Moonlight: "The Mortal Cure"

"Above average"
A premature season finale... A bit on the open-ended side.

I understand "The Mortal Cure" wasn't meant to be the season finale. That said, I thought it could've been better when I consider the last few episodes that'd come earlier.

This episode was centered around Mick getting the "cure" and getting tangled up in the trouble Coraline got herself into with Lance, a powerful ancient vampire...and her "brother." The B-storyline of Beth grieving over Josh, learning that he was going to propose to her, and being angry at Mick for refusing to "turn" Josh wasn't complementary, but a distraction.

I felt that Beth's part could've been reduced to her receiving condolences for Josh, learning about the ring he was prepping for her, and blowing Mick off at the beginning and then meeting Mick at Josh's funeral when he got the cure towards the end. The rest of the episode could've been devoted to Mick and Coraline to better effect.

Anyhow, after Beth gives him the cold shoulder, Mick goes to his office, where he picks up a scent...

The older a vamp gets, the more rank? (if that's the right word) the vamp becomes. New "Moonlight" worldbuilding detail. Ergo Coraline and Josef must be musky. Mick's apartment is rank.

A tall, cocky-looking guy with a black eye stands on Mick's balcony, giving him a lordly smile. A thickset linebacker type stands at the tall guy's back like he's "an indentured servant." The tall guy proceeds to demonstrate that he knows everything about Mick, including the fact that Mick was sired by Coraline, who he wants.

Mick says he doesn't know where she is, and the tall guy and his manservant go leaping off the balcony into the night a la Spiderman, but without the webslinging. Nice.

Mick goes to Josef, who says the tall guy is Lance, an ancient vamp who makes Josef seem like a "pauper." Lance never leaves Europe, but since he has, Coraline must've done something major to draw him to LA. Josef warns Mick to stay out of things and look out for himself. Naturally, Mick doesn't take Josef's advice.

Mick looks through hospital video footage during the time of Coraline's disappearance to see that she was carted out by a vamp friend of hers, Cynthia. With the help of his vamp hacker friend, Logan, Mick tracks Cynthia to a LA hotel. Cynthia says Coraline took off for Europe. Mick doesn't believe her, he leaves, and she abruptly drops out. I wondered why she was brought into the episode in the first place?

Somehow, Mick tracks Coraline to a warehouse where she's running experiments on a "compound" with plants and monkeys. Lance comes busting in alone, dispatches Coraline's vamp lab tech, and is about to take her away with him when Mick intervenes--

And gets his butt handed to him.

Coraline runs off, then so does Lance. Mick stays to put out a lab fire and calls the cleaner squad in. The head cleaner, a lady vamp named Celeste, lets slip that the warehouse is a hot spot for her crew--and that Mick doesn't need a catastrophe to call her up. Mick barely gives her a nod and heads off. What purpose did Celeste's crush on Mick and knowing that she's been coming to the warehouse serve?

Mick finds Beth at his apartment, who wants to lean on his shoulder over Josh. Coraline then shows up, and Beth leaves. Coraline then reveals that King Louis, and several members of the French court before the French Revolution were vamps, making the French Revolution out to be a vampire purge. Coraline also infodumps on Lance being one of "seven brothers" among the vampire aristocracy, who used the "cure" to temporarily become human and avoid the guillotine. Interesting reinterpretation of history, but I'm on the fence about Louis himself being a vamp.

Beth tells Mick that she simply wanted to know what it was like to "live again" so that she could know love with him and give back a little bit of what she took from him. This sounds like quite a character struggle. Too bad we didn't see this on the series (and how she survived being burned alive). She cuts Mick's arm, dabs the "cure" (a reddish paste), and the wound stays unhealed.

As the two go off to hide, Mick goes on about how he starts to feel warm and human again. Which is when Lance reappears. With his manservant this time. (Why wasn't the bodyguard at the warehouse, too?)

Mick starts to go paranoid on Coraline, saying she stripped him of his powers so Lance could take him down. But Lance points out he can take Mick down any day of the week at his vampire best, and it's simply not about Mick.

Fisticuffs commence, and Mick gets tossed around like a rag doll. He does a good job staking the bodyguard, though. Coraline holds up for a little while against Lance. But when Mick bats Lance in the back with a pipe (why not take the baddie's head off?), Lance just shrugs it off and tosses Mick into the back window of a nearby car.

As Lance advances on Mick, who lies gasping on the pavement, to apply the final coup de grace, Coraline offers to go quietly with Lance and give him all the compound she stole from him. Lance accepts, but not before telling Coraline she's in for a world of punishment at the hands of "him," their sire no doubt. Somehow, Mick realizes that Coraline is one of the vamp aristocrat siblings. Lance stakes Coraline, tells Mick "Welcome to the family," and takes off with Coraline.

Mick staggers home, puts some bandages on, eats a couple loads of Chinese delivery, and sleeps on a couch for the first time in years.

He shows up at Josh's funeral, where Beth realizes that he's human again. But only temporarily. We see that Beth is wearing Josh's grandmother's ring even though she'd said earlier that she wasn't sure whether she'd have accepted Josh's proposal.

Mick and Beth give each other searching looks at the priest orates on how life is finite and we have to make the best of the time we have. But where will these two go considering that Mick being a vampire is their stumbling block and his "cure" is temporary?

Some interesting elements and issues were raised here, but not focused on. No doubt they'll be developed when the WGA finally gets its act together and works out a deal that'll end the writers strike.

In addition to the other nits I noted, I thought we could've seen Josef come to give Mick support--and get beaten down alongside with him to show what a good friend he is. After all he owes Mick for helping him out with the ex-military hitman in "Sleeping Beauty." And with Josef coming out to face Lance, we could've gotten to see some of the tensions between "modern" vamps and the more "ancient" ones. Moonlight is apparently going with the implication that older vampires are more powerful than newer ones like in Forever Knight and Buffy/Angel. I'm fine with that.

This episode wasn't bad, but I felt it could've been better.