Review: Moonlight 1.04, "Fever"
http://firefox.org/news/articles/1189/1/Review-Moonlight-104-quotFeverquot/Page1.html
Tracy Morris
Tracy S. Morris is the author of the award-winning novella Tranquility, which has been described as "What you would get if Jeff Foxworthy wrote for The X-Files." <br>
http://www.yarddogpress.com/allen&.htm <br>
Morris has recently been awarded Honorable Mention in L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future competition for two consecutive quarters. <br>
Find her on the web at http://www.tracysmorris.com/
By Tracy Morris
Published on 02/13/2008
Lonely hearts, you might want to read this. You aren't the only ones with relationship problems. Vampire detective Mick St. John has a few of his own. And while the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble are crowded with vampire romance novels, the reality of being a vampire in love sucks.
Episode 1.04 all about relationships.
Lonely hearts, you might want to read this. You aren't the only ones with relationship problems. Vampire detective Mick St. John has a few of his own. And while the shelves of the local Barnes and Noble are crowded with vampire romance novels, the reality of being a vampire in love sucks.
To use Mick St. John's own words, any kind of relationship between himself and Moonlight's leading lady, Beth Turner, would be problematic. For one thing, he's a vampire and she is not. Episode 1.04, Fever, is mostly about those problems.
On its surface, Fever is about relationships. Mick's with Beth. Beth's with her boyfriend, prosecuting attorney Josh Lindsey, and guest star Leni Hays with her boyfriend.
At the start of the show, Beth and Mick's friendship is once again on shaky ground (when is it not?). Approximately a week ago, Mick told Beth how his ex-wife brought him across against his will, that Beth is the first human that he's trusted with this information, and that she is the only person that he does trust.
The information once again leaves Beth uncomfortable with her feelings for Mick, so she avoids him. That is, until boyfriend Josh needs help. The two of them go to Mick to help track down a star witness in a murder case: Leni Hays (played by American Dreams' Vanessa Lengies).
Leni witnessed her employer kill her boyfriend. And now, as the star witness to the crime, she would like to bring her boyfriend's murderer to justice. But Leni also has a few problems. One: There is a leak in the police department, and now she has a hit man stalker. Two: She's three months pregnant, and testifying doesn't seem like such a good idea, even if it means that she and the baby don't survive to see the courthouse.
With Leni on the lam and a leak in the law, things look bleak for Josh. Unless he can get Beth's detective friend Mick to help find his star witness.
Beth and Mick quickly track Leni down, and Mick hot-foots it to the sunny Californian desert, where Leni shoots him, the prime suspect in the case tries to blow him up, and he winds up stranded in the rusty bathroom a roach-infested motel. (The roaches are lovingly shown multiple times throughout the show in a J.J. Abrams style of en-medias-res that makes me miss Alias so much.)
When Beth tracks Mick down, she learns a valuable tip in vampire first aid: always carry extra blood with you. Of course, the only blood she has to spare happens to be pre-packaged and coursing through her veins. She offers, Mick accepts, and the awkward factor to their relationship just went up exponentially.
The good: As a character, Beth feels real. Sophia Myles seems to do cute well. She's cute with Josh, she's cute with Mick. She's just plain cute. One can see why Mick is drawn to her: She wears innocence like a white Easter dress. One can also see why he constantly pulls away from her: Ask any mother who bought their child's Easter clothes. It's very easy to get that untarnished white dress dirty. Mick is obviously afraid that no good can come of knowing Beth.
The bad: Given that Beth has a sweetheart, and that her interactions with Mick (spanning all of three weeks) primarily have consisted of awkward avoidance broken up by sporadic cute couple-like interaction, I don't quite feel like the history is there for the kind of epic love that the show is trying to sell to us. I can believe the longing looks that Mick throws Beth's way. But when Beth thinks that Mick has died, she breaks down in giant, heart-rending, ugly-crying tears.
Perhaps if the reaction had come later in the season, it would have been more believable. But here, it seems like a house with no foundation: shaky at best.
The conclusion: While Fever was a decent episode, its sole purpose seemed to be to kick up the awkward factor in Mick and Beth's relationship.
I know that Mick has been watching over Beth since she was four, so I can understand Mick's investment in Beth as a character.
But Beth's reciprocating those feelings leaves me scratching my head in puzzlement. Particularly given that she's known Mick for less than a month, he's played the cool cucumber with her, she's avoided him, and she has a boyfriend.
Given all that, I felt like the show is trying to rush the two of them into a relationship without laying the groundwork. Sorry show, but you need to work a lot harder than that to convince me.
To use Mick St. John's own words, any kind of relationship between himself and Moonlight's leading lady, Beth Turner, would be problematic. For one thing, he's a vampire and she is not. Episode 1.04, Fever, is mostly about those problems.
On its surface, Fever is about relationships. Mick's with Beth. Beth's with her boyfriend, prosecuting attorney Josh Lindsey, and guest star Leni Hays with her boyfriend.
At the start of the show, Beth and Mick's friendship is once again on shaky ground (when is it not?). Approximately a week ago, Mick told Beth how his ex-wife brought him across against his will, that Beth is the first human that he's trusted with this information, and that she is the only person that he does trust.
The information once again leaves Beth uncomfortable with her feelings for Mick, so she avoids him. That is, until boyfriend Josh needs help. The two of them go to Mick to help track down a star witness in a murder case: Leni Hays (played by American Dreams' Vanessa Lengies).
Leni witnessed her employer kill her boyfriend. And now, as the star witness to the crime, she would like to bring her boyfriend's murderer to justice. But Leni also has a few problems. One: There is a leak in the police department, and now she has a hit man stalker. Two: She's three months pregnant, and testifying doesn't seem like such a good idea, even if it means that she and the baby don't survive to see the courthouse.
With Leni on the lam and a leak in the law, things look bleak for Josh. Unless he can get Beth's detective friend Mick to help find his star witness.
Beth and Mick quickly track Leni down, and Mick hot-foots it to the sunny Californian desert, where Leni shoots him, the prime suspect in the case tries to blow him up, and he winds up stranded in the rusty bathroom a roach-infested motel. (The roaches are lovingly shown multiple times throughout the show in a J.J. Abrams style of en-medias-res that makes me miss Alias so much.)
When Beth tracks Mick down, she learns a valuable tip in vampire first aid: always carry extra blood with you. Of course, the only blood she has to spare happens to be pre-packaged and coursing through her veins. She offers, Mick accepts, and the awkward factor to their relationship just went up exponentially.
The good: As a character, Beth feels real. Sophia Myles seems to do cute well. She's cute with Josh, she's cute with Mick. She's just plain cute. One can see why Mick is drawn to her: She wears innocence like a white Easter dress. One can also see why he constantly pulls away from her: Ask any mother who bought their child's Easter clothes. It's very easy to get that untarnished white dress dirty. Mick is obviously afraid that no good can come of knowing Beth.
The bad: Given that Beth has a sweetheart, and that her interactions with Mick (spanning all of three weeks) primarily have consisted of awkward avoidance broken up by sporadic cute couple-like interaction, I don't quite feel like the history is there for the kind of epic love that the show is trying to sell to us. I can believe the longing looks that Mick throws Beth's way. But when Beth thinks that Mick has died, she breaks down in giant, heart-rending, ugly-crying tears.
Perhaps if the reaction had come later in the season, it would have been more believable. But here, it seems like a house with no foundation: shaky at best.
The conclusion: While Fever was a decent episode, its sole purpose seemed to be to kick up the awkward factor in Mick and Beth's relationship.
I know that Mick has been watching over Beth since she was four, so I can understand Mick's investment in Beth as a character.
But Beth's reciprocating those feelings leaves me scratching my head in puzzlement. Particularly given that she's known Mick for less than a month, he's played the cool cucumber with her, she's avoided him, and she has a boyfriend.
Given all that, I felt like the show is trying to rush the two of them into a relationship without laying the groundwork. Sorry show, but you need to work a lot harder than that to convince me.