Summer TV Rewind: Moonlight 1.09: “Fleur de Lis”

“One way or another I will finally find out the truth. We both will.”
- Beth

So as I mentioned in my recap of “Fever”, most TV shows do an episode using the in media res narrative device. Moonlight gave us two of them in one season! We start with Beth barging into Mick’s place accusing Morgan of being Coraline. Mick says he already knows the truth and then Beth goes and stabs Coraline in the stomach with a wooden stake. Oops! Cut to one day earlier and Beth is stalking Morgan, sitting in her car outside Morgan’s place. Mick shows up and points out that it was Beth who convinced Mick that Morgan was show she claimed to be. But now that Beth knows the truth about her kidnapping, she’s determined to find out if Morgan is really Coraline. We also get the episode done in Beth’s voiceover, rather than Mick’s which I found an interesting narrative change, too. Had the show gone on longer I think the writers would have used hat more (not just with Beth but other characters as well). Mick agrees to help keep Morgan occupied while Beth snoops around.

It turns out Mick only needs a sleazy client to walk through his door to have an excuse to meet up with Morgan. Mr. Haggins wants Mick to follow the very young and beautiful Mrs. Haggins to see if she’s having an affair. Mick, after making an apology to Morgan in a very public restaurant, gets her to agree to be his camera person for the job. It offers $10,000 for a few days’ work. Heck, I’d take that anytime! While Mick and Morgan head off to scope out Mrs. Haggins, Beth is at Buzzwire doing some research on courtesans and French culture. It turns out they were branded back then so that’s how Coraline got her tattoo.

It’s kind of amusing to watch Mick and Morgan work together as they let things slip that should clue the other one in that they know each other but they brush it off. Morgan gets some money shots of Mrs. Haggins kissing some guy while Mick overhears (thanks to his enhanced senses) what sounds like Mrs. Haggins worrying about her husband finding out and killing her. Mick convinces Morgan that they shouldn’t just hand over the photos they have because he doesn’t want to be responsible for Mrs. Haggins getting murdered. He tries to talk to his client at the office but Mr. Haggins isn’t seeing anyone. So Mick refuses to hand over the photos to Haggins’ lackey.

While Mick and Morgan work the case, Beth breaks into Morgan’s apartment and doesn’t find much, except an impressive shoe collection. Mick and Morgan’s next stop in their case is to spy on Mrs. Haggins and her lover at a hotel rendezvous. But this requires a different camera set up or something so they end up back at Morgan’s place and Beth nearly gets caught. Mick manages to usher Morgan out quickly so at least Beth doesn’t have to do any awkward explaining. Beth sticks around though and finds some old photographs that Morgan took. She calls Mick at the hotel and it is probably one of the most awkward conversations ever as Morgan commentates on the sex happening across the way. They learn that Mrs. Haggins’ lover is her stepson, Owen (who I forgot to mention is played by the handsome Victor Webster from Charmed and Continuum). Mick and Morgan share a kiss which is kind of expected given the situation but still kind of awkward, too.

While all of this is going down, Beth finds an old photo of Mick from 1952 in Morgan’s photo album. She briefly heads back to Buzzwire where she runs into Mick and Morgan before going off to do some “research”. This involves paying Josef a visit. I always like the two of them interacting in scenes since they have such different perspectives on Mick. Josef kind of fills Beth in on the whole Mick and Coraline dynamic while still not believing that Morgan can be Coraline given the lack of blood drinking and all. But Josef does turn Beth on to Coraline’s old house in Hollywood that she goes to check out. Meanwhile, Mick goes to meet Haggins at the same restaurant he met Morgan but discovers that it was just a ruse to get him out of his office so someone (presumably Haggins) could steal the surveillance footage and audio. Morgan is still at Buzzwire and gets the cleaned up audio back and discovers that Owen and Mrs. Haggins are plotting to kill Mr. Haggins, not the other way around. Mick figures this out when he arrives and Mrs. Haggins shoots him in the back of the head. Ouch!

Lucky for him, Morgan gets worried and finds him hidden und a pile of leaves. Together, they head to Haggins’ office and end up stopping the murder plot. Mick gets to do some high-flying stunts to save Morgan from getting run over by Mrs. Haggins and it only increases the sexual tension between them. Which is definitely not a good thing from Beth’s perspective. She arrives at the Hollywood house and finds more recent photos of her and Mick and then she finds the room where Coraline kept her as a little girl. Beth is on the war path.

Mick sort of joins Morgan in the shower and gets close enough to see the Fleur de Lis. He’s not so interested in how Coraline survived the fire or that she’s back and standing naked right in front of him but rather how she became human. He doesn’t get a chance to get any more information out of her because Beth shows up. We’ve come full circle with the start of the episode. Beth barges in and end up stabbing Coraline in the stomach. But it doesn’t paralyze her like Beth thought. Since Coraline is now human it did a lot more damage and they need to get her to the hospital so Mick has some shot of figuring out how in the heck Coraline managed to reverse the curse.