Luxe de Luxe wrote:grace, thanks so much for posting this. this was an unexpected treat. I had no IDEA the pilot was available.
there were things I both liked and disliked about this:
Likes -- primarily our Mick. The Mick hair is there, yay! A little shorter than our Mick's but still with the wavy goodness.
-- loved the New York apartment, casual men's club suits him.
-- the way that baby Beth helped Mick out in the fight. Already bonding, sigh.
-- his guilty little look as he and Beth's eyes locked at the 1st crime scene.
-- the vampire heat vision. Coool.
ITA with all of the above, especially the suit look. Also loved the familiarity with Guillermo and I'm glad they kept it in the version we saw.
Dislikes -- the rest of the cast. Both Beth and Coraline were too 'hard'. One of the things that made ML so enjoyable was that our Coraline had a softness that made it difficult to recognise the crazy, hence making us understand why Mick would have loved her once.
-- Josef. Hard to have a bromance with that old guy.
-- Josef and Coraline in league together! Only in our wildest fanfics please!
-- the vamp makeup -- seeing our Mick all ugly-like was just plain wrong.
-- the title. I guess we all know why that was changed.
Luxe's views pretty much summarize my own, but I've added a few others.
Coraline - seemed two dimensional and in Luxe's words, hard. She didn't even come across as 'sexy'. You could believe that Shannyn's Coraline was a courtesan. She had an alluring, siren-like quality. This other woman didn't.
Josef - they went for the sterotypical in the pilot - if Josef was to be the father figure, the older, worldly wise mentor, then he should look older. Again, Luxe has it right - he could never have the relationship Jason's Josef had with Mick and that relationship was such an integral part of the ML we came to love.
Beth - I could have lived with this Beth if she had lightened up a bit, but perhaps that was the direction she was given. Also, she didn't look very convincing as the baddie was about to kill her. Sophia just brought Beth to life and made her believable.
Carl - I like Brian, but this guy was ok
Guillermo - I'll be honest, for a moment, I thought it
was Jacob Vargas.
Other random thoughts. Loved how bits and pieces of the original pilot found their way to the series:
-the bit about not wanting to be an eternal teenager found its way to 'Arrested Development'.
-the scene with the cigarette lighter shows up in Out of the Past.
-Mick paying off Guillermo in the pilot got translated to Beth paying off other morgue attendants as she was searching for leads. Frankly, I prefer Guillermo being less mercenary.
-the goth teenage vamps got reincarnated as Donvan Shepherd's 'family'.
Some of the shots even worked their way in - baby Mick in the batcoat on the roof.
What I wish they
would have kept:
- a little more of the dark Mick. Dispatching the vamp guarding Coraline's house was pretty dark (and pretty cool)
- the sexual aspect of Mick's turning.
- liked Mick playing a trumpet in a jazz bar - seemed more relaxed / realistic than the stiff performance as a guitar player we saw in the series.
What I found weird:
- having Beth remember who he is at the end of the pilot. I think the way his identity as a vampire, then later as Beth's guardian angel played out better as it was shown in the series.
- Josef and Coraline - there had to be more to that part of the story and I wonder what it would have been.
The odd thing after having seen only bits and pieces before, I was prepared to really dislike the pilot, or find it wanting. Instead, I found it oddly appealing in some ways, although clearly lacking in others.
I can see why Alex was the only member of the cast they kept. The actors portraying Josef, Beth and Coraline were less believable, less flexible, portraying their characters more as caricatures (Coraline) or stereotypes (Josef and Beth) than they should have been.