Moonlight: "Sleeping Beauty"

"Series Classic"
The best "Moonlight" yet!

Having watched "Forever Knight," "Buffy," and "Angel," I was curious about "Moonlight."

I'm glad I decided to give the show a chance because it's been getting better with each week. David Greenwalt (ex-"Buffy," "Angel," etc. producer) helped provide early development for the series before he had to leave for health reasons. Hopefully, the producers who stayed on, Ron Koslow and Trevor Munson, keep up the momentum that Greenwalt helped build. Many critics were skeptical at the start of the season, saying that "Moonlight" is just another play on a tired old theme. Problem is every story has been told, so there are no "new" plots. It's up to the producers/writers to provide viewers with interesting characters in difficult situations. I feel that they're passing that test--so far.

Regarding this episode, we've got two parallel storylines: an old man on life support in NYC who hires a pro assassin to take out Mick's best friend, Josef, a 400 year old vamp, and Coraline back as a human, hanging on for dear life from a stake to the heart she got courtesy of Beth in the previous episode "Fleur de Lis."

Mick and Beth overlook Coraline, who's just breathing. Luckily Beth only nicked her heart, but she did puncture a lung. Unfortunately, Coraline has a major infection. She tells Nick she came back from the dead as a human for him (a la Angel's Darla). Should we be touched or freaked out? =) Unfortunately, she doesn't spill the beans before she goes unconscious.

Meantime, the hitman sneaks up on Josef in his office as he's playing poker with two other vamps, lays down a hail of automatic weapons fire, and tosses two incendiary grenades to blow out the office. Nice job.

Mick and Beth show up to investigate. No signs of remains. Josef is dead to the world. Mick is grieving and Beth is so torn for him. Except Josef's waiting for our budding couple when they show up in Mick's apartment and asks if they're ready to help find out killed him. LOL. I knew he survived. But I didn't mind.

Thanks to video surveillance and IR imaging records they got from the security system in Josef's business building, Mick and Beth ID the hitman and learn from a hacker friend of Beth's that he's an ex green beret and black ops specialist. If one is merely mortal and doesn't have an army of guards with the latest military spec, it'd be wise to worry.

Despite Mick's warning to stay low in his apartment, Josef gets stir crazy and goes back to his office to claim some cash. Unfortunately, his security chief calls in the hitman for a payoff and gets a bullet in the forehead for his trouble.

Meantime, Josef is opening a fireproof safe in his bombed out office. He picks up a few wads of cash, then lingers over a heart-shaped pendant. The hitman shows up behind him with a semiautomatic 9 mm complete with silencer.

But Mick comes in the nick of time to toss the guy around. The hitman's very good. He gets in some good punches and stabs Mick in the gut with a smooth special ops knife move. If only he weren't fighting an undead opponent with the strength of 4 (or so) men who could regenerate. Nice tight fight sequence. A few of the cuts were a bit too abrupt, though. Anyhow, Mick has the the guy hanging over a balcony, gets the name of his employer (John Witley), then bangs his head against a column to knock him out. He turns to Josef for help in carrying the guy out, but Josef has vamoosed.

After Mick hands the hitman off to the police, Beth shows up with info. Witley's a 93 year old real estate developer with a daughter who disappeared in 1955. We cut back to the hospital, where the doctor wonders why Coraline doesn't have a fever from her infection and how her body has lost 2 degrees fahrenheit. A nurse checks on Coraline. As she leans in close, Coraline's eyes go grey and her fangs extend. But Coraline fights off the bloodlust and the nurse walks out none the wiser. I knew the "cure" she took was temporary.

Beth is packing to go to NYC when her boyfriend Josh shows up. He asks her to look him in the eye and say there's nothing going on with Mick. As she averts her eyes, Mick shows up to pick her up. Josh leaves and Beth looks after him, heart struck.

Somehow, the hitman, while handcuffed in the back of a LA police squad car, is able to take out two cops and escapes. (He's really good.) The hitman then goes back to Whitley in NYC. He inserts a hypodermic into an IV line, ready to inject an air bubble in Whitley, and asks him how Josef could've survived the hit...

Josef shows up in an apartment at NYC.

Mick and Beth arrive at Whitley's residence, where the old man gives them the diary of his daughter, Sarah. Seems that Sarah met Josef back in '55, fell in love, and vanished.

Mick and Beth track Josef to the apartment, where they find Josef--and Whitley's daughter. She's lying in a coma, not a day over 21. Josef says he met her one day in Grand Central station waiting for a train (like in any classic movie) and fell in love against his will. Josef tried to hide being a vamp from her, but somehow she knew and she didn't care. She then kept after him for months to "turn" her so they could be together. Reluctantly, he does. But she didn't revive. So he kept her cared for till maybe modern medicine could do something for her. I couldn't help wondering if Dr. Crusher or Dr. Bashir could beam in and run a sensor scan.

That's when the hitman crashes in through a window, wearing a harness and detachable line. As everyone jumps for the floor, he empties a gun clip into Josef, then stakes him in the heart. As he wonders why Josef doesn't die, Mick intervenes again. This time the fight's short and he breaks the hitman's neck to take him out for good.

Mick finally understands why Josef has been telling him that it can't work out between vamps and humans. But Mick insists that anything's possible.

As Beth catches a taxi for the airport to catch a flight to LA, Mick asks her to go out with him to enjoy a night in NYC. But Beth says no cuz she wants to settle things with Josh.

Coraline meantime seems to be reaching a critical point in her hospital room. Her're bloodshot when they open, then her heart monitor at the nurse's station flatlines. When a trauma team comes pounding in with paddles and a crash cart, Coraline's bed is empty.

I sense some foreboding developments down the road.

If only someone would kick the bloody WGA and AMTP in their collective backsides to end the strike, so that we can see the first season of "Moonlight" finish. I expect that when viewers are hit with rerun after rerun in 2008, more of a public outcry will build up to help those two entities get their acts together.

Fortunately, the inital order of 13 episodes seems to be mostly done from what I've heard. I like that we got to see more of Josef in this episode, who I felt was underused through the season so far. It wasn't essential, but I wouldn't have minded seeing him in action.

If there's one quibble I have, I wonder why the hitman, who has access to the latest military hardware didn't load up on grenade launchers, phosporous bullets, flame throwers, home made napalm, etc. once he learned that he was going up against vampires?

Classic shaolin kungfu and more modern aikido teaches people how to go with the flow and use the strength of another against an opponent. Problem is, it can take at least 20 years to master. Lacking 20 years, using explosives and incendiary munitions against vampires is the way to go. The hitman should've done more research and packed more than a stake before coming back for a rematch.

Great episode all around, though.