Moonlight: “Love Lasts Forever”
Title: “Love Lasts Forever”
Episode: 1.11
Original Air Dare: 1/11/2008
Writer: Josh Pate
Director: Paul Holahan
Starring: Alex O’Loughlin, Sophia Myles, Shannyn Sossamon, Jason Dohring. Recurring Role: Jordan Belfi (Josh Lindsey), Brian J. White (Lieutenant Carl Davis). Guest Stars: Maurice Compte (Bustos), Emilio Rivera (Chemma Tejada), Manuel Urrego (Jorge Perez), David Blue (Logan), Margaret Easley (Dr. Alison Lin), Luis Fernando Moncada (Huerta), Jon Emm (Judge), Shelbie Bruce (Nicole), Jeremy Denzlinger (Paramedic).
Plot Summary: Josh is working on a big case, a conviction against a member of the notorious MS-13 gang. In an attempt to force Josh to drop the case, the gang threatens Beth, but Josh refuses to fold and enlists Mick’s help in protecting her.
Review: To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. (Quote from The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis). This excerpt, from an author best known today for his novel The Chronicles of Narnia, caught my attention as I contemplated my review of Love Lasts Forever, a fast-paced thriller of an episode that showed why Moonlight is deserving of all the buzz. (As well as a People’s Choice Award and possibly more recognition, if the writers’ strike ends before the beginning of the next millennium.)
Before I get philosophical, I want to give a quick overview of the procedural portion of Love Lasts Forever. Right off the bat Loyal Viewers, we know the bad guy, the bad guy’s goals, and that Josh Lindsey, Beth’s on-again-off-again boyfriend, is going to play a major role in this episode. The set up is that Josh, Mr. D.A., is going to take the hit for prosecuting a crime lord from El Salvador one way or another—and quickly, we learn that the way the bad guys want to play it is to go after Beth. Ironically, Josh asks Mick to protect their mutual ladylove. And that’s when it begins - a harrowing, exciting, angst-ridden, well-written episode that tore the guts out of our hero Mick St. John metaphorically, and out of Josh, literally.
This was a big episode for Jordan Belfi, the actor who plays Josh. His character is not confused about his feelings. He loves Beth and has for more than a year (pre-series). He also forgives her for getting caught up in the intrigue that is associated with private eye Mick St. John. He believes Beth cares about him and, although she went off to New York with Mick on a case, she came right back. So Josh is as pure as they come, an innocent bystander in the complex roller coaster that is the Mick/Beth relationship.
As C.S. Lewis says, when you’re in love, you’re vulnerable. The next thing we know, Josh becomes the victim of the revenge initially directed at Beth. This leads to a sequence of violence and bloodshed that is riveting. Once Josh is thrown into the trunk of that car, we know things won’t end well. I expected Josh to die, but I didn’t expect to experience each moment of his dying so vividly.
Kudos are well deserved for the actors’ work in sustaining the tension throughout Josh’s death scene. It was gory, bloody, and heart-wrenching, but we learned a lot about each of them—from Mick’s days as a medic, to Beth’s selfishness (more on that later), to Josh’s last words about his first days with the love of his life.
Best Lines
Mick: (voiceover) “How does an immortal handle mortal feelings?”
Mick: (voiceover) “Blood is vengeance.”
Beth: “Can’t be all that bad to live forever. You’ll see things when I’m gone, when everyone’s gone, that…we can’t imagine now.”
Mick: “Like what?”
Beth: “Cars that can fly. Diet soda that doesn’t suck.”
Mick (bar scene): “You missed me.”
Beth: “If you hate what you are so much, why do you go on living?”
Mick: (voiceover) “You make me want to.” (Mick laughs, sadly) I’m not really sure, I’m not really sure.”
Most Intriguing Voiceover
Mick: (voiceover) At the end of the day not a lot separates life from death…that’s what makes it precious. (He says this kneeling over Josh’s body, and then later, the last line of the episode Mick says: (voiceover) What I do know is that at the end of the day not a lot separates life from death…only one thing… eternity.)
Things to Ponder…
Where will the blood trail end? Is there really a vampire nation?
Mick Brings Out His Vampire
Two scenes that will standout as amongst the most compelling of Moonlight’s strike-abbreviated season are the interrogation sequence and the bar scene in this episode. Alex O’Loughlin, with no special effects outside of makeup, gave Loyal Viewers the face of a snarling, vicious, brutal vampire. It was horrific and mesmerizing.
The voiceovers in Love Lasts Forever were excellent, as well. We not only learned that Mick St. John was a medic during World War II, but that he also lies to himself and to others, in particular Beth and Lieutenant Carl Davis. But he tells Josh the truth, “I won’t let anything happen to her (Beth).”
Character Development and I’m not talking about Mick
Beth Turner’s character has intrigued me since episode 1.01. Young, 26, with a brand new shiny job—Internet crime reporter—and a year-long serious relationship with an up-and-coming DA, she’s a survivor of a horrific childhood abduction that didn’t leave her so crippled she couldn’t live her life. She developed a ravenous curiosity about living, which makes the Moonlight writers’ choice of making her a reporter almost a ‘duh’ moment. So when she meets Mick St. John, whose past links unexpectedly to her own, she feels an affinity, a connection she can’t shake off. She needs to be around him, learn his secrets, protect him, and find a way to deal with her fascination with him and his world.
In Love Lasts Forever, I got a real sense of Beth Turner (although, I still sometimes feel her dialog is choppy). I don’t believe she wanted to be in love with Mick, but she was falling, and until she came face-to-face with the devastating reality of vampirism (Sleeping Beauty), she was well on her way. That episode stopped her in her tracks.
From New York, she went back to her safe haven. Josh was her connection to the normal world of the living—a world that shouldn’t include Mick. That world died with Josh, and Beth was angry—angry because a man she cared about was dead, brutally shot in front of her, and the vampire she was falling in love with was a witness to the end of her normal world. Mick even tried to save Josh, but although she begged, Mick refused to turn Josh into a vampire.
In this episode, Beth asked Mick all the tough questions from save him please, for me to would you have saved me? She also played self-preservation games, pushing Mick away casually with statements like “So take a vampire wife then.” She may have seemed hard, or even disloyal, but Beth is a survivor. She doesn’t like feeling vulnerable. Perhaps she realized that loving Mick could break her heart, and being with Josh wouldn’t hurt as much. That’s the mindset I believe she brought to the love scene with Josh—the need to connect to a future without Mick. That’s why she looked so uncomfortable with Josh (good work Sophia Myles).
Loyal Viewers, there’s only one episode left this season. Wow, what a ride! Stay tuned to Voices from Krypton during the hiatus (because I believe this show will return). We’ll have updates, special features and more, because we don’t plan on letting Moonlight fade away.
Until next week.
Yours in Vampire solidarity,
Denny S. Bryce/denny_dc
