Current air date: July 22, 2010
Guardian Angel's Episode 8 discussion thread with screencaps
The basics (from tvguide.com):
Synopsis:
Mick tries to protect a woman from a murderous cult after its leader is executed and his followers vow to kill those responsible for his death.
Written by: Jill Blotevogel
Directed by: Dennis Smith
Original Air Date: Nov 16, 2007
Guest Cast:
Lorena York: Bronwyn
Mark D. Espinoza: Father Garza
Sarah Foret: Audrey Pell
Mark Totty: Jerry Drake
Paul Keeley: Quinlan
Brian White: Lt. Carl Davis
Gideon Emery: Donovan Shepard
Mark Tomesek: Warden Cooley
My own thoughts about this episode:
I'd forgotten this ep was written by Jill Blotevogel!
She's one of my favorite Moonlight writers, because she's good at getting to the emotions behind the action. And she does that here. This episode stands out for me for a few reasons: it has by far the best villain, Donovan Shepard, played brilliantly by Gideon Emery. It has a pretty good procedural with terrific emotional development. In fact, aside from its complete lack of Josef and the fact that it seems to pretend that "The Ringer" never happened, this is a favorite episode of mine.For one thing, it really spotlights the different aspects of Mick. We see him in sympathetic protector mode with Audrey, in total bad-ass mode going after the Shepard-lookalike in Beth's bathroom, acting all flirty and mysterious at Jerry Drake's house, using his mad detective skillz in breaking into Beth's place to help Audrey, and breaking into the prison morgue, not to mention using his mad vamp skillz in going through the prison video surveillance...
We see him scary and intimidating with the vamp priest, quirky and funny in the Alice in Wonderland scene with Beth, battling and getting the cr@p beat out of him when fighting with Shepard, and absolutely, devastatingly angsty at the very end. We also have an opportunity to see sides of Beth that don't always come to the fore, as well. (Jill is the ML writer who most liked Beth as a person, I think.) In this episode, Beth is seen as a sympathetic character who reveals her own deep trauma and her inability to deal with it--so she just pushes it down into a box and closes the lid. We see Beth the courageous fighter who won't back down, even from the scariest vamp ever. We see Beth indulging her fascination for Mick, sniffing his sweater,
and snooping through Mick's files to find info about him... and finding the file on her. And maybe most important, we see Beth being nurturing and sympathetic toward Mick in a way that has not happened before in Moonlight. Even when she fed him in Fever, she nurtured him physically, not emotionally. She didn't understand then. But here, she sees that he is in pain, he is vulnerable, and she yearns to comfort him and to make him understand that she's happy she's found out about the past. She doesn't blame him for anything--rather, she feels a huge sense of relief because finally the pieces have fallen into place. She's finally at peace, but he's shattered. That last scene on the balcony was just so beautifully done, both in terms of the visuals (the CGI wizardry was breathtaking) and the fabulous writing and acting.Links:
http://www.tvguide.com/episode-recaps/M ... -7088.aspx
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1077041/
(No Wikipedia page is available for this episode)
Unusual understatement from Beth...
Red, PGal, and Alle! 
