RECAP: Beauty and the Beast – Season 2 Episode 7 – Guess who’s coming to dinner?

Cat does her best to “Thanksgiving-it-Up!” but pumpkin lattes and beast triggers get in the way

We learn that you shall not bring your boyfriend home on Thanksgiving, especially if he doesn't have a job, a house or a tie. We also learn that there is nothing better than drinking pizza & that pumpkin cookies are bad omens.

The episode starts with yet another INTERESTING GUEST CHARACTER WITH POTENTIAL, WHOSE STORYLINE GOES NOWHERE. I am talking about Daddy Bob’s “PROFESSIONAL BEAST-CLEANER”. He doesn’t even have a name! I am going to call him LEON. Anyway; Leon, the professional is busy rigging a building with explosives and we instantly assume a nice incineration is planned for Vincent.

Meanwhile, Vincent is also about to set things on fire. It’s getting steamy over at Cat’s. However, memories of heart ripping tend to put a damper on the mood. Vincent reminds Cat that Windsor was about to “kill his daughter” Was he really? My theory is still that Windsor was going to kill everyone BUT Tori. Still good enough reason to stop him, but this whole “Tori needed to be set free” assumption doesn’t cut it for me. In any case, Vincent assures Cat that he won’t turn into Darth Beast or anything like that and reminds her that he just has one more beast to kill and then he is out.

Their conversation is interrupted by Daddy Bob who is calling to invite them for Thanksgiving dinner. Beast-assassins and FBI agents don’t mix well so Cat politely declines. In addition, Vincent had an alternative beast-feast plan that involved him “cooking” and “chopping” and damn he made it sound sexy… Imagine if Jay Ryan had a cooking show. I would SO watch that. But I digress…

Later, Cat decides to do what she does best on special occasions: overcompensate. In other words, she tries to Thanksgiving-it-Up! She buys all sorts of Turkey Day cheap decorations and tries to pretend having a beast-hunter-beast-boyfriend is normal and will be over soon [at least the beast hunter part]. Tess bursts her pumpkin flavored bubble by sharing Gabe’s theory about beast entrapment. You know… the one where Vincent actually IS the last beast on the blacklist. Unlike stupid flatlining, this is actually a sound theory; so Cat immediately freaks out.

Speaking of flatlining, Tori hasn’t caught up to the fact that IT DOESN’T WORK. So she attempts to get a crash course with Gabe. I do have one positive thing to say about her… she gave flatlining a catchier name: “de-monsterifying”. Gabe doesn’t get to go into the details of the complicated process of flatlining beasts because Cat barges in demanding information about Vincent’s possible demise. Gabe doesn’t think it’s an appropriate conversation to have in front of the daughter of the man Vincent just killed. But she seems to be OVER IT and not mad at Vincent AT ALL. So I don’t see what the big deal is.

Tori leaves and Gabe gets ready to share his Beast-puppet-master theories. However, he realizes that his “Muirfield files” are gone. So… let me get this straight… they HAD the M-Files and they didn’t get like 100 backups [including hard copies]? MUIRFIELD TRACKS EVERYTHING! [well, not anymore I guess…]

In the meantime, Vincent arrives at an abandoned warehouse for his last beast-hit. He notices right away that there is no-one in site, so unless there are ghost beasts we don’t know about he has no-one to kill. He communicates this fact to his handler by phone. Bob tells him to just go inside… not suspicious at all. Vincent is not THAT dense so he throws a metal bar through the window and the building explodes.

I might not be a professional beast cleaner but… tiny modification to this plan: kidnap some random person and tie him or her to a chair inside the warehouse. In that case, V would have “sensed” someone and just walked in to his certain dead. And they call themselves professionals… Shame on you Leon…

After realizing Gabe’s theory actually has merit, Cat goes into panic mode and drags everyone to the boathouse. She gets really upset and starts yelling at Gabe for not sharing his theory sooner and finishes her rant by saying “of course his handler is trying to kill him. He is totally out of control”.  Vincent walks in just in time to hear that unfortunate bit. He never fully reacted to this, but I think it hurt him to hear Cat say he is not in control. Up until that point I think he was consciously trying to get better and we know his “episodes” were triggered by Tori and weren’t really his fault.

Gabe gets a call and rushes to the hospital where he finds Tori who just tried to commit suicide [or rather assisted beast-flatline]. I’d feel bad for her… if she had shown an ounce of emotion! If Tori had a super-power it would be the ability to block any and every empathetic response from the audience. She is truly one of a kind in that respect. Tori basically begs Gabe to sign her out of the hospital and he is actually nice enough to do it. So the hot shot lawyer/fake cop is forced to spend Thanksgiving with the trust fund beast brat. That sounds like the premise for a bad Holiday movie…

Daddy Bob is NOT happy with Leon, the professional. He is SO asking for a refund. But before he can do that, Vincent calls him (from JT’s place, while recording the call). At first, Vincent tries to pretend he is still a good soldier, but quickly gets upset and ends up threatening his mystery handler. Guess they never trained the beasts in game theory and gathering intelligence. M was the WORST EVIL ORGANIZATION EVER. Cat understands Vincent’s reaction because he was feeling betrayed. Tess is all “you trusted deep throat? What kind of an idiot are you?” Can’t really defend Vincent here.

JT, most useful best friend ever, figures out that Gabe was hacked by the FBI. Vincent is all… “Oh yeah, remember Agent Tucker? Real uninteresting character killed by magical beast? He was my go-between and he was FBI… did I not mention that?” No you did not! Cat says that the “only thing they know for sure” is that they should have thanksgiving with her father. We know that for sure? How does “The FBI is most likely the enemy” translate to “Let’s celebrate turkey day with an FBI agent”? As Cat explains, she wants to interrogate Bob with the aid of her human polygraph boyfriend. Guess it sort of makes sense… still seems too risky.

Later, Bob talks to Leon… again… and tells him all the details of his new plan. I am confused, I thought this guy was a pawn… Why is Bob oversharing all of the sudden? [Besides the obvious need for exposition?] In any case, we learn that Bob is planning to send Vincent on a wild goose chase for his handler and that Leon is preparing another explosion in a yet to be disclosed location. This one better work or he will be seriously discredited in the cleaner/assassin circles.

Vincent and Catherine arrive at Bob’s country house and try to come up with a code word that indicates Bob can be trusted. Cat picks “pumpkin” [which is not a word you would use on Thanksgiving at all]. I thought it was sweet that Vincent was genuinely nervous about meeting Cat’s dad and not necessarily because of the beast issues. It is sad he never got to meet Cat’s real dad (Daddy Chandler), I would have liked that.

In the meantime, JT is trying to decrypt the mystery-evil-handler phone call he recorded. Tess is looking for an excuse to avoid her family dinner because she is tired of all the “Why are you still single?” questions. JT offers to boycott the holidays with her and have a “non-Thanksgiving” day, with beer and pizza [and creepy guy’s voice]. That was very sweet and it seriously sounded awesome. I might just do that on the next big holiday [minus creepy guy’s recording].

How much money do FBI agents make?

Back at Bob’s house… and what a house… how much do they pay FBI agents? Or is it the beast-damage-control bonus that pays for the perks? Bob does an amazing job at acting like a concerned father who is not planning a beast assassination. However, the conversation takes a weird turn when Vincent and Catherine bring up the “loaded” subject of “pumpkin cookies” [fine, this code may be even better than Joey’s Pizza]. The entire scene was hilarious and I am just wondering how many cookies Jay Ryan ate throughout all the takes. Cat tries to figure out if Bob knows what she thinks he knows. Bob tries to figure out if Cat knows that he knows that she knows. Vincent can’t tell if the cookies have PUMPKIN so Cat decides to go ahead and tell Bob anyway! Come on Cat, why come up with a hilarious code word if you are just going to ignore it!

Cat thinks she is being super smart by saying “their friend” is a beast and that “he or she” is different and needs help. Bob agrees to help them find the “handler” and asks for a copy of their research. Cat calls Gabe to ask for the files… that were erased from his computer but now he has? Did JT retrieve the files? What am I missing? Whatever, Gabe has a bunch of files and he volunteers to bring them over personally. I think he was just tired of watching Tori read fashion magazines and a road trip sounded appealing. Can’t really blame him.

Cat terminates her ill-fated phone call with Gabe and tells Vincent how proud she is of him for staying in control. He seems so proud of himself and so happy to get her approval. Aw… makes me sad. Anyway, Cat kisses him. He reminds her that they are in her dad’s place. She tells him that it’s like they are in high school, “or an alternate universe” he says [hey now, this isn’t Fringe]. *sighs* enjoy it kids, ‘cause this will be the last happy moment in a loooong time.

Gabe arrives at the HOUSE OF DESPICABLE BEAST REACTIONS AND TREACHEROUS CHURCH BELLS. Bob takes one look at him and is all “Don’t you have anything better to do in the holidays, son?” Gabe is all “No… Unfortunately, I killed all my family so… and beast-sitting is not all that it’s cracked up to be”. At that point Vincent and Catherine come downstairs. Hmm… they totally had sex right? It was supposed to take Gabe two hours to get there [I just like to get my timelines straight]. At that point Tori enters the house, because she couldn’t wait 5 freaking minutes inside a car... So spoiled. Gabe is all “Hey, this is Vincent… remember, he killed your dad”. She shakes Vincent’s hand which “triggers” something. They both retreat and try to pretend they are OK. Bob picks that moment to declare himself #TeamGabe for some reason… Didn’t he basically kill him a few months ago? But now he thinks he is son-in-law material? What’s up with everyone rooting for Gabe all of the sudden? Anyway, this doesn’t sit well with Vincent’s unstable beast and he transforms and attacks Bob. He stops just before he kills him and runs out.

Bob pretends to be shocked and terrified and he also pretends to be just figuring out Vincent killed Windsor. Quite ironic, considering he actually ordered Vincent to kill him. Cat explains that Vincent “saved Tori’s life” [Did he really?] Why is everyone convinced he was going to kill her? Finally, Catherine plays the “Daughter” card and begs Bob to give Vincent a second chance. He agrees with the condition of having “a talk” with him first. Cat explains the situation to Vincent and she is disappointed with his behavior all over again. It’s a sad moment. Vincent obviously feels bad but he is experiencing something out of his control [and comprehension]. At the same time, Cat is beginning to accept the fact that he might be back, but he is still broken.

Back at the GENTLEMAN’S CLUB, Tess and JT haven’t been able to figure out the identity of the mystery handler… probably because they are totally wasted! JT asks Tess why she is still single. Tess concludes that it is because “she is a cop” and “she is intimidating” and “not feminine enough” (her grandmother’s words). JT tells her something along the lines that when he met her, he thought she was so pretty he could barely speak. Tess points out that probably he couldn’t speak because she IS intimidating. JT says he couldn’t speak because he “wanted to do this” and he kisses her! And yes, I totally figured out they were going to get them together, but still the kiss took me by surprise! Enough that it made me gasp. As I said before, I was against the idea of getting these two together. I don’t like it when they get the sidekicks together just because they are there. I was also against it because I loved their slightly mean banter and was afraid it would go away [it sort of did, but it was replaced by other nice interactions]. Finally, I thought it was going to be awkward. However, I have to admit, I was wrong. It actually worked and I was pleasantly surprised. I think it was largely due to the fact that they are both great actors and made it work, but I think they also have chemistry that no-one saw coming. So yeah, it was cute.

Outside, Tori is staring at her eyes in Gabe’s car mirror. Her eyes are really pretty, but they are so completely lifeless! It’s eerie. Gabe comes out of the house and tells Tori they need to stay so they can convince Reynolds that Vincent “saved her” [did he really?]. I’ll give this to Tori; she wanted to leave and… she didn’t seem particularly interested in being around Vincent at that moment. However… it didn’t take much convincing on Gabe’s part for her to agree to stay. Seriously… even if Vincent “saved” her, he still killed her father. I wouldn’t be going out of my way to help him if I were Tori. But that girl has issues. She’s turning into a monster and her father just died and she just failed at committing suicide, etc, etc. I would normally feel bad for her, if I didn’t hate those lifeless eyes so much.

It’s time for Vincent and Daddy Bob to have THE TALK. Not the handler/beast talk, the father/son-in-law talk. Vincent is all “sorry I tried to kill you, but most importantly I am sorry I am not wearing a tie” then he keeps on listing all his qualities: “no job, no land-based house, cross-species DNA, etc”. Finally Vincent does what he does best and puts everyone’s needs before him. He tells Bob he is not asking for approval or protection, all he asks is for him not to ruin “their” lives [he even included Gabe in that]. Daddy Bob puts on his best caring father façade and tells Vincent he will do everything he can to find his handler [not a hard task] and then he gets threatening; and yes, Ted CAN go from nice to menacing in one second too. He basically tells Vincent he will turn Catherine in if he doesn’t walk away from her.

Time for the THANKSGIVING DINNER OF DOOM at Reynold’s manor. Bob keeps bringing up his “[absent] staff” What is this? Downton Abbey? And seriously, HOW MUCH MONEY DO FBI AGENTS MAKE? Tori starts telling Bob about how “Vincent saved her life” [did he really?] and then Bob makes the most on the nose toast about “loving someone means staying away”. When they are toasting Tori brushes Vincent’s hand and it is MURKY-RULES-TRIGGER-TIME again. Vincent is clearly under the effects of Tori’s beast magnifying nature. Everyone notices so he excuses himself before he beasts out.

After Vincent leaves, Cat complains to Bob about his veiled toast message. While they are busy arguing Tori fully beasts out for the first time. And she is a beast with no table manners for sure. Tori gets out and Catherine quickly figures out Tori was the trigger for Vincent’s episodes. Bob scolds Catherine for making excuses for him. She defends him and I am totally on Cat’s side… however, from an outside perspective, it does look like she is making excuses. Daddy Bob ends his speech by saying “love is not unconditional” [Isn’t that the definition of love?] Gabe announces Tori is missing and he is freaking out because he finally realized she was trying to flatline herself. I swear; at this point, even Gabe knows flatlining is STUPID.  Bob goes out on the porch and calls Leon to tell him he has one more beast to add to the holiday-murder-package.

Agrrr… and time for the scene of THE INCIDENT. It was hard enough to re-watch this so I won’t spend too much time actually describing it. Tori finds Vincent. He tells her to stay away but apparently she has suddenly realized she NEEDS to be close to him. She recites some badly acted lines [with ZERO emotion] and then she kisses him! He KILLED YOUR FATHER [who I am so NOT convinced was about to kill you]. Tori… you are THE WORST DAUGHTER EVER.

Now… small parenthesis on the trigger logic. The following will have SPOILERS, so don’t read it if you haven’t watched the rest of season 2. The effect Tori had on Vincent was never clear to me. We know she “amplified” his beast power [why? No idea] and the same happened with her dad. So it was a “violent trigger”, but was it necessarily sexual? I guess they could argue she woke up the animal side of Vincent, which included mating on a primal level. However, if this was the case then they should have had an exclusively sexual relationship and not an “actual” human relationship which later we were led to believe they had. Either the writers backed out from their original idea or they were never clear on their intentions for the character. The lack of clarity in the writing was aggravated by the awful acting. I would assume a LOT of subtext got lost due to Amber’s performance. END OF TRIGGER PARENTHESIS.

BACK TO THE EPISODE. Since we are going to go with the “[pseudo] femme beast-fatale-seduces-leading-man-for-no-logical-reason” storyline, they had to have the cliché scene where Cat walks in on them just as they kiss. That scene was so painful to watch. Poor Cat. As many others, I had the theory that Vincent heard Cat’s heartbeat before she arrived and he let Tori kiss him because he wanted to push Cat away. I could have lived with that! But… the writers debunked that fan-theory pretty quickly. So… back to crying I guess.

Cat walks away completely heart-broken, Vincent goes after her. I actually loved the way they wrote Cat’s reaction. She is obviously upset, but it is not even about the kiss. She has simply realized that she has been working too hard to artificially recreate the relationship she once had with Vincent, but it is just an illusion. The sad honest truth is that Vincent is still not the man she loved; he is in there somewhere, but he is still too messed up and Cat is suffering as a consequence. Vincent knows that. Enough of him remains that he takes the opportunity to give Cat an out. And that’s the way I see it. He wasn’t leaving her, he wasn’t choosing Tori [who he didn’t give a second thought until that day] and he wasn’t being a bad guy. I think he was trying to do the right thing and allow Cat to walk away, to set her free before they reached a point of no return. Of course, from Cat’s point of view, this probably feels like the ultimate betrayal and it is devastating. The fact that Bob’s words dictated both their actions is just unfortunate tragic irony.

Back at the HOUSE OF MISSING FOOTMEN AND BEAST SET-UPS, Bob offers Tori a one way ticket to the city with his “driver” A.K.A Leon, the professional Beast cleaner [I guess Leon is also a “transporter” if we are gonna keep up the Luc Besson references]. No-one stops to question why an FBI agent can afford to have a driver and why he isn’t “off” with the rest of the staff. In the meantime, Tess is REALLY excited about the bells in the background of their evil-handler-recording. JT thinks she is just trying to avoid talking about THE KISS. JT doesn’t realize that the JT&T kiss is the ONLY kiss we all want to discuss at the moment! JT is super sweet and apologizes for taking advantage of her vulnerable state. Aw. Tess tells him that if she didn’t want to be kissed he would have a black eye by now or something along those lines. Aw. Yes, this was really sweet and even kinda hot and Thank God we had something else to focus on at that point!

But Daddy Bob is not done with his Beast purge yet. He gives Vincent a dummy handler lead and tells him the non-existent evil mastermind has put a target on Tori. Bob even offers to go to Windsor’s Tower himself to check it out. Of course Vincent volunteers because he doesn’t want Bob to get hurt [because that would hurt Catherine]. Seriously… Vincent needs to stop trusting people. If I were him I would live my life assuming everybody is lying ALL THE TIME.

Later, Cat gets ready to leave with Gabe. Tess just called to tell him about the bells of doom. CUE Bells ringing near Daddy Bob’s house. Who didn’t see that one coming? As Daddy Bob is inadvertently outed as the BEAST PUPPET MASTER, Vincent arrives at Tori’s apartment where he finds her tied to a chair and he triggers a motion sensor bomb. Man I wished she would have died right then and there so bad! The bomb goes off. END OF EPISODE.

OK… end of episode reflection. I actually really liked this episode! It was well written, it had many funny lines, it was an interesting set-up and I thought all the characters were true to themselves [for the most part at least]. There were some inconsistencies with the overarching plot, but that is an issue of season-long planning and not really a problem with the episode itself. It could even be said that I “loved” this episode, if it weren’t for “the incident”. It was utterly uncomfortable and devastating to watch, but I wasn’t that upset about it at the time. I even respected the writers for being that ballsy and doing something that was inevitably going to piss off the audience. I respected them BECAUSE I thought they had a DAMN GOOD REASON to do it and that the resulting Tori-storyline was going to be super-strong. I was wrong. The Tori arc was not strong enough to justify making the audience suffer that much. That character was a mistake from beginning to end. It was a character with potential that was never achieved due to writing inconsistencies and bad casting. I don’t know if the writers got scared and watered-down the character, if there were disagreements inside the writers’ room or if they realized the actress just COULD NOT pull it off. It was probably all of the above. In the end I was just disappointed with Tori and even though I think she brought some MINOR things to the table it was not enough to cancel out the discomfort of watching her.

But… only a few more Tori-eps to go… These eps still have some nice moments but I honestly felt like I couldn’t breathe until she was gone! But who knows? Maybe I’ll find more good than bad when re-watching. Stay tuned.

BEST THANKSGIVING EPISODES

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QUOTES

Tess [to Cat]: Looks like the holiday section threw up on you

Bob: Dead guys don’t breathe or hang up on you. And they don’t call you back either!

Cat: There you were this vision of control enjoying your non-pumpkin cookies while he was going at you.

Tess: I don’t drink pizza

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