Review: 'Moonlight' - Fated To Pretend
The following contains MAJOR SPOILERS for "Fated To Pretend," the thirteenth episode of the CBS series "Moonlight."
With the body count of friends and loved ones in Beth Turner's life is mounting, you know "Moonlight" has returned.
In "Fated To Pretend," the first new episode produced since the writers' strike ended, someone is fated to pretend something. Mick (Alex O'Loughlin) is fully human after taking the mortal cure, and he's loving it. He rediscovers food, and embarks on an episode-long romance with hot dogs, coffee, and donuts. Oh, also a romance with Beth(Sophia Myles), but he partook in more donuts than Beth.
Still, he's sleeping in a bed instead of a freezer. He's walking bare-chested in the sunshine along the beach. He?s eating food at the beach. Oh. And Beth's there, too. She isn't eating so much, but she spends their picnic hitting on Mick.
Later, tanned Mick visits Josef (Jason Dohring) in the shell of his once and soon to be remodeled penthouse. Josef asks Mick if he and Beth have "sealed the deal," Mick admits he's in love with her, but has not taken that step. Josef warns him that he may regret putting it off and tells him "Now go do something about it before it's too late." (Uh oh! Strategically placed words of warning!)
Meanwhile, Beth is at home, obviously with Mick on her mind and her product-placed phone. Maureen (Tami Roman) calls Beth to work. When Beth gets there, work is ransacked and Maureen is dead with a big, bloody bullet wound in the middle of her forehead.
Cops show up at the scene. Hunky Ben Talbot (Eric Winter) from the district attorney's office shows up on the scene in Josh?s old job and offends Beth by insinuating the web news is trash. He says he?s also heard about Mick (as Mick shows up on the scene), but says it wasn't good. They quickly learn Maureen?s computer is missing. They go on a search for the computer.
Mick and Beth go to vamp coroner Guillermo's (Jacob Vargas) morgue to see Maureen's body. Guillermo points out that she was killed by a vampire, and that she was shot in the head to throw the cops off.
They then go to Maureen's apartment. The conversation that follows was among the best parts of this episode.
Beth: "Breaking and entering was much more fun when you were a vampire. It's a shame you can't still do that sexy vampire jumping thing."
Mick: "Yeah, well the jumping was kind of tied to the whole bloodsucking thing." Beth finds Maureen's USB drive in a box of tampons. Unfortunately, the files are all password protected. So on to Mick's computer geek vamp friend, Logan (David Blue), with USB drive and cat in tow.
Logan thinks the cat is lunch, but Mick pays him money. Mick asks him to help them find the password, and the search becomes fruitless for Logan. Mick suggests they try "Travis," the name of the cat.
Logan: "Nobody ever uses their cat?" Maureen was investigating a suspicious car accident that killed the wife of a local politician. The top vampire suspect in her files turned out to be Josef. Mick doubts it's Josef, but he investigates anyway.
Josef has an alibi, which exonerates him.
Mick and Beth check out politician Kent Morrow, and sit through a pompous politician-like speech. Morrow's teenage daughter Bonnie is clearly irked by her father, rolling her eyes as he speaks about "the importance of family."
Mick tries to ask Morrow questions, but is given the royal "I have nothing to hide" complete with indignant female assistant, and arrogant, nose-in-the-air-ness.
Beth asks corporate donut queen about the possibility of their spokesmodel being poisoned by killer donuts. She is given the big blow-off and sent on her way with a box of yucky donuts ? which Mick soon dives into with glee.
They check out dead donut spokesmodel's body for clues as to what killed her, since it turned out not to be the donuts. They find recent liposuction scars, though the liposuction didn't kill her. She still suffered a massive loss of blood, sending them off to find her cosmetic surgeon.
Hottie A.D.A. Talbot shows up again for functional conversation meant to push the story along, to create a dilemma for Beth, but most likely to position him as the third part of a new love triangle. (I?m taking bets on this!)
Mick follows another lead, Luis Perez, who was a witness who saw the Morrow car accident. Mick finds Perez, who runs when Mick calls out to him.
Mick: "I'm actually going to have to chase this guy? Crap!"
Chase ensues. Mick catches Perez, who is afraid INS is after him. Morrow tipped off immigration to get the only witness to the accident out of the way. It turns out, Morrow also had emails sent to Maureen that appeared to be sent from Perez's computer, but were sent from another location.
Soon we find Mick is on a rooftop of a very tall building, trying to stop Morrow's daughter from jumping. She is torn up about keeping her father's secrets and knowing the truth about the accident ? that Morrow himself was responsible for it and the death of her mother; however, it turns out, Morrow was not responsible for Maureen's death.
Even with this knowledge, Mick and Beth have to pause to arrange a date. Back to murder suspect.
Maureen's death was related to the Donut Queen death. All indicators point to the liposuction doctor ? who indeed turns out to be a vampire. Beth and Hottie DA seek him out, and get themselves captured and tied up.
Mick gets emergency surgery on a cut leg via coroner Guillermo. Mick concludes that at the moment, "being human sucks." He realizes that Beth is in danger, especially since she has a rare, tasty blood type.
Mick prepares for a showdown with Slice-and-Dice Doc, complete with arsenal of weapons. As he is readying himself, Josef enters, and violently convinces Mick he can't save Beth without his vampire abilities. Mick begs Josef to sire him again so he can save Beth. In a poignant and dramatic scene, Josef does just that.
Vampire Mick goes to the vamp surgeons office and saves the day, leaving Talbot blindfolded so he can't see the vampirocity the ensued.
In the end, we find Mick and Beth o, their moonlit rooftop date. She's back to hitting on him, even with his becoming a vampire again. He resists because he insists relationships between humans and vampires "are difficult, dangerous, and complicated." Still, before they part, they have a 20-second kiss, followed by Mick asking Beth to give him some time, to which she responds "Just don?t take too long. You may have forever, but I don?t."
Beth leaves, and Mick does that sexy vampire jumping thing, stopping to smolder beneath the full moonlight.
What Worked
Mick and food. Mick and doughnuts. It?s a good thing Mick went back to being a vamp, because any more eating and he would have had to be rolled around the show.
The banter between Mick and Beth, and Mick and Josef was fun. The characters and the actors have developed a very natural rapport with each other.
Maureen had a ocecat! Or a cat that looks very much like an ocecat! Maureen's ocecat loves Mick, who as a vampire, terrified animals.
What Didn't Work
The plot that put Beth in danger was largely a pedestrian plot. Some corrupt, ambitious politician is suspected of killing his wife. His teenage daughter knows that he was lying when he claimed his wife was driving during the fatal accident, when it was actually he who was driving. I'm trying to envision how he could have pulled that off in the first place, since forensic evidence would have most likely revealed the truth. No scenario I can think of would put her in the driver's seat and end up dead at the same time ? while her husband, who actually drove, ended up unscathed enough to what? Move her dead body into the driver's seat?
That aside, there was one other flaw in this episode. As good as much of the dialogue was, some of it just felt like nails scratching a chalkboard. The scenes between Mick and Morrow's teenage daughter just felt forced. Why would she tell Mick he was cool upon first meeting him? Yeah, he's all sexy and stuff, but something about their encounters just didn't ring true. The conversation between Josef and Mick about whether Mick had had sex with Beth also seemed a bit over the top. Maybe I'm missing something, but do vampires really talk that way with each other? It reminded me of bad soap opera scenes.
Still, as bad as some of the dialogue was in some parts, in others it was so fluid and entertaining that it made the transgressions mostly forgivable.
Giving Credit Where Credit Is Due
"Fated to Pretend" was written by Gabrielle G. Stanton and Harry Werksman, and directed by David M. Barrett. "Moonlight" airs on CBS, Fridays at 9 p.m. ET.
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