Beauty and the Beast - Primal Fear - Review

The second episode of season 3 continued to ponder the same questions introduced in the season premiere: how can Vincent and Catherine make their relationship work among obstacles both typical and highly unusual?  What happened to J.T. as a result of the life-saving medicine?  How will he and Tess settle into their relationship and continue evolving as people?  What's up with the new crop of supernatural people supposedly out to cause major trouble?  And why was Heather upgraded to a series regular?  I think most of these matters saw satisfactory progress in this episode.  

I'm going to use some lyrics from Jessie J.'s "Keep us Together" to supplement this review, as that song tackles the same topic (making a relationship work despite unavoidable hurdles) that we saw in this episode. 

"It's cool if we ain't got everything figured out
Cause love ain't got all the answers baby
This place we're in, they don't ever really talk about it
But that don't mean we can't navigate it..."*

Commitment phobia?  There's a couple of factors that have to reassure us, despite Vincent's skittish behavior while moving in with Cat. Firstly, I'm pretty sure he must want to spend the rest of his life with her, or he wouldn't have proposed.  Secondly, epic love, people!  That's not going anywhere.  So why was Vincent so unnerved as Catherine went through her kind of adorable, type A reactions to him moving his stuff in?  Well, sometimes the fear that something as stereotypical as commitment phobia or cold feet will kick in is just as terrifying as actually experiencing those problems.  I think that's what we saw in Vincent this week.  The worry that he could start to feel they were moving too fast. 

"It's unpredictable, but I feel so good about it
A mountain, but we can climb it
Ain't no way to get around it
Take this open road
And I wanna get it right
We can't win if we don't try
And I'm scared, I can't deny"*

Actually, this part of the episode was pretty hilarious, and I loved the sweet way VinCat resolved this issue by the end of the hour.  They did move so fast from finally being able to be together, to getting engaged, to moving in, that both probably just needed to get their breath back.  However, Vincent is going to have to get those beast-outs under control...maybe if he changes more often, it won't sneak up on him like that?

"Well, if it ain't enough

Are we just gonna give up?
It ain't easy trying to stay in love
Are we gonna walk out, when it rains?
Tell me we got enough of love to keep us together
Say we got enough of love to keep us together..."*

An electrifying new frenemy.  This week's antagonist was a man with a tumor who had likely been experimented on by the shadowy organization who are giving people special abilities.   Like Vincent back in the day, the electricity-powered semi-baddie was out of control because he had no one to turn to and couldn't calm down long enough to stop doing damage to everyone around him.  It's a good thing Vincent and Catherine were around to stop his chaotic violence and even help him out, and while it was disturbing to see him hijack J.T.'s bloodstream to steal some of that mysterious miracle cure, at least this gave us some new insight into J.T.'s situation - more on which to follow.  

So now we've seen a man with somewhat unspecified super-strength (in last week's episode) and one with the ability to zap NYC silly.  The rogue's gallery is starting to look like one from X-Men, and while I still wish we had already gotten a lot more details on where these guys are coming from and why they were created, what we've seen so far is intriguing.  Is each episode going to feature an antagonist with a different super-power?  Because that's a fun premise (and one with which Kristin Kreuk is quite familiar from the first few seasons of Smallville), but we need to know more about the Big Bad behind it all to feel a real structure to the larger story arc of Season 3.  However, this is hardly the first time the writers have procrastinated on showing us where the ongoing plot was actually going.  Gabe turned out to be the biggest villain of Season 2, and the writers didn't even admit that this was the case until close to the end of the season.  I'm hoping that the shorter episode order will force the writers to keep the story more tightly paced this time - we shall see.

One aspect that was brilliant, once again, about this episode: Vincent and Catherine working a case together.  I was particularly impressed by the highly intelligent way Vincent theorized about how the electrical powers might work.  The combination of Vincent's medical knowledge and detective skills is amazing.

J.T. stops selling himself short.  Tess made some really interesting points about the way J.T. still acts like a shy, insecure professor when in reality, he's accomplished some amazing things and grown into kind of a badass in his own right.  Most notably, J.T. is pretty much the best friend you could have.  I couldn't stop smiling when he put Tess' brother in his place.  By the way, how awful do those brothers seem?!  I hope Tess does make captain, because she'd be great at it, and that would also be quite convenient for the Fab Four, let's face it!  Agent Thomas hinted that J.T. is someone to "watch out for," and later the agent was scratched off, presumably by the aforementioned, as yet unseen Big Bads.  This is extremely ominous and has me incredibly curious as to what will be revealed about J.T.  Has he just gotten tougher and more focused, or are superhuman abilities in his future?

Hi, Heather.  What are you doing here, Heather?  I must confess this has me almost as confused as the slowness of the mythology's explanation this season.  That said, Heather is delightful and cute, and I really enjoyed her interactions with Vincent and Catherine in this episode.  I just think she needs to be pulled more into the main plotline (which itself needs more development).  And what's with the writers ending her engagement before we ever saw her fiancé?  It just seems a little weird after all those repeated mentions of the character, and makes me wonder if that's the last we will hear of it.  In order for Heather to become a nuanced, more centrally-placed character in the show's world, she needs more to do and to reveal more about herself.  I'm sure it's coming soon, and I'm looking forward to it.

What did you think of this episode?  Share your thoughts in the comments!  And be sure to catch an all-new Beauty and the Beast, Thursday at 8/7c on the CW.

*lyrics taken from the song "Keep us Together" by Jessie J.

About the Author - Virginia Mae Fontana

Virginia is happy to be reviewing The Vampire Diaries and Beauty and the Beast for Spoiler TV. She enjoys obsessing over films and pop music - in addition to tv shows, of course! You can find her blog, SugarRushed, at http://virginiamaeblog.blogspot.com/ and her Twitter handle is @VMaeFontana

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