Beauty and The Beast: S01E16 - Insatiable.

Last week started Beauty and The Beast off with a dramatic return but I was wary to get my hopes up after the quality so quickly declined last time. But let's see what this week brings us.


I really wish with such an ensemble cast that the focus wasn't always on Vincent and Cat. I mean don't get me wrong, the opening scene of the episode was stunning and I get as frustrated as anyone else that the show tries so hard to keep them apart. The difference now is, than say at the start of the season, most of the stuff around Vincent and Cat is sadly a lot more interesting than their romance and deserves a lot more screen time.

For example, Joe, who has largely been scenery through the whole season was given a major plotthread in the form of Vincent killing his brother to save Cat's sister. With a plot like that you'd expect him catapulted right to the forefront so we can see his world crumbling in real time, to give emotional punch when we finally see him snap... nope! The chief of police having his baby brother killed by our lead man deserves more than a handful of scenes of Joe belittling his female coworkers and going off on one in front of the DA.

Another muddled example of this is Tess. As the cases of the week were dropped Tess hasn't really had a lot to do other than to occasionally add a little more romance to the show by flirting with Joe. But this week she got the opportunity to explore a very interesting subplot and of course...it was wasted. She went over the entire vigilante case, talking to the victims and rebuilding her image of the vigilante. The image she got from the people he saved was some kind of werewolf superhero and despite being a detective, she decided to largely ignore all talk of his heroics and obsess over the claims he wasn't human...you know like real detectives do which in turn leads into an unintentionally hilarious scene where she actually raises her 'pattern' about him being something other than human to the chief of police, then she seemed mad he took the piss, what the hell did you expect would happen? And that wasn't even as mind-numbing as her shooting Vincent at the end, you've shown uncanny detective skills throughout the whole episode there Tess...

Although I think the best example of this is Evan. Evan is by far the most interesting person in the show, he had an in person experience with Vincent that led him on a crusade to both find the truth and ultimately protect Cat from it. A crusade that led him right into the arms of the bigbad Muirfield. Each week his character and motivations become more complex, he is driven further and further into an existential crisis but since he, much like Joe, is just a piece of scenery aside from key moments all of his character arc is ultimately happening off-screen and if we can't see what is going through his head to drive his thoughts and decisions then his actions become defined only by themselves in a black and white sense. And with only his actions to go on, Evan may as well have been a villain which basically completely undermines the character you are trying to get across.

Ultimately I just can't really appreciate what is happening to anyone outside of Cat or Vincent because we never get moments with them that aren't directly related to the plot at hand and sure the episode and show in general tries to weave in and out of the different characters lives, but this isn't a themepark ride, I don't want to come in halfway through their story. I know Cat and Vince is why we are here but you can't tease all these interesting things in the background and never bring them to the foreground, that doesn't lead to satisfying viewing.

Considering the ridiculous amount of covering up Cat has done throughout the season I really don't think they did enough to convince us that Vincent was at such a risk that he needed to give himself up in an elaborate plot involving a month old corpse and burning down his home. Thankfully the final ten or so minutes of the episode were really explosive and tense as both the cops, Muirfield and Tess all arrived around the same time leading to lots of shooting, a big explosion and raw emotion, taking an otherwise pretty weak episode out on a high note.

Ultimately my biggest problem with Beauty and The Beast at the minute, hopefully as expressed by this review, is priorities. When Vincent and Cat were first discovering one another and all their scenes were balanced by were incompetent Muirfield and filler cases of the week their romance was the most interesting aspect of the show. Since then the show has tried to make itself more complex and has attempted to give each of their characters something more to do and this would all be great but everything they add to the plot or its characters largely plays around in the background and although we are all here to see Cat and Vincent be all mushy with one another frankly everything happening in the background now is much more interesting than anything happening in the foreground and that is a problem.

Pros;

• Cat and Vincent are lovely together.
• At least they gave poor Tess a little more to do.
• Evan is still the most interesting character in the show, even if they try hard to not let him be.
• The final ten minutes or so were pretty great, minus Tess' trigger happy moment.

Cons;

• Basically everything interesting is happening in the background. 
• Tess was an idiot.
• You played Evan as a villain, you fucks!
• Although fun, those final ten minutes were a little unconvincing. 

Think About It!

-Locke

What would you rate, 'Insatiable'?