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Beth: "So where does a vampire take a girl on a date?"

Most of the initial dramatic conflicts introduced at the start of the series are gone, and the barriers separating Mick and Beth don't seem quite so insurmountable any more.

Mick has calmed down a lot about the human/vampire relationship thing. (Although if he's going to date a human, he needs to go out and buy an actual bed.) His new acceptance of himself makes him more fun, more relaxed, although he was seriously stressed by the loss of the saint-like non-Brittany Brittany.

Beth has changed, too, and even more dramatically. She gave up her job at BuzzWire partly because it might endanger Mick. And then she surprised me by actually asking Josef to take out nasty paparazzo Dean Gordon. She's not the ADA's girlfriend any more; she's definitely moving away from Josh's world and into Mick's. Even though Talbot, the new ADA, has "cutesy pie love interest" written all over him. Why? Why not just keep Josh in the show? But then we wouldn't have had that amazing death scene. And Beth would probably still be with him. I answered my own question; moving right along.

Josef's role has increased in the past couple of episodes (yay) and the best scenes in this episode were all Josef-related, starting with the Josef/Mick step-sire banter and ending with Beth asking Josef to kill a human being to protect Mick. I love the contrast between Josef's extremely youthful appearance and the glimpses of maturity under his snark (a bit like my beloved Methos on Highlander, as I'm sure I've mentioned before). Josef may tease about it, but he cares deeply about Mick. And Beth knows it, because she does, too.

So the series has changed. We're post Josh, post BuzzWire, and post Mick being a human again. Pretty big changes in a new series, and sort of surprising. The producers must have been thinking pretty hard about where they wanted to go with the season two that unfortunately, they never got.

Bits and pieces:

— The Queen Mary, permanently docked in Long Beach, is often used in filming, including the movie Mick mentioned (The Poseidon Adventure). I've been there twice, and it's a pricey tourist trap but definitely worth seeing. It's even supposed to be haunted.

— Josef's office is slowly recovering from the bombing.

— Jason Abbott was played by Eddie McClintock, future star of Warehouse 13.

— I did learn something from this episode: the singular of paparazzi is paparazzo.

— I was under the impression that pre-digital, vampires couldn't be photographed at all. In this episode, it was established that they just come out blurry.

Quotes:

Talbot: "We went through some pretty heavy stuff together."
Beth: "It's not like you get kidnapped by a plastic surgeon every day."

Mick: "So how do you want to do this?"
Beth: "It's called dating."
Mick: "Right. We go out, get to know each other."
Beth: "You've known me since I was four."
Mick: "Okay, it's weird when you say it like that."

Josef: "You should put it up on your Facebook page."
Mick: "You've seen my Facebook page?"
Josef: "Of course I've seen your Facebook page."

Josef: "I'm not your sire."
Mick: "You're kind of my step-sire."
Josef: "No."

Mick: "You went out with Jean Harlow?"
Josef: "I mostly stayed in with Jean Harlow."

Mick: "Some guy wrote a book about it. He called it The Poseidon Adventure. Exaggerated things a bit, but I like to think the Gene Hackman character was based on me."

Mick: "It's not like you've slept with a vampire."
Beth: "Maybe once in college, but I was really drunk."

Mick: "The camera, lost boy. You should be ashamed of yourself, making a living like this. Talk about bloodsuckers."

Boy: "In the name of vamp solidarity, we'd love to help. But..."

Logan: "You know, Tierney spends a thousand a month on cat grooming. Cat grooming." Well, if I were a zillionaire, I'd spend a lot on cats. Not cat grooming, though. I'd open a huge no kill cat shelter.

Beth: "You are going to get so tired of watching me eat."
Mick: "I hope so."

Josef: "Let's just say there was a particularly rowdy night at Garbo's I wouldn't want documented."
Beth: "Don't tell me. You're the reason she wanted to be alone."

The Tierney plot was so-so, but the rest of it was terrific. So how do I rate it? Should I take an average?

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

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