Saturday, April 27, 2013

Beauty and the Beast, Season 1, Episode 19: Playing with Fire



 
 Catherine has found Vincent a new place to lurk but Vincent is less sure about going back into hiding (this why he jumps from 6 storey buildings? And, no, I’m not over that) and wonders about doing something about Muirfield – he wants a new life, a place for them both.

Elsewhere, Gabe wakes up from an apparent nightmare, his door bell ringing and with a nose bleed (which the sound effects tells us is a very dramatic thing. They’re totally ready with the cymbals in case he stubs his toe and if he stumbles near the stairs, the sound guys will break out O Fortuna).  At the door is Joe, he wants to keep the task force going so he can use it to hunt down Evan.

Isn’t that a lot of resources to expend on someone meddling with evidence? Gabe also sees another problem  - if you call Evan into question then that questions all the evidence he has ever given, every case he has ever worked on. Gave assures him he has people quietly looking for Evan but Joe has to forget about him if he doesn’t want to destroy all the good work his police department has done.

Joe leaves and Gabe talks to the woman who was in his bed about finding Evan quietly but she comments on his nightmares – he says he’s running out of time – he has to find Muirfield. She tells him she has as much reason to hate them as he does –and we see she has a long scar running down her spine.

At work Catherine and Tess are sad over Evan and someone has tossed his apartment (they assume Muirfield) before Catherine got there. Tess feels a little guilty that she can’t tell the truth about evan and Vincent to Joe. Catherine reiterates that Vincent can never be safe because Murifield will always hunt him> which is when a man with a bullet wound bursts into the room, gasping Catherine’s name before collapsing to the floor and bleeding messily everywhere. He tells her they don’t have much time – then dies. See he was right, he didn’t have much time.

Catherine and Tess have an aside, they worry that the man may be connected to Muirfield – why else would a man she never met stagger in gasping her name (I don’t know, does she not take any cases as a detective at all that aren’t Muirfield connected?) and that raises the worry of how he knew about her and where to find her (Muifield found her before  - kidnapped her even). Tess removed a card off the man when checking on him and gives it to Catherine.

They talk to the new pathologist – Iveson; who tells him that the man has no ID of any kind (I think it’s Nathan off Haven actually) and was shot 5 times and he has defensive wounds. Gabe arrives in time for the next piece of news – the dead man has no finger prints at all. Gabe has a flashback to when he was a child, with a woman who had no fingerprints in a facility that has classic Muirfield décor – ice white on all surfaces.


Later JT is giving Vincent some judging for lying to Catherine (or implied lying) but telling her to stay away from the guy while he goes investigating without telling her to “keep her safe.” Ugh hasn’t he learned this lesson by now? Lying to Catherine and going behind her back to keep her safe never ends well. He follows the blood scent of the man to an alleyway with an abandoned car. They reconstruct the scene, the man was ambushed by the man in the car who jumps out. They fight, both are injured – one makes it to the police station and dies – and they find the other, rat eaten body, in the alley. Also without fingerprints. And they find a phone.

At the police station Catherine checks the CCTV of the shop opposite Evan’s apartment and catches a man coming out with a big box and she gets the numberplate of the car he gets into. Checking the car – they find it belongs to Gabe. Naturally they suspect Gabe of working for Muirfield.

Time to confront Gabe. Gabe claims he did it to stop Joe getting the files and opening a legal pandora’s box. And Evan’s research makes it clear he wasn’t covering up for the vigilante – he was working for an outside organisation. Catherine all but confirms it and adds that such an organisation would love to have Gabe onside. He’s surprised and asks “you think I’m working for Muirfield?” DUM DUM DUM he said the word!

Gabe tells Catherine his story; he was orphaned as a small child in Calcutta and brought to the US to be used as a guinea pig by Muirfield; he spent his whole life having tissue, blood and whatever else they could harvest taken for him. He’s hunting Muirfield, not working for them.

Gabe realises that Catherine doesn’t trust him and tells her what he knows – about a human/animal hybrid Evan was researching and that he thinks Muirfield killed him when they were finished with him – and Evan is covering for her – and that Catherine is hunting Muirfield out of revenge for Evan.

See, this is the problem when you play the “look what I know!” game. Sometimes you don’t know nearly as much as you think you do.

Gabe thinks the vigilante is dead and wants to expose Muirfield for all the victims like him and Evan. He had hoped to take the vigilante alive to protect him and so he could lead him to Muirfield. He wants Catherine’s help because even with his position, her being a cop gives her more avenues to pursue. But she doesn’t trust him, not yet.

Meanwhile, JT and Vincent recover the video off the dead Muirfield agent’s phone and show it to Catherine; he was Paul Davis and Catherine’s mother was his mentor. He apologises for not looking into her mother’s death and tells her that no-one else knows about her. Muirfield have recently had to move which makes them vulnerable and he can give her everything she needs to expose them – which is when he is attacked. He tells her to go to the Orchard. Video ends and Catherine plots – but Vincent is all “no, it’s a trap!” even if it is convoluted as they come. Nor does he trust Gabe – and he wants her to hang around and hide while he investigates. Catherine is not a fan of this idea.

Vincent pushes JT but, of course “Orchard” is too vague. Vincent is determined to find the answer before Catherine does – leading JT to snark that they could achieve so much more working together. Vincent even considers going back to total secrecy, no visits.

At the police station Tess feels all kind of awful after Joe talks about how Evan betrayed him and covered up for his brother’s killer (when Evan didn’t – but she is now doing so) and Catherine gets one of Evan’s journals from Gabe which she terms as “peace offering or bait.”  Tess supports Catherine’s gut instinct and sometimes it’s necessary to hide things from your partner to protect them

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Nononononono! And double no because I think Vincent gets to veto any Muirfield decisions considering he’s the one who will be dissected while still alive if caught.

She goes to Gabe and he gives her a big box of research – including a post-it note on Orchard Industries She tells him about the phone video – only that

Tess and Catherine go to the building with Tess distracting a guy so Catherine can sneak in. Catherine enters, keeping in touch with Gabe – who has her on speaker with his friend, the blonde woman with the back scar as well. Catherine uses the card Tess took off the dead agent to open doors and get in. Inside is a vast room full of computer servers – Muirfield’s brain. Except that they need a password. Without knowing what it is, Gabe guesses at chimera.

Chimera – a made up creature of different parts. That makes Catherine a little suspicious but it works. Gabe talks her through downloading everything to a separate server. Catherine does and Gabe celebrates, they’re going to get everything. But Catherine’s whole reason for not bringing Gabe was to stop Vincent being exposed. She sees Keller’s file. But Gabe’s assistant tells her they have an advanced security system – if the download is interrupted, all the files are corrupted.

Outside, listening to them from across the street, Vincent lurks and watches them. He calls JT and asks for a track on Catherine’s location

Seeing Vincent’s files being transferred, Catherine panics and tries to stop it. And outside Tess strangles the security guard into unconsciousness. And Vincent joins Catherine inside. She quickly fills him in and he uses his manimal strength to destroy servers. When the strike team arrives he has much fun with them as well. In the fight the server room catches fire and Vincent hurriedly grabs Catherine for a dramatic rescue

Catherine tells Gabe that it was Murifield who burned the server room when the alarm was tripped. Gabe tells her all the data is corrupted and useless – she apologises but he’s happy that she’s ok at least. She asks about Chimera and he tells her what it means and how it was the original department of Muirfield. Catherine’s mother used to wear a chimera necklace; she said it reminded her to “respect the power of nature.” Gabe has a flashback to his childhood again, remembering Catherine’s mother who got him out of Muirfield and with a family.

He goes to see his assistant who tells him she’s unlikely to be able to salvage any data. He tells her about Catherine’s mother and the realisation that Catherine’s involvement with Muirfield goes deeper than mere revenge for Evan. She shows him one of the serves – dented and thrown across the room, the bolts that held it to the floor sheered in half, one that Vincent destroyed.

Tess puts some papers on Joe’s desk from Evan’s files – she claims they’re the only ones she found. It’s a file on Joe’s brother being on drugs when he was killed. She wants Joe to move on because if he keeps crusading after Evan he’s going to hold on to Darius and never be able to grieve and live again.

Catherine and Vincent meet and resolve to focus on protecting “us” rather than each other. Which means focusing on bringing Muirfield down. Then  Vincent asks if she wants him to keep a safe distance since Agent Davis (the dead one) found Catherine pretty easily. Of course she doesn’t and he should know that because we’ve covered this a GAZILLION TIMES.





Do I have to point out the obvious? That the only reason Muirfield got on their trail was a series of ridiculous decisions on Vincent and Catherine’s part? That they could probably lead a secret life together if they stopped jumping off buildings and doing unwise internet searches? Let’s stop pretending that Muirfield is so so very cunning at searching for Vincent – the only time they have ever caught his scent is when Catherine, Heather or Vincent waved big flags.

My tolerance for everyone deciding to keep secrets for everyone else’s protection is rapidly draining. I suppose it’s a parallel, Vincent and Catherine keeping secrets while Gabe and Catherine also keep secrets that end up sabotaging them. Then there’s Joe and Tess. So we’re going for a whole secret theme.

But Gabe’s storyline looks promising