Moonlight: Well this really sucks…

Par­don the vam­pire pun, but there’s noth­ing worse than get­ting sucked into an awe­some new TV show only to find out it has already been can­celed.  My lat­est let­down was over the CBS series Moon­light, a show about a vam­pire P.I.  liv­ing in modern-day Los Ange­les who strug­gles with life, love and his oft-challeneged quest for redemp­tion.  Sounds cheesy, I know, and there’s no short­age of awful vam­pire shows—even some with strik­ingly sim­i­lar premises—but Moon­light was one of the best I’ve ever seen.  I typ­i­cally don’t watch many TV shows (at least not while they’re still air­ing), I guess because I hate com­mer­cials, wait­ing a week to find out what hap­pens next, and spoiler-happy ass­clowns online.  So most of my TV show con­sump­tion is done all at once in the form of down­loads, DVD, or Hulu, even though watch­ing shows all at once usu­ally means I’m unfash­ion­ably late to most fan­doms.  Which brings me back to Moon­light…

For­get for a moment that the name of the show is Moon­light, which is a bad idea for sev­eral rea­sons, the most obvi­ous being con­fu­sion with Stephe­nie Meyer’s much lamer Twi­light.  Also look past the fact that main char­ac­ter Mick St. John (Alex O’Loughlin) is bru­tally hot, which much of this show’s pop­u­lar­ity with a rabid female fan­base can be attrib­uted to.  Under­neath you’ll find an intel­li­gent, action-packed, funny, and yes, roman­tic super­nat­ural drama with high pro­duc­tion value, great direc­tion, and a kick­ass sound­track.  As far as vam­pire lore goes, Moon­light doesn’t devi­ate too much from con­ven­tional mythol­ogy, but does throw a few unique and inter­est­ing twists into the mix, like sil­ver as a lethal sub­stance, sun­light caus­ing pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion, and my per­sonal favorite, sleep­ing in freez­ers. For the geeks, there’s even a geek vam­pire with plenty of video game and World of War­craft references—even a full-blown Leeroy Jenk­ins bat­tle charge.

Crit­i­cally it seems Moon­light didn’t fare too well, with many hav­ing dis­missed the show as silly, or per­haps more detri­men­tal, com­par­ing it to Angel. But it was an obvi­ous hit with fans, hav­ing won a People’s Choice Award for Best New Drama, and its rat­ings were noth­ing to scoff at. So it’s beyond me why CBS would choose to can­cel a good show, espe­cially after claim­ing there were plans for a sec­ond sea­son.  I’m just bit­ter I started watch­ing it with­out know­ing it was already over.

Fans of the show can sign the online peti­tion to save Moon­light, even though most online peti­tions are like pisisng into the wind.  As for me, I’ll just have to be con­tent with re-watching the first and only sea­son and mourn­ing the loss of yet another good show that’s gone too soon.