This review contains spoilers.
1.2 Proceed With Caution
This week’s Beauty and the Beast taught us a couple of things. Firstly, Catherine has a baby sister named Heather, and secondly, Vincent and JT’s Warehouse of Isolation lacks a doorbell (apparently they have a barbed wire fence instead - because that makes sense), which must be why when Catherine enters to share what she’s found in her mother's possessions, JT comes at her with a bat. Catherine being Catherine, takes him down, which is satisfying as JT’s character is dismissive and obnoxious through the entire exchange, even if he is just using sarcasm to try to protect Vincent.
“People started dying when you showed up”, JT accused Catherine when he was finished snarking, to which she countered "People were dying before. Like my Mom." Then she demanded he share the information she had with Vincent because JT may sound like a Catskills comic but that doesn't mean he can talk down to her.
The crime of the week is that of a ballerina who fell to her death from the top of her ballet studio and not because she jumped. Catherine’s partner Tess is still a bit of a cliché but that doesn’t mean she’s not enjoyable to watch. She's fun and funny and has chemistry with Catherine. I also appreciate that for the first time since Cagney and Lacey, we have two female detectives as leads. That they're both people of colour and their commanding officer is as well is a step in the right direction for diversity and visibility on TV.
Catherine’s right-thinking reactions to Vincent’s stalker-behaviour are part of what makes her such an attractive protagonist. Her “Vincent, what the hell?” anger at his having grabbed her from behind and covered her mouth this week was the correct answer to being jumped like that. Rock on, girl. When he tells her she can't come to his place though he did get the research, Catherine comes back with with "Says the guy disturbing my crime scene." I'll paraphrase Vincent's reaction: Don't! You can't! It's dangerous! Her retort is something along the lines of: I will. I can. I can handle myself especially while you're not telling me everything. P.S. You're starting to get Edward Cullen eyes. Stalking: it's unattractive and creepy. All right, the P.S. was unspoken. Still, Vincent has little by way of response.
Vincent may not have had a pithy reply to Catherine’s declaration of independence, but he did have information about the dead ballerina - things his abilities allowed him to learn - but even that he can’t share without the two of them sniping at each other. It's what I like about Vincent and Catherine. They’re a contrast to Evan, the CSI guy, who flirts shallowly with her. He's gorgeous and charming but he doesn't bring any real depth of humanity out of Catherine the way Vincent does.
This is further proven when she returns to the Warehouse of Isolation to talk about her mother, the case, and the government experiment that changed Vincent into a beast. She waited outside the fence this time because she knew he could hear her and after living like a hermit for almost a decade, the chance to talk to anyone other than JT would be a relief. Of course he let her in, then in an awkward, charming move, he offered her a drink and I melted inside. When he showed her a picture of guys from his squad who were victims of the Muirfield experiment and they talked about his lost friends? I melted even more.
Congrats show. That is how you make me care about a couple. You give them moments of emotional intimacy that set it above a friendship rather than Evan's ‘I'm using big words to impress you’ approach.
However, JT rains on their parade because Vincent looks "like [he’s] about to make her a playlist" and apparently something happened last time Vincent made playlists. Did his previous love interest die? I bet she is dead/ran away screaming/told him he was horrible/sold him out to Muirfield.
When Vincent returns, my favourite moment of the entire show happens. They fight over her trying to help him through proper channels and Vincent shouts "Catherine, I'm a criminal" and she spits back "You're a victim." Vincent looks like he's been slapped and then lashes out. It's Jay Ryan’s single best performance moment so far.
In that moment, it is crystal clear that Vincent never thought of himself that way. Victim is not a label he imagined he could put on himself because he was a soldier, he volunteered for the project. How could he be a victim? It ties the plot together with Catherine's police case because the ballerina was also a victim of an unlikely abuser.
Unfortunately, Catherine also steals the picture and runs it through her police database, no doubt to prove her point. It sets off alarm bells in the system, crashes her computer, rightfully infuriates Vince, and causes a Muirfield agent to attack Catherine again when she's off-duty. Still, Vincent in beast form saves her when her hand-to-hand combat isn't enough against a gun. Before he can lose it completely though, Catherine talks him down. Emotionally, the beastliness has been stepped up but he's still not physically monstrous enough for me.
In the end, Catherine apologizes for being self-centred and he acknowledges his own failings before they decide to talk, like adults, like friends even. How refreshing! For the first time, I am really rooting for them as a couple.
Read Rachael’s review of the season one pilot, here.
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