Firstly we have a Beast on the rampage breaking stuff on Vincent’s
boat
Then to Cat preparing for a get-together with her old
school friends (she’s having some “me” time) while Gabe calls her to tell her
that a) he’s having trouble finding her biological father and b) to put his
foot in it repeatedly about Vincent and his own crush. Bless. And Vincent is lurking in her bedroom having
sneaked in through the window. He wants to continue poking his memory but she
kicks him out because she’s having some “me time” with girls only.
Yes she kicks him out. Yes I am impressed, shocked and
astonished by this.
So we can have a room full of women who are all good
friends and they sit around and talk about… men. Uh-huh, someone post the
writers the definition of the Bechdel
Test, please. It seems Cat has an ongoing habit of “bad boy” boyfriends –
and boyfriends who are “projects” to fix.
At the police station the mayor is pissed at Gabe; he
wants an explanation for all the unsolved murders that have happened during the
whole series, which includes several dead police. Gabe tries to blame Joe but Tess
isn’t letting that stand and he admits it’s all Muirfield and Beast related.
They’re all in trouble if they can’t clear up the cases but the cases
themselves are untouchable – and Tess teases Gabe some more about his crush on
Catherine. Poor Gabe.
As Cat’s party breaks up she goes to her bedroom to
collect one of her friends handbags – and the Beast-of-the-Week is there and
grabs her throat demanding to know about Vincent. When her friend calls out he
is distracted and she manages to hit him repeatedly and drop him to the floor.
They fight, he starts to strangle her, for reasons unknown choosing a really
slow way to kill her rather than use his super strength to pull off her head
and play a series of different sporting games with it; he’s interrupted by Cat’s
friend running in an gasping and rather than kill them both with simple Beasty
violence, he decides to run away. Muirfield may need to return to the drawing
board with this one.
The police arrive and Cat’s friend, Beth is really honest
– describing a man with glowing yellow eyes who jumped to the street from the 5th
floor and is a little irritated that Cat won’t second it all. Gabe and Tess
arrive and get the wonderful news that Beth is a journalist. Cat wants to warn
Vincent but Gabe warns her that Vincent will just charge in without research
and Beasts
are now coming in weird and wonderful varieties because the writers are running
out of ideas. Cat does have DNA from when she hit the Beast so Gabe takes
it to JT to analyse
And doesn’t realise Vincent is there visiting JT when he
breaks the news – his voice climbs a good 2 octaves. Vincent rushes off to
check on Cat so fast all they hear is wind and a door slamming. On the plus
side, Cat manages to convince her friend to hold off on the story since she
will ruin her hard won credibility if she reports something so fantastic with
so little evidence.
Vincent drops in to do his super-senses investigating and
follows the other Beast’s trail with abilities that would seem considerably
more ridiculous and supernatural if the guy last week hadn’t thrown fire. He
catches up to the other beast in an abandoned church – and he recognises Vincent.
He’s shocked, he thought Vincent was dead. Vincent attacks while, the Beast, Zack
desperately lists how they know each other, having being in the same company in
the army: but Vincent has that pesky amnesia. Vincent gets the upper hand and
starts strangling the other beast – and some flashbacks kick in just before
Vincent strangles him.
Which means Cat and JT are several kinds of shocked when Zack and Vincent arrive at JT’s hideout all chummy. JT recognises him as well as an old friend (and attended his funeral as well – looks like he also faked his own death). They explain this obvious thing to Cat (just in case you’re not paying attention and need it lampshading) and Zack apologises to Cat for the whole trying to kill her thing but she’s not all that ok with an apology (I think when apologising for attempted murder, one should at least include a good fruit basket). Zack was hunting Vincent because he was all kind of nervous about all the Beasts being killed lately so was tracking him down to be the hammer rather than the nail. He totally wouldn’t have tried to kill Cat if he had realised she was important to Vincent.
Y’know, Beauty and
the Beast has an almost Vampire
Diaries moral code here – these police are willing to let an awful lot of
killing and attempted killing go.
At least Cat isn’t entirely on the yay-Zack! train since he did try to kill her (I’d be more praising of this if it weren’t for the fact if the victim were another innocent and not Cat, I’m not sure how upset Cat would be) and says as much to Tess when she goes to work (Cat is at work! I know I’m shocked too! She still has a job!) She plans to do a background check on Zack (ah, she needs police resources, she’s not actually working). Tess also encourages Cat to go to her reunion – making the awesome point that Cat needs to spend as much time on her own needs as she does on Vincent’s. Cheerleading along her, well said Tess. Of course, Tess offers to do the investigative work for Cat so she can leave the police station before anyone asks her to do some detecting.
Out at a bar, JT, Vince and Zack play pool and Zack tries
to trigger more of Vince’s memories by dragging up an old girlfriend, Gabriella
who came after Alex
the Annoying (who may or may not have been killed by Muirfield last season
and I really really do not care, so let’s hope if they did they buried her very
very deep or far out to sea). Yes that’s definitely going to get him in Cat’s
good books. And Vincent gets a memory hit off the barmaid. JT is unhappy,
probably anticipating the future relationship angst like I am and wanting to
cower in a corner whimpering “no no no no.”
Agent Reynolds, Cat’s secret biological father, FBI agent
and puppetmaster pulling Vincent’s strings drops in on Gabe to check if Cat is
ok. Gabe is bemused and suspicious at the FBI getting involved in an assault
case and politely invites Reynolds to jog on. When Reynolds insists he wants to
help because he promised Cat’s father that he’d look out for her, Gabe ropes
him in on the search for her biological father. Ok, I get that this is for a
nice twisty story loop – but as far as Gabe knows Reynolds is a near stranger
to Cat and possible acquaintance of her father’s – you’re going to just drop
the whole “Cat is adopted” info on him?
Tess arrives with some info on Zack: it seems his DNA was
found on the shredded murder victim, Gabriella. She also decides to tell this
to Gabe in front of Reynolds which will totally not get him interested in a
case you’re trying to hide, right Tess?
At the bar, Zack keeps trying to focus Vincent on the
woman who looks like Gabriella trying to inspire more memories. And apparently
Gabriella left Zack for Vincent and now Vincent has a couple of memories of her
he picks a fight with Vincent over stealing his girlfriend. JT breaks it up and
calms them down before they go all beasty in the middle of the bar. Zack
leaves, but not before threatening to rip Vincent’s heart out.
Back at JT’s, JT assures Vincent he didn’t break the “bro-code”
since he didn’t know Gabriella was dating Zack (the “bro-code?” Really? Couldn’t he have just said “you didn’t know
they were involved?” That doesn’t need a “code”, it needs the common politeness
not to hit on one’s friend’s partners). Vincent wants to go make it up with
Zack while JT thinks being both a Beast and alone and angry for so long makes
Zack impossible to reason with.
Cat is busy at her high school reunion party and her
friends insist she and Beth turn off their phones. Which means Cat doesn’t get
any message from JT warning her about everything (especially since you know
Zack’s “I’m going to rip your heart out” means Cat). She does get hit on by a
creepy guy in a bear costume, learns that her dad has been generously donating
to the school every year – including this August after he died which is rather
odd and Gabe shows up. He definitely wasn’t her classmate. He and Tess are
there to fill her in on what they’ve found out
While Vincent gets a call from Reynolds through his voice
disguiser about Zack the murderer and how he is on the list but he was unsure
about sending in Vincent because of their history (which would make sense if Vincent
didn’t have amnesia. I mean, surely it goes without saying that Vincent would
have had some contact with several Muirfield experiments?). Vincent wants to
reason with Zack and Reynolds says that Cat has made him all weak and fluffy.
Vincent goes into the church and talks about Muirfield
making them angry beasts and Zack leaps on him. The fight ends quickly because
Zack runs out to hunt down Cat (told you, like that wasn’t predictable).
Vincent goes to join Cat at the party where she is
angsting to Tess and Gabe about how her life isn’t what she wants it to be and
lacks botox and lawyers. Cat is upset, Vincent apologises and she says “it’s
not your fault” in that tone that means “I don’t care whose fault it is, you
are so getting blamed for this”. She does raise a good point in not being able
to complain about what’s happening in her life and how it sucks – because Vincent’s
problems are so epic.
Meanwhile Zack ambushes the creepy nerd in the ridiculous
bear suit, of course. He will now wear said bear suit to get close to Cat without
being noticed. Except he is – not just by Vincent but also by other party goers
who aren’t impressed by the guy in the bear costume grabbing Cat. Zack throws
the party goers around and then Vincent tackles him into the punch and snack
table and dismantles the stage. This conveniently takes out the electricity
leaving everything dark except for dramatic strobe lighting and causing all the
party guests to run away so the beasts can do their fighting unobserved. Zack
makes a run at the just-returning-to-consciousness Cat and Vince manages to
move at even faster speed, catch him and break his neck in one movement. Clearly
a tactic Zack has not mastered as we have seen over and over again.
The FBI collect the body and everyone’s all sad about the
death of a veteran chalking it up to Muirfield (except, y’know, men have been
killing their partners since the dawn of time and the idea that a man killing a
woman he thought was cheating on him was entirely due to Muirfield kind of
ignores this happens every day and it’s a bit of a leap to assume only genetic
experimentation is responsible in this case. And in a selective morality
stance, I don’t remember anyone cursing Muirfield and the poor waste of life when
the murdered beast WASN’T Vincent’s friend or an American veteran).
Beth interviews Gabe who says the soldier had PTSD and
they had no idea why he was so focused on Cat. They also play ignorant when
Beth asks if there was anything physically odd about the man. Tess also takes
the chance to tease Gabe some more about his crush on Cat (Gabe is cute when
embarrassed).
Vincent checks up on Cat and we have a weird memory
moment – Vincent remembers how to be a doctor and has all his medical knowledge
but doesn’t remember being a doctor. He apologises to her because as his memory
returns he realises how much Cat has sacrificed and risked for him. With added
angst that he would be just like Zack if he didn’t have her (because Zack didn’t
have Gabriella – errr, because he killed her. Remember that part?)
Gabe then takes his shift on reassuring Cat and she
thanks him for all he’s done to help her. They jokingly thumb through some of
her old photos from the reunion – and see that Agent Reynolds was at her graduation.
This calls for a huge leap of logic! AGENT REYNOLDS IS HER BIRTH FATHER!
(Or maybe you went to school with his kid or niece or
maybe he was a friend of the family showing support or maybe he wasn’t an FBI
agent back then and was an undercover cop trying to investigate various trouble
– y’know there are a gazillion reasons he could have been there).
I find it somewhat dubious that Vincent is the only beast
without severe violent problems. Ok, maybe that can be proof of the damage
Muirfield did to them, but I feel it’s also a cop-out that so many of them are
hurting or scarred by Muirfield in ways that leaves them violently dangerous. Also,
if that is going to be accepted as the excuse of why these Beasts are all
dangerous, it’s pretty pathologising of the mentally ill: most people severely
traumatised by experience aren’t dangerous (not to others anyway). Especially
since the Beasts we’ve seen aren’t suffering from the lack of self-control we
saw in Vincent in season 1 (since that has already been established as something
we’re supposed to feel sympathetic towards), but with more “mundane”
pathologies: the violent arsonist,
the man
trying to kill his father, the hit
man and now the man who killed a woman who rejected him and is now gunning
for his romantic rival.
It lets the writers avoid the actual moral implications
of Vincent literally working down a list of people who are only on that list
because they were picked out for some deeply unethical scientific
experimentation and then killing them all. In short, it’s a way to justify Vincent
doing to these beasts what Murifield spent the entire of season 1 trying to do
to Vincent.
In the end, we’re left with only one conflict – Zack is Vincent’s friend – never the idea that hunting down Beasts for some extra-judicial execution is dubious.
I do like several points raised in this episode – both that
Cat needs to take some time out for her own life as well, she can’t exist just
to serve Vincent (fine, but Tess and JT also need to take that advice) and how
that relates to her not being able to complain or worry about the stuff in her
life (and between a dad dying a sister relocating, suddenly revealed secrets et
al, she has stuff in her life) because Vincent’s stuff is so epic. I think that’s
a general issue worth raising for many people’s lives – when we have a
friend/relative who is going through EPIC HORRIBLE SHIT it can feel… churlish
to spend time or require attention for one’s much lesser shit – but that doesn’t
mean said lesser shit is not still, well, shit and worthy of time or attention.
