By Brandon Nolta

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when people I kill show up again after 25 years, it really bugs me. It sure seems to bug Mick (Alex O’Loughlin), especially when the dead person in question is his undead ex-wife (Shannyn Sossamon). Wait, that didn’t come out right. In the universe of MOONLIGHT, cremation is one of the sure methods of disposing of the undead, and that’s what Mick did in the process of saving a young Beth (Sophia Myles) in the early 1980s. This comes up because in the process of watching a landmark building burn to the ground, Mick runs into a photographer who is a dead ringer for the vampire ex.

Luckily (or maybe not), Beth is acquaintances with Morgan, the dead ringer, and when somebody breaks into Morgan’s apartment and steals her cameras, Beth logically turns to Mick to help find the guy. However, Mick’s total freakout at being confronted with a twin to his ex generates a lot of tension that Beth isn’t particularly thrilled with, and things get tenser when it turns out that Morgan captured an image of the thief/arsonist killing someone. Oh boy. Apparently, that sinking feeling is catching, because it even creeps into his conversations with his buddy Josef (Jason Dohring).


Anyway, as the coincidences mount up and the connections to his ex become more numerous, Mick’s paranoia muscles get a workout. Despite the good advice Josef delivers and his own knowledge that Morgan is not a vampire, his fear that his wife is back becomes more palpable—mixed with a dash of hope that she’s found a way to become mortal again—and the possibility of someone doing something eminently regrettable takes a sharp swing upward. Ah, a little vampire violence, maybe? Then again, maybe Mick is just taking a ride on the Loonie Express. Still, as both William Burroughs and Nirvana pointed out at different times, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

As Buffy once put it, “Love makes you do the wacky,” and this episode of MOONLIGHT seems bound and determined to demonstrate that truth in Mick’s case. O’Loughlin does a nice job showing how a normal guy, dead or alive in flashback, can descend into madness over love, and does this pretty singlehandedly. Sossamon is in a lot of the episode with O’Loughlin, but she appears to have all the emotive ability of a tree. Actually, this is an improvement, because in her past roles I’ve seen, she’s had all the emotive skill of a block of wood, so at least she’s moved up to living material. Fortunately, the role really only requires that she look fine and act mysterious, so it’s not as painful as you’d expect. This episode makes a good addition to the mythology, and despite the low violence quotient, was an interesting peek into its main character’s head. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s a Casper Van Dien flick on Sci-Fi Channel that’s just begging for the MST3K treatment.