Hey, y’all! Hope you’ve had a great week. I briefly forgot that time existed and almost didn’t make my recap deadline, but luckily I remembered the concept of Wednesday just in time. Also, I was watching a YouTube essay about how all the Transformers movies were just extended commercials, and Sophia Myles – Beth! – is in the one with Stanley Tucci! Poor thing. So pretty, so doomed to shitty, shitty writing. Let’s see what we get served this week!
We open on Beth walking into… the fire station? the police station/DA’s office/beige office building? whatever, she sees a paramedic that was there when Josh kicked it and we get a bunch of flashbacks of Josh kicking it. Oh, it’s the police: she has to give a statement about Josh’s death, rather obviously. She’s still pissed at Mick, who confronts her about it with whining about being undead. Stay pissed, Beth. Leave the show. Start a new life with Stanley Tucci.
Back at home, someone’s in Mick’s house. I – you know what? I’m gonna spare you the rant about how he knows – “As vampires age, their scent becomes more potent from decay” – and just let y’all guess who it is. I’ve got money on Coraline, but they draw this shit out f o r e v e r and it ends up being… Crispin Glover? and his bodyguard, Joe Pesci? I mean, they’re not, but IMDB is no help in telling me who they are, so… Crispin and Joe are looking for Coraline.
They know Coraline turned him, but he still doesn’t know where she is, dudes. Mick tells us they smell really old. They fuck off down the side of the building, and you know what? Low-rent Crispin is just as creepy as the real thing, so good on him.
Mick brings Josef up to speed and calls them “medieval”. Josef knows of Crispin, and calls him “Lance”. Coraline apparently took something from them, and they want it back, and Josef tells Mick to just not get involved if he can help it. Do not pass GO, do not collect anything, so Mick immediately starts investigating “Morgan’s” disappearance from the hospital. He starts with the footage from the hospital, complete with that ridiculous “zoom in” trope! But it shows Coraline’s hand dangling from the underside of a gurney pushed by her BFF, Cynthia, whom Mick recognizes from their wedding.
So it’s off to Mick’s hacker kid. Vampire? Vampire hacker kid? Who also looks 30, so maybe just a baby vamp, not an actual kid. He is tasked with tracking down Cynthia.
Back in Very Special Episode territory, a friend of Josh’s drops off his stuff from the office for Beth, including a fat envelope, which looks like it should be a personalized letter or the bulk of Josh’s offshore holdings or something, but goes absolutely nowhere. Shocker. Some dreamy-sad music and memories later, and Beth sees an appointment in Josh’s datebook to meet a “Celeste” at 8 pm that night at a fancy restaurant. Beth rings her, hears a young, female voice, and hangs up. She then calls the restaurant and confirms the dinner reservation.
Cynthia’s been busy: flights to and from Paris, master’s and PhD in biochem, importing agriproducts from France. Mick heads out to her hotel. She claims she has no idea where Coraline is, that she helped get her out of the hospital purely because Coraline’s a vamp, and that there is no cure. She’s also from Dawson’s Creek, so….
Mick heads to where the “herbs” or whatever are being delivered. (Cynthia said they were for restaurants.) There’s a whole-ass lab there, and Coraline, and a scientist. He is not having good luck recreating “the compound”, and Coraline is definitely re-be-fanged. But what’s this? Crispin barges right through the front door as Mick watches from the rafters. Scientist gets his head cut off – oh, he was a vamp! – and a fire starts, because a fire always has to start.
He wants the compound. Mick drops from the roof and slides Crispin into the fire, but Crispin is fine. There’s a vamp scuffle and some taunts, and then Mick is almost knocked out and Crispin is gone – as, it seems, is Coraline. Mick calls the cleaner, and she says the lab is a hotspot – all newly turned vamps, clearly test subjects.
Beth goes to dinner to meet Celeste – WHO IS THE GRIMM’S FUCKING GIRLFRIEND, what, this is ridiculous! Josh looked so much like the Grimm, he even got his girl!
Okay, okay, in seriousness: Beth goes to dinner to meet Celeste, whom she tells Josh is dead – after making some accusations. But Celeste is a jeweler – she’s been resetting Josh’s grandma’s stones to propose to Beth. She was finally dropping off the ring – it was hard to fit regular store hours into his schedule.
Mick brings Josef up to speed, and he tells Mick to stay out of it, AGAIN. But we all know how that’s gonna go.
Beth is ready to forgive Mick, yay. She brings him up to speed, and before he can tell her to stay out of anything, Coraline shows up, throws her arms around Mick, and Beth leaves.
Coraline wants Mick to run with her; he refuses. The cure is temporary, but real. It was first developed by a “noble bloodline” in the 1700s from “local plants”. Louis XVI and much of his extended family were vampires, so the guillotine was invented to genocide vampires.
Coraline keeps talking, but I just fucking can’t, y’all. Let them drink blood, I guess. The compound made it look like the vamps were human long enough to avoid the guillotine and get hanged or let go instead. Crispin is one of these aristos. Coraline wants to make the compound more effective, so it’ll last forever. Or not, I guess.
Beth checks her email: more soft music, more flashbacks.
Coraline offers Mick the compound. He takes it immediately, like a fucking dumbass. He probably will not charmingly eat spaghetti, like a loveable dumbass.
So Mick is human when her brothers Crispin and Joe finally catch up with her. Yup – her brothers. Coraline is one of these French aristos, and Mick immediately assumes she’s set him up to die, but Crispin is like, “Dude. No. You are unbelievably small potatoes, this is a family matter.”
There’s vamp fighting and Mick manages to stake Joe Pesci, but Crispin pulls the stake out and is about to kill Mick when Coraline offers herself and the rest of the compound in exchange for Mick’s life. She says it’s the rest of the compound, but it’s not, so that’ll come up in the next episode. She’s in trouble for making Mick, she’s in trouble about the compound, Mick is voiceovering stentoriously, and they fly off so he can continue.
He takes a sample of his blood, talking about how it’s the last link to the compound, because Coraline gave it all away, and, like, what? Mick, do you not listen when people talk? Oh, who am I asking, of course he doesn’t. He eats a shitton of takeout and curls up on his couch to sleep. He wakes up still battered, and he’s thrilled, because he’s an absolute dirty tube sock of a person.
So of course he goes to Josh’s funeral, because that wasn’t going to be all about him. Well, and Beth, I guess, she does seem central to his narcissism at this point.
And that’s the end! YAY! My high was just starting to wear off at the end, there, can you tell? I was trying to be nice, but “the French Revolution wasn’t about inequality and human selfishness, it was ACTUALLY a vampire genocide” broke me, y’all. 2007 was fuckin’ WILD.
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