It’s been a brief hiatus so a quick reminder of where
everything stands:
Everything is falling apart. Everyone is suspicious of
Catherine, Darius is dead, Evan has joined Muirfield and it’s all very messy
indeed.
Time to open with Vincent and Catherine getting all hot
and steamy (though very careful with their hands and wearing a lot of clothes),
it heats up and then Vincent’s Manimal thing kicks in, making his eyes glow and
him jerk away. Way to kill the mood with your
out-of-control-feral-killing-machine-moment. Vincent wants to wait a moment and
it’ll past – I have to say that if you have an
out-of-control-feral-killing-machine-moment it’s probably best not to just wait
a couple of seconds then pick up where you left off, like it was cramp or wind
or something.
Proving me right, Vincent starts growling (especially
since she doesn’t give him a minute) grows claws and tosses Catherine across
the room. Ok my money’s on angst nightmare. She cowers helplessly on the floor
begging him as he advances menacingly. He attacks her – and wakes up
Told you! Angst nightmare. And seriously, Vincent, you’re
having sexy dreams of you both fully clothed? Someone needs a word with your subconscious,
man. He gets up shirtless – please stay that way Vincent, I need something to
balance the inevitable epic amounts of angst that are, no doubt, going to
overwhelm us because you had a nightmare.
Which is when Catherine arrives – with her own house key which JT comments on a little snarkily (since he does live there as well it would have been nice to tell him. Y’know angry manimal is one thing but bad housemate etiquette is really pushing it. I bet he drinks all the milk and puts the bottle back as well). Catherine wants to spend time with Vincent (since she no longer has any friends at all) while JT effortlessly skewers her small talk before making a grossly conspicuous “I’ve leaving you two alone to get it on” exit. Hah, JT, you should know better, of course they’re not going to get it on, they’re too busy stammering like awkward teenagers at Prom while Vincent falls down his angst cycle and, rather than talk about it decides he’s going to avoid her instead and runs out the door, leaving a confused Catherin in his wake.
Let’s switch to Muirfield where Ethan is meeting some bad
guys in a white room. No really, the walls, the floor, the table, the chairs,
everything is white. No-one would have a room like this. You’d need to employ
15 people just to keep it clean and they’d have to wear sunglasses so they
wouldn’t get migraine. The only possible purpose to have a room like this is to
scream “evil sinister lair”. Either way, the evil people have taken Ethan’s
work and are surprised by how quickly Vincent is mutating. And Ethan realises
the evil people are trying to sideline him and pushes to be more included
eventually resorting to violence which gets him escorted out with a gun pointed
at him. My, working for a shadowy group with secret headquarters that performs
illicit experiments on people is not everything Ethan imagined! Who could have
predicted this?
Catherine is in the gym complaining over the phone to
heather about Vincent’s lack of eagerness to get hot, sweaty and necked with
her (Heather’s misgivings about Vincent have disappeared – possibly because her
boyfriend turned out to owe money to a loan shark and try to kill her which
means she will Never Have the Moral Highground Ever Again). Her frank
description of which is overheard by the extremely hot guy who makes a joke
before she points out he’s in the women’s locker-room by mistake. With that
chest, who cares what room he’s in?
It seems Beauty and the Beast may be replacing plot with half
naked man candy. I see no problems with this flawless plan. Ok, putting aside
eye candy, he acted all kinds of skeevy there – even if he did accidentally
enter the women’s locker room, butting in on a woman’s private phone call (even
if loud) and inappropriately coming on to her while half naked? Skeevy and
wrong, even when you look like that.
Alas, I can’t remain on pause so onwards, with Catherine
at work offering cappuccino to Tess so
she can have some girl talk to vent even though they’re on the outs with each
other. So she rants about Vincent and half-naked guy until interrupted by Joe
introducing the new district attorney – Gabe Lowen, aka half-naked guy. And why
is Lowen – and extra investigators (including 2 cops who have a reputation for
shooting first asking questions later) – hanging around? To catch the vigilante
(that would be Vincent). Catherine isn’t impressed by Vargas isn’t joining her
on that one. They’re investigating Joe and the whole special crimes unit to see
what’s not working and why.
Which means Gabe interviewing Tess and her having none of
his “friendly friendly” approach. So he takes off the gloves and asks why she
wants to no longer be Catherine’s partner – and if it’s connected to a whole
lot of tampered with evidence he’s been seeing
Let us leave this interesting plot to spend some time
with Vincent’s angst and JT questioning why he spent 3 hours killing time to
give Vincent and Catherine alone time if Vincent was just going to rehash old,
resolved angst. Catherine arrives and JT leaves to give them more time, but
Catherine’s not here for sexy times, she’s here to warn him. Vincent, in full
angst mode, accepts his death as inevitable, but Catherine thinks if they find the
goons who were pressuring Darius they can prove that Vincent was only trying to
protect Heather.
We could spend more time worrying about that threat,
instead we’re going to angst about Vincent losing it when he has sex - he
describes how, 2 years ago when his adrenaline kicked in with a woman he couldn’t
stop from changing (err, this isn’t relevant information before they made out
last episode?) Back to the plot and they
discuss how Darius borrowed a large sum of money from a loan shark from the
East River Crime Syndicate to start a VIP lounge that didn’t actually make any
money. Oops. For 40 seconds. Then it’s back to the “rawr I’m out of control no
sex I hate myself” angst. Back on topic – she has information on a man called
Ross who may know people in the Syndicate to help them find the man who got
away that night. But Catherine can’t go because if Joe finds out she’s trying
to prove the vigilante innocent, she’s in trouble.
Vincent goes to Ross, as a veteran who needs some quick money
to pay off some foreign loan sharks who will kill him if he doesn’t. And offers
weapons as collateral. And he has a time limit so Ross needs to call his boss
fast – which he does at a distance, but not out of range of Vincent’s
super-hearing to catch the boss is called Ray
Whose details Catherine tracks down, Ray Sheckmman, and
takes to Evan where she learns that the trigger-happy cops are also following
the same leads, only they may fabricate evidence to get the warrants they need.
When she leaves, Evan passes on the information that he may have a witness who
saw their “creature” up close on the night Darius is killed. At this point,
what does Muirfield have to do for him to stop co-operating? Muirfield refuses
to give him a bigger role in the investigation so Evan doesn’t pass on the name
– saying he’ll handle it himself.
Catherine has a talk with Gabe where he suggests that,
maybe, she is tampering with evidence in the interest of justice. Catherine
doesn’t fall for it any more than Tess does. But he then reveals that his
mother was also murdered. Catherine consoles and empathises with him rather
than saying “seriously, you’re actually going to use the corpse of my mother
who was murdered in front of me as a questioning tool?”
Back at Catherine’s she and Vincent have a planning
strategy: talk to Shekman before the trigger happy cops do because if they
arrest him first he will just say he was an innocent bystander and finger
Vincent as the killer. They need to “talk” to him first – which means going to
a special formal event (they go to a lot of them, am I the only one who thinks
so?) Thankfully it’s a masque ball so Vincent can come as well. Yes, really.
To the fancy party where they can put the characters in
evening dress again. I think they have all these formal parties because the
person in the wardrobe department has a gun and occasionally snaps and yells “EVERYONE
MUST BE PRETTY! MORE STYLE!” On that note, Catherine hasn’t bothered with a
mask and has gone for some awesome eye make-up that there’s no way she had time
to do instead. Vincent is so stunned he takes off his mask. They spot Shekman
and Vincent questions whether Catherine is really fine with planting evidence,
but she’s determined to go ahead.
At work, Tess talks to Joe who she finds drinking in his
office. She thinks it’s a terrible idea to have the shoot-first-ignore-the-rules
cops around while an ADA is investigating them and further that it’s not a good
idea for them to be together. He pushes for discretion instead and adds that
with his baby brother dead less than a week ago, she was the only thing that
made sense to him. Tess kisses him. Guess they’re back on.
At the party, Catherine flirts with Ray and arranges for
him to meet her alone in the closed Asian exhibit to give her a tour (hem hem),
we also see that Gabe and Evan have also turned up for this event. To the
darkened Asian exhibit where Catherine holds Ray at gunpoint. She talks rather
ineffectually until he calls her a bitch and points a gun at her – leading to
Vincent leaping on him all snarly. She uses Vincent to threaten him unless Ray
goes and tells the truth in a full confession.
He leaves and runs into Evan – who notices he is shaken
and wants to ask about the monster, but then Gabe arrives and, of course, Ray
has something important to say to Gabe. Meanwhile Catherine and Vincent discuss
Ray seeing Vincent (better than Catherine planting evidence) and they’re
impressed that while Vincent looked all snarly, he was in complete control.
This is proof that all the angst was unnecessary (really? No! Surely not!) and
they can dramatically kiss again.
Ray, with Gabe wants full immunity to be a witness saying
that the vigilante only acted to save Heather’s life. But Gabe is more
interested in what the vigilante looked like.
The next day Evan gets a call from Muirfield
congratulating him on doing the right thing – finding the witness before he
spoke to the ADA – and killing him. Though they wish he’d been less public
about it. Evan is shocked but checking the paper he sees that Ray’s body was
found in the basement of the museum. And Muirfield think he did it and, on the
strength of that, he’s now in.
Catherine, Evan and Tess are dragged into a conference
where Joe dissolves all their partnerships and puts them on a new task force,
entirely focused on catching the Vigilante. And Gabe says he wants cops who
focus on justice above all else… uh-huh. These leads to a dramatic press
conference where Gabe swears to protect the people of New York from the
vigilante – with all the cops in the background
At this point, it’s probably best for Vincent to leave
New York. Instead he and Catherine have a reconfirmation of their commitment
and finally sleep together.
Things I’m happy about with this episode:
Tampering with evidence isn’t just swept under the rug. There
are chains, there are investigations, people are noticing, Catherine can’t
throw out the entire justice system by destroying evidence.
Vigilantism isn’t treated as a negligible crime
What I’m not happy with:
Convoluted Catherine/Vincent angst. Honestly the whole “ugh
I could hurt you” has already been DONE! Enough already
Evan working with Muirfield that praises him for murder?
Uh-huh, why would he want an in with these people?
I actually find Joe and Tess’s relationship more
compelling than Catherine and Vincent’s – the emotion (and possibly the acting)
seems much more real and much less melodramatic.
