Well, Picard Day was yesterday, but still! Happy Thursday, Snowflakes! I have a snazzy new haircut (very welcome as it hit 104 yesterday) and a little sunburn from actually leaving the house this week! Looking forward to some beach time this weekend, once my new umbrella gets here. I hope y’all are enjoying your summer so far! Let’s get started!
Mick is…working out? in his house, talking about how vampires have to embrace a life of solitude partly because they get up when everyone else is already asleep.
I just – Dude. Look. You have been running around in the daylight, having lunch and shit, for TEN EPISODES. TEN. 400 minutes of you hanging out with Beth and Morgan and Josef, all during the day (when, I get it, it is much more economical to shoot a television show, but for real). You don’t live a life of solitude, you don’t have to hide all day long, and we are quickly approaching the point where I roll my eyes as soon as you open your mouth. All that bad writing certainly did hide what a pretentious waste you are, Mick. Even I might want it back if we continue this way.
He asks us how an immortal handles mortal feelings, and oh my god, I should have smoked another bowl before I got down to business. THEY’RE THE SAME FEELINGS, you absolute shoe horn. I keep writing book after book about how THEY’RE THE SAME FEELINGS, you just have more time and experience and money to deal with them all (and are still wildly unable to). To steal a bit from Jenny Trout: This fucking guy.
Let’s check in with this episode’s plot devices. Cop Carl is back, and he’s in an interrogation with Josh. They have a…gang member? terrorist? no, wait, gang member. No, leader? They have some gang leader in the box, based on his fancy suit. They’re saying they have all this evidence on him, but he’s there with his lawyer already and they’re not getting anything out of him. Josh and Carl leave the box, and Josh says he and Beth are going to need some protection. (I will skip the 929403248925943587234093274 ways this is absolutely not how the world works and just go with it today. It’s hot. I’m tired.)
Josh leaves the weird-ass office building that he works in with the police and is dictating something instead of paying attention to his surroundings, because that’s exactly how someone who thought a gang might kill him would act. Dirtbike assassins are on the case, and they rough him up a little, point a gun at him, and threaten Beth. Pretty standard, except for the part where I had to write “dirtbike assassins”.
Beth and Mick talk about how much he hates being a vamp, and where he should take Coraline’s blood to have it analyzed. He wants to go outside the vampire community because they might take a “cure” the wrong way. Beth knows someone, though, so that’s all settled, which is good, because Josh comes in right then, looking all beat up.
Mick quickly leaves. Josh tells Beth he recused himself from the gangster case to protect her, and the opening sting prevents her from answering until Josh has cleaned himself up a little. Gangster dude has a habit of killing people’s families, but Beth still wants him to see it through. They both think it’s supes romantic that they’ll be morally consistent, so they fall into bed.
Which leads to a weird scene of them the next morning, talking about their relationship (YAWN), intercut with Mick sitting in his car waiting for Beth? I mean, he’s outside the lab, and he says he hopes “nothing’s happened”. (I would like to point out that he is parked IN THE SUN, in the morning, because I’m petty and it’s why you love me.) And then Mick shows up at Beth’s place? He already dropped the sample, it’s an hour after Beth was supposed to meet him, this is a very weird sequence.
Mick hangs out while Josh gets dressed? Josh asks him to keep an eye on Beth until the protection detail can catch up with her, and he says he will, and then in the next scene it’s night, and Gangster Dude’s daughter’s quinceanera. Oh, wait, sorry, this guy from El Salvador, who runs Los Hermanos en Muerte, named his daughter “Nicole” and gave her a Sweet Sixteen.
Anyway, Carl shows up to arrest the guy, and Josh makes sure to threaten him for threatening Beth. Good job, Josh. That’ll get you exactly what you want.
Beth and Mick go to see her doctor friend about the blood sample next day. Dr. asks if it’s from a child, because it’s so “untainted”, because as we get older, “we accumulate toxins. Based on the number of free radicals alone, I thought it was a child’s sample.”
I mean, no, I am not a doctor. Clearly. But I am a pretty normal adult in America today, I’ve had blood tests done, I know what my liver and kidneys do – that is, filter out “toxins”. This sounds like some Goop shit right here. Doc’s gonna try to sell them an exploding vagina candle next.
Mick’s pissed that there’s nothing unusual in it, but there actually is: the blood type. It’s AO negative, which is also Beth’s blood type – and so rare that only one in a million people has it. Or, you know, absolutely no one, because it’s supes made up. I wouldn’t be trusting this doctor or this lab, y’all.
They’re arraigning Gangster Dude in the judge’s chambers? Well, Josh uses “flouted” correctly, so
Gangster Dude gets bail at $5 million, which is apparently no problem for him.
Beth thinks that the vampirism cure must be linked to blood type – else why the coincidence? But Mick says that “the best blood to consume is from a child that matches the vampire’s blood type” and you know what, show? You know what?
Sweet little 8lb, 7oz Baby Jesus, I simply CANNOT with this nonsense anymore. WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS LORE?! I just – Look, y’all, I am an amazingly lazy writer. I literally have had characters simply tell the reader that they weren’t going to get into a subject because I didn’t feel like doing the research. I Cow Tools a lot of things, because honestly, too much worldbuilding is just as bad as too little, in my opinion. And yeah, in the real world, stuff doesn’t make a whole lot of sense all the time, I get it.
But this show is so fucking dumb sometimes. The whole “vampires can taste your blood type” thing is funny – or maybe was, the first time the joke was made – but why it hangs on, why people insist on putting it into things, I have no idea, because apart from being mildly witty the first time, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense! IT’S A BAD TROPE, AND THEY SHOULD FEEL BAD.
Anyway, Beth doesn’t get to tell Mick that this is as useless as shoe polish on a cracker, because Mick can suddenly hear a gun being loaded somewhere out of sight. We have to endure a drawn-out attempt on Beth’s life. Mick loses the blood sample in the process. But this does finally get the protection team to show up, two days later, so good job, I guess? Mick creepily listens in on Beth and Josh exchanging “I love you”s as he drops her off at? takes her to? her apartment.
Gang Dude puts out an official hit on Josh. Glad we had a whole scene just for that, with extended intro and outtro and dialogue from his guys. Definitely necessary.
Josh, of course, has zero situational awareness, because why would you. He’s leaving the house – same day? maybe? – and gets kidnapped? Oh, because Gang Dude said “bring me that DA”? That was – literal?
We get a drawn-out chase scene now, and tbh, I am not paying attention, I was looking for that Data pic. Beth gets Josh on the phone somehow, though he’s in a car trunk and zip tied and has duct tape over his mouth. Sure. She tells him they’re on their way, just hang on! You know, the uszh. Oh, they tracked Josh’s phone, though how he picked up… You know what? Forget it.
There are slo-mo shots that we could have filled with plot, but it’s just a lot of violence and guns and Mick throwing people. They think they’ve rescued Josh, but no, one of the dudes isn’t quite dead yet, and shoots him through the car seats. They call 911, Mick (a WWII medic) puts pressure on the wounds, ties a tourniquet, doesn’t do anything that might actually help, like giving a little vamp blood or something. Maybe their types aren’t compatible?
This goes on roughly forever. Is Josh dying? I hope so, because this is too much nonsense for him not to. Mick is doing full-on fucking surgery in the dirt at Griffith Park, and I am so. bored. I wish I could make some jokes about how Josh can now go on to be the Grimm, but even that is denied me.
Yep. Josh dies. Beth immediately asks Mick to turn him, and of course he refuses. Paramedics finally show up – no dice. Obviously, if these were real people, this would be horrifying and tragic. But in a show that has done absolutely nothing to get me to care about these people, I’m most concerned for the paramedics who are going to have to fill out paperwork detailing how Mick performed crappy, 70-years-out-of-date surgery in the dirt and thought it would help.
Mick asks to interrogate the shooter. Carl lets him.
Mick vamps out, obvies, gets the guy to tell him where Gangster Dude is, I guess? and then Mick goes there. If this were a good show, Danny Trejo would show up about now, but it’s not. Mick vamps out in the bar and fucks the place up while he pretentiously voiceovers for us. Mick, honey, I do not give a fuck about your feelings.
He bites Gangster Dude and then goes to see Beth. I don’t know if I’m supposed to assume he killed Gangster Dude, or if he turned him in, but does it matter? This show does not give a shit about story. They just want to take their little Beth and Mick Barbies and mash their faces into each other, and they know they had to get rid of Josh and make a pit stop at “Beth is mad Mick didn’t make Josh a vamp” avenue and now it’s just gonna be all relationship drama and Mick whining, all the time. Thrilling.
