SGRoA: Moonlight, S1 E5: Arrested Development, Arrested Development Edition

Unfortunately, I don't think it's a crossover. Happy Thursday, Snowflakes! Just before we get started, I'd like to add a Content Warning. I know I don't do this often, but this episode is one of the more misogynistic things I've ever seen on television, so I want you to be prepared before we got in: it's gonna make you fucking furious.

Let's get started!

Beth and Josh are leaving the doctor's office, where Beth has gotten her "weird cut" checked out - the cut, of course, being the vampire bite. There are still red, recognizable puncture wounds on her wrist, so it seems like it's still really close in time to the bite, but Josh is going on about how Mick hasn't visited or called, and isn't that strange? After what, like a week? Two? Does Beth usually have Mick over for tea on the regs? Have they been BFFs this whole time and the writers - as usual - simply failed to inform us?

Of course not: this is just setup for this episode, the summary of which is "After their encounter in the desert, Mick is avoiding Beth. Then murder brings them back together." The writers, bless their little hearts, just couldn't figure out any way to make that clear besides this mess of a first scene. Poor dears.

Mick, meanwhile, is monologuing about avoiding Beth and what the universe wants and is on his way into the medical center as Beth and Josh are on their way out. Beth very subtly brings Mick up-to-date on the story she's telling Josh about the cut ("I'm here for a tetanus shot because of the cut from the chain-link fence"), Mick says he's there for "bloodwork", there's a weird bit about getting blood tests to get married? They still do that in LA? Josh ends up inviting Mick over for an anniversary party - he and Beth have been together a year - and Beth is all, "Oh, he doesn't want to go to that," and Mick says he does, but he's busy, congrats! And Josh doesn't seem to notice anything, but my god, I am autistic and I have never had a conversation this awkward.

More monologuing over a scene of someone sitting in the dark, in their apartment, in a baseball cap, reading Buzzwire but clicking over to an escort site, printing out the ad for the girl they want, and then calling the number on a landline. No time to feel old, however: person shows up at the sex worker's place (or at least a place she works from) and she says she can't with him. We're given to understand it's because he's "ugly", I think (we're shown half his face, badly acne-scarred), but I'm pretty sure it's because he's too young? She tells him to "run along" and they'll call it even. He tells her she was prettier in her photo and grabs her, backing her into the apartment and preventing her from screaming.

Beth's editor brings her news of the murder; Beth's looking at recipes for the dinner, and there's a coq/cock joke that I'm surprised got by the censors. This was network TV in 2007, after all. Apparently the killer has "a very distinctive MO", like "the guy up in San Francisco", and Beth goes rushing out with the editor telling her to follow up on "the copycat angle".

An older couple, presumably the vic's parents, are talking to Mick at his apartment/office. "She came out here to be an actress", but she was suddenly unreachable, their letters came back, her phone was disconnected. First off: letters?

it's 2007. 2007!

Secondly, Mick is thinking he's heard this story a million times, and then goes on to be whorephobic for three more sentences. These girls all end up "dancing in a cage" (I assume go-go dancers?) or, if they're "lucky", being kept women. But lately it's all "escorting". The parents say they were "the last ones to know", and hand over the same printout the dude used in the murder scene. So, yes, the victim's parents; no, they were not sending letters, and oh my god, y'all, the dad then compares sex work to auctioning off livestock.

So, like, yikes on bikes, but that's how Mick gets involved. He promises he'll find their daughter, too, which... I mean, you do you, boo, but I wouldn't be promising shit to victims or families.

Beth busts onto the murder scene to harass Cop Carl. She's convinced the Feds are there, she wants to know if it's like the "escort murders" in San Fran, Carl wants her to have an off switch. The usual.

Mick goes to see Josef, who apparently does have an office, in a big ol' office building in the middle of a bunch of other big ol' office buildings. Guess this set wasn't available before, when he just had "business" going on in his house while he chatted about secret things. Josef starts the convo asking about Beth, delicately phrasing his question to call the bite in the desert "happy hour" and make a crude pun about fang meeting flesh. Gross! I hate him!

Mick has come to make use of a dude sitting at a computer just off-screen, who does all Josef's computer stuff. Like, there is nothing in the dialogue here to explain him, why he's the computer guy, why he has a little desk in Josef's office, anything. All the dialogue, as Mick hands over the printout of the missing woman's ad, is about how hot she is and how Mick shouldn't have to pay for it and it is absolutely vile.

like fuckin' Weinstein is in the room or some shit

Hacker guy gets the woman's address, and Mick thanks him and Josef, and nary a word is ever said that indicates they believe that sex workers are people, or deserving of respect, or that sex work is anything but something to titter and giggle at, like tweenagers, while they make apallingly gross jokes like incels.

Beth and Josh are giving their little dinner party. Apparently they met by getting in a fender-bender in "a parking lot the size of Rhode Island" and I honestly can't tell if it's supposed to be that they shouldn't have hit each other because it's big, or they had to hit each other because it's tiny. Like, Rhode Island is miniscule, in terms of states, but it's still like an hour to get across its widest point, which would be an enormous parking lot. I would wonder why such a non-joke joke was allowed to stay in the script, but given how vile it's already been, this is the least of its fucking problems, so yeah. Parking lot the size of Rhode Island, sure, leave it, why not.

The phone rings; Beth tells whoever that she can do something later, but not right now. Turns out it's a morgue appointment, and her and Josh's friends find it bizarre that she would want to, you know, do her job. I'm amazed she could get four other 20-somethings to her house for dinner on a weeknight. I'm realizing that 2007 was a vastly different time; feels like it shouldn't be, but hey! The end of the world makes things go faster, I guess?

Anyway, Josh is mad, because it's "rude" of her to leave their guests the second Mick asks her to. "That wasn't Mick," she tells him, because it wasn't, it was some contact she has at the morgue. And despite looking like he noticed absolutely nothing at the medical center, apparently he "saw the way you two looked at each other" and has been sitting on it for almost two full days. First of all, doofus, they looked at each other awkwardly, because it was awkward. Second of all, BRING THAT UP WHEN IT HAPPENS AND CLEAR IT UP THEN. Don't fucking sit on your feelings until you blurt them at her because you don't want her to work and you think her ambition is suddenly all Mick's fault.

I hate every man in this show. Every one.

we are 11 minutes into this episode, and I am ready for murder

Mick goes to the crime scene. He can smell a vampire all over it, even though vampires don't have to pay for it. ("Between willing freshies and basic vamp appeal, there's no need.") There's a flashbacky scene of the actual assault on the victim, because we definitely need to see that, and Mick in voiceover thinks, "And it wasn't just the victim. It was the vampire that did it to her." But there's no antecedent to the first "it"? Like, WHAT wasn't just the victim, Mick? WHAT FUCKING WAS IT? WHAT ARE YOU WALKING OFF TO FIND? Blood? Did the perp bleed, too?

Maybe if these fucking writers could stop tittering at sex work for three seconds they could let us in on the plot. Wouldn't that be nice?

Beth slips some money to her morgue contact and takes a look at the body. He makes a joke about the victim's "stripper name" - hence her being Jane Doe on the toe tag - and when Beth expresses shock at the extent of the injuries, he laughs. LAUGHS. When she calls him on it, he says, "You paid fifty bucks to look at a naked dead girl. I figure you're up for anything."

RAGE

I cannot believe this ended up on television, just like this, and there was not a campaign to get it canceled. I cannot believe I watched this the first time and either didn't notice this shit, didn't react to it, or simply forgot it. This is - We are 13 minutes into this 41-minute episode, and every scene, practically, has been anti-sex-work, anti-sex-worker, and disgustingly misogynist. I have been watching television from the seventies and eighties in my free time lately - Love Boat, Golden Girls, Columbo, that sort of thing - and I can't imagine any episode of those shows aging as poorly, as fast, as this episode has. I am, in fact, going to take a break to bake some bread right now, because I don't know if I'll be able to finish this.

All right, y'all. I'm still irritated, I'm still not sure I can do another 25+ minutes of this, but my hip hurts less than yesterday and I am sufficiently elevated to be in a pretty good mood about everything else, so. We'll give this one more try.

So Beth is looking at the body of the victim and she ducks out of sight when they hear the elevator bell go off. Disgusting Assistant just leaves, after saying hello to his boss, who's bringing Mick and the victim's parents into the room, presumably for identification purposes. But surprise! It's not their daughter!

Mick sees them out and then tells Beth she can come out, because obviously he smelled her. They catch up on the case together - Mick tells her it's a vampire, a piece of info that I assume came from the bizarre crime-scene visit he performed earlier. The victim is those people's daughter's friend, who she came to LA with and who was her roommate, but it isn't their daughter. Beth is shocked he would bring them here to look at the body, but, like, identification is a thing? It has to be done? It is, in fact, a very large part of these cases? And he would have had to get permission for this, would have filled out a bunch of forms and shit, like, Beth. This is not happening in a vacuum. Also, why all this censure for Mick, when the disgusting assistant should have gotten more from you than "You're sick, you know that?" while you practically laughed along.

Anyway, they figure out they're working the same case, and then it's time to deal with our personal problems! They step into the hallway and Beth starts in on how he's avoiding her, and clearly the universe brought them together on this case, and it's like, a sign, or some shit? And then she just starts in on the vampire stuff IN A HALLWAY, where anyone can hear them.

Back to the killer, finally! He's calling the girl Mick's looking for, Cherish, saying he's a friend of her friend (the first victim). She says they had a falling out when said friend stole her website, so that explains that, and that she's not looking to "expand" her circle of friends. He offers a token of good faith; she orders 500 "roses" per hour, and he says it's fine.

One of Beth's friends works with her, apparently? She comes to Beth's desk to harass her about leaving the dinner, and it comes out that Beth and Josh don't live together yet. But, like, it's only been a year? Isn't this when the kids start talking about moving in, if they can both pay their own rent? I moved in with Mr. Winters at nine months, but that's just because I got knocked up with super-awesome MiniWinters and we just fuckin' went for it. I don't think that works for everyone.

Beth's friend says that Beth should "get serious", and then teases her about there being someone else. I don't understand any of this conversation, it is not how people talk in real life, and I refuse to believe I had to waste two paragraphs on it. Though it was delightfully misogyny-free, unlike what's coming.

Back to Josef's office (???) and his weird hacker-guy, who has an unfortunate overbite that wouldn't be half so unattractive if he were able to treat sex workers like human beings. They're looking up the late Jazzmyn, Cherish's friend and our victim, and Hacker and Josef are leering at the screen. Beth shows up, presumably at Mick's behest, and Josef hits on her and Hacker says something about how she has a "great voice" and she's all, "I AM TRYING TO WORK YOU ASSHOLES, PLEASE STFU AND GET TO THE POINT."

Hacker has downloaded the phone records from the phone associated with Jazzmyn's website. They want Beth to call and see if she can figure out who the killer is by talking to them and doing "whatever escorts do".

She gets the killer, and he says he'll see her at "Greenies", whatever that is. Beth says it reminds her of high school - "He sounds like he wants a girlfriend more than an escort." Which, yeah, there's a whole other show about the girlfriend experience that is much better than this one.

They get the address from a phone trace, because apparently in this version of LA, you have to call a phone and trace it in order to do that, instead of just, like, looking up who gets the bill. So Mick and Beth head off to killer's house.

Mick picks the lock, but couldn't hear the heartbeats of the FOUR cops who are already in this guy's house. Cop Carl and his cronies are clearly disappointed, and meanwhile, our killer is at Greenies.

He is, indeed, a kid! Looks maybe 18, acne scars and what look like fresh pimples????????????????????? Vampires get zits now, okay, sure.

But this is Moonlight, so we can't stay with that scene, we're back in killer's apartment. Mick sees a photo on a bookcase that is supposed to show killer in the past, working at a saloon, but is clearly just one of those novelty photos you can take at tourist spots. My guess: he worked at a saloon because he was one of the workers' kids and now he hates sex workers and probably women in general, and that's why he's killing escorts, and they'll take him down and feel like they did a feminism and we should all be proud of them.

it's a very open criticism of the men on this show

Cop Carl tells Beth they have the guy all figured out, and then gives the standard profile of every serial killer ever. Beth steals an appointment book and she and Mick leave. Ooh, Mick's car is a Mercedes! Glad to finally get a look.

The scenes are switching back and forth, but Killer is making his moves, Beth and Mick figure out where Greenies is, blah blah. In the car, Mick and Beth are having the vampire/human slashfic talk, and he says that sex between vamps and humans never works. There's a weird phone convo between Mick and Killer about vampirism and shit, it's boring, you've heard it all before. They close in on Killer, they lose him on the boardwalk, they find him again, you know how TV works, yes? Cherish is saved, but Killer gets away for now.

Mick catches up with him later - hours later, after dark, and this is all such silly writing, I just - anyway. Life sucks for teenage vamps! Tell it to Claudia and Armand, dickweed. Tell it to Mircalla Karnstein: she was only 17, my ridiculous sir. Killer is an incel, we knew this already, wonder why he didn't just do a mass shooting like all the others. There's a vamp battle, and now I understand where all the budget for this show goes, because clearly none of it is going into the writers' room. Incel gets beheaded by a roller coaster, end of killing spree.

Cherish is reuinted with her family, Beth's editor wants her to film it, she won't. There's some bullshit monologuing about fate and choices, Beth kisses Mick and leaves, and that's the fucking end of this piece of shit episode.

yes, good for me!

Y'all, I do not know how to end this. I'm still so disgusted with this episode. Honestly, a lot of the way Mick treats/talks about women is not fantastic, and Josef has always come off a little sleazy, but I thought it was the 50s thing and the billionaire thing, not that this show just fuckin' hates women! And the irony that I was using all these Jessica Walter gifs, from a show whose set was apparently just a hotbed of harassment for her - well, at a certain point (about 8 minutes in), that became pretty purposeful on my part. This isn't just a TV show: it's a piece of our culture, a part of a system that is breaking down around us, and that needs to break down around us. I surround myself with people who do not think this way, who do not act this way, who rightly call out this behavior when it happens in front of them, and having to sit with these people for more than two hours to write this recap has me pretty pissed off. And I can't even aim it at anyone in particular, because so many people are responsible, and overarchingly, no single person is responsible.

These writers, these actors, they're not advancing an agenda here. If they were, I might be less annoyed, frankly, because at least that would allow me to put blame somewhere. But they're just reflecting what the culture was, what the culture is. They're just reflecting America: disgusting, misogynist, incel America, where the only thing we can all agree on is that women deserve it.

Come back next week when hopefully it will be a more bearable episode, or I will have decided to say fuck it and move on to another series. Any other series. I will take suggestions.