Thursday, January 23, 2014

Beauty and the Beast, Season 2, Episode 10: Ancestors



Vincent is now doing talk shows with – ye gods is that Sharon Osbourne? He’s going with the amnesia excuse (which makes him doing talk shows even more ridiculous since he has literally nothing to talk about). They fall back to talking about how sexy and single he is (and Tori looks all angsty when he says he’s single).

Vincent isn’t pleased though – for one thing he’s not happy about being called a war hero when he spent the last 10 years hiding from the army after its dubious experiments and then attempts to kill him. Being open and known to all has just vastly increased how much he has to lie.

Despite him saying he’s single, Cat still gets to angst about a newspaper headline saying Vincent is dating Tori. Tessa is there to play eternal supporter and ye gods even when Cat has broken up from Vincent these two are still incapable of having a discussion that isn’t about him.

To work, where Gabe has called them to the morgue and introduces them to FBI Agent Dana Landon (who isn’t here to investigate Gabe’s blatant evidence tampering last episode); she has a corpse to show them, Mara a professional thief. Dana shot her, but it’s possible the gang she works with who are preparing something big don’t realise she’s dead. She wants to send in a replacement to pretend to be Mara. She resembles Cat. And she needs to be ready to imitate a woman she knows nothing about to a gang of professional criminals that very night.

Cat asks how important it is. My answer: not important enough because this plan could NEVER WORK. Cat agrees – because she saw Vincent talking to the media on her phone

Meanwhile, Vincent and Tori rush to see JT who has been attacked by masked men who want Tori’s dad’s shackle but seemed surprisingly uninterested in the spooky skeleton they found. Especially since JT’s research concludes that it’s a 10,000 year old Beast that, yes, Murifield extracted the DNA from – I am just going to throw in an “I told you so” right here.

Vincent turns on his beastisenses to track the attackers. Going to the location, Vincent is snippy and Tori questions why he’s so upset when it was her stuff that was stolen and she didn’t even like it very much. She wants to focus on the future – he wants to learn about the past because it’s more honest (which has a point, especially after his actual amnesia).

Back to the police – Gabe continually tries to appeal to the slightest hint of common sense (from Cat! Oh the naivety!) and Dana came to Cat because, as a woman who arrested her own father, she has proven to have impeccable integrity (ah, no – just her loyalty to one corrupting element was more important, but a reasonable guess). Cat tries to convince Gabe that this is all totally not because of Vincent (yeah right) and she wants to do it because this is what she did before Vincent (what, spur of the moment undercover missions with no chance to plan against cop killing gangs?)


She goes on her ridiculous mission and meets 3 men, Peter, Patrick and Shorty – and beats one of them up in retaliation for him trying to push her around. And guess who turns up in the club? Yes, Vincent – so she makes out with Patrick. (And Tori is upset because she thinks Vincent just tracked down Cat like a creepy creepy stalker) Since Patrick and Cat have swapped spit he now has to be the good guy – he’s only here because a cop shot his other brother and now he has to stick to his remaining brother through thick and thin – or murder and theft anyway. Then they all split up again without discussing, well, anything. This was a social call?

Vincent returns to angst at JT and he does the boo-rah-rousing speech and sends Vincent back out to hunt the shackle – he finds the thief who was hired to steal it: Shorty. Apparently the shackle has a matching gem. A gem that’s in the Russian consulate. Of course

Really? Vincent kills the man but if he tries to sell me that nonsense I would too.

And guess who is stealing a gem? Yes, the gang Cat is infiltrating. They’re now all suspicious and think Cat is a cop especially since she interpreted the “get changed” comment to mean “wear my awesome red coat”. After sending a message through the wire about where she is, she kicks one guy and jumps into the water (shorting out the wire). When they all somehow get dragged back to the van, of course the wire doesn’t show up to Peter’s nifty sensor.

More bonding with Cat and her kidnapper, Patrick, more of Gabe freaking out and the gang is off to the Russian embassy posing as very very unlikely caterers.  They get in, everyone gets their instructions (Cat has to pick pockets) and nifty plastic guns (and a warning that they will be shipped off to Siberia if they’re caught which, yeah, not true – embassies remain the sovereign soil of the nation they’re in – you just can’t send in police without permission).

And, yes, Vincent is at the embassy as well. They bring each other up to date then throw down the gauntlet – Vincent wants the gem to find out who is doing Beasty stuff, Cat wants the gem to stop a crime (presumably Russians want the gem because it’s actually theirs but no-one seems to be consulting them on this) and they even threaten each other over it.

Vincent gets an early lead seducing the Russian ambassador’s wife before… I have no idea I think it was an attempt at a Vulcan neck pinch (across the front of her throat no less), but she’s rendered unconscious. Cat takes down 2 of her fellows and the third runs into Vincent at the safe – but Cat arrives with a gun to protect the murdering armed robber from Vincent. Wow, she’s just looking for an excuse to shoot him these days.

Vincent knocks the guy out and steals the gem – Cat gasps “what happened to you?” Um… not much? You were always quite happy to beat, threaten people and steal if it would get you what you needed on the Beast front – did you forget season 1 Cat? Anyway Cat runs with Patrick and she’s helps him go on the run (warning that they will assume he has the gem) because Patrick, the armed robber, is totally in need of Cat’s protection. Honestly, one kiss and that’s it – Cat doesn’t give a damn about the laws.

FBI agent Dana is not amused that they lost the gem and Cat knows nothing. Cat throws her own accusation questioning why Dana sent Cat and what was involved (not outright saying it but questioning whether there’s a Beat motive). Apparently Dana has been watching Cat – and a lot of other thefts – for years since her hubby was murdered: her husband was an archaeologist who was killed alongside other strange artefacts disappearing. Now to get really surreal – the gem had been part of other murders as well, including one Cat’s father investigated and way back in the past, and at a London crime scene in 1836 investigated by Cat’s ancestor.

JT fits the gem into the shackle – and it fits perfectly. Which asks more questions because the shackle fits perfectly round the dead creature’s neck while the gem couldn’t possibly have been cut at the time the creature was alive (now, being a sensible person, I would say “coincidence of neck circumference” especially since there’s no way JT can get a very accurate view of how thick a skeleton’s neck would be. But this is Beauty and the Beast). The shackle was a leash – but Vincent decides that the gem cannot be merely ornamental because REASONS. JT also points out that Tori is very involved as well so can’t be sidelined

Cat and Gabe have a bonding moment because he trusted her – and she kisses him (she will now break laws for you Gabe. It’s the rule of the Cat kiss).




Special Russian Gems, prehistoric Beasts and woo-woo shackles. Beauty and the Beast hasn’t so much jumped the shark as vaulted the whale.

Cat agrees to do this ridiculously risky and foolish thing… because Vincent is getting media attention. Seriously? That… that doesn’t even begin to work. I was actually happy to see Cat finally getting involved in police work again, but we had to work Vincent in there as well? And having him show up so she can make him jealous in the middle of an investigation.

Also, can we spend a second considering the implications of knowing that an armed and lethal gang is going to raid the Russian embassy and you LET THEM in order to get the higher up the chain. Not only let them – but you infiltrate and undercover police officer INTO the embassy (while embassies are not little foreign countries it is still very very very naughty to send in police or security services without express permission – hence why you have dissidents and refugees fleeing to embassies – not because it’s a foreign country, but because the police/army will not follow). Did they even inform the ambassador?