Like Pushing Daisies (analyzed earlier on this site), the new CBS drama series Moonlight explores fairly heady ideas about what makes us human, specifically the relationship between flesh and spirit. Unlike the cheerful Daisies, Moonlight, created by movie producer Joel Silver, is another of the many dark dramas so common on TV today.
Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is a moralistic vampire who doesn’t prey on "innocents" but instead kills only evil people whom he thinks deserve to die (so he says). Mick despises vampires who kill humans indiscriminately, and he helps people by working as a private investigator, using his heightened senses to solve the crimes.
The possibility of redemption is a strong impulse throughout the pilot episode, as Mick is torn between his will to live and his desire to live right.
That’s a good and interesting theme to consider. Unfortunately, the scriptwriting, performances, and visual presentation are at a low level of sophistication, sticking to the modern comic-book/graphic-novel approach and never striking much contact with the real world. That makes it difficult for the viewer to experience the show as much more than an intellectual exercise—and comic books are hardly the best way to exercise the intellect.
I have to agree with Audrianna…I saw the commercials for the show and didn’t think I would like it. I figured it would be kinda hokey actually. However, I like Vampires so I watched the first episode and I have been hooked on it since. I actually can’t wait for each episode. I think that Mick St. John being super sexy helps with the whole “romanticism” that comes with vampires. Not to mention the sexual tension between the two main characters that plays into the storylines. I hope this show stays around!
i love this show. i got hooked on the first episode. now i never miss a show.
That makes sense to me, CC. Perhaps what is happening here is that the gns that most critics and fans claim are so extraordinary are rather dissatisfying because they do not reach the lofty heights their supporters attribute to them.
The supernatural dramas, and comics, that I enjoy the most always seem to have protagonists with one foot in the world as we know it, even while they pursue a mission that isn’t subject to the same laws and perhaps is not entirely clear to them. (Think of Buffy trying to keep her grades up and avoid getting grounded, Clark Kent trying to come up with a scoop and protect his cover.) This dichotomy not only makes for better drama, but is a more satisfying model of the human condition, wouldn’t you agree?
I haven’t read the Buffy comics, and I will acknowledge that the authors of those things do indeed try to create intellectual stimulation, as I in fact suggested in my mention of comic-book/graphic-novel dynamics, which, as I said, tend to have a somewhat abstract connection with the real world. (I hope that your real world is not much like Buffy’s or that of Moonlight. Of all the graphic novels I’ve read, it was always clear that the authors were trying to engage in creating intellectually challenging dramas, but I must say that I have never found any of them to be particularly impressive at doing so.
Frank Miller’s celebrated works, for example, strike me as intellectually puerile. He tries, and his intentions are clearly good, but his ideas are just not very deep or original at all. I have no doubt that some truly impressive graphic novels may have been published, but I have never seen one.
Yet that’s o.k., I want to stress. Not everything has to be Shakespeare. The key thing is that critics and analysts (which is how I would characterize myself) have to make these distinctions, even if audiences do not, so that people will know what might be enjoyable and, more important, will understand what’s going on in the culture.
Whoa! I haven’t had a chance to watch Moonlight yet (or Pushing Daisies or Reaper or Chuck, all stacked up on my TiVo). But I have to call you on that comic-book generalization. Have you read any of the Buffy Season 8 comics? Nearly every scene poses a mental challenge, inviting the reader to draw inferences and fill in the blanks about what’s going on.