Moonlight"Dr. Feelgood"
Original Air Date: October 12, 2007
Jon G - TwoCents Staff Writer
Okay, Moonlight’s starting to warm up. It may not be perfect yet, but it’s definitely getting interesting. This third installment pits Mick against other vampires, teaches us more about the vampire mythos, increases the number vampire effects throughout the show, and Mick and Beth’s relationship became more interesting now that she’s aware of what he is. Oh, and we got a rich flashback sequence from Mick’s past with Coraline…
So, what did we learn about Mick and vampires tonight?
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Moonlight
ReplyDelete"Dr. Feelgood"
Original Air Date: October 12, 2007
Jon G - TwoCents Staff Writer
Okay, Moonlight’s starting to warm up. It may not be perfect yet, but it’s definitely getting interesting. This third installment pits Mick against other vampires, teaches us more about the vampire mythos, increases the number vampire effects throughout the show, and Mick and Beth’s relationship became more interesting now that she’s aware of what he is. Oh, and we got a rich flashback sequence from Mick’s past with Coraline…
So, what did we learn about Mick and vampires tonight?
• Mick can’t fly - we don’t know if this applies to other vampires, though. Maybe Josef can float around a little? There’s a little room here for speculation.
• Mick’s going to be 85 in November and was turned to the dark side on his wedding night in 1952.
• People are turned to vampires when they are drained of almost all their blood, and then ingest some of a vampire’s blood (Anne Rice fans already know this).
• Vampires have a ‘cleaner’ who comes to their aid to clean up bodies they leave around. Kind of like Harvey Keitel’s character in Pulp Fiction.
• Vampires aren’t able to taste regular food.
• Blood glows a bright red to a vampire’s eyes. They can see it throbbing in our veins.
• If a new vampire isn’t brought under the wing of their maker, or sire, they pretty much go crazy and drain the blood from just about anyone they run into.
Episode 3 starts when a rocket scientist vampire is accidentally hit by a car while absent mindedly walking across the street. A good Samaritan, who happens to be a doctor, stops to help the scientist lying in the street and becomes dinner for the injured vampire. Thinking that the doctor was drained and dead, the vampire calls in a cleaner for his mess and takes off. Little did he know that he had accidentally coughed blood into the doctor’s mouth which turns the doctor into a vampire.
The doctor goes on a killing spree, starting with a convenience store clerk. This is where Beth and Mick pick up the case. Ravenous and unable to sate this thirst, the doc takes out another unwitting Angelino getting into their car in a parking garage.
For his next victim, the doc heads to his own house. His wife pulls up to their garage, opens the door and notices food and containers thrown about inside. She pulls open the refrigerator door and finds her husband sleeping inside, naked. He wakes, comes out, and almost seems coherent. His wife consoles him, thinking he’s freaked out from stress at the hospital, but soon after becomes a morning snack.
Mick and Beth track the doc to his house. Within, his wife lies dead with her throat torn apart. Newbie’s aren’t very delicate with their victim’s throats. Mick enters, gun drawn, as Beth trails behind him. They check the house and head upstairs, but no one’s there. Mick heads back downstairs to check out a noise and finds the scientist vampire. At first, it seems he’s simply looking up the doc to right a wrong. But then he skewers Mick with a wooden stake, telling him that he wasn’t going to kill the doc and that the scientist always wanted to raise a son. The scientist also mentions something quickly about never having been able to sire a vampire in the past, but now somehow has been able to. Unlike the staking incident in the previous episode, Mick falls to the ground this time and is wide-eyed and completely paralyzed.
Beth hears someone leave through the front door, heads downstairs and finds Mick lying on the floor. Barely able to speak, he says, “Take it out.” Although she’s been relatively easy-going about getting involved in Mick’s vampire world up until this point, she’s a little uneasy about pulling out the stake. But she does, and Mick is once again animated and writhing in pain.
Beth and Mick race to the hospital convinced the doc is headed to his workplace to feed on the endless supply of blood and patients. They get there just in time to halt the doc from feeding upon a sleeping patient. And then the vampire fight breaks out. Mick and the doc battle back and forth, fangs out and creepy-eyed. They throw each other around until they end up on an outside stairwell. Mick pins the Doc and shoves the wooden stake he pulled out of his own chest into the Doc. I would have thought that Mick’s age and experience would have allowed him to make quick work of the newbie, but the struggle seemed rather even until the stake came out.
Beth catches up with Mick and finds him wheeling the paralyzed body of the Doc down a hallway on a gurney. The newbie can’t be saved, and must be destroyed, so Mick throws him into cremating oven and burns him up, most likely paralyzed and aware of the flames.
Moonlight’s getting better. We finally get to see Mick fight some vampires and the interaction between Mick and Beth is good and getting more interesting. The story was decent, but still keeps to the same overall arc of the previous episodes. Yes, this is a detective series, but the writers have to shake up the formula a little more to keep life in the show. Also, I’ve been in several hospitals, and I found it a little hard to believe that Mick (dressed in a black jacket) can wheel a gurney down the hallway to a cremating oven and burn a body without anyone seeing him do this. It’s interesting; we have fun suspending reality to watch vampires run around, but when stuff like this happens, it takes you out of the game a little bit. Couldn’t he have simply taken the body down by the LA River, lit a match, and called the vampire cleaner to brush away the evidence?
Beware spoilers – If you purposely don’t watch the previews for next week, read no further. Next week looks to be pretty intense with Mick taking his first taste of Beth’s blood in order to survive. That has to have repercussions on their relationship. I guess we’ll see…
One last thing: Is it me, or do some of the promo shots of Alex O’Loughlin make him look like Jon Stewart? Check out the background on the right of Moonlight homepage to see. http://alpha.cbs.com/primetime/moonlight/