Recap: BATB S4E4

Something's Gotta Give

Heather decorates Cat's new unnecessary office while she unnecessarily goes on an undercover mission with Vincent. We also learn that accountants can be hired assassins and bloggers can be competent kidnappers.

Remember how DEPUTY HILL magically made Cat a secret DHS agent last week? Well, that’s apparently still going, except they forgot about the “secret” part because Cat just marches inside the DHS like she is the face of the organization. She doesn’t make it past the lobby though, since she discovers that Deputy Hill is missing [that’s what happens to DHS suits that know about beasts, they get killed and are replaced with another suit that comes out of nowhere].

Actually, Deputy Hill is not dead [shocker, I know], he was just taken hostage along with his wife and daughter. And the perpetrator is… ding ding ding you guessed it, a beast bounty hunter! Beast bounties are real! [but not spectacular]. Hill turns out to be more heroic than you would expect and he refuses to divulge the identity of the LAST BEAST ON EARTH. It would have probably cost him his life, but, lucky for him, Vincat arrive just in time to rescue him.

Somehow, this leads to HILL finding a confidential informant, an accountant called ALFRED TOLLAND. Tolland works for international criminal VOYNOV [where do they get these names?], who we assume is behind the beast bounties. Why? Unclear. I mean… Do they ever give us a reason? No they don’t. In BATB’s [flawed] logic:

INTERNATIONAL CRIME LORD + HIRED HENCHMEN = BEAST BOUNTY

So let’s just roll with it. Mr. Tolland is willing to provide information about Voynov and his potential beast links, but they have to approach him discretely. So Cat and Vincent go undercover to a private school [because setting a meeting with Tolland at an empty warehouse or casually approaching him during his morning run would be too easy].

During the UNNECESSARY UNDERCOVER PLOT, Vincent and Catherine pretend to be soon-to-be-parents at a school event where Tolland’s kids study. The twist here is that Cat is having yet another pregnancy scare, but Vincent doesn’t know about it. So while Cat is seriously contemplating a future with kids, Vincent is mulling over how he is not ready to be a dad. And exactly NO-ONE is worrying about finding Tolland! Well… actually someone is, because Tolland gets kidnapped from the school before Vincat can get to him.

Elsewhere, Heather and JT are decorating Cat’s new office… because she needs to be away from DHS HQ to keep the beast investigation under wraps? Can’t she just do that from home? And if she is working outside DHS HQ, why did she go there earlier in the ep? And why do the writers make me waste so much time asking questions that clearly don’t have answers?!

Anyhow, while Heather worries about gardenias or petunias or something, JT worries about databases and security. Apparently, the beast conspiracy bloggers are still in play. JT decides to take care of that problem by himself and his brilliant plan is to call up a meeting with the bloggers and intimidate them by pretending to be a DHS agent. It doesn’t work [maybe because he was dressed like a “Man in Black” rather than a DHS agent]. The bloggers don’t believe he is a government agent, instead they suspect him of being the beast. So they kidnap and chain him in an attempt to film him while he beasts out. Well, that doesn’t work either. [Also, that’s not the correct way to handle a potential beast kids. Safety first!]

So, how does one get out of a mistaken beast identity abduction? By sharing your existential beast-protector crisis, of course. After JT tells the bloggers his story (leaving out the beast parts) they let him go. I love JT to death, but this crisis of identity/purpose has been going on for too long without moving forward [like a lot of things this season TBH].

Anyway, back to the BEAST BOUNTY HUNTER [?] OF THE WEEK. Cat takes Tolland’s wife and his two demons kids to her apartment while they track down her abducted husband. It turns out to be harder than expected because apparently fog and children’s screams interfere with BEAST TRACKING. The illogical rulebook just keeps expanding... Beast tracking is the gift that keeps on annoying me. Eventually, Vincent manages to track Tolland, but just as he is “rescuing” him, JT finds out that Tolland is in fact an assassin posing as an accountant.

So the kidnapping was a trap designed to lure Vincent out. Vincent puts it together, but not quick enough because Tolland manages to shoot him. It seems a bit silly that Vincent can’t take on a single man with a gun. But OK, let’s pretend he had his guard down and that’s why he got shot. But also… it looks like a single bullet wound is enough to completely defeat Vincent nowadays. So the hitman/accountant gains the upper hand and is about to kill Vincent... Fortunately, Cat shows up and kills Tolland first. Yay girl power and all that, but it’s a sad day when your ‘superhuman’ protagonist can’t handle ONE boringly human sicario.

Cat brings Vincent to the hospital, where they patch him up without realizing there is something weird with his DNA. It’s the end of the episode and this is what we learned:

1. Vincent's boss must have the hots for him because there is no other explanation for him still having a job.
2. The Beast Bounty is now a BEAST HIT ORDER.
3. The hospital doesn’t have gowns. [Not that I am complaining]

Oh yeah, and I forgot to mention. Before Vincent went on a tracking expedition to find his own hitman, Cat blurted out that she was pregnant… maybe. Vincent had been bitching about small humans throughout the episode so Cat was feeling very sensitive, but once he finds out about the potential beast baby he is actually very sweet with her. Not that it matters because Cat is not actually pregnant. Eh… writers, you do realize WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN THROUGH THIS RIGHT? Really… why reuse a plot that did nothing to move the story forward? Not that I want a beast baby, but come on!

So yeah, beast bounties are real, Cat is not expecting a half-human baby and Tess misses JT. My Kingdom for some new information in the next episode. Seriously, tell me something I don’t know already!