BEAUTY AND THE BEAST: Happiness Neverlasting
Episode 220: “Ever After”
[photos: Ben Mark Holzberg/CW]
After last week’s awesome Beauty & The Beast episode (look here; see, I loved it), I had high hopes for the remainder of the season. Unfortunately, the writers something altogether different in mind with the most recent episode “Ever After.”
The episode begins with Cat peering up into a tree at a terribly rendered CGI bird. I feel certain that a real trained bird would have had a comparable production expense and would have been far more convincing. And considering that it added little to the plot development, perhaps the better avenue would have been to simply skip it.
In any case, Vincent quietly sneaks up on Cat and she rewards his efforts by flipping him, reminding us all how much of a BA Cat regularly is, whether we’re convinced of it or not. They banter a bit, and the conversation turns to leaving the city until such time as Gabe is behind bars, Vincent is exonerated, and Cat and Vincent can go back to business is usual…which is frankly dodging some bad guy, so I don’t know why they’re expecting Gabe’s disappearance to usher in a kinder, gentler era for them.
With the museum murder witness now missing, Tess is on a mission to find out what happened. She heads to Gabe’s apartment with a couple of uniformed police officers to take Gabe in for questioning. Gabe swears to Tess and the captain that Vincent is trying to set him up to divert attention from the manhunt, and with no body to prove a crime, the department has little option but to set Gabe free.
Vincent and Cat pay a visit to the safe house where the witness was being held before his demise. Vincent uses his beast senses to play back the scene; upon realization that Gabe did in fact kill the witness, Cat and Vincent try to track down the body. Vincent loses the trail in a crowded square, and is recognized by a member of the crowd. Desperate and with nowhere else to go, Cat and Vincent flee to Agent Knox’s office. Given Vincent’s persona non grata status, Knox suggests they leave the city as part of witness protection.
And thus begins a fairly ridiculous segment wherein Vincent and Cat roll up to a high-dollar suburban house in a nice BMW at the taxpayer’s expense, meet the neighbors, and badly pretend to belong. Except Cat can’t keep her nose out of other people’s business, so she manages to get involved in a murder that has really nothing to do with beasts or the overarching story line of the show other than to demonstrate that Vincent and Cat can’t be themselves if they aren’t in Manhattan.
Considering that the show overall had given up on the police procedural aspect of the show to focus their energies elsewhere, perhaps this tangent is a nice reunion of sorts for some viewers. I’m not one. In my estimation, this is the safest, quietest, and alonest (yes, I just used that word) Cat and Vincent have had it in maybe ever. We should have seen a little lovin’. Have the writers forgotten that we all got started on this show because of the romance?
So where does that leave Gabe, Tess and JT? After some initial feelings of self-doubt, JT realizes that he can use cell phone signals to track Gabe’s whereabouts after the witness disappearance. That leads them straight to the old prison where Tori died. And because that prison comes equipped with a crematorium, Tess and JT dig around for body parts they can test for DNA.
Before Tess and JT get too far, Gabe jumps out of the shadows with his gun drawn. Tess asks the question we’ve all been wondering: “Gabe, what happened to you?” While Gabe may be crazy enough to think that it’s his job to protect Catherine from Vincent and all things beast, he does have his senses about him enough to point out that if JT and Tess take their evidence back to the precinct, the police will find cross-species DNA and everyone’s fingerprints. So, apparently it’s back to the drawing board with Gabe.
What next for our motley band of heroes? Will Agent Knox be able to get Vincent exonerated? Will Vincent manage to stay one step ahead of the law? What are the odds that Gabe relapses into full beasthood? Beastness? Beastitis? What about JT and Tess; will they be able to make it work over the long haul? And once Gabe gets his, who will the writers tee up as the next bad guy?
Just two episodes left. At this point, no place left to go but up!
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[Official Show on CW] [Previous Recap: “Cold Case”]
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