Beauty & The Beast: Love Goes Kaput
Episode 209: “Don’t Die on Me”
[photos: Ben Mark Holzberg/CW]
Hope you all enjoyed a long winter’s rest, but Beauty and the Beast was back last week with episode nine of season two, “Don’t Die on Me,” and it’s time to get back to it. It’s worth mentioning before we get too seriously underway: congratulations to Beauty and the Beast for winning the People’s Choice Award for Favorite Sci Fi/Fantasy show, and to Kristin Kreuk for Favorite Sci Fi/Fantasy actress. Way to go, guys!
Now, before the winter break, we left Vincent ripping Cat’s dad out of a car and threatening to kill him. That is, until Cat begged him not to and ultimately shot Vincent to prevent him from killing Bob. Bob. It’s a little hard for me to feel intimated by an arch enemy named “Bob”. Say it out loud. It just really doesn’t sound that scary, does it? Anyway, Bob ends up in jail, and Vincent ends up splitting.
In this new episode, we see Cat undergoing an internal affairs investigation into the case around arch enemy Bob. While it seems like it’s an open and shut case at first, the investigator eventually finds a bullet at the scene with blood on it, and of course, ballistics will indicate a match between the bullet and Cat’s gun. Good guy Gabe comes to the rescue and does the wrong thing for the right reasons: he steals into the evidence locker at the precinct and swaps the bullet out with another bullet, and Cat’s out of the hot water. Hard to believe that Gabe was the bad guy last season, because he sure is looking good this season.
So while she’s secure again professionally, Cat struggles personally throughout this episode with feelings of responsibility for Vincent. She doesn’t feel wrong for having shot him because in her mind, she was clear about what the stakes were. However, she is sad about Vincent’s choices.
So where does that leave Vincent? Well, throughout most of the episode, he acts like a jerk to Cat (like that’s anything new), he bleeds a lot, and he gets lectured by Tori about how he should stop living in the shadows what with Muirfield now defunct, as well as seek proper medical help for his gunshot wound. Speaking of Tori, she gives Cat a lot of judgey attitude, which I suppose is easy to do when you’ve got designs on someone else’s man.
And finally, JT and Tess expand their friendship; it doesn’t look like they are foraying into romance in the near-term, but he shares a vulnerable moment wherein he explains his role in the Vincent-Muirfield debacle, and Tess shares some very wise advice with him. In my opinion, both of these characters have been overwhelmingly underused this season, and it has hurt the show.
The nice part about this episode is that the writers gave us something interesting outside of the Vincent-Cat tension story line. It appears that an unnamed group of people had been hired to secure a curio shop that had been owned by Tori’s father, and that somehow these people knew that Tori’s father was a beast. Headed by Haley Webb, who played crazy Jennifer Blake last season in Teen Wolf, the shadowy and pushy group threaten Tori until she beasts out in their presence and reveals the beast secret didn’t die with her father.
Then, that same group shows up at the Curio shop after Cat and Tori go to poke around a bit. They figure out how to open a secret storage room, bedlam ensues, Cat ends up being the only person to see what’s in the room: the skeletal torso and head of a beast, perhaps, sitting next to a collar? What could it mean? All the more intriguing is that near the end of the episode, we see a bunch of stray dogs crowded around the front of the shop, and we can only presume that something about the skeletal remains is attracting them.
Another interesting turn of events outside of the Vincent-Cat story: the episode wraps with Vincent conducting a press conference revealing his presence to the world. Self-righteous Tori stands in support of his brave revelation. I wouldn’t be sad if she disappeared.
Questions for next week: What will the implications be of Vincent Keller outing himself? What evil ne’er-do-wells are going to work their way out of the woodwork? What about Alex from season 1? Could she re-appear and make trouble for the other redhead in his life? Who hired the group of crazies to get the curio shop? And finally, we know the writers have got to try to re-unite Cat and Vincent. Is there anybody out there still rooting for that? I mean, Vincent is no longer the man that Cat fell in love with. The Vincent she fell in love with was kind, noble, and troubled by his aggressive tendencies. This Vincent ain’t that. So how the heck are these writers going to pull it off and make us all cheer? I’m having a hard time seeing it.
That’s going to do it for this time. See you guys next week. Fingers crossed that we’ll make some progress on the Tori-disappearing-Vincent-becoming-a-good-guy-again front!
>>>>
[Official Show on CW] [Previous Recap: “Man or Beast”]
