RECAP: Beauty and the Beast – Episode 19 – Playing with Fire

Nothing says "Respect the Power of Nature" like experimenting on children and creating genetically altered soldiers

The episode starts with some cute Vincent/Catherine interaction and I, of course, love this scene as much as the next Vincat scene… however, at the moment this episode aired I was not over Evan’s death, so I felt the opening scene should have addressed it somehow. Apartment hunting could have waited a couple of script pages, but well…

Cat shows Vincent the Best a Beast could ask for: an apartment previously owned by an arms dealer. It has important features like being “easily defendable”. She also says there is “ample space for entertainment” and “no complaints about noise”… I’ll let you put those two together [Hint: I am not talking about “dinner parties”]. Vincent is not convinced about the arm dealer’s lair because he wants a more “romantic” place where his girlfriend would visit him. I am pretty sure any girl would be willing to “visit” him even if he lived under a rock or on top of a mountain, but I guess he doesn't realize that… he is a modest beast like that. Vincent gives Cat a quick kiss and then finally addresses Evan. Cat still blames herself for “encouraging him” [did she?] I think the main issue was that she was withholding the truth about Vincent, but that’s another story. A lot of people blamed Cat or Vincent or both for Evan’s death. I don’t. Evan died due to a series of unfortunate decisions he took [not saying it was his fault either]. It was nobody’s fault, just the way it played out. Anyway, Vincent tells Cat he wants to start their new life in a place that doesn’t look like a prison [because the warehouse was so swanky?], so suddenly he is very demanding about his accommodation. He tells Cat “I want a place for us” and she is obviously smitten by the prospect [mainly because of the way he said it]. Vincent and Catherine start making out again and…

ABRUPTLY JUMP CUT TO Gabe waking up after what looks like a “Beastly” nightmare. Next to him sleeps his pretty blond girlfriend, putting to rest all fears that Gabe may be romantically interest in Cat. Gabe is obviously shaken and it is weird to see him not as his usual “composed” self. He sits up, looks at his watch and starts getting a nose bleed. The door bell rings, it is Joe for Round two of the Cop vs. Lawyer showdown. Joe is not satisfied with the “vigilante’s” [fake] death by warehouse explosion [AKA enterprise]. He has decided to focus his revenge on Evan, unaware that he has “skipped town” joining Ray Shenkman, Garwell and most likely Alex Salter. Gabe goes all lawyer in the blink of an eye and starts listing all the bureaucratic inconveniencies of prosecuting Evan. As soon as Joe leaves, Tyler (Gabe’s girlfriend) asks if he is going to be a problem and the way she said it totally sounded like she was asking: “Do I need to kill him?” Gabe and Tyler start discussing the nightmare and Muirfield and Tyler says she has “as much reason to hate them” as him [another plot with no pay-off?]. Then Gabe removes Tyler’s shirt and as they kiss we get a good look at Tyler’s back where she has a huge scar running down her spine. No explanation was given about the scar [or Tyler’s story for that matter]; so, for a while, I thought I completely imagined the scar! But a lot of people noticed it too; although, according to me, it was actually glowing! So I thought Tyler was a cylon, but I think I might have imagined the glowing part [I am still going to call her a cylon].

At the PRECINCT Cat is not sporting the usual “sex glow” she has after being with Vincent. Tess notices and Cat explains that she’s feeling down because she went to Evan’s apartment [with Vincent]. Sidenote: Taking the photobooth picture of the day Evan kissed her as a memento was probably not the best idea. At least the strip didn’t have the picture of the kiss. Tess and Cat mourn Evan for a second… and I seriously mean a second… One of the things [and there are quite a few] that bothered me about this episode is that they didn’t give the chance to any of the characters to come to terms with Evan’s death. I thought they missed the opportunity to have some very heartfelt scenes. But, let’s move on, just like Cat and Tess quickly do on this scene. Apparently, someone beat the Beast team to Evan’s apartment because the place was tossed when they got there.  They assume it was Muirfield, because Joe wouldn’t do it without a warrant [are we sure? He looked pretty desperate]. Cat tells Tess about the “place for us” plan, but she is not too excited about it; not because of commitment issues, because she doesn’t like to live with the constant threat of Muirfield. However, their chat is interrupted by SOON TO BE DEAD CUTE M AGENT [I am told he is on Haven… Agent Haven? ] bursting into the precinct. He is bleeding pretty bad and collapses. He is only able to utter the words: “Detective Chandler, you don’t have much time” before he dies… Yeah, that was helpful… good thing he managed to crawl to the precinct and give Cat the most useless final words! Wouldn’t it have been better to write a note before dying? The cops would have found it anyway and maybe he would have been able to add more details… just saying. I never watched Haven so I wasn’t familiar with the actor, that’s why I didn’t realize until now that he was also on the previous episode. He was the M-receptionist! You know the agent who had license to pee…

Cat and Tess start stressing about the fact that “Muirfield” found Cat. So… we assume that M has no idea about Cat up to this point? She INFILTRATED their lab! Agent Twilight took a good look at her and SERIOUSLY there wasn’t ONE security camera in the entire building?! Well… apparently M doesn’t know about Cat, so are we assuming Agent Haven knows about her because he saw her in the tunnels? Maybe HE was the only competent M agent and that’s why they killed him. In any case, if Agent Haven had a purpose in life, it was to provide UNIVERSAL KEY CARDS, which Tess grabs from the body before anyone can find it. It is time for the second thing I didn’t like about this episode: There is a new M.E., which totally gets filed under the “too soon” category. I actually quite liked the new M.E., he had a good name (Iverson Kirk) and I thought he was rather cute [where do they get their M.E.s? The “Cute forensics association”?], all he was missing was an accent [they could have made him Aussie or Irish]. I thought he was going to be around for the rest of the season, yet he was on ONE scene, so… what the hell was the point of having him there reminding us that Evan is dead? The only useful information Dr.Kirk provides is that Agent Haven didn’t have any fingerprints, which sends the recently arrived Gabe into a FLASHBACK TRIP.

FLASHBACK: A young Gabe [that kid looks nothing like Sendhil] attempts some finger painting, but he is not getting the results he wanted because he has finger prints. His M-teacher/care taker/jailor/keeper or whatever has better paintings because she has NO FINGER TIPS. Little Gabe also had a patch on the back of his neck, and at this point a BAR CODE wouldn’t have surprised me. The M-WOMAN tells Gabe it is time for his “session” and escorts him to a creepy looking hallway. END OF FLASHBACK

Meanwhile, JT and Vincent are at RAT ALLEY to investigate what happened to Agent Haven. Vincent is sort of doing this behind Cat’s back; which is another thing I didn’t like about this episode. What is great about Vincent and Catherine is that they tell each other stuff, they have always been honest about their feelings and intentions, not withholding information and that is why their relationship always felt so refreshing! This week they did the very old thing where the characters lie to each other even though they have good intentions. Every drama in the history of TV has done a storyline like this, so it is not refreshing and is not consistent with Vincat [in my opinion, you might disagree]. But that’s what is going on. In the alley JT and Vincent find another dead Muirfield defector, some rats and the dead guy’s cell phone, because NO-ONE taught M-agents to get rid of cell phones after killing people!

Next, on an unnecessarily LONG scene Cat and Tess figure out that the person who broke into Evan’s apartment was Gabe. Breaking into dead M.E.’s apartments and stealing cross-species DNA files sure makes you look as a Muirfield Agent. So Cat confronts Gabe, which hardly seems like the best idea; she was basically implicating herself with the vigilante… but not much of this episode makes sense. They have a veiled “I know and I know you know I know” type conversation and Cat sort of accuses Gabe of being an M agent which makes him go all “I am not on their side! They totally used me as a guinea pig and may or may have not turned my girlfriend into a cylon!” Of course he does all that in a much more heartfelt manner and via a flashback. New information we get from the FLASHBACK is that Gabe was designated as “Chimera 5” [where the hell are Chimera 1-4?] And that he spent his childhood in M-Boarding school, which wasn’t so bad, except for the fact that they were harvesting him for blood and tissue. Also, Vanessa was one of his doctors. Long story short, Gabe is not on the M-team, he is hunting M. Cat is obviously skeptical so Gabe keeps talking. He read Evan’s journals and came to the erroneous conclusions that Cat and Evan were after the “vigilante”, discovered he was half-animal, Evan went to M behind Cat’s back [that part is true] and then they killed him [that is also unfortunately true]. Now Cat wants to find M and get revenge for what they did to Evan. Cat is all “if you are not on M’s side, why did you go after my boyfriend… er I mean the vigilante?” so Gabe explains he was trying to protect him which I would have never believed, but he DID ask repeatedly for him to be taken alive so…

At CAT’S APARTMENT [where Heather doesn’t seem to live anymore], Vincent shows Cat the video he found on Agent Haven’s [Paul Davis] phone. In summary he was Vanessa’s protégé and tells Cat no-one knows about her and that Muirfield is vulnerable because they are moving their operation, so it would be a good time to take them down.  He starts getting shot and says “Go to the Orchard” before the recording is interrupted. More treasure hunt type messages… awesome. As soon as she finishes watching, Cat tells Vincent that they “have to get busy” and no… she didn’t mean it like that [maybe later], she just meant that they should follow Agent Haven’s cryptic message and destroy Muirfield. But Vincent disagrees; he thinks the entire thing might be a trap and that they shouldn’t trust Gabe either. She starts to argue with his logic, but he shuts her up by saying “Catherine [yes, I know, the voice!] I couldn’t handle losing you, all right I couldn’t live, I wouldn’t want to” She tells him that she can’t live knowing that he is a hunted man, he asks her to give him time to figure it out and I would have said yes to anything he asked if he was looking at me like that… Seriously “Would you jump off a building” Yes Vincent; “Would you be interested in moving to Argentina and run an Ostrich’s farm” You bet Vincent; “Would you dress as a giant Teddy Bear and recreate the Miley Cyrus VMA performance” whatever you want Vincent, “Will you…” well you get the picture.

JT and Vincent take a trip to the former HQ of M which have apparently been vacated. How stupid is of Vincent to go looking for M? They are after him! Anyway, JT tried googling “The Orchard” and found lots of things [like a marketing company and an evangelical church among others] however he didn’t come across an entry like this:

THE ORCHARD

Technology

Location where the evil secret organization named 

“Muirfield” stores its servers or “Brain”

Founded: 1980

Founder: Unknown, but Arvin Sloane and 

Donald Lydecker have been suspected

HQ: New York

I am personally shocked. Turns out Vincent is in a race with Catherine to see who can find “the orchard” first and “protect” the other one by avoiding his or her involvement. Since Google brought them nowhere, JT and Vincent decide to spy on Gabe, still assuming he knows more than he is telling. Back at the PRECINCT Joe is still in “Emily Thorne-Revenge” mode; Tess tries to talk some sense into him. He is not listening and… yeah, that was pretty much it. Another scene that feels a little redundant due to the better scene that will come later. Tess gets out of Joe’s office and finds Cat engaged on some light “cross-species reading” from Evan’s journal, which was given to her by Gabe. I wonder what it looks like:

Dear Diary: 

I saw the vigilante today and he DOES NOT look like Ron Perlman. It seems unfair that “it” has all this cool DNA and doesn't look like a lion…Cat is totally mesmerized by him and his fire-escape jumping skills... I don't think my accent is going to cut it...

OK, it was probably much more scientific than that. Tess asks Cat if she trusts Gabe, Cat says her gut says “Yes” But Cat… Vincent asked you not to trust him looking at you with his SAD eyes! Tess believes that she should trust her gut and ignore the voice in her head, which sounds like Vincent… [how on earth could you ignore THAT?] because “sometimes you have to hide a little truth from your partner to protect them”. I love Tess, but she is hardly the best person to be giving relationship advice. Cat would be better of going to JT!

So Cat goes to Gabe’s apartment. He shows her the rest of Evan’s journals, she opens the first one and she finds a post-it that says “M’S BRAIN HERE!” OK, it wasn’t anything THAT obvious, it actually says “Orchard Industries” and an address. How did Evan know about this? Did Agent Twilight tell him about the servers during his “Evil organization” induction? Cat tells Gabe about the post-mortem message from Agent Haven. Gabe offers to go with her to the orchard but she turns him down because she is worried she will find something that exposes Vincent… At least Cat brings Tess as backup, but you know what would have been a better idea? Getting his supernaturally strong boyfriend and geek-squad friend to go along! At this point we know how EASY it is to break into M facilities, so two girls should be enough. Tess is in charge of distracting the ONE guard outside the building. She starts playing the dumb girl who got lost on his way to a party and it was SO funny to watch. As Tess chats up the security guard, Cat gets into the building which didn’t have any infrared sensors, electronic locks, old school locks or… security cameras [no shocker there]. She arrives to a locked room and she uses the keycard Tess lifted from dead Agent Haven. Good thing M doesn’t revoke access from its rogue agents! She gets in and she finds ALL of Muirfield’s servers (Muirfield’s brain) conveniently located on one single location with no security whatsoever. Point Beast team!

Cat tries to access the server but it asks for a password. She has Gabe on the phone, remotely assisting with the break-in and he suggests CHIMERA for the password  [he also assumes Cat can’t spell]. It works of course. And that is the LEAST SECURE PASSWORD in history! Even hotmail would tell you to pick a better password! Add some lower upper case and some numbers or something! With the help of Cylon Tyler Gabe gives Cat instructions to download the files to his computer. Cat quickly sets up the download without thinking that maybe just maybe… the “Brain” of Muirfield contains information about… I don’t know THE SOLDIERS THEY EXPERIMENTED ON! Cat finds Vincent’s file, just as she realizes that Gabe has complete control over the download. Tyler tells Gabe that Muirfield has “some pretty advanced security measures” [REALLY?] Point being that if the download is interrupted they would lose everything. Gabe tells Cat not to interrupt the download, Vincent hears him because he was spying on him from a nearby rooftop. He calls JT to ask him to track Cat’s phone… I guess his Beast GPS tracking mystery powers were off?

Cat tries to interrupt the transfer so Gabe doesn’t get the files on Vincent, but she can’t do it. Getting downloads completed is hard, interrupting them is like the easiest thing ever! But I guess M wanted to make things easy for whoever was trying to steal their files, so there is no interrupting that download! In the meantime Tess is STILL talking to THE WORST SECURITY GUARD/CAGE FIGHTER ever! He finally gets a security alert, but it doesn’t really matter because Tess takes him out in 2 seconds. Then she calls Cat to alert her, while they are still on the phone Cat hears a growl, turns around and finds a very angry looking Vincent standing behind her … and yes, it is hot. Cat summarizes the situation and Vincent quickly goes “agrrrr” and starts breaking stuff. And while we are on the subject of beasting out, I have a confession. I like this old Beast better than the “new Beast” we’ve seen on the preview pics for season 2 [and no, this time I am not referring to the scar]. I thought this beast looked more… affable? I don’t know… the new one looks scary. In any case, Beast make-up is not why I love the show and I am guessing Jay Ryan appreciates not sitting 4 hours on the make-up chair. So Vincent destroys the servers, a fire is started, M is defeated once again! It was a pretty neat action sequence actually and probably the first time we got to see Catherine and the Beast fight alongside [it’s usually Cat that does all the ass-kicking and then V comes in last minute to smash and maul. The scene ends with the Beast holding Cat in his arms bridal style and taking her away from danger… who doesn’t like that sort of thing, right?

After exiting the warehouse Cat stays around [not suspicious at all] to have a meeting with Gabe inside her KIA. He informs her that they didn’t get anything from the download [Vincent lives to beast out another day!], she asks about the CHIMERA password. On top of implying Cat can’t spell, Gabe starts lecturing her about Greek mythology. Cat stops him to let him know she knows all about CHIMERA because her mom had a chimera necklace [totally unnecessary over-shareing], which reminded her to “respect the power of nature” which she did by creating cross-species genetically altered creatures? Anyway, the story about the necklace sends Gabe on another FLASHBACK TRIP where Vanessa is smuggling him out of Muirfield and handing him to his new foster parents. If you think about it, Vanessa knew M was experimenting with children [which in my book is pretty bad]…  and yeah, she saved Gabe’s life, but she stayed with M anyway and went on to experiment with soldiers years later! Who did she think she was? Walter Bishop?

Gabe gets out of the car and approaches Cylon Tyler who is standing right next to the burnt building, because she is an arson investigator? I don’t know! What the hell is she doing there? Gabe tells her that “the doctor who saved him” might have been Cat’s mom. I bet an 8 year old kid would know what a “chimera necklace” looks like. Tyler shows Gabe a picture from inside the building… because she is an arson investigator? Seriously, is she? The pic shows part of the wreckage and they figure the “vigilante” was involved and that Cat is involved with the vigilante. Agrr stop saying vigilante… this isn’t Arrow! I think I would prefer “mutant” at this point; the CW gave me a “vigilante” over-dose last season.

Time for the necessary Tess/Joe scene [because the previous one could have easily been omitted]. Tess gave Joe a report that indicated Darius was on drugs when he died [was he?], she thinks it might give him some closure and allow him to move on [I really fail to see the logic in that]. Tess also tells him that he needs to let go of his anger and say good bye to Darius, stop using his crusade against Evan as a way of holding on [now, that actually makes sense]. She had a very good point and she seemed to get through to Joe, but still… I felt the scene was a little rushed [it was probably cut]. I normally complain about scenes that were obviously over-cut, but funny enough, in this episode I thought some scenes should have been cut.

Meanwhile Vincent calls a meeting with cat down at the sewers… Is that his idea of a romantic place? She apologizes, he apologizes, they conclude they need to end Muirfield if they want to be together [is that supposed to be new information?]. Vincent announces he has a question for Cat. The question is if she would like him to keep a safe distance and keep his new address a secret. She replies by saying: “That has got to be the dumbest question anyone’s ever asked me” which is EXACTLY right. And that was yet another thing that bothered me about this episode! We’ve been over this already! More times than I can count, Vincent thinks he is not worth loving, he thinks he puts Cat in danger blah blah blah. But he got over it! Remember last week? He was being all cocky and hot “Maybe she is in love with me”? [Just go watch the TRAIN SCENE!] And then, suddenly, Vincent went backwards! Not cool. I know how writing staffs work. They break the episodes in the room, then they draft them, then a writer writes the actual script, other writers read it, more re-writing, EPs approve it, network, etc. So it really is a coordinated group effort and all the writers should be n’sync, but this episode felt off… like it wasn’t consistent with everything else… I noticed the writer only wrote this one episode, so maybe he was a freelancer? I don’t know…

In any case, V tells Cat that he has found a new place and takes her there. What exactly is this place? Is it a house, a former showroom? A speakeasy? [Update 10/01/13 in the latest preview clip for S2 JT says the place was a former Gentlemen's club, so I guess I wasn't that far off] Who owns it? Who rents it? Where did they get it? And most importantly, if they could live in a place like this, why were they living in an abandoned chemical plant for 10 years?! But whatever, Vincent and Catherine are making out in the middle of his new place. END OF EPISODE.

As you can probably tell, this is not my favorite episode. I still liked parts of it, but it had a lot of structure issues and some unnecessary scenes in my opinion [some pretty cool moments too]. I also thought it wasn’t the right episode to air right after the VERY emotional Heart of Darkness, the stakes seemed too low after they had been so high. I still believe they should have delayed the events of Heart of Darkness until the last two episodes.

But that’s it for now… a little over a week to go before we get new BATB episodes! One week, three episodes to recap… will I be able to make it??? Come back and see… I may have multiple updates waiting for you!

MORE RECAPS

QUOTES

Cat: Trust me, your girlfriend will visit you wherever you live

Cat: His name is Vincent/ Tess: Lame, boring

Vincent: Catherine I couldn’t handle losing you, all right? I couldn’t live, I wouldn’t want to

JT: There’s thousands of things called “The Orchard”

JT: Imagine what you two could accomplish if you were actually working together