My Moonlight-watching friends tell me that the show hits its stride in the third episode and just keeps getting better. So I went into episode 1.03, "Dr. Feelgood," with high expectations. I'm happy to say that the show delivered on several levels.

At the start of the episode, Mick St. John and Beth Turner are dealing with the fallout from episode 1.02, "Out of the Past," where Beth learned that Mick is a vampire. The show opens with Beth hesitating at Mick's door. Her uncertainty over her next move is obvious. Should she knock on his door and find out exactly what's going on, or just walk away and pretend that it was all just her imagination? At the same time that Beth is facing her moral dilemma outside, Mick is secretly watching her through a hidden camera.

The scene is a good metaphor for Mick and Beth's relationship up to that point. Although she doesn't know it, Mick has watched over Beth since she was a little girl.

The plot itself has been done before: a person accidentally becomes a vampire and then spirals out of control without the mentorship of another vampire. What makes the plot interesting are the themes of trust and the question of how far a person (vampire, human, or other sentient being) is willing to go to avoid being alone.

Starting with the first scene, when Mick lets Beth into his apartment, trust is an issue throughout the episode. We see Mick struggle with trusting Beth while she pokes and prods him like a kid with a new toy, and asks questions that polite vampire society would frown upon. Meanwhile, Beth likewise grapples with trusting Mick as she tries to wrap her head around the idea that there are people (vampires) out there who see her as nothing more than a walking all-you-can-eat blue plate special.

As Beth metaphorically opens the drawers of Mick's past, pulls out all the contained memories and dumps them on the floor, it triggers Mick's memories of how he became a vampire. Through Mick's own personal wayback machine, we see memories of his wedding night, when the bride that he trusted not only failed to tell him she was a vampire, but also turned him into one as well. Thereby breaking his trust.

Even the minor players of this drama unknowingly misplace their trust. The doctor's wife trusts her shiny new vampire husband and in doing so becomes the next Denny's Grand Slam breakfast.

In Moonlight, vampirism seems to be a metaphor for being alone. Mick sleeps by himself in a freezer. Coraline must have suspected that he wouldn't have wanted to be a vampire, because she not only hid her own nature from Mick but brought him across without asking first. All to avoid being alone. The vampire rocket scientist goes so far as to stake Mick so that he can protect his vampire 'son.'

The good: There was a lot to love about this episode. For one thing, the quirky, cute chemistry that we got a glimpse of in episode 1.01, "There's No Such Thing as Vampires" was back. Sophia Myles' Beth is endearing as she is by turns pushy as a journalist, gleefully fangirly as she finds out about vampires, sarcastically snarky when she's annoyed with Mick, and quirky when the two of them are just hanging out.

As Mick, Alex O'Loughlin shines when he is either unleashing his dry humor, or playing straight-man to Beth's quirkiness or Josef's sarcastic comments.

A second bright point was getting a better look at Mick's ex-wife, Coraline. (In full fifties regalia, Shannyn Sossamon comes across as a kind of scary Donna Reed: having Jackie Kennedy's style with all of the iron-fisted control of Martha Stewart.)

I've compared Moonlight to another vampire detective show before. (I won't say its name, but it's starts with Forever and ends with Knight.) Two of my favorite characters on the show were the protagonist's biggest obstacles in becoming mortal again: his ex-wife and his sire.

Another stroke of genus in Moonlight is that the show has combined those two characters into one. Coraline seems to show all of the controlling, manipulative acumen that LaCroix had in that other show, while at the same time possessing the beauty, poise, and grace of Janette.

I've mentioned in my last two reviews that the effects could use some work. I'm also happy to say that that problem seems to have cleared up. Even the green screen/CGI effects didn't seem as noticeable.

Finally, Jason Dohring's Josef Konstantin comes across as some kind of bloodsucking guru, dispensing advice, whether Mick wants to hear it or not.

The bad: Kevin Weisman's Steve Balfour is credited as being in this episode, but I seemed to have missed him.

Another tick in the bad column is the plot for the episode. There are certain tropes that you see in vampire fiction that inevitably get used again. Most of them fall under the category of "Anne Rice did it first." "Making vampires is hard to do" is definitely one of them.

The conclusion: Thus far, "Dr. Feelgood" stands out as the best episode yet. Moonlight seems to be finding its footing.