Vincent and Catherine are being all cutsey getting out of
the city for a day to visit a small town, including candy floss (and no, that
nasty stuff isn’t edible). It’s all so cute and saccharine. They also fit in a
recap about his happy death pills. Mopey time
But back at home JT has a major revelation – the pill
works VERY differently with Vincent than it did with Gabe. It’s attacking his
animal DNA constantly, even long after the time limit Gabe has, and if it
continues to destroy Vincent’s animal DNA he could be fully cured of being a
manimal.
Of course the bad news is Gabe is still plotting to kill
Vincent to get his shiny cure. And he’s clearly troubled at the decision. Tyler
reminds him that he’ll die – if he doesn’t get the lethal medical stuff from
Vincent he will become BeastiGabe permanently. They plan to wait until his
pills wear off to confront Vincent. But JT is following them – being the most
unsubtle stalker ever.
Catherine receives the good news from Vincent and
launches into a massive leap forwards – getting fake IDs for Vincent and
planning to move them to a small town in Colorado so they can not only cure
Vincent but can live without Muirfield. Oh and it has good schools. This is the
normal life she’s always wanted and she could never dream of a future before!
Uh-huh… that’s a pretty huge step. And doesn’t Catherine
have friends? A family? A career?
But as an added plot twist. Catherine gets an urgent call
from her father to meet him. She goes to see him on the street and someone
behind him pushes him out onto the road in front of a speeding car.
To the hospital, Catherine donates blood and her father
is unconscious in a hospital bed. Heather arrives and they discuss his injuries
– he’s expected to recover. Catherine is convinced it isn’t an accident and
Heather is annoyed at her for seeing conspiracies everywhere and always being a
police detective rather than a sister and daughter.
Catherine leaves and tells Vincent she thinks Muirfield
is at it again. Lots of plans on how to investigate and Vincent plans to check
the scene – but without his manimalness he doesn’t actually have anything to
offer.
And JT calls Vincent to tell him he’s been investigating
Tyler and Gabe and all the many many essential organs that Tyler plans to chop
out of him for Gabe. He advises Vincent not to go meet them and then destroys
their computers.
At the police station, Catherine brings the computer and
phone her father was carrying to the IT department to see if they can open it
up. Tess is doubtful, like Heather she thinks Catherine’s a bit too quick to
rule out an accident. Catherine cracks and starts crying when Tess tries to
calm her down – her frenzied activity is about not standing their helpless, as
she was when she saw her mother murdered. Tess promises to check the computer
but tells Catherine she has to go back to the hospital with her sister and get
past her feelings of helplessness.
Tyler gets back to her little lab and finds the mess JT
left. She calls Gabe and warns him that Vincent has opted out of being murdered
and harvested. Gabe tells her to get new equipment because he’s going to force
Vincent by going after his weakness – Catherine. Which is why, when she gets in
her car, Gabe is in the back seat with a gun pointed at her.
Meanwhile, Tess, after some smacking of the condescending
tech guy, finds the contents of Catherine’s father’s tablet – a report from
Homeland Security about a man back in the country
And we cut to that man investigating Tyler’s lab – looking for Gabe’s research. He is determined that Gabe won’t “slip through his fingers again.”
Gabe takes Catherine to a rather palatial estate (do
people really build modern replicas of European castles to live in?) in the
countryside where she tries to convince Gabe that Vincent is being cured by one
pill. Gabe doesn’t buy it. Some speeches about giving up all their power and
abilities for love and happiness and then through the secret door up the secret
staircase to a secret lab with a doctor who warns him how the delay is the
procedure more difficult. He calls Vincent and demands he shows up within the
hour.
He locks Catherine in a cell – apparently one he used to
be locked in. It’s metal reinforced walls are covered in marks where, BeastiGabe
tried to fight his way out when he was a child.
Vincent and JT decide to go for a little tit for tat and
kidnap Tyler. Since they’ve both turned each other’s girlfriends into damsels
in distress, Vincent proposes finding another way of healing Gabe that doesn’t
involve murder. Alas, Gabe isn’t playing this game and says “go ahead, kill her”
Yeah, the garage-flowers-apology-bouquet you will be
buying better be incredible epic, Gabe.
This leaves Vincent with one choice- going in armed to
the teeth. JT warns Vincent that Gabe will be BeastiGabe but Vincent reminds JT
before he became a Beast, he was a soldier – he knows how to fight. Tyler,
reeling from betrayal (and, perhaps, not wanting Vincent to go in with a gun
since his options them will be to kill Gabe not defeat him) tells Vincent how
to reverse his transition to human – anything that boosts his immune system
(like a vaccine that stimulates it) will fight the cure and return him to
Manimalness. JT also brings up a lot of off-camera whining that’s apparently
been going on: Vincent feels numb as a human, and that he’s lost his purpose.
But Vincent wants to stay human – especially after Catherine’s rather elaborate
picket fence fantasy life in rural Colorado.
Yeah, I don’t understand that either.
Back with Catherine, at least Gabe’s prison comes with
room service and Gabe pours out his guilt and childhood history; and how his
adoptive parents were afraid of him. And how he accidentally killed his mother
and, shortly afterwards, his father died as well leaving Gabe with epic angst
loads of guilt. He leaves – and Catherine steals a knife. But Gabe is rapidly
losing control and leaves her the keys to her cell – so she can lock herself in
to keep away from him.
Tyler and JT geek out on science together until she
breaks free and hits him with a metal pipe. She escapes and… runs into the guy
who was shown in Catherine’s father’s tablet – who shoots her several times.
Tess arrives at the flat looking for Catherine and rescues
JT while indulging in some cuttingly accurate snark. JT fills Tess in on the
problems he knows about and she adds the Homeland security guy problem. Lots of
problems!
Is that enough revelations? Let’s have an ethically questionable nurse add more! In the hospital the nurse tells Heather that they need to operate on their father’s leg and they need blood to do it – ideally a family donor would be best. Heather explains Catherine already has donated blood and the nurse says “surprise! Your sister’s not your father’s daughter! And it’s totally ok for me to tell you this without her or her father’s permission!”
At the palatial home Vincent begins his infiltration,
smacking guards and climbing walls, while Gabe freaks out all Beastiboy outside
Catherine’s cell. To escape Gabe she pries the cover off the window and pries at
the bars, as Vincent climbs up on the outside to help hammer at it, removing a
bar and letting her climb through.
They begin their escape and Catherien thinks it’s time to
have a heart to heart discussion while they’re trying to dodge past the guard. Because that’s totally sensible. She wants to
know if Vincent took the pills because he wanted to be human (which, y’know, he
has been trying to do SINCE BEFORE HE MET HER! Remember? The medical lab in the
Warehouse?) or if it was just for her and her dreams of a picket fence in rural
Colorado. She declares it doesn’t matter to her if he’s a beast or not and…
Oh for gods’ sake people! There are guards YELLING behind
you and you’re having this conversation
now?! And how many times do we have to do this? Is she supposed to be
even remotely convincing?
C:“I don’t care if you’re a beast,”
V:“oh, I found a cure!”
C: “Really! OH MY GOD WE CAN FINALLY HAVE A FUTURE! LET
ME PLOT AN ENTIRE FANTASY LIFE INCLUDING CHILDREN WHICH WOULD COULD NEVER EVER
HAVE BEFORE OH THIS EMANS SO MUCH TO ME!”
V:“cure’s off.”
C: “That’s ok, I totally didn’t care. Honest. I love you
anyway and you’re totally not a disappointment”
V: “cure’s back on!”
C: “ZOMG A NORMAL LIFE OF MY DREAMS WHICH I’VE SECRETLY
DREAMED OF AND KNEW I COULD NEVER HAVE WITH YOU!”
This is like the 3rd or 4th time we’ve
played this game
Vincent realises he should have turned back as JT said – and
Beastigabe runs out the building and throws a car at them. See they could have
been trying to get away rather than have a heart-to-heart but nooooo.
Vincent tries to shoot Gabe but he moves too fast and
throws him aside. Catherine runs inside the building with a gun, taking down a
random guard, to hold Gabe’s doctor at gun point (where does he get all this
staff anyway?) and demand a vaccine. Any vaccine. She runs out to where Vincent
is dodging Gabe throwing rocks (it’s a good thing Gabe doesn’t just jump on him
and kill him in seconds as he’s more than capable of) and stabs Vincent with
the vaccine.
Gabe throws them both – Catherine far enough that she
should be pretty wrecked and Vincent into a stone wall so hard he shatters the
stonework. But that’s ok, the vaccine triggered his immune system to work IN
LESS THAN A MINUTE! Someone call the WHO! Vincent goes beastly and it’s beast fight time – and Vincent looks
to be raaaaather a lot stronger than Gabe.
But a helicopter interrupts the fight, inside which is the ominous guy on Catherine’s father’s tablet. He and his men shoot Gabe repeatedly – and then fire a net over Vincent. Catherine wakes up to see him being taken up into the helicopter. She tries to hold Vincent down which, unsurprisingly, doesn’t work. And the man in the helicopter stops his sniper from shooting – and says Catherine is his daughter.
Ok, I suppose there are a lot of revelations there for
next season, while at the same time it has nicely closed all the current issues
with this season. Vincent is no longer (I hope) going to be “waah I don’t want
to beast!” and Gabe is effectively a
closed issue. – we have a whole new set of issues for next season.
My main problem with Beauty and the Beast is that the
plot was very forced and very contrived. We had a lot of moments when conflict
is forced through bemusing actions on the part of the characters that are not
only not supported by the character development, but also not supported by even
the slightest pretence of common sense. Evan’s willingness to trust Muirfield.
Evan continuing to trust Muirfield even after it’s clear they’re evil as evil
can be. Alex trusting Muifield. Vincent taking ridiculous risks exposing
himself after they’d faked his death. Why Muirfield doesn’t share information
with itself. The many “misunderstandings” between them in the run up to the “will
they won’t they.” Even one would have been too many, but this entire show is
saturated with extremely forced plot. Nonsense has been written into the story
to make the plot move – it’s clumsy, it’s ridiculous and it undermines a lot of
the show.
And why does Catherine keep saying things like “I couldn’t
picture a future before” about uncertain futures! She has done this 3 or 4
times! By the end of the show Vincent will find out that *gasp* he has to stay
a Manimal at which point she’ll have to backtrack AGAIN because she’s just said
how doomed and horrible their life together is. It’s more convoluted conflict
creation – after the first time, she’d
learned and realised that she’s making huge plans based on expectations Vincent
can’t meet and how hurtful that is, then fine. But doing it repeatedly?
This made it hard to enjoy any aspect of the plot because
the plot was too clumsy – and I wasn’t sold on Vincent’s acting. I admit a lot
of this is personal taste – star crossed lovers on their own is never going to
be a plot that fascinates me, but there wasn’t enough else, or not enough well
done to hold me.
Inclusionwise, we actually have a surprising number of POC
including: Catherine herself (Asian), Catherine’s mother (Asian), Joe (Black),
Tess (Latina), Heather (the actress is half Filipina and was playing Catherine’s
sister), Gabe (South-Asian). As well as
past characters like Kyle, the Muirfield boss. We did focus mainly on Catherine,
Vincent and JT but I wouldn’t say the others were completely removed or
remotely irrelevant.
There were also a lot of women in Catherine’s life who became
strong friends – I was worried about Tess and Heather moving away because of
the secret and I don’t like how Alex was portrayed, but Tess and Heather both
came back strong. What is bothersome is, despite all of these female
relationships, Catherine, Heather and Tess had usually 2 topics of
conversation: Work (required with Tess) or men. The men Tess’s dating, the men
Catherine’s dating, Vincent, Evan, Joe, Catherine’s father – it’s a lot.
Unfortunately, this New York City is an entirely straight
place.
We shall see what the next season brings – I can’t say I’m
excited, but nor will I hate it.
