Cat goes to investigate the cell where Tori died and
nearly shoots a shadowy figure who turns out to be Gabe – careful there Gabe,
we know how trigger happy Cat is. This is his desperate attempt to flirt with
her and bring her coffee because she’s never around. She complains about her
new boss wanting her to do work and stuff – and has a random flashback as Gabe
as a beast when he kidnapped her. In the midst of her little moment she spills
her coffee – and hears it dripping into a cave
Time to see Dana and Sam – who has cleaned up and gained
a lot of stability it seems – but he knows nothing of a cave under the cell.
They talk about their plans to renew their vows over an epic breakfast, Cat
again mentions how unreasonable her new boss is for wanting her to do the work
thing – and she is vaguely horrified to discover she had FORGOTTEN VALENTINES
DAY! More worrisome is she agreed to see Gabe on Valentines day – which is a
much more reasonable worry since agreeing to see a potential love interest on
Valentines day cannot not be a date. It’s a rule.
Boss is, unshockingly, pretty unpleasant though at the
same time he’s unpleasant because he kind of demands they do their job which
isn’t unreasonable. But he has a little chart that’s roughly on par with the
sort of thing you find in a telemarketer den – for police detectives it’s a
horrifyingly bad idea. Just to ensure we hate this guy, he throws in some
sexism that doesn’t even come close to being professional.
On leaving his office Cat calls Vincent – of course she does. She wants him to focus on Barnes (who was using an imposter) so she and Tess can close some cases. Put those cases on hold because Cat said “with Gabe” which means Tess now needs to talk men and sex because she literally has no other topic of conversation. If Tess were magically moved to a world without men in it, she would become mute; and Cat brings up her odd little flashback which rather chills the mood.
I am stunned how quickly they forgot the ultimatum from new boss.
Vincent, meanwhile, is moping. Oh Vincent, I just watched
Being Human, I’ve filled my mope
quota. After trying to distract JT by poking him for sending anonymous flowers
to Tess, Vincent cracks and tells JT Tori’s ridiculous last words “you belong
with Catherine”. Vincent mopes a little
more when Cat arrives – with Tess (so he can hold that against JT at least) to
recruit Vincent to investigate fake!Barnes but he’ll totally be alone they
promise…
Until they get a call that Sam was attacked and drag Vincent
along. Some goons are trying to silence Sam, which is a bit late – and Sam
totally wants them all to come to his and Dana’s valentines renewal of vows to
keep them safe during the ceremony. Events have conspired to make Vincent and
Cat spend Valentines together. I am shocked by this. Really. She calls Gabe
about all this – who is up to something surreptitious involving him getting his
photo taken.
Vincent goes to investigate the cave – and Cat shows up
there as well for REASONS. Mainly she’s there to add to the romantic tension
and create lots of mopage. She tells him about her nervousness about Gabe and
then they find a furnace full of bones – back to the case! The bones, when they
take them to JT, turn out to be humans who have been experimented on to make
them beasty. And Tess arrives after having done some actual work (apparently)
complaining about the hideous bouquet she received (awww poor JT). She also had
to make Sam’s attack official just so she could convince their boss they’re
actually doing their job despite, y’know, not.
Now it’s an official case, Cat can bring Sam in for
questioning because there’s no way he didn’t smell burning bodies on the floor
below him. After much poking he admits that he experimented on people when
forced to by fake!Barnes and that his failed experiments were… disposed of. He remembers
one name – Clara – and one man who came with Barnes: he was tall, had dark hair…
and then Sam suddenly recognises him from Gabe’s picture.
Awww Gabe, you’re being evilled out to get Cat and Vincent back together.
He quickly backs away from the identification when he
realises he’s just accused Cat’s boyfriend.
Cat and Vincent reassure themselves that Gabe isn’t evil and
focus on the missing Clara instead (well after Vincent is all nobly supportive
after Cat raises the very reasonable problem of Gabe’s past and always being
suspicious of him). When they find a Clara who disappeared and also went to the
same orphanage as Gabe (also Vincent sees the flowers JT sent Tess… oh… dear…).
Gather the gang with Vincent repeatedly trying to get
them to slow down and give Gabe the benefit of the doubt while Cat is very much
on the ZOMG MY BOYFRIEND IS EVIL train. They talk – Vincent is afraid that
dealing with him has left Cat unable to trust while Cat thinks Vincent doesn’t
need to champion Gabe to prove to everyone how not-jealous he is. They settle
on talking to Gave and Vincent checking his place while Tess and JT do some
digging – especially since he has a flight to Mexico booked (aww, that
Valentines weekend was a holiday? Awwwww)
Cat talks to Gabe and tells him what they learned –
upfront, no dodging round the houses. Gabe has been acting weird because she
ruined his Mexico Valentines holiday (told you). Her was taking his photo to
renew his passport – wait you can get your passports renewed that quickly?
Nifty. MYSTERY SOLVED
Except Vincent finds the serum JT made hidden in Gabe’s
home. Oops. Vincent hurries over to Cat and Gabe and starts throttling the man.
Cat makes Vincent back off but then Gabe realises Cat oked Vincent searching
his house. She tries to explain but he is hella pissed of constantly trying to
re-earn Cat’s trust – he confirms with Vincent that his beasti-senses show he’s
not lying then leaves, telling Vincent to tell Cat because he’s so very tried
of trying to get her to trust him.
I can kinda see Gabe’s point – but, y’know kidnapping
her and trying to murder Vincent IS a pretty big hurdle to leap over. But
Cat realises that maybe she’s been avoiding Gabe to dodge the whole question of
getting in a relationship with him. Vincent has his own guilt moment with JT
because he can’t believe he ruined Cat’s relationship and it’s all his fault
and waah mope mope mope. JT thinks he should just try again with Cat
Meanwhile JT has learned about Tess’s worry and pulled
strings to claim that Tess and Cat have solved a theft at the university. Oh JT
that will backfire. Tess has done some research and found one of Sam’s
attackers was emailed by someone unknown to “scare” Sam. And now he got a
second email to kill Sam.
Cat goes to Gabe with Mexican food to try and offer
apologies and blame her baggage but Gabe isn’t so quick and Vincent and JT call
with ids for all the people who died in the furnace. They all were at Gabe’s
orphanage (what is this orphanage that takes the DNA samples of the orphans as
standard?) which, added to Gabe being experimented on by Muirfield means either
these victims were chosen to frame Gabe or maybe Muirfield is involved. Gabe
checks the records he’s pulled about Barnes and finds that Barnes was in a
court case against Sam over some medical stuff – there’s no way Sam could not
have met Barnes, there’s no way he could not have known what Barnes looked
like.
The gang gathers up and they realise that Sam has plotted
everything – even being attacked to make Cat cancel her plans after she first
refused to come to their ceremony. So they have to go to the ceremony and make
Sam think they haven’t rumbled him by making him think they suspect Gabe (a red
herring he raised to try and take the focus off him since the clinical trials
he did for their son and the bones would have connected to him).
Which means Cat going to the ceremony with a different boyfriend – Vincent. JT rubs this in almost perfectly by gasping “oh my god they look like Brangelina!” when Cat and Vincent enter the party – overheard by Gabe on the phone. That was cruel JT.
Vincent hears a beeping, he follows it, followed by Gabe
to a very large bomb. Very quick plan – let the bomb go off and apparently kill
Gabe while actually saving him – the idea being Sam will believe them having
stopped investigating believing Gabe was the bad guy.
They rush upstairs, Gabe takes Sam aside while Vincent tells
the gang what’s going on. Everyone is out of the chapel (except Cat returns
because she’s Cat) Gabe makes his threat to Sam and leaves – and the bomb goes
off, Vincent saving them. Plan seems to work.
Sam is lead away by Tess while Cat tries to comfort Dana
that her husband intended to kill lots of people during their vow renewal. Yeah
that’s a hard sell. They also intend to go on and not tell Sam what they know,
let him think he got away with is so they can follow him and who he talks to -
which means Dana has a choice. She can pretend to have died in the explosion,
or she can go back to him and live with him pretending nothing happened. She
leaves to go into hiding.
And Vincent drops in on Gabe to give him pointers on how
to pretend to be dead – and on dating Cat; urging Gabe to give her another
chance since it’s Vincent’s fault she doesn’t trust. Gabe handwaves the guilt,.
I suppose a little breaking and entering doesn’t really match up to Gabe trying
to kill Vincent
JT and Vincent repeat the whole “no JT I am not with Cat”.
And JT and Tess have a little moment with her thanking him for the fake case
even if his romantic instincts don’t match her cynicism.
And here we have an example of when using prejudice as a
plot tool can be clumsy and silly. New boss arrives, we’re supposed to hate him
so he is hyperbolically awful – with his apparently pedantic fixation on time
keeping, his silly little chart and, of course, some random sexism added in
there just because
Of course, he HAS to be hyperbolically awful because if
he wasn’t we’d be left with a non-villainous boss pointing out to Tess and Cat
that they don’t actually do any work.
And on “colourblind” shenanigans – Sam describes the man
who came with fake!Barnes as “tall with dark hair” a singularly useless
description – then identifies a picture of Gabe. It seems bemusing in the
extreme that his description would not include a) smoking hot (ok, maybe that’s
just me) and b) of South Asian descent.
Still kudos to this episode being actually complex. I’m
impressed
