, the law has been less subtle about it, as well (eg. property requirements for voting, so-called literacy tests, voting fees, and disenfranchisement of disproportionately poor communities). There are probably other sneaky ways, but these are the obvious ones I was thinking of when I wrote that comment.
That said, I think the worse offence is the way that our options are culled before we even get to cast votes. When elections are won and lost in an arena owned by the bourgeoisie and our very notion of who should run for office and what the office entails are shaped by bourgeois media, then it really doesn't matter who gets to vote.
@@Salsmachev most states don't have those and most of the ones who do aren't strict like most will except a valid driver's license also yeah usually candidates are limited to the two major parties but under your system it's just one and there's still an aristocracy in the form of the Vanguard
20:00 imagine thinking you should only punish the feeling of guilt that represents a person has realized what they did is something that needs amended for
Sociopaths partying in heaven.
Ikr it's so tone deaf
@@aidschbe that isnt the worst part. deciding to not punish people at all for things they can't be expected to understand as wrong isn't unreasonable. It is unreasonable to punish people who can't help but think they did something wrong when they objectively didn't. See doctors blaming themselves for failing to save a patient as an example. Or unhealthy people committing suicide that likely underestimate their self worth and blame themselves irrationally. This would swipe in people with PTSD and mental disorders that distinctly aren't violent or resulting in a person that is destructive
@@moona3206 it's supposed to be dumbass
This account for the plot of the show
I always took the show as being a sly and sometimes loving satire of police proceedurals, given that the main character can more or less just ask the murderer if they did it. In that respect I think is taking the tropes of that genre and trying to have fun with them, more than commenting on the real world applications of police work. Is it copaganda, yes, but mainly because of the work it doesn't do.
I think the story behind Lucifer being English due to the fact that he tried an American accent and came off like a jerk is hilarious because that's exactly how they wrote the twin character he played. Michael's entire character was that he was a giant knob.
Just realized why I felt weird about WB taking the concept from the Lucifer, the anti-authoritarian role model of angsty teens everywhere and turning into a cop show.
As some others have mentioned, this fails (because it was made over a year ago) to take Season 6 into account, where Lucifer comes to the understanding that his role in Hell was supposed to be as a Healer as opposed to a Torturer.
18:09 Lucifer doesn’t kill him, just break his back. Lucifer has only killed two people in the show
There's a powerful taboo against celestials killing humans.
Commenting for the alg*rithm! This is the type of series that RUclips should be promoting more (through visibility and ads) and I hope more creatives pursue this line of analysis on their channels!
Jackson deserves so much more attention our boy is so damn talented!
This was such a good video!! And if you do end up making an episode on Veronica Mars and The Americans, I'm looking forward to it!!
An epsidoe about the Americans would be absolutely amazing
If we have to reform the entire Judeo-Christian concept of sin and punishment as well as the American criminal justice system this is going to be a long struggle indeed.
Would love to see a video on Hannibal!
Same!
4:00 I can say for the record that my girlfriend is absolutely obsessed with Lucifer, mostly because all of the characters are hot. I thought its finale (spoilers ahead) with Lucifer becoming Hell's therapist instead of a cop was particularly nice.
20:00 - Classic cop interrogation technique: Convince someone they're actually an evil, evil, evil, evil person and there's no such things as accidents.
Except all the times police officers make them 🤔
I love this series, it is the perfect combination of fun and informative. I think that you should consider doing 24/Homeland/Alias, they may not be about cops but spies and special agents are law enforcement and share so many similarities with cops and these shows will provide really rich material
I’d love to see this covered, as someone who grew up in the 2000s on a steady diet of spy-related media (Alias, 24, Chuck, Burn Notice, Covert Affairs… which are pretty vastly different shows. Never got into Nikita but that would count as well). The topic easily ties into some of the subjects he touched on in the superheroes episode with regards to the US as a global police force.
Covert Affairs!
I hate how defense attorneys are shown to be bad guys all the time. If there weren’t defense attorneys, then anyone could be jailed for life for nothing. Defense attorneys make sure that people can prove someone is guilty before that happens.
Lucifer did not kill the human trafficker, he broke his back and left him like a broken doll, which was the term that the trafficker used to define the merchandise he trafficked, "they were already broken dolls." I think the punishment Lucifer gave Julian (the human trafficker) was perfect.
I would love to see Pushing Daisies included on an episode about private investigator shows. It’s silly and over the top but the concept of poetic justice is pulled to its absolute limit in it
The return!! Waiting for Copaganda episodes like they're the Detox album.
just commenting because i love this series but youtube refuses to recommend new episodes to me. hopefully this helps but i turned notifications on to be safe! keep it up!!
Not gonna lie... Im struggling to see how a show where a police department can't accomplish anything without employing literal devil for help is a copaganda
HOLY SHIT I WANT THE PAW PATROL EPISODE SO BAD
13:26 CHILLING. I'm sure many defense attorneys get into it to "protect the innocent" but that's not really the job; even if someone in the US does a crime, they still have rights, and they're still innocent until proven otherwise. Insert long rant about the rise in plea deals here, but at least in theory defense attorneys are meant to be a checks and balances system with the State--making sure rights are respected and that prosecutors do their job properly. Already pretty telling that they're a traditional bad guy in cop shows, but "you're just as guilty as the criminals you represent"?? HOLY COPAGANDA BATMAN.
This series is always great to see in my feed, as I was... somewhat strangely obsessed with cop (and cop-adjacent) shows as a teen. From CSI: NY to Criminal Minds, Castle to Veronica Mars, I watched them all. Even as I held progressive views?? Anyhow, I love every episode of this, and digging into the ways in which these shows influence the public psyche.
i think your past of being attracted to problematic things can be used as a way to empathise with those who fall further into ideas that appeal to their emotions.
For many people convicted of crimes, there is no path to redemption and a restoration of liberties. They have a record which follows them around forever and denies them opportunities for work, housing, and social participation. And we act like it's on them to rise above those challenges and make better, more socially acceptable choices than they did before. Live a better life in spite of greater adversity.
How can we expect people to improve their behaviours and their lives when our system of justice only makes their circumstances worse?
Also, in several scenes in the department, you can see a back the blue flag on a door in the background.
15:29 there actually is a logical point to this. Lucifer learned brtish english before he learned american english (for obvious reasons), and therefore has a closer connection to it.
At the end, he is neither a native american nor a native british citizen, he learned the languages. And given that american english is just a dialect born from british english, he obviously is more like a british citizen living in america, than the other way around (atleast from a language perspective).
Two minor errors in this video:
1)10:44 sorry, but he said that its unrealistic that whisteblowers are believed.... they were never believed in the show. Chloe was ridiculed and shamed for stating that Malcolm was corrupt, and the precinct was turned against Lucifer for a while when they were trying to bring down pierce.
2) 18:04 Lucifer didn't kill the human trafficker, the only human he ever kills is cain.
3)
this copaganda series is spectacular. you've done great work.
I've been waiting for this for a YEAR from you!
The best way I've been able to think about the contradiction I feel between knowing punishments like prison sentences don't help things, typically make things worse, and just generally result in lots of abuses of human rights and dignities; and still having a strong gut sense that there are people who "deserve" punishment; is that I dont feel like our justice system should be based on anyone's gut feelings or wants. Do i think [insert horrible person] should go to jail/be attacked/die? Maybe! But i don't think there's a system in existence that should be trusted to enforce that.
Your point at 29:26 is perhaps the most poignant and accurate description of the systemic issues that are faced in the modern-day. Especially in the case of the justice system. I give you 1 million billion trillion gold stars. Like that genuinely clicked so well in my mind, and made me really happy.
I'd love to see a similar analysis on Psych's relationship to copaganda. It's there, but between Shawn actively choosing not to be a cop, and some recurring pokes at the cop characters come together to create a weird undercutting of it all
Lucifer was a fun show but the fact that some of its fans think that it accurately represents "good" cops proves it's copaganda. Also it's entire idea of justice and forgiveness is incredibly, incredibly Christian (logically) where you don't need to apologize and make amends to your victims, only to yourself and God.
Shame you didn't wait a month to do this video. A lot of the developments and resolutions in the final season would definitely impact a lot of the discussion points here.
I started watching for Maze and Eve. I was disappointed to learn they won't be getting together until season four.
some people do like the storyline but as someone who did the very same thing well don't expect too much from that storyline..... it's.. well not very fleshed out and they do not spend much time on it either. just saying cause it can be disappointing especially if you're gonna watch so many eps for it
@@roza2633 Wow.
@@lecherouslibrarian9924
The cute moments are extremely cute though,
Eve. I broke your heart? That's awesome.
Maze: gives her a look.
Eve. I meant... That's awful.
@@alanpennie8013 Thanks.
So about the British thing, the writers had to make him British do to the jokes he had to give. This video somewhere said they tried making Tom speak in an American accent but he sounded like a real douchebag so they let him keep his British accent 😅. I don’t remember if this was after he booked the role or during the audition process
Really, and who’s to say what Lucifer’s accent is anyway. I don’t think delving into accents of supernatural beings has anything to with his whole premise of copaganda
@@rachelgarber1423 He didn't delve into it and it doesn't matter if he did. The video is primarily about copaganda but that doesn't mean we can't talk about things related to the show.
I won't accept lucifer as anything other than that one painting where he cries and glares over his arm, hiding his face.
It's very pretty.
Lucifer has given me some amazing bangers in the soundtrack so I forgive everything. also yes it's much more interesting when it's being a melodramatic biblical soap opera
15:00 you get into the topic of his Welsh accent. His American accent was too unsettling for the charming Lucifer. Hence why his evil twin Michael was given the American accent when season 5 came.
Was watching this series because it was excellent. Now that you've added a Bojack reference, I am morally obligated to love this series and all involved with its creation, good day.
6:15 right?
@@Albtraum_TDDC Yup
I am J goddamn D goddamn Salinger, _and I want _*_rain!_*
These just keep getting better and better. The conclusion reached at the end of the video is absolutely what people need to hear, think about, and discuss, if ever this mess can stand a chance of meaningful reform.
Lucifer is a show that does some good and some bad when it comes to the police. One thing I really wish you touched on more was Dan and his History as a corrupt cop. Not only does it point out that Dan just getting away with his crooked history is bad, there's even an episode where once again, Dan just gets away with shit. It causes Dan to have a meltdown where he actually gets angry with how much he gets away with. Its a moment that not only says a lot about his character, but really just points out... how much cops get away with just for being cops.
I've been asking myself this question as long as I've been watching Lucifer, so thank you for the nuanced analysis! The conflation between punishment and justice is something that I think I've had in my brain, but never put into works. Well done!
Looking forward to your take on Criminal Minds and Hannibal, too! Now to watch the back catalogue :)
I HATE what they did to Chloe, she’s ONLY “his love interest” and I hated the last few season because she was so one dimensional.
Wow. Even the third season of Twin Peaks had its full song performances only at the end of the episodes.
This series sticks in my mind all the time when watching series. For example, I'm rewatching Star Trek TNG and I look at it from a _very_ different perspective now, in part thanks to you.
Just curious, in what way?
@@arnoldfreeman2885 In general, the whole military-run "exploration" vessel which coincidentally also does a lot of fighting (or, if you will, policing) just sits a lot less comfortably with me now than when I was a child. Although I generally agree with Picard's actions, I can't help but think of how concentrated the power is within Starfleet and how much power Starfleet holds within the Federation, making a terrifyingly militaristic society.
Most contact with other planets is done via Starfleet and disobeying a superior officer's orders is an extreme offense that requires an ironclad legal justification, which is hard as officials have a _lot_ of leeway to do as they please. This means a lot of power within the Federation is held within a small group of admirals that were not elected and generally keep their position for life. And iirc although TNG does have a few episodes dealing with officials giving bad orders, usually this is either an alien incursion or a bad apple. The system as a whole is rarely critiqued and never to the point where they come close to considering changing it. In fact, Starfleet is often put on a pedestal as a morally good organization.
Let me also give one example that sent shivers down my spine. In Datalore (season one, where Lore is introduced) Riker ordered Wesley, a literal child, to spy on Data before anything bad or suspicious has happened. Wesley says, "Yes, sir!" and walks off with a huge smile on his face, happy to have been ordered to spy on his close friend, as the camera pans to show an extra who is also smiling as if it's cute. That's a thoroughly indoctrinated child and the show doesn't even realize it.
I'm nowhere near finished yet, so I'm curious to see how my thoughts change. It's still a lot of fun to watch.
6:15 a bojack horseman reference, I see you're a man of culture
HWS:WDTKDTK:LFO appreciation corner
Something my husband and I liked about the early seasons is it never showed his devil face. The best you got was a blurred glitch. It felt much more supernatural. Like the face that was scaring people was a nightmare of their own creation. Once they started showing the face it stopped being scary. It kind of just looked like bad stage make up in comparison to trying to imagine it.
one correction about the human trafficker, he doesnt actually kill him, he only injures him _really really really_ badly. like, the guy is in basically a full body cast and is so terrified that he tells the cops he just fell down a hill (said with the most fear possible) despite it being very clear he didnt. its notable because the only person lucifer kills is cain. in fact, the trafficker is so terrified that he begs to confess his crimes so that he goes to jail because he feels jail is safer for him than being free where lucifer has easy access to him. make your own conclusions about that correction, because i cant tell you what to think about it, mostly cause i dont know a good conclusion to make.
i love this show (even if the last season was awful), but that doesnt make it any less of a cop show with its same cop show flaws. also... to bring up a conversation i dont think anyone wants to have (because no one ever has it with me,) this show was blatantly made by christians for christians. its in the writing, its in the interviews, and its especially clear in stuff like the final season where their ultimate message at the end is "you should accept whatever fate god made for you" or whatever crap. im not the best at explaining what i mean but... if you know about how "justice" is in christianity, doesnt it make it a bit more clear when it comes to lucifer, and maybe even... other cop shows? all or nothing, us vs them, blah blah blah. funnily enough that plays into how the best media ive seen that includes heaven and hell and god and stuff wasnt written by christians, because its by people who have the ability to see it from the outside.
anyway uh, haha funni devil fall in love with human woman cop show
I second others in the comments for a revisit to Lucifer after the 6th season. Lucifer goes from Punisher to Therapist/Healer, helping people to heal and go to Heaven. They go from retributive justice to restorative justice.
Just to comment on what's probably the least important part of the video, Lucifer probably calls it a boot instead of a trunk because even if you adopt an accent rather than have one as a result of where you grew up you also adopt the vocabulary said accent typically comes with. I'm not a native English speaker and have been more exposed to American culture than British culture but I too still say boot rather than trunk because I've adopted a British accent.
I want an update video about the final season! What did you think about Dan's (You called it) redemption and Lucifer NOT KEEPING his title as God?
4:01 something that sticks out to me about that reddit gender poll that says that most of it's participants are not male is that it's a reddit gender poll that says that most of it's participants are not male. Reddit is like 4chan but less bad, it's known for having a lot of toxic men on there, so seeing that most of the poll's participants are not men makes me wonder if the number of non-male fans is even higher than that