Beauty and The Beast: S01E10 - Seeing Red.

Yay, Beauty and The Beast is back! I wonder if this second half of the season can learn and build on its mistakes, not just repeat them...

Picking up right from where the mid-season finale ended certainly gave this episode an explosive start but I had no idea it'd be able to keep that momentum up right until the end of the episode. For a romance show, Beauty and the Beast has a surprising amount of tension and action, to points of overkill at times. Seeing Red deals with both the aftermath of the mid-season finale and uses that to add in a new threat to Cat and Vincent's relationship, which is what the rest of the episode remains around, minus a few other things sprinkled in to create conflict in later episodes. Vincent also gets a new power, night vision!

Because of the nature of the TV format, it's easy to forget these are actors and think of them as characters and so I apologise that I don't really talk about the acting enough in my TV reviews. I know I have criticised the actors in this show before, but this week the acting was really, really impressive. New character Alex was portrayed by Bridget Regan who gave the kind of clever, restrained, subtle performance you don't often find in shows like this. Taking Cat away from her cases was for the best, Kreuk is one of the least convincing detectives I've ever seen on TV but she does a damn fine job of looking hurt while Vincent fucks her around. And Evan, as portrayed by Max Brown, is such an extremely nice person, it runs the risk of making him feel one dimensional but he portrays it with such believability and charm, I never find myself rolling my eyes.

What's that you say, taking Kreuk away from her cases? Yes! It looks like the show finally stopped being so stubborn and decided to take some fan criticism on board and shape itself justly and I can't express to you how much better the show was for it. This is easily one of, if not the best, episode of the show so far. Although the action still largely remains, Seeing Red was all about the romance, all about the characters and wasn't trying to juggle itself with a pointless case of the week which meant it was able to get on with all the stuff the audience wanted for once.

For the record, after this episode, I'm firmly in the Team Evan camp. I know this is a review, so I'll keep this down to a minimum but as an actual criticism of the show, Vincent is a cunt. He basically spends the episode lying to everyone and blaming his mistakes on other people, as good looking as Vincent is, all his charm seemed lost this episode. And as Evan was at the same time running around to do everything he physically could for Cat and considering Cat barely seems to notice and he still does everything he can to help her anyway, it only adds a further sense of sincerity and selflessness to Evan, that Vincent just doesn't have.

I think part of the reason I enjoy this show so much is a sense of real danger, despite Supernatural featuring apocalypses, monsters and everything in between, as the show progressed the stakes got bigger around the brothers but the brothers themselves seemed to have less and less to lose. Eventually the show was forced to have things awkwardly shoehorned in to be pulled out again to give a sense of threat and danger that was completely superficial. And I suppose largely because Beauty and The Beast is still in its infancy, the danger and threat still feels immediate and real. Like I know I complained in the past that Vincent has no 'real' threats but I meant that in a physical sense. And  although that doesn't really change this episode sadly, the episode really reminded me that there are other ways to threaten a monster, than just with another monster.

For example Seeing Red featured two direct threats to Vincent. One was him stumbling back into Alex and deciding to reveal himself, which admittedly felt a little out of character, but nonetheless added a new layer of believable tension. And the second was Vincent's evolution and the unknown of what he could turn into. I would complain about the shows incredible ability to always find a way to cock block Vincent but at least the show bothers to set these things up from the start. Vincent is a mystery to be unravelled by the show and as important and interesting as his evolution is, his past is still just as fascinating to us as an audience.

I have to say though, the general shittiness of Meerfield does make certain elements of the show hard to swallow. Vincent took them down with surprising ease, with little help and Meerfield haven't stepped up to do anything since which leaves me to ask, if it was that easy to fight back, why has he been on the run so long? Why did he commit to so much self sacrifice? You could argue that his friends and family don't have the same superpowers he does, but I'm pretty sure he could rescue and save anyone Meerfield put in danger to get to him. There just doesn't seem to be as much risk in involved in this as the show is trying to suggest there is. It doesn't help that this week the mention of Meerfield was largely a red herring for what turned out to just be a stalker. Sure stalkers are horrible in real life but they provide little threat to our hulking monster man.

Seeing Red was a surprisingly intense and action packed opening for the second half of the season, which holds a lot of promise for greater things to come. I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the introduction of Alex and the further backpedaling the show may end up doing in the future but I still enjoyed this episode hell of a lot.

Pros;

• I love the episodes sense of urgency. 
• I love how action packed this show actually turns out to be.
• Believable, out of the box danger.
• Great acting.
• The episode had a much better sense of focus.
• Evan!

Cons;

• Was Vincent always this much of a dick?
• Meerfield seem more mouth than dick.
• I'm not really sure how I feel about Alex.

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate 'Seeing Red'?