Okay, Snowflakes! It is rainy and delicious outside, I’m all set up in my comfy bed, and I am in a pretty good mood after a lovely Mothers Day that included 1. doing nothing, while B. being extremely high all day long. I’m ready to tackle this show and whatever it throws at me this week! Let’s go!
We’re at a fashion shoot, a woman in a red tulle skirt and a fancy jeweled bra. Beth is covering the shoot, which is a sneak-peek at hot new designer Ghislaine Tavares. Beth is already snarky about it, sneering into the camera and declaring that the outfits are something “only a broomstick could wear”. I feel like the women in the audience are supposed to like Beth for this, but honestly, it’s just body shaming in a different direction. The model on screen looks just super normal sized, maybe a little tall, definitely too “large” to be on a runway. Look, fashion has its issues, I am very well aware of that as a fat woman, but this little dig at high fashion is ill-informed and petty, Beth.
Josef lets himself into Mick’s place and wakes him by beating on his stupid freezer door. Josef has lost someone, Delores, his on-again, off-again girlfriend of a century or so. She’s the oldest vampire he’s known, but he omits how old that actually is. Josef says some gross stuff about her, obviously, because he’s sleeping with her and you have to be nasty about women who put out. But Mick agrees to help.
Beth is still doing her report and still being salty, because she’s a crime reporter, goddammit! – when the model collapses, and we get our little opening sting. The model is dead, of course, and aren’t you glad you showed up now, Beth? Especially since now she can harass all the other models. The vic – Renee Beresford – just moved from Shreveport, and last night she told her bff that she was going to quit modeling.
Cop Carl AND Josh show up, because obviously, all your important secondary characters should be in every scene, and Carl tells Beth she has to leave the crime scene. She counters that a woman collapsed and died, and there’s no evidence of a crime. Carl says he wants her tape, and that he can’t comment on an ongoing investigation. Which only makes Beth more curious, especially when Josh tells her not to follow the story.
…And then tells her the whole thing? It’s the third OD in two weeks from a drug they can’t identify – only, how the fuck do you know that, Josh? The paramedics literally pronounced her dead less than a minute ago. Are you psychic? Do we not need autopsies anymore, Super Josh is on it?
Beth and cameraman Steve turn over the tape, which seems a little unconstitutional to me, but whatever, and then Beth asks Steve if he’s ever been to the club the model bff mentioned.
Mick and Josef are chatting about digital photography as Mick Googles Delores – Lola. She’s ordered a literal ton of silver, and when Josef met her, she was building a pirate army. Josef’s looking for her because she stole a million dollars from him, and he can’t let her get away with it. Can we get a show about Lola? She sounds – just so much more interesting than these boring dudes.
Beth gets right into Club Valis, despite not really being dressed for it. She learns that the VIP room is for “approved buyers only” and tries to get in, but is stopped by the best actor we will probably ever see on this show:
I just saw him in Hail, Caesar!, which was excellent and old, so y’all have probably seen it. But he’s done Mad Men and Lost and a whole bunch of shit, I see him all the time, dude is so much better than this.
She can’t get upstairs – the owner approves the list, and she’s looking down from the VIP room’s glass walls and shaking her head. I think maybe it’s Lola? It’s hard to tell, even for me, who recognizes everyone in every context, but this show is really good about giving a head shot for a photo and then making the actor look completely different when they finally show up on camera. In any case, Beth gives up, and we’re back to Mick.
Lola apparently has bought enough silver to paralyze every vampire in LA, and he’s tracked down the address where it was delivered. Mick finds an apartment? a studio? and starts touching shit, finding vamps in barrels, and of course gets silver all over his fingers and passes out.
Or…doesn’t? In the next scene he’s at the morgue, and he’s brought a vampire corpse? For an autopsy? Terrance, the guy on the night shift today instead of Guillermo, tries to take a blood sample to see how much silver the vamp was exposed to, but there’s no blood. They’re both flummoxed: no one wants vamp blood. You know, except the vampire who’s making new drugs and funneling them out of her club? The one who bought all the silver? That vampire?
They obviously do not figure this out, because it’s too early in the episode, so we’re back to Beth, who is…also at the morgue? Or a different morgue? Or some other place in the morgue, I guess? She’s here to look at Renee’s body, to see if she has the club VIP stamp. She has to deal with yet another disgusting morgue attendant who comments about how “hot” the body is, but he does tell us that Renee had a small microchip in her hand, under the skin, that he removed, and Renee has silver in her blood – probably what killed her. Attendant gets a phone call, Beth grabs the microchip while he’s distracted, and then runs into Mick.
They’re super awkward with each other, but Beth asks him if he knows a good veterinarian, anyway, so she can get this chip put in. Mick says they can’t be trusted with pets, which is gross and weird, and asks her what kind of a club she’s trying to get into, exactly? So she lets him in on the microchip thing and about the silver in the blood, which makes Mick perk right up, and they’re back on the case together!
Mick takes Beth back to his place and loads the microchip in this bizarre olde-timey syringe and shoots it into her hand. He wants to come with her to Club Valis, and she tells him to meet her there in two hours. They have some actually cute flirty banter before Mick goes in vamp-style, and Beth walks in the door.
Her chip scans just fine, except that it’s Renee’s chip, and Patrick leaves the checkpoint to someone else, telling them not to let anyone in. Designer drugs in vials on trays; people making out cuz they’re high; what I imagine is the usual at a VIP room, but what would I know? Clubs give me headaches. She’s offered “Black Crystal”, and puts it in her purse, but Lola catches her putting it in her purse instead of just taking it, and confronts her about not being Renee.
Mick comes in just in time, and there’s a bunch of vamp posturing and threatening and veiled insults. I gotta say, I like Lola, and repeat my request for her to have a show instead, because she rightly points out how shitty it is of Mick to tell Beth about vampires in dribs and drabs, bits and pieces, never telling her anything real and definitely never turning her. Beth denies she wants to be a vampire, and Mick practically shouts that no one’s turning anyone, but Beth. Think clearly. Even if you decide, in the end, that on the whole, life is more trouble than immortality is worth, it still would be fun for a while, wouldn’t it? Invincibility? The power? The money? Because Black Crystal can give you all of that. Just try it, you don’t even have to get turned!
But before Beth can make a bad decision, cops show up – including Cop Carl and Josh!
Carl arrests Mick? Because he’s not just working a case? Beth gets to go home with angry Josh, and I can’t tell if he’s more pissed that she followed the case, or that she was there with Mick. In either case, she still has the vial of drugs.
Mick also has a vial, and hands it over to Josef, who’s insulted that he gave Lola a cool mil to murder other vamps and turn them into drugs. I mean, the murder part is definitely not cool, though we could argue about whether vampires have a right to life after the limits of a human lifetime have been exceeded – but also, why is Lola’s murdering any worse than Josef’s own business? He seemingly has billions, and we all know how you manage to get those, even if you’re a vampire who’s had the time. Like, you’re not a good guy, Josef. Maybe see about getting a ladder to climb down off that horse.
Beth is at home, looking up what drugs taste like (????) and then she eats a little of the Black Crystal, which is, indeed, black crystals, like black salt. She’s tripping balls and it looks like it could be a good time, if it didn’t, you know, kill you (and if you had a safe space and a babysitter. Don’t fuck with hallucinogens, my dudes.).
Cop Carl has lab results back on the five ounces of Black Crystal he and Josh picked up at the club: no drugs, just filler. Josh says they must be missing something, and then goes to interrogate Patrick Fischler. Patrick says he’s just the doorman, he’s not selling, he doesn’t know anything about it, and he wants a deal. Full immunity will get Josh Lola’s location and Patrick’s testimony. But Josh has a counter-offer: wear a wire, say exactly what we tell you to, and if we get her, maybe you’ll get immunity.
Lola is talking to a lackey in a … walk-in full of vamps? Looks like a walk-in full of vamps. And no one crying, which is so weird. I thought every walk-in had a server crying in it at all times. Anyway, she tells Lackey that they can’t take anymore from around here, they’re attracting too much attention. Then she blames it all on his human girlfriend, Renee, and kills him.
Beth, still high on doofballs, gets all glammed up and walks over to Mick’s. He tells her the Black Crystal is vampire blood, and she wonders if he feels like this all the time, and he has to, right? Or maybe he doesn’t, because he’s like…the neurotypical version of a vamp? He can just block out the sound of whatever the vampire-equivalent of the fridge is?
Beth comes on to him, hard, and there’s a bunch of nonsense talk about how this isn’t her, and he’s trying to say no and she’s being pushy, and then she goes up the stairs to his bedroom, presumably, and he struggles with it for about three seconds. But then they’re in the shower fully dressed, and he’s just trying to sober her up while she tells him to turn her.
Next morning, she doesn’t remember much. The drug made her feel invincible and hot, but Mick tells her about the lows of vampirism – missing sunlight and food, and he says it never gets easier. Beth says she’s surprised he doesn’t want to forget what it’s like to be human, but he has to, right? I mean, probably not in the big ways, not in the, like, “make an art”, “care about a thing”, “form relationships” part, but I’m sure he has no idea what it’s like to pee anymore. Hell, I forget how bad my hip can hurt on low pain days! You have forgotten a lot, Mick, trust me.
Beth and Josh make up, and Josh apologizes because the case is making him crazy, because he fucked it up. Unfortunately there is no Greek chorus in the hallway to agree with him – just Cop Carl. Patrick’s all wired up, ready to go to the office at 5th and Alameda.
Beth calls Mick to tell him that cops are on the way to Lola’s warehouse, so if there’s anything he thinks shouldn’t be found, he should head over there. She does this in the hall at – the DA’s offices? The police station? It’s all the same bland office building on this show, just everyone in cubicles except for Super Josh. Anyway, she says all this in the hallway as Patrick walks by her and smiles, presumably because he’s pleased that she’s helping him and Lola evade a search warrant? BECAUSE SHE’S TALKING IN A NORMAL VOICE IN A HALLWAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY.
So while everyone’s on their way to the warehouse in the middle of the day, Mick approaches it after dark, in a truly ridiculous slo-mo shot accompanied by someone’s idea of “hard rock”. I know shows have limited time and editing snafus are sometimes unavoidable, but come on. COME ON. Don’t draw attention to your fuckup with bad music!
Inside, people in clean suits are making the Black Crystal. Mick comes in punching, for some reason, and gets shot because he knocks like three guys out. He asks the last one where Lola is, and he says “in the back!”, where Mick finds a bunch of vamps in tanks, being drained. Mick and Lola start their chatty vamp fight. Mick calls her “evil”; she says it’s just a word that’s thrown around a lot, like “great” or “awesome”, and you know who I’m reminded of?
But of course, we aren’t going to get to see her (or probably anyone that likeable) again, so they vamp fight a little more, and then Mick throws her in one of the vats (that’s filled with silver solution? I think? they never actually said) and then blows up the building with some… oxygen tanks? Tanks of something, at any rate, right before the cops FINALLY show up – “just after midnight”, Beth says on her Buzzwire report.
JUST AFTER MIDNIGHT. Patrick’s wired up at like, 10 AM – AND NEVER WENT TO TALK TO LOLA, btw – and leaves the police station district attorney office complex then, but no one gets to 5th and Alameda until MIDNIGHT.
Josh thinks the fire was just Lola covering her tracks, and doesn’t understand why Beth isn’t more interested. She brushes it off as not wanting to interfere in his job, but he doesn’t buy it – and he doesn’t want to know why Beth is so sure Lola won’t be back.
Mick tells Josef how everything shook out. Josef is regretful, because Lola was “at least 500 years old”, and then they go on about all the history she must have seen, like this is just unfathomably ancient, when 400-year-old Josef is standing right fuckin there. And I guess there’s none of the famous vamps in this world, because the big names are all pushing 600 or 700 – Vlad, Mircalla, Ruthven. Black. You know, the biggies.
Beth puts the leftover Black Crystal in her underwear drawer and then stares at herself in the mirror, because I don’t know, deep thoughts or some shit. Who cares? I’m not looking for anything introspective from these writers, so honestly, this scene just feels useless. I mean, I assume someone who watched this show was actually interested in Beth’s emotional journey, but I would settle for just not having to ask what the fuck is going on every three minutes.
And that’s it! This week was, thank god, so much more bearable, even if it was still very bad television. At least I had some fun doing it, and I got to fit in a “the one with the whales” reference! Come back next week, when Shannnnynnnynynnnynynnn Sossamon finally shows up as Coraline!
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