Beauty and the Beast 3.09 – Cat’s Out of the Bag

by Mieke Trudeau

 

“Do you believe in destiny now?”

After the horrific mess at their wedding, Cat is understandably scared. As she proclaimed at the end of last week’s episode, she is done, and you can’t really blame her. Admittedly, her idea to go after Liam the old fashioned way, with methodical police work, is really not a bad one especially since it ends up getting Tess out of the hot water she has found herself in at work. But is it really possible for her to simply wash her hands of the whole affair and make it someone else’s problem?

Once again, in this week’s episode, Cat’s Out of the Bag, Beauty and the Beast is taking us to the threshold between myth and reality, destiny and coincidence. As has been the case pretty much all season, the title is spot on (kudos to whoever comes up with these every week), since the whole hour long we see Cat in denial of her deeper purpose; her role in the fight against the super human beast creating machine that has plagued her and hers for centuries now. Tess is able to see through Cat’s bravado fairly easily as she recognizes that her best friend is acting out of fear and an enormous sense of guilt. Cat feels that she is the one who has started her friends and family down this path that leads to nothing but heartache, death and destruction. As much as everyone else, including the usually reluctant Vincent, is more than ever on board with this “greater purpose”, it is Cat who is now on the outside, pushing back against her destiny.

Catherine’s plan is to not only find Liam and arrest him, like he’s any other suspect in a run of the mill murder case, she also no longer tries to cover up any of the super human and beast involvement. In fact the complex nature of the case and the presence of an internationally hunted fugitive more than qualifies the case of Julianna’s murder and Liam’s involvement to be kicked back to the Department of Homeland Security. Of course Cat and Tess spin it to be about some new dangerous street drug, rather than a super beast serum, but those are semantics at this point. Catherine argues this is the end of their responsibilities and a chance to finally move on with their lives, but of course it doesn’t quite work out that way.

Heather and JT play out this push and pull of reality against myth very nicely in the episode. As the little sister who is only just learning the depths of Vincent and Cat’s story, Heather is reluctant to buy into the whole destiny thing. She just wants her big sis safe and happy and it’s hard enough to adjust to the existence of beasts, let alone some centuries old plot that is playing itself out through Vincent and Catherine. JT, the scientist and probably the most pragmatic of the bunch, can relate to her skepticism, but he has been with Vincent from the very beginning of this journey and he feels that their fate is undeniable in the face of their every day reality. JT tries to get Heather on board, because the gang is all worried about what they see as Cat sticking her head in the sand. As Tess points out; things don’t usually turn out too well when Vincent and Cat aren’t in sync, and JT worries that Vincent won’t be able to fight this new threat without Cat by his side. In the end it’s not Rebecca’s journal, or even a visit with Cat’s father in prison that persuades Heather and therefore also Cat, that there is no escaping fate; it is the fact that danger finds our friends no matter how hard they try to avoid it and that it takes all of them working together to get out of it. If Vincent hadn’t used his beast powers to track down Liam’s henchmen and burst in at just the right moment, Heather and JT would have been blown to smithereens. And if Cat and Tess hadn’t used their excellent policing skills, coming in guns blazing when they did, Vincent would have been shot dead. Even JT’s nerd skills saved the day when he used a video game and chemistry to distract the bad guys long enough for Heather and him to retreat to the temporary safety of his vault.

In the button scene on the rooftop, at this point so much the symbol of their relationship that Cat admits that they will have to get another place with a rooftop terrace should they ever move, Vincent sums up the motto of the whole episode and perhaps the series when he says that he is on board with pretty much anything, as long as they do it together. Perhaps this is how we all feel, don’t you agree, Beasties?

I think this was a slightly weaker episode in the recent spate of excellent ones. The performances were great, as always, but it seemed to be a bit of a filler that mostly served to get Tess out of the professional mess she was in. It is always best to get Vincent and Cat back on track together and the plot moved Heather from the periphery of the Scooby gang to a full-fledged member, but overall it didn’t quite pack the punch I have come to expect this season. The episode did raise some intriguing questions and going forward those will be interesting to see explored. There seemed to be some foreshadowing that JT’s brush with beast powers isn’t quite as behind him as we thought and it also appears that the plot will circle back to Vincent and Cat’s connection to their ancestors; Rebecca and Alistair.

Where do you see the story lead us, Beasties? Is it all coincidence or it is fate? Do you believe? Tell me your thoughts and fears in a comment below.