Friday, September 4, 2015

Summer TV Rewind: Moonlight 1.13: “Fated to Pretend”

“You were right. I can’t save Beth as a human. But I can save her as a vampire. You have to turn me back.”
- Mick

Things are looking pretty good for Mick and Beth in the wake of Josh’s death and Coraline’s return to Europe. Mick is thoroughly enjoying being able to go out and enjoy the sunshine and sleep in a regular bed. He even downs a hotdog covered in all kinds of stuff that would normally make your stomach cringe. But he’s drinking it all in. And he and Beth share a nice beach picnic date before Mick pays Josef a visit. Mick seems to just randomly drop in on Josef a lot without any real purpose it seems. But Josef points out that Mick is just scared of getting hurt. Maybe Josef has a point. Given his last relationship as a human was with Coraline, he may be a little gun-shy.

Unfortunately, their bliss is quickly interrupted by Maureen demanding Beth’s presence at Buzzwire. When Beth arrives, she finds the place in disarray and Maureen is dead. Man, Beth is really not having a good time lately when it comes to people she cares about. Mick arrives to lend some moral support and we all meet the new DA, Benjamin Talbot. He’s almost a Josh look alike but with a little bit harder features and less likable personality. He’s not pleased that Mick is there and he calls Buzzwire a trashy tabloid. Circumventing the police, Beth and Mick break into Maureen’s place to look for her flash drive back up of files. It’s hidden in a box of tampons (do people really hide stuff in their feminine products?). Anyway, the drive is encrypted so Mick suggests they pay Logan a visit. On the way they swing by the morgue to identify Maureen’s body. Guillermo points out Maureen was near a vampire before she died. Mick obviously can’t smell it now that he’s human.

Thanks to Logan (and a helpful suggestion from Mick about the password to unlock the files), we have a few leads on potential stories Maureen was working that could end up being the source of Maureen’s death. They first have to talk to Josef about a story Maureen was doing which highlighted a fraudulent charity he oversaw. Josef says that he did talk to Maureen but he intended to make the victims whole. Oh and the only person he’d killed that week was his PR guy who was responsible for keeping track of the charities Josef sat on. So that’s one lead down.

So Mick and Beth split the remaining stories. Beth is hunting down a donut diet company whose spokes model died of a heart attack. She and Mick check out the body and notice liposuction scars that weren’t noted on the autopsy report. Beth runs into DA Talbot at the morgue who basically chastises her for getting his way. Yeah, I really dislike him a lot. Oh and apparently he’s already gotten calls about Mick asking questions of a mayoral candidate. The other story Maureen had been working on involved the candidate, Kent Morrow, and the car accident that killed his wife. Mick gets stonewalled by Morrow’s publicist at a rally. It seems that none of the stories are yielding any helpful results. The donuts are pretty much harmless and Logan can’t find the person who tipped off Maureen about the Morrow accident. But he’s going to dig for the IP address. Mick pays the guy a visit and after having to chase him down, learns that the guy was a valet the night Mrs. Morrow died. He admits that Mr. Morrow was driving. With a little tech magic from Logan, Mick finds out the emails were actually sent from a computer in Morrow’s office. Beth and Talbot show up just in time for Morrow’s daughter to freak out and threaten to commit suicide. She was the one who sent the emails. Her father basically blackmailed her into saying her mother was driving that night so that he wouldn’t go to jail and she wouldn’t be an orphan. What a horrible thing to do to your child!

This of course leaves the donut diet story and Mick and Beth convince Talbot to let them speak to the dead model’s plastic surgeon with him. Things go awry though during the meeting when it turns out the surgeon is a vampire and he knocks out Talbot and takes him and Beth hostage. He thinks Mick is dead so doesn’t worry about him. As Guillermo pulls a really big shard of glass out of Mick’s leg, he realizes that maybe being human isn’t what he needs. When he heads home to gear up, Josef stops by to keep Mick from doing something stupid. Josef makes the very clear point that Mick can’t do anything to save Beth as a human. So Mick makes the sacrifice of becoming a vampire again to ensure he has a shot with his girl. I remember watching the scene originally and then on re-watch and going “there are probably some Mick and Josef shippers out there who loved this scene”. It was kind of intimate.

Mick and Josef end up riding to the rescue and Talbot has far more questions than answers (he went back to the location they were being held and find nothing. The Cleaner is good that way. Mick and Beth share dinner on the roof at night time and Beth throws up the possibility that Mick is the one who is scared of getting hurt. She wants to be with him and she doesn’t think him being a vampire is what is standing in their way. She’s about to walk away when Mick grabs her and pulls her in for a very passionate kiss. He just needs a little time to figure things out in his head. She urges him not to wait too long because he may have forever but she definitely doesn’t. She also points out that Mick being a vampire is what saved her life all these years. Overall I thought this was a good episode I was glad that for a vampire show, they didn’t drag out the main vampire being human for very long. It’s a far more interesting storyline when Mick has to navigate his vampire traits in terms of a relationship.

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