Beauty and the Beast - Season 1 Episode 2 - Recap and Review - Proceed With Caution

I'll say this for "Proceed With Caution," the second episode of The CW's nightmarish Beauty and the Beast reboot: it's better than the premiere. With that already-low bar cleared, we can explore why it's better, and whether it might actually portend a better show to come. That said, I can't think of a better title for this episode than "Proceed With Caution." It's an improvement, but the compliment comes with a host of reservations...

First and foremost, this show just doesn't need to be a procedural at all. The case of the week involves a ballerina thrown off the top of a building, and the investigation leads through the twisted network of her acquaintances and the increasingly volatile relationships in her life, particularly with her director and her understudy. It reads as something of a low-rent Black Swan, with an ambitious understudy and a benign director masking a deeper creep factor underneath. Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme...

The case itself isn't uninteresting, really. It's just uninspired. So much of the procedural aspect of the show feels like Fisher-Price presents CSI, a cop show without all the myriad complexities, and all the dirt and grime buffed out for mass consumption. There isn't really anything wrong with that approach, per se, but to take that tact, the case has to provide some greater insight into the show's characters, developing them through their jobs, in much the way Grimm develops Nick and essentially teaches him how to be a Grimm via the cases he encounters each week. There's no such development here, at least not of any real substance. Much of the second episode is spent merely recapitulating the information we got in the pilot, starting with a truly dreadful opening narration in which both leads take turns restating the premise of the series. Catherine (Kristin Kreuk) lost her mother nine years ago when two armed men basically assassinate her, coming within moments of shooting Cat, before Vincent (Jay Ryan) comes to her rescue. Vincent has a beastly id that comes out in violent bursts, the result of a secret Special Forces military unit to which he was conscripted, with the experiments to create the perfect soldier going terribly awry. The military went about murdering all the subjects to silence them, with Vincent getting away. He now hides in his cushy loft with his scientist friend, J.T. Forbes (Austin Basis), who is understandably fearful of the government kicking down his door at any moment. Last week, it felt like he was being set up to play the comic relief, the bumbling partner to the heart throb romantic lead, but he seems more like the foil this week, the symbolic presence of the government around every corner, a reminder for Vincent, and for the audience, to keep one eye open at all times.

Of course, last week's pilot culminated in Vincent's revelation that the murder of Cat's mother wasn't a random occurrence. He said this so that Cat could finally let go of her guilt over putting her mother in the situation that led to her death, since her mother had been present to give her car battery a jump. However, instead of letting go (and come on, Vincent was crazy to think she would, in the first place), Cat unofficially reopens her mother's investigation, trying to figure out what her mother knew that would require her being silenced. Cat discovers some files among her mother's old things, a study in DNA and gene therapy that she forwards to Vincent, believing that it might be a clue. Vincent, however, has no real interest in pursuing the investigation, nor is J.T. keen on letting him, getting testy with Cat at every opportunity. After going over the notes, Vincent breaks it to Cat that the report has nothing to do with the experiment that made him a beast (because the real tragedy is spending the rest of your life looking like a Hollister model, I guess). Of course, Cat has no intention of letting it go. And so on and so forth...

It's a back-and-forth storyline that doesn't feel like as weighty as it could be, yet I actually think it's the episode's best strength. What this show needs is an overarching narrative to ground it in some semblance of reality. I feel as though the series thinks that this is what the "case of the week" conceit does, but it really just makes each episode feel far more jumbled with narrative excesses than is necessary. The presence of a central mystery for Cat and Vincent to solve is far more compelling than the ephemeral exercises in redundancy that Cat and her overly sarcastic partner, Tess Vargas (Nina Lisandrello), are given to solve each week. There's a broader story to tell about loyalty and the catalyzing effects of grief, and the show would be well-served in telling that story. Cat and Vincent are already partners, after a fashion, so it wouldn't be that big of a stretch to have them pursuing those responsible for the project that maimed Vincent and murdering Cat's mother. It gives us a better opportunity than the standard procedural cases offer in getting to know these characters, particularly Cat, whose younger sister has been staying with her. It provides us the opportunity to see that Cat was once relatively normal, as she says, before her life spiraled out of control with her mother's death. Any details we can get help us to engage with the characters, such as Vincent's memories of his old platoon back in the military, each one dead, the figurative ghosts of his former comrades haunting him to this day. These details the things that are going to help the series, going forward, even if the details are simply about how Cat's father is getting remarried. We need more character moments, and fewer shaky-cam fight sequences like the dreadful bit of business we got tonight, an attack in a back alley by a hitman sent to kill Catherine, culminating in Vincent inadvertently killing the man. I can appreciate what they're going for, but this show doesn't need to come across as cheesier than it already does. However, if you're going to commit to cheesiness, then really commit to it.

"Proceed With Caution" is hardly the finest hour of television on Thursday nights, but it's still far from the worst. There's at least some semblance of growth here, the attempt to become something more than the sum of its parts. And if nothing else, that's admirable.