Friday, August 28, 2015

Summer TV Rewind: Moonlight 1.12: “The Mortal Cure”

“The cure is mortal itself. It’s only temporary.”
- Coraline

As you might expect, this episode deals with more of the fallout over Josh’s death. It also picks up on the Coraline plot thread. She’d disappeared from the hospital a few episodes back and so while Beth is dealing with everything surrounding Josh, Mick is trying to figure out what happened. Tensions are still high between him and Beth over the whole Josh situation so he kind of has some time on his hands to focus on Coraline. This happens to be spurred by a visit from a medieval vampire named Lance. Lance, who has one jet black eye and is very creepy, is looking for Coraline because as he claims, she stole something from him. Josef warns Mick to stay out of. Lance is a heavy hitter and Mick doesn’t need to get dragged down in more of Coraline’s drama. So of course, Mick starts to dig. He finds out that Coraline was either kidnapped or more likely aided in a hospital breakout by a vampire friend of hers, Cynthia Davis.

Mick pays a visit to tech genius (and slob) Logan. Logan is kind of adorable in his still-lives-in-his-mom’s-basement kind of way. Plus he’s a geek and plays Guitar Hero. It was 2007 after all. Anyway, with a little monetary prompting, Logan finds out that Cynthia is in town and has been making trips between LA and France every few weeks. She’s also been importing some sort of agricultural product from France. This is concerning to Mick because Cynthia despises LA. Still, he pays Cynthia a visit. She lies to his face which he figures out so he tasks Logan with finding the location of the warehouse where the agricultural product is being shipped. He finds Coraline and another vampire working on some science stuff when Lance shows up. He’s demanding the “compound” whatever that is and he’s ready to stake Coraline when Mick interrupts. He gets to see first-hand just how dangerous Lance is when his hand catches fire and he doesn’t die. In fact he heals. So not good! Mick calls for the Cleaners and learns that they’ve had a lot of pick-ups at the address of newly turned dead vampires. Josef is still not happy Mick is getting caught up on Coraline’s drama (and that Mick interrupted his massage) but he knows Mick won’t listen to him.

Elsewhere, Beth gets some of Josh’s stuff from his office (including a $40,000 life insurance pay out) and she starts to panic a bit. She sees he has a meeting with someone named Celeste that day at 8pm and she jumps to the conclusion that Josh was cheating on her. After working up the courage to confirm the reservation, Beth goes to meet Celeste and it very quickly turns out that Beth was wrong. Celeste is a jeweler who was setting Josh’s grandmother’s stone in a new band so he could propose to Beth.

Mick is back on the hunt for Coraline but he finds Beth waiting for him when he gets home. He invites her in and she drops the “Josh was going to propose” bombshell on him. Mick doesn’t have a whole lot of time to react to the news or to Beth’s admission that she’s not sure what her answer would have been because Coraline shows up at his door and falls into his arms. This makes Beth very uncomfortable and so she leaves and goes to Buzzwire. I’m not sure what the purpose of the scene was other than to show she’s still upset over Josh (as she looks at old emails from him saved in her work email).

Things are far more interesting back at Mick’s place. Once Coraline detangles herself from Mick, she explains that Lance is from a very powerful and very noble bloodline. There were seven siblings turned by a cousin of Louis XVI (who was also a vampire) and it turns out the Reign of Terror was a vampire genocide. The compound was developed to give vampires the needed characteristics of humanity to avoid being decapitated. Coraline stole some of this compound from Lance a year ago. When Mick presses her as to why she wanted to become human all of a sudden, she says she wanted to feel life again and she figured maybe love couldn’t exist without mortality. Obviously Mick isn’t going to take her back but she does offer to let him use some of the compound. It’s not permanent (and her research is basically stalled on that front) but it’s a temporary fix and can right the wrong done to him for a short while.

Not surprising, Mick didn’t get the whole story from Coraline about the noble bloodline. As he is trying to escort her safely out of LA, Lance and his goon find them and Lance drops the bomb that Coraline is his sister. She is also part of the noble bloodline. Apparently their sire (I’m assuming) was less than thrilled that Coraline took the compound. He was even more pissed that she married Mick without permission and the family blessing. Oops! Well it also goes to show how little they think of Coraline because she’s a woman. I understand those were views held at the time they were turned but they could have evolved with the times. Mick still seems to think he can kick ass like a vampire because he starts wailing on Lance but ends up getting beaten up pretty badly. Lance is about to stab Mick when Coraline offers herself up. She’ll go with Lance provided he spare Mick’s life. Lance obliges and stakes Coraline to keep her docile on the trip home. Mick manages to get home and draw some of his own blood (the only source of the cure he has left) before ordering all kinds of food and sacking out on the couch. The next day, he attends Josh’s funeral and reveals to Beth that for now, he’s human. So finally the romantic obstacles are out of their way and for the time being the pesky immortality obstacle is pushed aside, too.

No comments:

Post a Comment