Moonlight never fails to piss me off, yet I keep watching. Today’s current source of annoyance, as I listen to grainy videos on fanpop.com, is El Doofus Grande Mick’s job and motivations.
In the intro to each ep, he is often shown saying, “I want to help people. That’s why I became a private investigator.” You know, off the top of my head, that is not the first job that I think of as a helping profession. If I wanted to help people, I would become a nurse, an EMT, a counselor, a firefighter, an elementary school teacher, a martial arts instructor, anything but a private dick. But no, none of these jobs is flamboyant and action-packed enough for a TV show [although I think there’s an awesome concept here for a show about vampires on an ambulance crew]. These jobs are quieter, not as explosive; they deal more with the internal workings of human beings, which TV shows don’t like to examine, unless the internal workings are splattered all over the ground.
Why, why, WHY is there such a spate of TV shows about vampires with sexy detective jobs [Forever Knight, Angel, Moonlight, New Amsterdam]? It’s as if being the walking dead equates to a high-profile, fast-paced job full of thrills, chills and spills. Frankly, I think that’s unrealistic. Your average vampire would probably be living a rather discreet life [the better to slip through time without aging] and would be more likely to have committed crimes [breaking into blood banks, robbing for money rather than holding down a job, assaulting for food] than to be catching criminals. You know, a pretty unassuming person doing some secret bad things. For example, the high points of some of the LHF characters’ days run as follows:
Will gets a spate of new porn subscribers.
Anneka sorts through cartons of donations and finds an exciting, valuable book.
Rori invents a new bestselling drink at the Nightcrawler.
Mark auctions off a big-ticket book and can afford a vacation.
Pippilotta talks someone out of committing suicide on the hotline.
Sibley closes [yet another] lucrative real estate deal.
And, in the closest thing to private investigating that LHF comes, Chow patrols while on neighborhood watch, sees a suspicious person and calls the police.
Of course, that doesn’t make for good TV.