Moonlight: Fever (Episode 104)

Hey, it's that vampire show

We open on our fanged hero Mick in a bathtub, but before you get too excited, it's a nightmarish series of shots in a disgusting motel, and Mick isn't looking so hot. As pipes drip and roaches scurry, the Emo Voice Over (EVO) ponders the conundrum of the one thing that can save your life being the thing that will make living unbearable. We see Beth in the tub (they're both fully clothed -- boo!) offering her neck to Mick, who tears into it with gusto. This appears to be a fantasy, since Mick is actually alone in the tub filled with water and a large amount of ...cubed tofu? I assume it's supposed to be ice, but it looks more like Mick is ready to be served up with some pad thai noodles.

21 hours earlier, the EVO ponders (it does that a lot) the nature of blood, and how both vamps and the living need it. As Mick enjoys a glass of chilled O-neg, he watches Beth's BuzzWire report on the murder trial of a billionaire arms dealer. Beth's honey Josh is the prosecutor, and things aren't going well. Of course, it's a huge conflict of interest for Beth to report on this case, but BuzzWire isn't exactly the New York Times. In their bedroom, Beth and Josh watch the report and make with the cutesy coupleness. Beth tries to get more case info out of Josh, and thinks there's a secret witness stashed away in a safe house.

Cut to -- wait for it! -- the secret witness stashed away in a safe house. Two cops play cards while the bored and pouty young woman they're protecting, Leni, snags one of their cells to make an ill-advised call in her room. Sure enough, things soon go to hell in a hand basket and the cops are dead in a hail of bullets. Leni manages to escape out the back alley and into the night, although not before cutting herself on the window she climbed out. Hope that call to your BFF to gossip about Lindsay Lohan's cokepants was worth it.

In Mick's apartment, the EVO rambles on about how Mick and Beth can never be together due to her boyfriend, his Coraline-related trust issues, and I'm not really sure what else, because Mick is shirtless and it's extremely difficult to concentrate on anything other than those abs of steel. YUM. Beth and Josh interrupt Mick's quiet, half-naked Sunday morning to ask him to help find Leni, since the police can't be trusted thanks to leaks. Leni worked for killer arms dealer Amir Fayed (wouldn't it be nice to have a non-Arab arms dealer once in a while?) as a nanny and witnessed the murder. Mick takes the case.

Josh, who seems to have a lot of crime-scene authority for a DA, shows Mick the safe house. Mick takes a psychic whiff of the blood on the scene and then follows Leni's trail out into the alley, where she apparently took off in a truck belonging to one of the cops. After activating the Lojack system, McBeth find the truck on a residential street and Mick figures out which house Leni went into. Mick asks Beth why she's working with him, and she tells him that she's going to be his conduit to Josh, getting the scoop on Leni's story in return. It's a bright California day, and a sunglasses-wearing Mick shades himself with the file on Leni. Beth calls Mick a "delicate flower" for his inability to tolerate the sun. Hee.

Mick jimmies the lock on the house where Leni cleaned her cut and apparently acquired a gun, judging by the empty case. Turns out the house belonged to the alleged murder victim in the case, Fayed's associate Jack Toland, who was dating Leni. Mick figures out that Leni is busing it to Jack's cabin or whatever in a place called Victorville. Mick tells Beth he's going alone because it could be dangerous, and they banter rather adorably about making a good team and how things sometimes things end in "terrible screams and bloodshed." I'm sure you can guess who was on which side of the good-natured debate.

The bus pulls up to a roadside diner, where Mick, rocking a black ensemble including sunglasses and baseball cap, waits for Leni. By the vending machine, Mick listens to Leni's accelerated heartbeat and tries to convince her to go back to LA with him. She pulls out her gun and -- whoopsie! -- blows a hole in him. Guns don't kill people -- scared nannies do. We come back from commercial to learn that the bullet wound was just in Mick's forearm, and it heals almost instantaneously (although according to EVO, it still hurts like a mother). Mick tells Leni she missed, and convinces her to come and talk inside the diner.

In Josh's office, Beth moonily praises Mick's mad detective skillz while Josh grits his teeth. Another DA flirts with Beth before telling them that the safe house cop called a cell phone paid for by Fayed. So now safe house cop looks dirty and Josh calls a judge for a warrant to follow up on the cell call. Would they need a warrant to get the name of the phone owner? And wouldn't the police be investigating this further? Whatever, this isn't Law and Order: Bloodsuckers, so I'll let them have their possibly unnecessary warrants. Of course, we know it was Leni making the call. Get out the wooden spoon -- that plot is thickening.

EVO informs us that Mick is hungry, and I wonder why he didn't bring a thermos of grub along. In the diner, Leni describes witnessing the murder after Fayed found out Jack was dropping a dime on him. She refuses to testify and then tearfully professes her love for Jack. Mick realizes that he can hear her echoing heartbeat so loudly because she's knocked up, and that she's trying to protect her baby, not just herself.

Josh and his minions storm the Fayed mansion with their warrant. Beth waits outside and gets the call from Mick that he's trying to convince preggo Leni to testify. After conferring with his DA friend (who is probably the leak), Josh tells Mick that he's sending a police escort to bring them back to LA. In Victorville, Mick ignores Leni's boundaries by following her into the can, but he vows to protect her and the sprog, convincing her to ride back to LA on his white horse.

I have to imagine there was an easier way to do this, but Josh gets Fayed's men to cough up their cell phones to figure out which one was called from the safe house. Meanwhile, Beth bonds with Fayed's moppet of a daughter outside. Turns out Leni called the kid from the safe house, and it's safe to assume that the child didn't order the hit. Although if you've seen The Bad Seed, you might beg to differ.

In Victorville, our hitman has stolen a local cop car and assumed the cop's identity. Mick takes a whiff of him and smells bullshit, recognizing his scent from the safe house. He quickly gets Leni out the back, taking off in the stolen cop car. A helicopter appears in the rearview (no, really), firing a missile (no, really!) at the car. Thankfully, Mick has either taken a course on evading heat-seeking missiles or he's a big fan of the Die Hard series. He slams on the brakes and the missile sails long. As the helicopter comes around for another try, Leni and Mick bail out of the car, Mick rigging the gas pedal so the car keeps going. I fail to believe the helicopter occupants wouldn't notice Mick and Leni taking cover in the shrubbery, but after the cop car is blasted to kingdom come, the helicopter takes off. Mick and Leni are now in the middle of the California desert with no cell service, the sun beating down.

Josh gets the call that Mick and Leni are dead, and a teary Beth snots that the leak is on Josh's team, and he needs to take care of it. Meanwhile, Leni and Mick are trudging through the glaringly bright and hot desert. Mick isn't faring as well as the pregnant woman, and he hilariously takes her jacket from around her waist without even asking, putting it over his head to shade himself. Leni kindly asks if Mick wants to stop for a while, and she must be thinking, Man, my knight in shining armor's a pussy! But lest the audience think less of delicate flower Mick, the EVO tells us that as a human, Mick survived six weeks of extreme cold during the Battle of the Bulge in WWII.

At home, Beth noisily sobs about her dead vampire. Back in the desert, Mick's looking extremely pale and being held up now by Leni. EVO muses about how pretty soon Mick won't be able to stop himself from feeding off Leni, but luckily for the plucky young lass, the abandoned motel appears like a roach-ridden oasis. Mick instructs Leni to fetch copious amounts of ice as he runs the cold water into the tub before dramatically tearing his shirt open. That's right, Mick. Don't hide your light under a bushel! Of course, an abandoned motel wouldn't have a working ice machine or running water, so I guess we're just supposed to think that this motel in the middle of nowhere has an inattentive staff who don't notice new guests who wander in from the desert.

At the ice machine, Leni looks surprised as I am that it actually contains ice. She dumps it into the tub on top of Mick and tries to give him a snack from the mini bar. This motel really is an oasis! Mick tells Leni to keep trying to get a cell signal and to call Beth at the number Mick gave her. Leni wonders if Beth is Mick's girlfriend, and Mick says no, hilariously adding in an exasperated tone that, "it's complicated." Hee! Mick kicks Leni out of the bathroom to avoid drinking from her, and cradles the tofu to his chest. Seriously, hasn't Hollywood mastered the art of fake ice yet?

I said bring me some soy sauce!

Leni magically gets a signal and summons Beth to the motel. When she tells Mick the good news, he fantasizes about biting her before yelling at her to get out. I must say that poor Leni's being a trooper through all this and I like the actress. In Josh's office, he chows down on some Chinese food (there's a tofu theme going on, clearly) and shares the good news about Mick and Leni's resurrection with his pal DA and a female cop from earlier. But really, who cares when Mick and Beth are reuniting in the motel bathroom?

That's right, it's time for the scene we all knew was coming. Sure, every vamp show/book/movie/play/haiku in existence has used the story of a sickly vamp being forced to feed from the human he or she loves. It may be cliché, but it's delicious. Beth bares her neck, nervously saying she doesn't know how to do this (forgetting to add the part where she's been masturbating to the thought every night). Mick screams at her to leave, but Beth insists, saying she trusts that Mick won't kill her or turn her.

As Beth pants, Mick tells her, "At some point, you're going to have to stop me," before taking her wrist and chomping into it. Ow! Dude, a little finesse goes a long way with the ladies. Mick sucks, Beth holds him, and we cut to the hitman driving up outside. Okay, that was not nearly enough sensual blood sucking! I know this is CBS and not Showtime, but sheesh.

Meanwhile, Josh figures out that his DA friend is indeed the snitch, and Josh punches him for his trouble. At the motel, Mick, once again ambulatory, dispatches the hitman quite easily. Beth presses a towel to the bleeding wound on her wrist and looks rather forlorn as a grateful Leni hugs a dripping wet Mick.

At home later, Josh notes that the good guys have won and the day is saved. He kisses Beth's injured wrist and she looks pained in more ways than one. Josh apologizes for kind of being a douche earlier when Mick was faux dead, and notes that they make a pretty good team. Beth wallows in guilt.

In the Fortress of Style (aka Mick's pad), Mick is (what else?) brooding when Beth knocks on his door. They both lean against said door longingly until Beth leaves. EVO tells us that Mick feels a connection to Beth, maybe from the blood, maybe from his rescue of her as a child, but he puts her in danger and it has to stop. This was only episode four, so that's highly unlikely.

Another very enjoyable outing! No Jason Dohring, although I wouldn't want him shoehorned in just for the sake of it. The chemistry between McBeth continues to shine, and I look forward to seeing more. Well done, show.