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.

Moonlight: "Love Lasts Forever"

"Series Classic"
Josh-heavy installment. The show just keeps getting better.

I'm impressed with how the series producers are taking a familiar concept to a good place. Too bad the bloody writers strike is keeping production on new episodes from going ahead.

Just one more left after this episode.

Speaking of which, "Love Lasts Forever" opens with Josh pressing Chemma Tejada, an El Salvadoran drug lord, to either help bring in some Latin-American drug dealers in the US or face a grand jury.

Tejada tells Josh to do what he has to do and be ready for "a miserable future." Tejada took out the wife of the last prosecutor who went after him back in El Salvador. I guess the guys from the Colombian Medellin cartel don't have anything on Tejada. Josh's prospects aren't looking bright.

Mick and Beth are in her apartment kibitzing over a blood sample he got from Coraline before she vanished. They decide on a private lab when Josh shows up to warn Beth about Tejada. He also signs Mick up for her protection detail.

Some goons in mask beat on Josh in a parking lot as he goes from his office to his car. When they have him curled up on the ground, they leave a picture of Beth by his face and warn they'll see her next if he doesn't back off of Tejada.

Josh hightails it back to Beth to tell her that he's recusing himself from the case to save her. Beth then goes noble and selfless, saying how her safety doesn't matter against the need to put Tejada behind bars. Josh muses how he'd forgotten about how cute she was when she crusaded. A spark's rekindled, they kiss, and...spend the night together.

Tejada is holding his daughter's quinceanera (15th birthday party), a Latin-American sweet sixteen gala. As they dance, he tells his daughter nothing's too good for her. Too bad he's a ruthless thug. Josh crashes the party with Lt. Davis and a few squads of cops. Josh says Tejada shouldn't have made things personal. Tejada tells Josh he doesn't have much time left. Looking like bullyboys, the cops haul Tejada from his daughter's party. Ironic.

Josh goes ahead with pressing charges and gets a judge to set a bail of $5 million dollars.

Meantime, Nick and Beth're getting the low down on Coraline's blood, which is...normal.

Aside from the fact that it's like a child's sample, being free of toxins and free radicals that adults inevitably gather (unless they eat well). And the sample is A-negative, extremely rare. As in less than 15% of Americans rare. It's also Beth's blood type. Outside the clinic, Mick reveals that children's blood is the best for vamps, especially if it's the same type as the vamp's original blood. I'm speculating here, but I won't be shocked if Beth turns out to be a descendant of Coraline's. Another reason Coraline singled her out as a potential vamp daughter?

Mick comes up short when he hears a high-powered automatic rifle being assembled and loaded. Supersonic vamp hearing is so handy. A sniper targets Beth in the head with a laser scope and fires--

Nick drags her down at the last millisecond, then dodges superquick toward Tejada's goons, who bug out. Nick goes back to Beth, who only has a few scratches. She worries when she sees he has blood on his chest. It's not his blood. It's Coraline's. Damn.

The vial's crushed. But Mick and Beth have more pressing concerns right now.

At Beth's apartment, Josh makes sure Beth is OK and that her police escort has been suitably beefed up. He and Mick have a nice bonding moment over how they want to keep Beth safe.

Josh steps out to his car, where Tejada's thugs grab him and stuff him into their car's trunk. Pretty blatant. I would've nabbed him out of sight of Beth's police detail. Nick and Beth jump into her car and go chasing after 'em. But they're out of sight. So Nick calls a hacker friend (human?) to triangulate on the GPS locater in Josh's cell, which Beth calls. As she assures Josh, who's gagged, that she'll find him, Nick's hacker friend triangulates the return signal in a remote corner of Griffith Park somewhere near the observatory. Nick and Beth peel rubber and call the police to meet 'em.

Tejada's thugs pause in the park as they wait for a park ranger to drive away. They're just about to bump Josh off when Nick and Beth come barrelling. Nick shrugs off a few hits and takes the thugs down, while Beth keeps her head to the ground.

They open the car trunk and are about to get Josh out when a thug revives, gets a spare gun, and pumps a few rounds into Josh.

Nick knocks him out, gets Beth to call an ambulance, then does first aid on Nick, revealing he was a medic in WW II. In a sequence worthy of "House" and "Grey's Anatomy," Nick puts pressure on a belly wound, uses a neck tie as a tourniquet to bind Josh's leg, and cauterizes a severed artery on Josh's neck with a car cigarette lighter.

But Nick senses that Josh's leg wound is still bleeding, so he bums Beth's necklace to tie an artery off. But Josh goes unconscious and Nick hears his heart stop. He and Beth're doing CPR when Davis and the cops show up. Late.

The ambulance shows up even later. The medics put paddles to Josh, but no joy. As the cops cuff Tejada's thugs and the medics look 'em over, Beth begs Mick to "turn" Josh.

Mick can't, and Josh is gone. Beth glares daggers at Mick.

At the police station, Davis gives up trying to pump Tejada's goons for their jefe's whereabouts. With his back to Davis, Mick turns vamp, and asks the goon where Tejada is.

The goon freaks out and tells the "diablo" where to go to a bar. Mick sends Davis off on a wild goose chase and goes to the bar.

Nick himself monologues on how things go the same in every bar fight, like when the barkeep pops up with a gun in hand. He goes vamp, beats down the patrons, and gets Tejada's location in the oficina, where Mick finishes him off. We only get to see Mick start to bleed him dry.

Mick shows up at Beth's apartment to let her know Tejada's been taken cared of. He tells her he couldn't inflict the curse of vampirism on Josh (not to mention reveal his secret in front of the cops and medics).

When Beth asks why he keeps "living," Nick says to himself it's because of her. Aloud, he mumbles, "I don't know." She then asks if Mick would let her die, and Nick says "Yes."

Things don't end on the best note here.

Which is perfect.

How can one not feel for Nick and Beth?

Once the strike ends and the second half of season 1 (the first half of season 2 more like) kicks off, I do wonder how things can keep going at this pitch? I totally understand why Josh had to die, but there were some interesting possibilities here. If Josh had lived, it would've made things even more interesting for Nick and Beth.

And if Nick had "turned" Josh, we would've gotten to see Beth torn between two vamps--and gotten a whole new storyline with Josh getting used to being a vamp and Nick bringing him into the fold as his sire and maybe seeing those two come to blows over Beth.

I can hardly wait for the season finale.

If only it weren't for the bloody writers strike. Too bad no one can lock the negotiators for both sides in a room and keep 'em there on bread and water till they stop acting like kids holding their breaths and make a reasonable deal.

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.