Saturday, December 1, 2012

Beauty and the Beast, Season 1, Episode 7: Out of Control



  Crime of the week – a couple of college students leaving a party run into a sliced and diced body.

Catherine’s all packed for a weekend way and rather giddy when she joins Tess at the murder scene. There they discuss a party for the firefighters’ calendar Tess wants to drag Catherine to and another little poke at Catherine’s increasingly secretive life. Time for Evan to arrive with the crime details: victim is a Derek Moore who manages to crawl before dying – but the sprinkler has washed away evidence and the blood trail from the real crime scene.

Meanwhile with Vincent, he’s had another blackout and his clothes are stained with blood, which rather worries him and JT. To be sure, JT has started carrying a tranquiliser gun just in case (with Victor’s knowledge). But they’re also worried about Catherine and the camping trip they have planned. JT says he has to cancel but also has to keep the blackouts from Catherine to make sure they don’t put her in a position where she has to turn Vincent in because she’s a danger to others.

They still can’t find a medical cause for the blackouts but he has one right there during the test, passing out, his stats go weird then he wakes up animalistic and attacks JT. After being thrown against a wall, JT shoots Vincent with his tranquiliser gun. Which is when Catherine shows up and JT has to reveal what an awful liar he is and say Vincent isn’t home. He is perturbed to hear about the murder – especially since the time fits Vincent’s blackout

Back to work. We’re introduced to probably-will-be-relevant-later Peter who is an intern working with Evan. The body of Gary shows he died from multiple lacerations (as I said, sliced and diced) and he has a check mark cut into his ankle.

Going to the fraternity Derek belonged to gets them a grade A arsehole with lots of money (who won’t answer questions about initiation because of “the oath” really? In a murder case?). They find a more intimidated and willing to talk student who gives them hints about how tough the initiation is and how those who fail are ostracised.

Vincent wakes up to find JT pointing the gun at him. JT opts to be cautious since he was thrown against a wall (but he does say “no guilt because you didn’t know what you’re doing” which is a nice touch. Not blaming Vincent but still taking reasonable precautions). During a blackout his reasoning mind shuts down (didn’t really need the scan to see that) and he tells Vincent about the dead fratguy.

Catherine goes to the firefighter calendar party and gets a guy’s phone number. This is apparently relevant.

Back to the police station for some work and they talk to the fratguy who bailed out on the initiation. He didn’t kill Derek – but Derek deserved it since he is an outright sadist during “initiation”. And they find that the hazing took place in the Bell Tower


Going there they find the crime scene – by the blood splatters anyway. Tess goes to call it in and Catherine runes into Vincent who tells her he may be the culprit.

Time to go to Vincent’s to check the blood and see if the crime scene blood and the blood he tracked in are the same, all while Catherine expresses her complete faith in him. Yes it does appear that Catherine has just wandered off in the middle of a case again. JT checks – the blood doesn’t match so it probably was whoever lured Derek to the Bell Tower that night. Of course, it doesn’t change that Vincent was covered in blood.

Meanwhile Evan is looking up that check mark with totally-not-suspicious-eager-intern Peter. He finds it – a cadaver from the medical lab was removed and dumped with the mark on them a year ago in a sick prank. Perhaps practice for a real murder. Leaving suspicious-eager-intern-who-was-probably-at-the-university-at-that-time behind, Evan goes to the crime scene to check it over, noticing how staged it was. He calls Catherine to talk about it – and gets smacked on the back of the head and kidnap him.

Time for a meeting of the police under Joe. Evan wasn’t just knocked out, he was kidnapped. All the police are brought up to speed and they also have a list of students who had access to the morgue where the body was taken a year ago – and, lo, Suspicious-Intern-Peter is on it. I’m shocked guys. Truly. This is my shocked face. They realise he’s a criminology student who is getting his jollies following the investigation of a murder he committed from the inside.

They go to his flat and find pictures of a famous murder from the city’s past and realise that Derek’s murder had been staged to copy it. They realise this means he’s not going to kill Evan randomly, he’s going to kill Evan in a way that mimics a previous, famous, New York City murder. So they just have to narrow it down to a murder that has been committed in New York city in the past. That should be oh-so-easy.

Based on the fact it’s daylight and he’d want to go somewhere hidden, Catherine makes the massive logical plummet of assuming Peter’s going to try and mimic the killings Vincent committed protecting her in the subway. And she even has an idea of which disused subway track he’s going to use (don’t ask how she’s guessed all this – she’s Catherine, leaps of logic are required). Because the track is so long she decides the best thing to do is abandon the police and Tess during  a huge race to save Evan’s life and go to Vincent and appeal for his help searching the tunnel.

Evan and Peter play headgames with each other (blaming Peter’s killing on seeing his father’s suicide when he was 7 and claiming Peter will be bothered by not being able to exactly duplicate the previous crime since Evan is a random victim of opportunity and not planned)

And Vincent has an episode. He tries to give Catherine the tranquiliser gun but she refuses to take it (whyyy?) and when he falls to the floor and goes all animaly, she points it at him – but lowers it (that’s it, kill her now, she left her survival instinct at home. I could understand it if it were an actual bullet gun – but tranq?) Thankfully, this is when Peter decides to stab Evan in the leg and when Evan screams it attracts Vincent’s attention –he runs down the tunnels and nastily mauls Peter, while poor Evan listens and gets spattered with flying blood.

Vincent starts to advance on Evans but Catherine fires a warning shot with her real gun – the bullets hitting near Vincent. He turns to her and growls. She fires another one and Vincent runs off (presumably to find another victim, but we don’t care about the pesky collateral damage).

Catherine goes to wash up and panics about the whole situation until JT rings her and assures her that Vincent is back and under control. Catherine worries about the latest cover up they’ll have to pull off, but JT advises her to just be normal and pretends she doesn’t know what happened.

The next day she sees Evan who does an amazing job of both being reserved and burying his pain while still expressing it. And he says that whatever attached Peter wasn’t entirely human and compares what she saw when her mother was murdered. She instantly works on saying how that was wrong and she knows it was just a human who saved her back then.

To the desk where Tess arrives and wants to talk to Catherine about her being the wingman with the cute firefighter! And why is she so distracted, it must be a guy, who is he?! (hello, kidnapping and torture of Evan? Ring any bells Tess?). Which is when Joe the boss steps in with images of what was left of Peter after Vincent finished with him. He says the vigilante went above and beyond on him and has now jumped to the top of the most wanted list – and every precinct is on it.

Catherine goes to JT and he drags her out on the carpet. When Vincent started to black out why didn’t she trank him. She says she took a chance to save Evan, he’s angry because she didn’t think of the price Vincent would pay (especially since not a few minutes before Vincent told her how killing those people one the subway hurt him, even though he did it to protect her). I’d also like to throw in she didn’t know if Vincent would go after the killer, her, Evan, the police searching the subway – anyone around for that matter.

JT opens a secured cell to show her that Vincent has locked himself in. If he can’t control himself then he needs someone else to do so. Catherine demands the key (why?! This seems pretty damn reasonable all things considered). JT drops another bombshell – every time Vincent has had a blackout it has been related to Catherine.



How does Catherine constantly disappear even at the most desperate, time intensive moments to go see Vincent? It’s getting almost farcical.

I really hope that the fireman-number thing doesn’t develop into any kind of conflicting love interest, we already have that with Evan and it’s getting silly. I mean, she actually seems to have some level of feelings for Evan, she has actual, dramatic feelings for Vincent – but guy with calendar photo comes along and inserts a third contender? Really? Or was that scene an attempt to characterise Tess (if so it failed. Men are already Tess’s single topic of conversation. Seriously she talks about men and she talks about work).

Evan needs to stop with that good acting. It makes the others look bad.

Catherine’s behaviour this episode was beyond spunky. Assuming that blackout Vincent - WITH NO HUMAN REASONING – would be safe to use as a weapon against Peter. Assuming he wouldn’t kill anyone else before he reached JT. Using Vincent as a weapon. And discounting the blood that is already on his clothes – sure it wasn’t Derek, but he’s clearly badly hurt someone! And at the end trying to get Vincent out of the cage… so, what? He can run and rampage again? Because she luvs him she’s going to ignore the body count? Is she going to change her name to Elena now?