Moonlight: Sleeping Beauty

Josef: "She never came out of it. She got lost somewhere in between."

This episode did two cool things: it gave Josef a seriously romantic backstory, and it gave Mick a damned good reason to never turn Beth.

I like Jason Dohring a lot because of Logan Echolls, the complicated, heart-wrenching character he played so beautifully on Veronica Mars. So I really wanted Josef to be more than a rich flip immortal playboy. And I just got my wish. Josef was once deeply in love, and he lost her in a particularly painful and guilt-inducing way. With a lesser actor, this episode could have been icky sweet and uncomfortable, but Jason Dohring made it work. And Mick's choice of best friend makes more sense now, too, since Josef is a lot more like Mick than even Mick knew.

One serious flaw in this series is that eternal life is so appealing and has so little down side. These vampires are not only immortal, they can go out during the day and don't have to kill to survive. Who wouldn't want that? Let's turn all of our friends and party forever, huh? Apparently, though, when Coraline turned Mick, it could have resulted in a horrible living death. Not something Beth is ready to do, since she just ran back to Josh.

So basically, unless Beth is willing to risk a fate worse than death, she and Mick can only truly be together as equals if he takes the "cure" and becomes human. Except that the "cure" isn't permanent. Coraline, who was also in a hospital bed and suffering because of the transition between vampire and human (sort of the reverse of Josef's Sarah), has apparently just become a bloodsucker again. Why did Coraline take the "cure" in the first place? How did she do it? Why isn't it permanent?

Coraline is an interesting character. She's just all over the place – vampire, human, powerful, fragile, fun, evil – but we still don't know who she really is. The monster that turned Mick against his will and kidnapped Beth, the woman Mick was in love with, the quirky photographer with a sense of humor? We can see why Mick once loved her, although I don't think he still does. In this episode, he was a lot more interested in the "cure" than in Coraline herself, suffering in that hospital bed.

Sarah's condition raises a bunch of questions. Will she ever die? What about the cure for vampirism that Coraline has apparently discovered – would it bring Sarah out of her coma and make her human again? I also found it hard to swallow that Sarah's father waited fifty years to avenge her. And if he read her diary, why avenge her at all? She clearly chose to do what she did.

Bits and pieces:

— Mick gave Beth a hard time about her covering Josef's death for BuzzWire. He sure didn't think that one through, though. Would he rather have some other reporter show up, looking into the deaths of several vampires?

— Mick cried when he thought Josef was dead. I liked that.

— "Josef Kostan" may be an alias, since Josef was "Charles Fitzgerald" in 1955.

— Coraline was the one who introduced Josef and Mick.

— Speaking of Veronica Mars, Sam the pretty hacker was very like Veronica's friend Mac, down to the streaks of color in her hair. (See also Claudia on Warehouse 13.) Streaks seem to be de rigueur for snarky pretty female computer hackers.

— Playing vampire poker with vials of blood is a bit impractical. Probably less so than playing vampire poker with kittens, though. ("They're delicious!")

Quotes:

Mick: "You've already died once this week. Isn't that enough?"

Mick: "Vamps tend to move around. We can't stay in one spot for too long."
Beth: "But you have. You stayed in L.A."
Mick: "I like the weather."
Me, too. It spoils you. Almost makes the traffic worthwhile.

Josef: "The longer we were together, the more I began to think the whole reason that I became a vampire was so, you know, I could live long enough to meet her." Aww.

Mick: "You know, for a four-hundred year old vampire, you sure have a low threshold for pain."
Josef: "Well, giving is different than receiving."
You'd think psychologically that under the circumstances, Josef would be masochistic, and punishing himself. Guess not.

Three out of four games of vampire poker,

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

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