Cast
- Alex O'Loughlin ... Mick St. John
- Sophia Myles ... Beth Turner
- Jason Dohring ... Josef Konstantin
- Shannyn Sossamon ... Coraline
- Shoshana Bush ... Chloe
- Rudolf Martin ... Christian Ellis
- Dean O'Gorman ... Daniel
- Christina Peterson ... Hot Goth Student
- Gigi Rice ... Martha Ellis
- Tami Roman ... Maureen 'Mo' Williams
- Amro Salama ... Scientist
- Jacob Vargas ... Guillermo
- Brian J. White ... Lieutenant Carl Davis
Dawn of the Dead
Mick St. John is a 90-year-old vampire who has spurned the ways of his kind, choosing to use his powers to help humanity rather than feeding off of them. The fresh blood he needs to live he obtains from hospitals, rather than from ambulatory donors.
When he spots web journalist Beth Turner reporting on an apparent vampire murder (loss of blood, two holes in the neck), he joins forces with her to find out whether one of his colleagues is responsible. The killing was only meant to look like a vampire strike; but as his friend Josef, a 400-year-old vampire living the L.A. good life, reminds him, any publicity at all could lead to their secret lives being uncovered.
Mick and Beth investigate the victim's "mythological anthropology" professor, Christian Ellis, who claims to actually be a vampire and holds late-night "study group" rituals in the basement of Chandler Hall. (Ellis claims life is a quest to return to the blood and darkness of the womb, and vampirism is the achievement of this.) Beth joins to the study group to unmask Ellis as the killer, but when Mick finds another student dead he realizes Beth is in danger.
Meanwhile Beth feels like she has met Mick before. She has: Mick rescued Beth as a girl from his ex-wife, the woman who turned Mick into a vampire. Mick was forced to torch his ex (the only way to kill a vampire) and has been keeping an eye on Beth ever since.
Running out of the ritual Beth is drugged and taken by Daniel, the T.A. Mick arrives just in time to defeat Daniel and save Beth, but not before she sees Mick take a knife straight into the chest.
It Says Here I am Angry with You!
The Moonlight pilot episode opens with Mick St. John unspooling the entire contents of Vampires For Dummies in one big infodump, framed as an imaginary interview on some Charlie Rose-esque talk show. (The updated highlights: they can endure the sun, though with discomfort, and you need a flamethrower to kill them, not a wooden stake. Oh, and garlic is great on pizza.) This is not the most deft means of introducing a show's concept and central character. Unfortunately this truckload of exposition serves as an unwelcome harbinger of the level of artlessness to come.
Every character in this show suffers from a complete motivation disconnect. Everyone does everything they do for no reason. The compulsory team-up of Mick and Beth, complete with immediate divvying of responsibilities, happens when the two have barely met and have every reason not to trust each other. Ellis's embracing of the vampire lifestyle is unexplained, especially as it seems to be damaging his marriage to the lovely Gigi Rice (people married to Gigi Rice should think twice before screwing it up), though there's a murky hint that his ulterior motive is sex with impressionable students.
Chloe, the dead girl's friend, spills all to Beth and then suddenly gets angry and tells her off, because the script tells her to. Mick goes to the diner where Chloe works to find her even though it's well after hours, because that's the only way he'll find the girl's body. In flashbacks, Mick's ex kidnaps young Beth for very obscure reasons, and that event makes Mick decide to help humans, for even more obscure reasons.
Old and Tired
The premise (L.A. vampire P.I.) only serves to remind us of a character with a similar background and occupation: Angel, the vampire with a soul from Buffy. Angel was grumpy about being a do-gooder and bucked the confining conventions of the P.I. formula, and he kicked demon butt to boot. He would eat this milquetoast Mick for lunch. Mick has no presence; his attitude toward being a vampire is one of tired resignation -- not really the cornerstone of a weekly action-adventure show. It might work if you added camp to it; but Moonlight is as straight, and entirely humorless, as they come, even for a CBS drama.
This is a character that cries out to be interesting, wry, and quirky. He's alien to the humans he wants to help, and also sets himself apart from his own people. He's dissed from all directions. It's still possible, even after decades of TV drama, to use these ingredients to conjure a fascinating and innovative character. In fact NBC did it the night before, with Damien Lewis in Life, a perfect example of how outstanding writing and acting can create a unique and magnetic individual. The folks behind Moonlight (including Ron Koslow, whose last credit is the failed Birds of Prey) don't have the first clue about how to do this, or even how to make characters act naturally instead of like plot-propelled wind-up toys.
Moonlight went through a major overhaul before the pilot was in the can. I found myself wishing they'd ditched everything and followed Gigi Rice's life as the wife of a sap who thinks he's a vampire. That's a premise that could have some fun with itself.
