Anybody catch MOONLIGHT last night? It's the Joel Silver show about a vampire private detective prowling the freeways and breezeways of Los Angeles... oh, I'm already bored writing this.

You would have thought THE NIGHT STALKER redux with Stuart Townsend would have glutted everyone's desire for drab nocturnal fashion plate heroes going after generic monsters and monster wannabees in the City of Angels, but here we go again 'round the dingleberry bush.

Alex O'Laughlin (aggravating star of FEED) is the protagonist here and it's pretty much everything we've already seen... the "witty" double entendres, the slick headquarters, the fashionable vintage car (you'd think a vampire hesitant to go about during the day would spring for tinted windows) and the overbearing atmosphere of generica.

Dull, dull, dull. Stick a stake in this stinker and bury it face down.

Well, Angel at least rode around in his '68 Plymouth Belvedere GTX convertible with the top down because of an unspoken self-loathing, a mild death wish, and to bolster his facade of cool, that he might differentiate himself from his dark past.

I don't suppose MOONLIGHT bothered to make their man-model vamp-tective multidimensional or have motivations, though.

Well, there's another liner note writing job you've talked yourself right out of, mister.

"Dingleberry bush"?

dingleberry n. Vulgar Slang. A piece of dried feces caught in the hair around the anus. An incompetent, foolish, or stupid person.

See? Makes sense now, don't it Wells - you dingleberry! ;)

So am I really the only one who watched this thing?

We're all out partying on Friday nights, pops. WHOOOO HOOOOOOO! :P





Okay, but I did record NUMB3RS (which Tony Scott ruined, btw).

Looks like it. I was put off by the promos long in advance.

Likewise, I was never going to watch CANE or GOSSIP GIRL but the promos for both made me hate them long before they premiered.

CANE looks like the best CBS show of 1986.

Or as I like to call it, "That's still on?"

I wanted to see MOONLIGHT, but realized that I had already seen FOREVER KNIGHT.

Still I might get round to watching at least the first episode, if it stays on the DVR that long.

Oh, dingleberries!

Beware the wrath of The Krumholtz if it hears you talking like that.

I watched it, and yes, I experienced a strong sense of deja vu. It's even more reminiscent of ANGEL than FOREVER KNIGHT, or rather, I think it wants to be reminiscent of ANGEL. The hero is a bit bland, but then so was Angel. What made ANGEL the show great was [a] the Whedon touch and [b] the supporting characters. A little bit of Spike goodness goes a long way.

I watched MOONLIGHT because I was curious to see how Jason Dohring, late of VERONICA MARS, would fare as a very old vampire. He had the one funny line [something about low fat vegan blood] but other than that, the show was remarkably humor free. I guess they are going for the tortured vampire/human romance angle, but who says you can't do that with a light touch? BUFFY pulled it off. Oh well. It's not like there's anything else to watch on Friday at 9 so I'll probably keep watching until CBS inevitably pulls the plug.

Half the reason the vampire/ Slayer romance is so epic and wonderful on BUFFY is that the entire world of the show is suffused with teen angst. And when it's time for Buffy to grow up, it's time for Angel to leave. The story couldn't be quite so involving if told from Angel's point of view, and MOONLIGHT can't have those things. Odds are the show would've been generally better written if David Greenwalt had stayed with the program (and he swore it wouldn't be ANGEL Redux), but until I hear otherwise, I'm not terribly excited about inviting MOONLIGHT into my house.

On the other hand, I'm really enjoying REAPER, which has my favorite performance of the new season so far: Ray Wise as Satan. It's exactly the same show as CHUCK (which I also liked), but Wise is so good in it and gives it a slight edge. I'm talking Alec-Baldwin-on-30-ROCK-good, not that I expect the stuck-up Academy to give Wise an Emmy nomination next year.

Yeah, I TiVo'ed Moonlight. After watching it, I was hoping that I hadn't reduced the life of my hard drive. This show was DOA and even a transfusion wouldn't save it. (And that's about the quality level of the writing in the show. Yecch.)

On the other hand, I'm with Marty on Reaper. The presence of Kevin Smith was a BIG red flag to me -- I dislike his self-consciously cool 'tude -- but ended up really enjoying the show and, of course, ESPECIALLY the brilliant Ray Wise. Every show on TV should have Ray Wise in it, except Boston Legal, which is already near perfect.

Watched Chuck and it's on the Season Pass cusp. One more episode and if at least one of the characters doesn't get even a little interesting, the pass WILL be deleted. Over hyped and under delivered, IMO. On the other hand, they could save it by figuring out a way to tell their story in 5 minutes, and devoting the remaining 40 minutes of airtime to footage of that blonde in her underwear--the best part of the pilot.

Of course. It has Shatner!

Denny Crane.

Actually, I found the Buffy/Spike story more compelling than the Buffy/Angel story, but that's probably because Spike was always more interesting than Angel. It was a pretty dark and twisted romance, if you want to call it that, and Buffy was no longer a teenager. And we did get Spike's point of view.

It's too bad David Greenwalt left. He might have steered MOONLIGHT in a less predictable direction.

And Spike wasn't played by a block of wood.

Absolutely Spike's more interesting. And that relationship, while it starts in a damaged, destructive place, ends in utter grace and hard-won transcendence. It's a more mature story from the writers, and it's the more mature romance for the characters. Angel/Buffy is about an epic star-crossed romance failing because of Angel's terminal adolescence: he can't grow up, can't move past a developmental roadblock, can't forgive himself for his past even though most everyone else has. Some of that's his soul-curse, some of that's just Angel. He's stuck in a loop. Angel reads Sarte, while Spike writes poems.

Buffy and Spike seem like a perverse, terrible match, but after the emotionally abusive way she treats him at first, they have a lot to offer each other. He helps her regain meaning in life in season six, and provides a cause for her to rally around in season seven. In turn, Buffy gives Spike an opportunity for redemption. Not fantasy-buzz-word "redemption", but real, messy love/forgiveness/justification for existence. They save each other. That's romance in my book.

I think you nailed it, Lisa, the story of Spike's rocky path into the light is strongly written because Mutant Enemy had established full-fledged dual protagonists. The last two seasons of BUFFY are really BUFFY & SPIKE, and better for it.

Oh also: MOONLIGHT stinks!