I also really noticed how Julia's newspaper line didn't fit our world any more. It made perfect sense the first time around!
Interestingly I had almost the exact opposite reaction as allegrita did to this episode, watching it again all these years later. I remember absolutely loving OOTP the first time around, but also being
very bothered by the story problems and plot holes, enough so that I really considered the episode to be a "guilty pleasure." Yet this time around, the problems with the story didn't affect me nearly so much, and I was mostly just overwhelmed by how beautifully made this episode is. The acting is amazing; I really don't know how they pulled off some of those lines and actually made them work. The production quality is very high. And with some wonderful character development as well, this episode really does manage to overcome its weak story.
And as allegrita mentioned, there are so, so many wonderful individual scenes in this! I also loved all the ones she mentioned, especially Mick with the lighter on the stairs, the "trust me" moment, and "wanna navigate", then also that wonderful voice-over where Mick is hesitating at the door of Beth's apartment imagining that he's telling her that he's a vampire, and.... probably my favorite, the whole scene with Mick and Bobby. That scene is so wonderful that I really didn't care how convenient it was that Bobby had gone blind. It was just so amazing to see Mick interact with such a very old friend, with the added plus that we also got to see them together in flashback. The scene with Bobby was a beautiful way to let us get a feel for just how long Mick has been around, and how hard it is for him to watch his friends grow old and, eventually, die. There were such nice little touches in this scene, too, like the way Mick quietly straightened one of Bobby's certificates on the wall. All of these favorite scenes, I liked even better this time around.
For me, too, this was where Beth and Josef first became interesting to me, like real people, not just the pushy reporter and the snarky friend. I noticed this, too, even more this time around. I hadn't remembered how hard Josef was on Mick all the way through, but at the same time it was obvious just how much Josef cared about him. Beth was so much more interesting to me than in the previous episode, with her memories, her relationship with Josh, and with her compassion and level-headedness starting to show through. It was a bit cliche I suppose, but I did like the fact that Beth saved Mick in this episode, rather than needing to be saved herself. And I hadn't really noticed on first viewing just how thoroughly Lee Jay outwitted Mick in this episode, at every turn. I liked the contrast with the previous episode ... in the last one, Mick's powers as a vampire were really on display, and in this one, we saw how
vulnerable the vampire could make Mick.
And this one definitely goes on my "good endings" list. I think it might in fact be my favorite ending, though I'll have to wait and see what I think of the rest of them all these years later. But this one's amazing, like a tapestry at first, with the layering of the scenes ... helicopter, Beth, Julia, the street scene ... along with Lee Jay's voice over and the absolute perfect song in "Forever and Ever Amen" .... I found it absolutely hypnotic even before we got to Mick's apartment and the vampire reveal at the end.
(And I do remember the first time being so surprised, and so pleased, that Beth found out about the vampire in the second episode! I think there were only six episodes green-lighted at that time, and just in case the series ended on ep. six, I
so wanted them to go full speed ahead!)
And I'd forgotten that this is the first episode that features the fabulous bookcase. I
love Mick's bookcase. Of course this time around, I was thinking how lucky it was that Lee Jay had not found the weapons cache in there, given that he'd really been tossing the books around.
One thing that seemed odd this time around: Lee Jay knows that stakes paralyze vampires, presumably from his vampire research. But how would he know that? I'm not aware of any vampire mythology, save Moonlight, where things work that way. (Hm, maybe Lee Jay saw Mick's interview.
) Or ... I've always thought that Moonlight occurred in a parallel world that was exactly like ours except for the existence of vampires. But it would make sense that in that parallel world, the vampire literature and mythology would also be quite different from ours, drawing on reality rather than fantasy.)
One of the effects of the "showrunner shuffle" in those early episodes, I guess. 
