Saturday, February 2, 2013

Beauty and the Beast: Season 1, Episode 11: On Thin Ice



 Vincent’s wandering around during the day now, look at him getting all daring. He drops in on Catherine to help her with her physical therapy after being shot (she’s frustrated at being on leave because of it). Awkwardness happens when Alex calls and they not!discuss their non-relationship.

Wow, Vincent, you spend your life hiding in the dark with only one friend and you still manage a love triangle. Behold the power of CW. If CW did the story of the last man on Earth, he’d still manage a love triangle.

He goes on to Alex’s to find that she seems to have covered nearly every flat surface with pictures of them both together – in a totally-not-creepy-honest way. He also seems not very happy by her stripping naked. Don’t take it personally, Alex, Vincent is never ever happy.

Catherine has to go to a therapist to deal with her being-shot trauma and instead dumps her relationship drama on him. He’s better man than I, there’s a window right there and he makes no attempt to leap out of it, but does try to steer her towards talking about the whole being-shot thing. He then does the aggressive therapy thing to make her all questiony and uncomfortable. Personally I think if someone asks “who are you really protecting” when you use the “serve and protect” line you should really have “the public” ready as a response. Really.

As she leaves, she sees Alex – who is surreptitiously taking some drugs out of a storage room and hiding them – and then lies about them to Catherine. Oooooohhh, love rival may be evil.

JT joins me in being confused how Vincent has 2 potential girlfriends despite being a legally dead shut in. Ah JT, doubt not the power of the CW! JT apparently went to Alex to tell her he couldn’t see her again because finding out about Vincent ruined JT’s life and Catherine’s (what, so he’ll take Catherine because her life’s already ruined by the big secret? Wow… that’s romantic). But instead decides that maybe he can see Alex and just not tell her that he’s a mutating manimal who has been known to lose complete control and rip people into teeny tiny shreds with lethal government agencies with massive powers hunting him down!

Uh… someone slap him. Please.

This is when Catherine arrives – she doesn’t slap him but does tell him that she saw Alex stuffing a bag full of drugs and that there’s an open narcotics theft case going on at the hospital and the police in charge will find out. Vincent insists they don’t know if Alex is guilty (sure, she could have a perfectly innocent reason for illicitly stuffing a duffle bag full of drugs like… like… damn, even in the name of snark I can’t think of one. Let’s assume she’s getting pills for her sick aunt. Aunts rather. It’s a big family). Catherine asks if Alex knows how care she has to be about keeping Vincent’s secret – and Vincent says no. Catherine still doesn’t slap him.

At the police station, under dire threat of manipedis, Catherine makes Tess tell her about the case she’s working. Noah Hawkes, super rich guy who went sky diving with his wife who died when her parachute (and back up) were both tampered with by a left handed person 24 hours or so before the jump. Catherine begs to be allowed on the case but Tess says no – Jo has laid down the law.


To Vincent visiting Alex and it seems he didn’t take advantage of her being naked last time and they have an awkward stilting discussion where he tries to say “yes I loved you but I’m a different person now and things have changed” and she tries to push things back. He mentions he has secrets – and so does she and Alex realises that Catherine saw her take the drugs.  Alex leads Vincent to a secret clinic hidden in the back of a shop where they treat people who can’t afford to go to a doctor or hospital and don’t have insurance – the people she steals the drugs for. She introduces Vincent as a doctor and he has a good, glowing time helping patients. She talks about him living in a hole somewhere and wants him to leave it – to come to the clinic (which is hidden) and be the old Vincent again.

When they finish she takes them to a closed ice rink they used to sneak in (what, in New York City you can’t find anything better to do?) so they can talk nostalgia and she can keep pushing him towards being past-Vincent. She also tells him her fantasy of leaving New York and going anywhere – joining a mobile medical team in remote Nigeria. She wants him to go with her so he can stop hiding and start loving again. He distracts her by pulling her onto the ice. They play around for a while – until a policeman arrives

He’s not charging them but he wants to see ID. ID Vincent won’t show, even at Alex’s urging.

At the police station, Tess questions Noah Hawkes while Catherine naughtily questions his CFO, Pam Davies. They find out little except the dead wife packed her own parachute and she and Noah were devoted. He’s going to a billionaire boy’s club that evening and Tess wants her and Catherine to go under the pretext of the case to try and snag a billionaire.

Meanwhile, Evan calls in JT to study another victim of the trans-species DNA (i.e. Vincent) he has found and got permission to exhume. Evan talks about the creature being moral and intelligent since it only targets criminals. He doesn’t want to capture the creature – he wants to find it, study it and maybe, heal it.

Except, when he gets his matches Evan confirms that that’s 6 cases Vincent has interfered with – and he now has the evidence to go to Joe with. To form a task force – yes he wants to catch Vincent then try and understand him. And, he adds, the thing has killed people – even if they’re bad people, that is illegal (thank you! No praising of random vigilantism!) JT panics but then the computer announces that the sample was corrupted – it’s no longer useable.

Catherine and Tess go to the Billionaire Boys ball, Tess all eager – and she gets a phone call from Vincent. She gives her excuse to Tess and runs to help. Vincent is being lead to a police car for refusing to give his name and Alex pushes him further and tells the police his name is Vince. Vincent starts to get a little bestial. Catherine arrives in time to tear strips off the cop and get Vincent out of there (I think she should have torn an extra strip off him for calling her “sweetheart”).

Catherine is furious with Vincent – if the cop had run her badge she’d have been kicked off the force. Every police car has a camera on it, she’s got to cover that up as well. She also blames Alex for making him do reckless things (seriously?) She reminds him of Muirfield, that he’s putting them all at risk and if he wants to get his old life back, fine, but he can’t just make his current life disappear and he needs to be careful or she needs some distance.

She goes to the shooting range at the police station and fails badly – and then runs into her therapist again who starts the analysis since she missed a session. He talks PTSD, she says she knows all about it – when she saw her mother die, now seeing someone else she loves leave her life and completely fail to appreciate the risks people take for him and that he would rather be with someone who doesn’t even know him.

Meanwhile, a woman we saw making out with Evan earlier, meets with a shady guy in a restaurant. She tells him Evan was getting close to Vincent so she corrupted his samples. Muirfield will get to Vincent before the police then they will have what they need to “move forward”

Back to the case, Tess and Catherine bring in Pam, the CFO for questioning after playing at the Billionaire Boys club reveals Pam and Noah were an item before he met his wife and he called it off – and that she had no alibi and things were tense at the office. She’s also left handed. Faced with their search warrant for the knife, she confesses, telling how Noah left her for Lisa and she hoped to get him back. She makes a point that she didn’t fight for him before it was too late and they were married.

Catherine goes to see her therapist again and he talks her through her issues – this time settling on the relationship she so obviously wants to talk about. He asks her if she’s told Vincent how she feels – she says it’s obvious and he points out she can’t even say it to him, her therapist. Catherine says she loves him

She goes to see Vincent and tells him she’s successfully got the camera footage. Vincent marvels at the risk she took for him despite him being with Alex and she says she wants to be with him and she’s willing to fight for him. But Vincent  isn’t sure his choice is simple since Alex is willing to give up her life to be with him and give him a chance to be the Vincent he was before (except the whole lies and manimal thing. Sounds more like nostalgia than romance). Catherine points out it’s all a fantasy is Alex doesn’t know the truth.



Ok so Vincent is back in Alex’s life after several year’s absence and within a week she’s covering every flat surface with pictures of them together and trying to get him to run away with her to Nigeria? Run Vincent! RUUUUUUN!

Someone needs to tell Tess about the Bechdel test. If she’s not talking about work, she’s talking about men. And someone who is more informed on the ways of jewellery really needs to tell me how earrings can be “slutty” without being little obscene statuettes.

Catherine blaming Alex for encouraging Vincent to be reckless when she knows that Vincent is mushrooming her? Yeah, not good – have Vincent accept some responsibility for his own actions. But I did like Catherine’s epic rant about Vincent to her therapist – that was well done (and acting classes have finally appeared!)

At least we’re getting some plot beyond love triangles. Ish. But I’m not sure why they even tried to shoe horn in the police case. Catherine’s on leave, they had every excuse not to for once.

I also have to say how much I don't like this "fight for them" rhetoric. What does it even meaaaan? Compete with someone else for his attention? Attack them? Fight them? Or fight the love interest, force them, demand their attention?