Midnight, Texas 1×02 Review: “Bad Moon Rising”

Midnight, Texas got focused this week and we’re thankful for the massive slow-down in story in “Bad Moon Rising” as we focus on the Rev and his tiger transformation.

First though, we pick up with Manfred, who is running with Creek into his trailer with a nasty claw mark on his side. Wondering what the hell is going on, we get a “24 hours earlier” message on our screens indicating that all will be explained in time after the murder-mystery and Manfred’s demonic house storylines are solved.

As for Aubrey’s murder, Bobo is still in jail after being arrested as the prime suspect last week. When he’s put in his jail cell, he’s quickly bombarded by bikers, but they’re no match against Bobo, apparently.

He beats the daylights out of them, with punching sound affects and everything. I mentioned how much I dislike Bobo and his scenes in the premiere’s review and there hasn’t been much of an improvement since then.

As for the demon house, Manfred calls upon the witch-next-door, Fiji, to preform an exorcism, as she cheerily puts it. Manfred is there when she starts to preform the exorcism and wastes no time leaving when she tells him she needs to do it by herself so the demons don’t enter into Manfred’s body.

But Manfred’s just a cutie, so he can do whatever he wants and I don’t think I can be mad at him leaving Fiji to face the smoke ghosts alone.

Meanwhile, the Rev has a tiger problem. Olivia locks him up in his cellar in order for him to transform without hurting anyone.

But the police are stupid. Like, really stupid. After the Sheriff suspends the most annoying deputy in the history of television, she goes to Midnight and hears noises coming from the cellar.

Like growling, tiger noises.

So she opens the chained up door and, so satisfyingly, gets chewed on by the Rev and gets pulled up into a tree.

And that’s when the episode gets interesting. Back at Manfred’s, Fiji thinks she’s gotten the demons out, but there’s one that’s calling her name in an eerie (demonic, duh) voice. It shoots Manfred out of the house and pulls Fiji onto the wall. By the time Manfred gets back into the house, the demon is showing everyone what it wants by lifting up Fiji’s skirt.

That’s when Manfred’s had enough, banishes the demon, smashes the mirror and saves Fiji (for now at least, it sounds like the demon may have followed her home by the end of the episode).

Midnight still has a tiger problem though, but Olivia and Lem are on the case. Olivia is out to kill, even though the Rev is her friend. Lem, on the other hand, manages to wrestle the tiger to the ground and knock the tiger out, letting the Rev transform back into the man everyone in the town knows and loves.

This week’s episode was a massive improvement from last week when we were bombarded by new characters and hopefully next week’s vampire-centric episode will continue building on character and story just like this week’s episode did.

Watch Midnight, Texas on NBC, Mondays at 10/9c.