Moonlight: The Ringer (Episode 107)

Hey, it's that vampire show

We begin tonight with our hero up on the roof (or possibly his balcony?) as he hangs from a bar with his feet and does ab crunches. Way to dispel the myth that vampires = bats, Mick! As the Emo Voice Over (EVO) rambles on about the dangers of complacency, Mick finally notices the towering inferno behind him in the distance. Black trench coat billowing, he hits the scene, pausing to help some firefighters open a stuck hydrant. Beth leaves her new cameraman (Kevin Weisman W must be back in Gambler's Anonymous) to do his thing and heads over to Mick to commiserate over the landmark hotel that's burning. Mick remembers going there for brunch after church as a child, but that's forgotten when he spots his dead wife Coraline snapping pictures of the fire. Yep, just when you're feeling pretty good about life, the universe has a way of pissing in your corn flakes.

Mick flashes back to the night he first met Coraline, when he was playing guitar at a fancy party as part of a Hawaiian-shirt-clad easy-listening trio. Somehow Alex still manages to make this look sexy. As Coraline slinks by, Mick muses to his band mates that he wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers. Little does he know, it's drinking blood in bed that will be the deal breaker.

Gee, that lady's almost as pretty as I am. Almost.

Back to the future, where Mick boggles at Coraline and calls her name. She blows him off, claiming to have no idea what he's talking about. Beth bounds over to say hi, and Coraline introduces herself to Mick as Morgan. Mick looks back and forth between Beth and Coraline/Morgan (Morgaline) and has a note of hysteria in his voice when he asks how they know each other. Beth apparently buys a lot of Morgaline's photos for BuzzWire, and they've known each other a couple of months. Mick, still suffering from severe cognitive dissonance, can't stop staring at Morgaline as she takes more pictures, and an irked Beth stalks off. EVO reminds us that Mick killed Coraline, just in case we missed the previouslies.

Mick runs to his BFF Josef's pad to share his wide-eyed panic over Morgaline. Josef doesn't seem too concerned, and I get the feeling he's kind of used to Mick having a hissy from time to time. Josef wonders what Beth said about Morgaline, but Mick reminds us all that Beth doesn't remember anything from her kidnapping by Coraline at four years of age. Mick goes on to say that Morgaline isn't a vamp, and Josef emphatically states she can't be Coraline if she's human.

BuzzWire. Beth and Morgaline chat, and Beth notices that Morgaline has a bandage on her arm. Turns out some guy broke into her place the night before and stole her cameras. They "scuffled," but Morgaline seems more concerned about her stolen equipment. She innocently asks if maybe Mick can help her. They visit the Fortress of Style, which just thrills Mick, as you can imagine. He regards Morgaline with both suspicion and fascination, and Beth can tell something's amiss.

Mick flashes back again to the '50s party where he met Coraline. Half the picture is in black and white, with certain people and objects in colour, which is a very nice effect. Coraline requests that the band play some "devil's music," and Mick moonily agrees to play "Just Like a Woman." In the present, McBeth accompany Morgaline to her apartment, where the decorations have a '50s theme and books like Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust are lying around. Morgaline says the thief left jewellery, cash and car keys -- just taking the cameras. Mick figures the thief wanted what was inside, and Beth helpfully suggests, "Pictures." She's not an ace investigative reporter for nothing, folks!

Mick says that perhaps the arsonist from the hotel thought Morgaline took his photo at the scene. However, she has the pictures on a memory stick around her neck and plugs it into her laptop. When they zoom in to one of the shots of the burning building, they see a hilariously bad Photoshopped image of the thief murdering a woman as the inferno rages around them.

Help! CBS blew their special effects budget on those flashbacks!

Horrified, Mick wonders how something so amateurish made it onto network TV flashes back to killing Coraline. Morgaline deduces that the killer saw her take the picture. So, let me get this straight: The guy sets a huge fire in a hotel, then murders a woman (not before setting the fire, which would make a lot more sense), and also manages to see a photographer outside on the ground taking his picture as he struggles with his victim, surrounded by flames. Okey dokey.

Back at Josef's, poor Mick is very rattled and insists Coraline is somehow setting this whole thing up to bait him. Josef seems quite tense about the notion, and he insists Coraline couldn't "come back from the undead." Mick confesses that he never saw Coraline's ashes, and Josef sadly says that Mick never told him that in the 22 years since Coraline died. Aw. Josef mentions that he knew Coraline for 100 years more than Mick, and that although she was one crazy chick, even she couldn't resurrect. He then gets up close and personal with Mick, reminding Mick to let her go already.

At BuzzWire, a slightly tense McBeth discuss Morgaline and her work history as a gritty photographer. When Mick keeps asking questions, Beth tries to play it cool, saying that she didn't think Morgaline was Mick's type. He cutely realizes she's jealous, which she cutely denies. As he heads off to the hotel to try and sniff out the body of the woman from the picture, Beth barely resists doodling "Mick + Beth 4-eva!" on her notepad.

Taking a page from the Winchesters' playbook, Mick pretends to be an insurance investigator so he can poke around the remains of the hotel. He very quickly finds the woman's body, which somehow the police and fire crews missed. At Morgaline's apartment, Mick dusts for the killer's prints as Morgaline puts on "Just Like a Woman" and muses about how sometimes you feel like you know someone really well, even though you've just met. This bitch has mind-fuckery down to a science. Or, if she really is innocent in all this, Mick has really, really bad karma.

As Morgaline casually ponders how absolutely terrible it would be to die in a fire, Mick notices a tattoo on the dead woman's back in one of the photos. We flash back to the '50s party, where Coraline goes skinny dipping in the pool at the end of the night after asking Mick to unzip her. Of course, she had the same fleur-de-lis tattoo as the current dead woman. Mick is officially freaked the fuck out.

At BuzzWire, Beth assures Mick that Morgaline is who she says she is -- Beth checked into it. On cue, Morgaline appears, and Mick takes off. Morgaline wonders if McBeth are an item, and Beth insists they aren't. In his office, Mick runs the prints (which he notes are almost too perfect) on his computer as he tells Josef about the tattoo coincidence. Turns out the prints belong to a Hank Mottola, who happens to have died weeks ago. Mick concludes that Hank's a vamp in cahoots with Coraline to play the most elaborate revenge prank ever. Josef still thinks Mick needs to take the tinfoil hat off, but Mick asks him to come along to check out Hank's house, since he could use another pair of eyes, "and teeth." Josef snarls, bearing his fangs, and millions of fangirls and boys fantasize about being ravished.

At Mottola's house, Mick leaps up to the roof. Josef requests that Mick go open the door for him, suggesting that perhaps they could hire someone to do this kind of dirty work. Clearly Josef's gotten soft over 400 years, and he grumbles before leaping up to join Mick. Inside, Josef kvetches about the decor until Mick tells him to STFU. They really do have great banter and chemistry, and I'm glad TPBP are giving Josef more to do these days. More Jason Dohring! I decree it.

Mick finds a picture of Mottola and the dead girl, and Josef snarks that they look like Mick and Coraline, "only worse." Hee. Mick also finds a copy of the same Proust book from Morgaline's place (Josef: "A little French for me. I couldn't finish it."), which was apparently Coraline's favourite book. There's a key inside.

In the bedroom, Mick searches while Josef hilariously tests out the bedsprings. As usual, Jason is the slashers' best friend. Mick unlocks a safe in the closet with the key and finds Morgaline's missing cameras, noting they were stolen by a guy who's been dead for three weeks. Josef finally begins to suspect that something is indeed rotten in the state of Denmark.

The next morning, Morgaline visits Mick's office. A shocked Josef looks like a tiger about to pounce and gets a good whiff of Morgaline as Mick returns her cameras and baits her with theories about Mottola rising from the dead. Morgaline insists Mottola must have faked his death. I personally would have wondered what Mick and Josef were smoking before nodding and smiling my way outta there. The whole time, Josef and Mick are giving each other these great looks conveying how absolutely surreal this whole Morgaline thing is.

Once she leaves, Josef tells Mick that Morgaline is indeed a perfect Coraline doppelganger. Ah, one of my favourite words, although I do have to wonder why Germans came up with the term. Was it a big problem back in the day? Lots of evil identical twins running around Bavaria?

Josef agrees that Morgaline moves, sounds and looks like Coraline, but that she's human, and that's that. Mick thinks that Coraline's found a cure for vampirism, which is basically his wet dream. Josef, who would never go back to being human, tells Mick that's his problem in a nutshell: someday, Mick is going to have to stop hating what he is. Awww. Mick, your BFF just wants you to love yourself! Josef prefaces that comment by mentioning that he knows they have an unwritten rule about not giving each other advice, which I think is demonstrably untrue. Oh, boys. They both need some Chicken Soup for the Vampire's Soul.

Mick thinks Coraline has come back because she can't stand to see him happy with Beth, and later while Morgaline and Mick stake out the cemetery where Mottola's ashes are supposed to be, she tells Mick that Beth is totally into him. In another gauzy flashback, Mick goes to see Coraline at her mansion and finds her entertaining another man. Disappointed and angry, he leaves. They must have taken the EVO out at the last minute, because the closed captions for it are still there: "That's the way it started with Coraline...and that's the way it always was -- on again, off again, hot, cold -- enough to drive anyone crazy."

As Morgaline distracts the guards, Mick sneaks into the mausoleum, where many candles are burning. I have to imagine this is for Mick's benefit, since that would be a real fire hazard. Mottola's ashes are missing, and sure enough he's alive undead and well, and he and Mick engage in some spirited fisticuffs before Mick takes a big bite out of him. Morgaline arrives just in time to witness this, and she takes off running. Mick catches up with his super speed and starts shaking her, demanding to know how she turned human. He's unhinged, she's terrified, and he tears her shirt, yelling about her tattoo, which isn't there. Mick's totally lost it, and it's kind of scary and surprisingly violent. The bandage on Morgaline's arm from the other day rips off, and Mick sniffs her blood desperately. As she runs away, a dazed Mick keeps repeating, "How are you bleeding?"

The next night at the Fortress, Mick confesses to Beth that Morgaline looks exactly like Coraline, and that he murdered Coraline the same way Mottola murdered his girlfriend. He asks Beth if she's ever had an "intense affair," and of course we can tell from her face that Mick's the only person Beth's ever felt intense about, but she can't exactly say that. Mick tells her it's like a fever and makes you do things you wouldn't normally do. He flashes back to a drunken stalkery visit he made to Coraline's place which ended in him smashing a window to get in (much to Coraline's delight, of course).

In the present, Mick tells Beth he went crazy when he saw Morgaline, and that he was wrong about her. Beth asks if Mick was disappointed, and his silence tells her all she needs to know. According to the EVO as she leaves, people never learn to expect the unexpected, no longer how long you live.

At the BuzzWire studio, Beth films a piece on Mottola faking his death before murdering his girlfriend. She smiles at Morgaline across the studio, and Morgaline simply gives her a creepy stare back before turning away in slow-mo.

I'm an evil bitch. Ask me how!

In her room later, Morgaline flips her hair, pouts, and wipes the makeup off the back of her shoulder, revealing a fleur-de-lis tattoo. Dun, dun, DUN!

I have to admit I'm not a huge Shannyn Sossamon fan, but since Coraline's not supposed to be likable, she works well in the role. I know this storyline is quite similar to the Darla/Angel one on Angel, but eh, whatever. I'm really looking forward to Mick absolutely losing his wee mind when he finds out that Coraline IS back, and that she has indeed somehow de-vamped herself. Let's just hope it happens in the next four episodes.