Moonlight: Arrested Development

(S01E05) "I saw how you two looked at each other." -- Josh Lindsey

A big shout out to Isabelle Carreau for covering Moonlight for me last week. I was in Canada, and I really felt the pain of not being able to watch an episode online. Stupid ISP blocking. If you haven't heard yet, CBS has ordered four more scripts of Moonlight, which is promising for our current favorite vampire addiction. Of course, that could simply be due to the impending writers' strike, but considering the fact that cancellations have already been made, I choose to think of it as a good sign. Even so, I have to say that I enjoyed last week's episode, "Fever" more than tonight's "Arrested Development." One of the things Moonlight writers do well is to lay out Mick and Beth's relationship, layer by slow layer. Their attraction and their bond are growing almost painfully slowly, but each week we get more and more and more -- but not too much by a long shot.

On the other hand, what they really need to improve is the actual cases that Beth and Mick work on together. One of the things this show's creators can learn from their network's sister show CSI is that what works for the show is the compelling combination of really good cases and the subtle behind-the-scenes relationships between the main characters that develop from week-to-week. Of course, the focus of Moonlight is on the primary relationship and not the cases; however, if you are going to build a structure on which to hang the developing romance, you might as well make it a structure we enjoy, right?

Tonight, we had the enjoyable awkwardness of Mick avoiding Beth because of their interlude in the desert last week. It was, from her standpoint, more significant for her than it was for him. It was a great parallel to having sex: They were intimate, exchanged key bodily fluids, and then he didn't call. Not only that, but he also ducked her calls. The fact that her boyfriend even picks up on this and asks about it just makes things more awkward for her, because she has to pretend not to care.

Of course, she can't know that Mick is avoiding her because he thinks he is dangerous to her. Beth seems rather immune to the dangers vampires pose, and possibly that is because Mick has never harmed her. In fact, tonight's episode marks the first occasion in which Beth hasn't had to save Mick from some sort of mortal (immortal?) peril in at least the past three episodes. For someone who isn't easily killed, Mick ends up nearly dead fairly frequently.

The story about the parents looking for their lost daughter who is now an LA call girl felt flat. The most genuine emotion came from the mother's grief before they were to identify the body, and their relief that the dead girl wasn't their daughter. However, they were almost laughing about it. If this were truly a girl they knew, who had gone out to LA with their daughter, I would have thought they would have felt some grief for her parents, and some grief at how close a call it was. Granted, the show didn't have time to deal with that-- but why bother to make her someone the parents knew?

I know I wasn't supposed to like the Kiddie Vamp, but I would have enjoyed the episode more if I had liked him or found something to sympathize with. His acne was a bit over the top. Sure, I can understand the frustration of being a vampire forever, stuck at age 16 and never having heartfelt love. I didn't feel any empathy for this kid though, because he was mean, obnoxious, and didn't exhibit any of the boyish tenderness toward Cherish that I would expect of a boy who really wanted a girl to go on a roller coaster with him. I have to say though, the fact that he let himself be decapitated by the same roller coaster was awesome. I couldn't believe they actually showed his dis-membered head. That was kind of an adrenaline rush.

But that leads me to one of my other plot complaints. They established two episodes ago that rogue vampires have to be dealt with. They introduced the fabulous character of The Cleaner. So, couldn't they have brought that back into this episode? Even having the cleaner called after the Kiddie Vamp died? And Jason Dohring is given such precious little to do, if I were him, I would be on the phone with my agent demanding better scripts. Why bother to have a 400-year-old vampire if all he gets to do is leer at call girls and smirk? I would think that if Mick were dangerous to Beth, Josef and Rider would be even more so. Josef is older and doesn't share Mick's principles or identification with humans. I would have liked there to be more danger for Beth in that atmosphere, and more nervousness on Mick's part. But instead, all we get is a crack about Beth's voice? I just think there is opportunity in both the writing and the direction of the show for greater richness, greater potential for suspense and a charged atmosphere.

There were also some moments that were really well done. We finally saw the cracks in the veneer of Beth's relationship with her perfect D.A. boyfriend Josh. When Mick asks her what the deal is with Josh and she offers the banal, "Oh, he's smart, funny..." it's clear that she is just giving him a laundry list of Josh's attributes, without any real chemistry to speak of. Josh is handsome, smart, decent, funny, successful, and so why shouldn't she be with him? Even Josh knows the answer to that. As he put it, he couldn't miss it. He assumes incorrectly that she is rushing off from their anniversary party to see Mick, but he was absolutely right that her behavior was unconscionably rude.

Even if she weren't visibly attracted to Mick, the fact that she put work before her boyfriend on that one evening was pretty telling. By establishing that they were just having sleepovers, rather than actually living together, the writers are setting up their breakup and making it neat and tidy, so nobody has to move out. I would prefer that it were a little messier. Perhaps if she had to move out of Josh's place, she could stay with Mick for a bit, but that would be too predictable. And probably too dangerous.

I loved how Beth used the Kiddie Vamp's rampage as an excuse to ask Mick about how sex between vampires and humans works. Purely theoretical, ha! But I didn't think the episode needed so much hammering about fate and destiny and how what you want and what you get are different. We especially didn't need that in addition to Beth insisting that their ending up in the same place after two different paths was really strange. That would indicate that every meeting they have ever had is strange, but she doesn't consider it odd to continually end up seeing her cop friend , Carl, at every crime scene. Granted, Carl is working cases, but so, by now, is Mick. Especially on cases where the suspect is probably a vampire. It's really not strange at all. The show could benefit from a little less telling and a little more showing. That's a basic of any introductory Creative Writing class.

I don't mean for my complaints to sound like I didn't like the show: I did. I just think this show has so much potential to be better. I would really like to see it grow and succeed. And so I saved the best for last: I loved that Beth kissed Mick, and his gleeful grin at the very end was a joy.