TDL’s Sports, Wrestling, & Otherwise

I’m a whore for vampire shows. I have to watch them. Therefore, when I found out that there would be two this season I knew I had to check out both.

Moonlight’s premise is thus: a good, charismatic vampire with a soft spot for humans is a private investigator in Los Angeles who killed his sire to protect a woman and doesn’t get involved in relationships because he can’t handle people seeing him as a monster. This is distinctly different from the premise of Angel because Angel was a good, socially-inept vampire with a soft spot for humans who was a private investigator in Los Angeles, killed his sire to protect a woman and doesn’t get involved in relationships because he turns evil if he experiences a moment of true happiness.

The show kicks off with someone interviewing Mick St. John. He’s our vampire. The interview outlines which vampire rules this show will follow. Vampires on this show can only be killed by fire or decapitation. Garlic, crosses, and holy water don’t get the job done. A stake in the heart slows them down. Sunlight makes them “uncomfortable” but doesn’t cause combustion. They seem to be following the “non-magic” rules for vampires. They show up in mirrors and combustion and disintegration doesn’t occur because a mystical rule isn’t followed. I tend to like these vampire rules better. As much as I can apply realistic physics to something supernatural.

The version of Los Angeles in this show depicts vampires as normal people with normal jobs. Mick is a PI. His blood hookup is medical examiner. His good friend Josef (played by Jason Dohring) is his 400-year-old best friend who seems to be an investment banker of some sort. It doesn’t give any indication that there are demons or magic or anything else “supernatural.”

The pilot episode gives us the following set-up. 20 years ago, Mick rescued a young girl from his sire, Coraline (Shannyn Sossamon). He killed his sire to rescue the girl. Today, the girl has grown up to be a reporter for a tabloid news show (the name of which I think they stole from RENT, but I’m not sure) and Mick is still baby-sitting her from afar. In the pilot episode, he interacts with her for the first time in those 20 years and by the end of the episode she starts to remember who he is. The previews make it quite obvious that this relationship will be explored as time goes on.

Pros

• The Josef character is interesting. He plays the aloof vampire who treats humans as a necessary nuisance and annoying species quite well. The humans are fine so long as they’re not asking too many questions.
• The relationship between Beth and Mick should at least be interesting for a few episodes. If they started to iterate over the same tired ground that Dark Shadows, Forever Knight, and Angel went over it will fizzle quickly.

Cons

• It’s Angel with inferior writing. Lock, stock, and barrel… up to and including the stock footage taken over the city of Los Angeles.
• It’s really heavy-handed with “this is a PI show” voice-over. Meaning it starts with “Like all good private investigator stories, this one started with a woman.” Yes, they really used that. It’s like every parody of a PI show anyone’s ever seen.
• It’s going through the same storylines that every vampire show ever goes through. The theme is thus: “When you live forever, it’s impossible to escape your past.”

Final Thoughts: I have a really bad feeling about this show’s shelf life. It’s fortunately part of what appears to be “Supernatural Crap Friday” on CBS so it should at least get the whole season to work out. Unfortunately, I think it’s borrowing WAY too much from other Vampire shows to be a long-running program. Angel worked because the character had a legitimately haunted past that he was trying to escape from and atone for… I don’t get that from Mick yet. Maybe it’s because you go into Angel already knowing the character, but it worked with the parallel that he was alcoholic just one mis-step away from going back down the path of pure evil. This isn’t the same thing. Mick is a vampire who apparently retained his humanity in spite of his instinct. Is there probably an interesting story in there? Yes. Do they have a long time to get to it? No.

Series recording but only because I’m obligated to watch vampire shows. If it was a cop show, it’d already be gone. I’ll be patiently waiting for New Amsterdam.