My own self

I left my cell phone here yesterday. Spent 400 years without one. Now I can't go a day.

- Josef Kostan

In autumn 2007 (wait, what, seriously? *double-checks* Sigh, I feel so old) CBS premiered a vampire detective procedural show called Moonlight, with a male vampire-human female romance at its core.

So, crime procedural + angsty vampire romance mush, this should be an automatic instant hit in recent years' climate, right? Well I guess they were 6 months too early to hit the wave or something, because the show was cancelled after a mere 16 episodes.

I've always meant to watch this show - there is a distinct lack of paranormal quality fun on TV out there, and the show sported an executive producer credit by Profit and Angel's David Greenwalt as well as Veronica Mars' amazing Jason Dohring among the regular cast. But initial reviews were [insert politically correct term for piss-poor], Greenwalt left the show for health reasons before it even got on the air, and the show got cancelled before the winds of reputation turned for it.

Having now finally seen it at what I up until 5 minutes ago assumed to be max two years later, I have mixed feelings about this cancellation. Because, frankly, the pilot, the pilot is shite. SHITE. The dialogue and monologue is utterly awful, the plot predictable and un-engaging, and on the whole it comes off as the one thing this show immediately seems like it would be: a really weak Angel-copy. The only scenes which stood out were Dohring's puny two, and while he was great, they hardly made the rest worth the bother.

So why the mixed feelings? Well, first of all, the oh-so-bland main character was given impressive amounts of presence by actor Alex O'Loughlin. Encumbered with dialogue so bad I'm sure Aaron Sorkin was quietly weeping somewhere on account of its mere existence, O'Loughlin actually managed to make the part be more than the pretty boy main character.

And then episode 2 took an enormous step up. Suddenly, the show was simply bland, not awful. The main thing which had improved was the dialogue. It was now DECENT. Not good or anything. But decent. Even had a good joke or two.

Episode 3, 4, 5, 6... more of the same. A predictable procedural, not really worthy of my attention, but with a slight, steady crawl upwards in quality. Also, Dohring kept having a scene or two, like all too rare diamonds glittering in the dust. And the ridiculously uninteresting love interest was somehow becoming slightly tolerable by Sophia Myles' acting. I'm not saying she's an amazing talent, but she clearly knows something about what she's doing. At least O'Loughlin had the main character with the complex backstory to work with, but Myles was taking a two-dimensional turd of a character and making me NOT CRINGE WHEN SHE WAS ON SCREEN. By the end of the season, I almost liked her. Emmy anyone?

But then the show really hit its stride. Mid-season, suddenly, the hints of arc were hints no more. Shannyn Sossamon did a very charismatic turn as O'Loughlin's vampyric maker, some twists actually contained slightly surprising aspects, and I found myself LIKING the show. Eventually, Dohring's character even got a (rather good) episode devoted to him, though it would be the first and last of the kind.

As the Sossamon-arc drew to a (clearly only planned to be temporary) close and a recurring character was killed off with quite frankly surprising emotion, the show turned once again standalone, but it couldn't shake the nigh-on-depth that it had acquired in the mid-season. The final batch of episodes were thus genuinely okay even without the benefits of a powerful on-going arc. The final episode before the cancellation even, probably completely coincidentally, had aspects that made it a halfway decent series finale.

So on the whole, if you like vampires and mysteries, Moonlight is actually not that bad a choice. Skip the awful pilot. It has a lot of important exposition, sure, but you can read that between the lines and in the "previously on..."-segments anyway. You might need to hold your nose a bit for the first four episodes or so which follows as well, but if you're anything like me, you will then gradually find yourself quite liking the show. Oh, sure, there are plot holes and mythological inconsistencies here and there, but please, even True Blood is littered with those and they're on HBO. For what it is, Moonlight is frankly both surprisingly consistent and true to the genre. In 16 episodes, the only supernatural element was and remained vampires. No witches, shape-shifters, warlocks, djinns, nymphs or werewolves were ever even hinted at. This alone was impressive to me. Even Angel never remained that grounded in its own mythology.

We return then, to my mixed feelings. This show should never have made it past the pilot. But once it did, it managed to warrant its own existence and steadily grow and improve. Considering that, the early cancellation really is unfortunate. Moonlight, given a full first season and maybe at least half a second season, could actually have gotten quite great. It was certainly for its entire run headed in the right direction, without ever taking serious turns backwards. So, is it a travesty and a loss on the lines of amazing first-season goners like Firefly and Kings? Not at all. But having seen it, I must admit that I might on occasion find myself missing it a little, nonetheless.