Moonlight 1.01 dir. by Rod Holcomb

Look, this is a new series with a vampire detective, so I hereby promise that there will be many and varied references to how much I miss Angel^[1] but it does have Jason Dohring, so I’m keeping an open mind. As always with my telly recaps, beware of spoilers, cause they won’t be hidden.

The episode begins with an interview with our heroic vampire detective^[2] where he tells the off screen interviewer just what it is like to be a vampire. Handy device that, letting the viewers know just what sort of vampire mythology we are dealing with in this show. And that is very little. No garlic, no holy water, not even any stakes. Instead the sunlight is bad for him, but he can cope, just about, with it. Fire is very very bad, and he may as well be an Immortal^[3] cause beheading won’t do much for his long-term prospects. And of course we learn that he is a good guy. He doesn’t bite peoples.

We also have a voice-over^[4] Hell, I suppose it is a quick and easy way to introduce your brand-spanking new world, but what is it they say about showing not telling?

The VO lets us know that he is private investigator. And we also get the never-seen-before^[5] link between blood and drugs. He even injects. Classy.

Anyway. On with the story.

Our vampire hero’s attention focuses on a pretty female reporter on some website. And he tells us that the main problem with being a vampire is that the past always catches up with you. So, do we think there’ll be a link there at some point. Never!!! Sorry, back to the story. Reporter wan, whose name is Beth Turner, is covering a murder. Luckily enough she is friends/has a very good relationship^[6] with one of the cops working the murder and so gets slightly more info than other meeja types would. She even manages to sneak a peak at the body, and with her iPhone^[7] she takes a few pictures, including a close up on the puncture wounds on the victim’s neck. Again with the classiness of this show. Vampire Hero dude watches her poke about.

Can I just interject for a second. Mick St. John! Mick St. John is the name of our hero. Mick! The only heroes that can get away with being called Mick are Big Fellows^[8] from Cork with the appropriate accents^[9] But then again I suppose Liam isn’t that heroic and super-hero-esque either. Angel, slightly more so. End of interjection.

Beth is busy thinking up catchy headlines, or taglines, or RSS headlines, I don’t know what they are called when you work for a web-news-thing, when she bumps into Mick. She thinks he looks familiar. But she can’t quite place him. Despite that she has no problem starting a conversation with him and wondering what he thinks of her headlines. He tells her there is no such thing as vampires^[10] and then does that vampire trick of disappearing when her head is turned. Poof! and he isn’t there any more.

Roll opening credits. But not for long cause they are v v brief. Hmm, every show needs a good theme tune, but maybe it is just cause this is the first one?

Beth investigates the dead girls car and takes a few snaps before heading back to her office. And her boss is very impressed. The whole vampire angle is really gaining public attention. Web hits are on the rise. Yay!

Even more yay for this next scene, cause look, it is Logan. We love Logan. We being me, and Logan being Jason Dohring. Only here he goes by the name of Josef and Mick’s VO lets us know that he is a 400 year old vampire and Mick and he are BFFs. Josef doesn’t like the idea of the vampire news story, he tells Mick that he is only 90, he has never had a mob on his tale, it isn’t fun. And then he lets us know that not all vamps are like Mick, with the not-biting peoples.

Mick heads to the morgue, to buy some blood and, of course, some info on the dead body. He takes a peak and discovers that she wasn’t killed by a vampire. It looks like there is a wannabe vamp.

Flashback! and OMG 1985 was 22 years ago^[11] Anyway, Mick’s flashback is about a missing child case he took that changed his life forever. Back in the present day he heads to the dead girl’s apt, where Beth is already breaking in and taking a look around. And isn’t it wonderfully gothic and emo^[12] Mick gives her a bit of a surprise and she whacks him in the head with a glass bottle of some description. She is a little suss of him, well you would be wouldn’t you, last time she saw him it was at the crime scene and so he could very well be the killer. He tells her that he isn’t and shows her his PI badge. Persuaded they begin to work together and find a thingy^[13] symbol of some Egyptian blood cult. But Beth is interrupted by her mobile and when she hangs up on her fella^[14] Mick has done the disappearing trick again.

At the funeral there seem to be quite a few goth types, and a right auld weirdo who turns out to be one of Kelly’s^[15] lecturers, professor of strangeness, or mythology or something. And a sudden emo/goth girl appears to slash prof. across the neck. Luckily for him it isn’t a serious wound, unluckily it means that Mick gets a whiff of his blood and realises that it is the same as they found in a vial in Kelly’s apt.

Nice little scene with Chloe^[16] and Beth chatting, only the visuals are of Beth pulling up the diner where Chloe works rather than just the usual two people conversation shot.

VO Mick lets us know some of his super-powers, he can sense the past and glimpse the future, as well as having much more heightened other senses.

He waits for prof to leave and then goes to talk with his wife, learning that prof is a sleazy weirdo who believes he is a vampire and has affairs with pretty much all of his students. Classy.

Meanwhile Beth has cunningly desguised herself as a student-type and is sitting in on prof’s class. And he is a weirdo talking about how we all long to return to the womb, a place of blood and darkness. Urgh. She pretends to be well impressed and asks is there any way she, as a transfer student, can catch up. So he invites her to come to a study group meeting later on. His TA Daniel^[17] takes her details.

VO lets us know that Josef wants Mick to find the killer so that their secret, you know, that vampires really exist, is kept hidden.

Mick goes to visit prof. And prof comes across as plain old weird.

Back at Mick’s apt. Josef is waiting for Mick to return. Drinking his chilled blood, although he’d really prefer something fresher. Anyway Josef is not happy that there are “vampire experts” on the telly. Bloody food mouthing off about the farmer^[18] I’m not too sure if this scene works, yes it is good cause it has Jason, but it is more than a little forced, pounding in the fact that Mick is different to other vampires. That others like to keep secret and Josef will not let that happen. Still Josef is an interesting character; who doesn’t enjoy a blood-thirsty , immoral killer?

And look, Chloe’s dead. Oops.

VO again. I’m guessing these mark the ad breaks?
Beth has come calling to Mick’s, filling him on all she knows. Blah blah blah. Exposition, and stuff that we already know. However she does ask Mick to check him out, which’ll mean that he will find the dead body right? And she tells him that she is going to the study group, which gets him all worried about her, telling her to careful.

Flashback! Flashback. And we meet Mick’s maker, and wife. And she doesn’t seem so right in the head.

So Mick heads off to the diner and finds the dead Chloe and straight away is all worried about Beth. Who is being lead through the bowels of the college by Daniel. All miked up^[19] Down in the basement prof’s weirdo study group comes to an end, Beth is confudled, she thought she was supposed to be there for 11. Prof says that he prefers to get new students on a one-on-one basis the first time they come. Eeww. As you may have expected from a weirdo he ends up laying on the hands and so finds the microphone and gets a little upset. Ripping open her top and everything. But she kicks him and manages to escape, running back up the stairs where Daniel acts all worried and says he has a phone in his car as she wants to call the cops.

But of course he is the bad guy and injects her with some sort of sedative thingy. Meanwhile here comes hero-vamp to the rescue. With the running and the action and the putting on of the game-face to scare prof-dude. And that sensing the past is really very handy^[20] Daniel is busy singing the praises of prof, he is trying to save him from distractions such as women, but Mick catches up to the car, and we get a fight scene, which you just know Daniel doesn’t win. And a flashback. Which is nicely done. And I like the sound effects too.

Turns out that Beth is the little girl that Mick’s crazy wife stole 22 years ago. Bet you didn’t see that coming!^[21] So he saved her then and since then he has been looking out for her. Just in case she ever got in trouble. Like in this episode. And when she wakes from whatever it was Daniel stuck her with Beth finally realises where she knew him from, when she was little. He tries to persuade her otherwise but she is more than a little sus. She doesn’t push it though, instead she hugs him.

Fin

You know, for all my missing Angel, this wasn’t that bad. Sure it isn’t great, and it is a little handy and predictable, but it has some nice touches. It has definite potential, and thankfully Jason Dohring’s Josef is well written and sounds like he actually has a character. I’ll be *borrowing* more episodes. Plus I liked the way the scenes of the city used the car lights to make the streets look all red and blood-like.

Reviews from Pink Raygun, TV Squad, Watching Sitcoms, Cinefantastique