Yesterday I watched the pilot episode of Showcase's "Beauty and the Beast". What can be said about it?
For a start, confronted with such fantasy shows as "Grimm", "Once Upon a Time", their own "Lost Girl", etc, where fantasy and mystery genres collide, Showcase made B&B more Gothic, rather than fantasy and also more modern. The Beast, Vincent, is an ex-veteran of fighting in Afgan, where he apparently started mutating into a "monster", while Beauty is police officer Catherine, who seeks to find the criminals who killed her mother and almost killed her.
Does this sounds cliched? Certainly, for the plot of Vincent (Jay Ryan) and Catherine (Kristin Kreuk) is very much influenced by "Buffy's" relationship between the titular heroine (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Angel the vampire (David Boreanas) back in the 1990s. This means that Vincent and Catherine's relationship will have lots of angst, with Vincent's friend J.T. (Austin Bates) providing the occasional comic relief (and Austin isn't very good at it).
That's the more Gothic plotline. The second plotline, apparently is Catherine and her partner Vargas (Nina Lisandrello) go around solving crimes, as Rizzoli and Isles do, only without the lesbian subtext, since Catherine's "one true love" is Vincent. (Otherwise, the whole "Beauty and the Beast" idea is null and void.) That said, the detective portion of the show is good, showing very intense psychological work, similar to Disney's idea (in "Hunchback of Notre Dame") - "what makes a monster, what makes a man"? Guess B&B are going to show the audience, while the FBI appears to be the show's main bad guys, fighting Vincent for unknown reasons, and also possibly being connected to the death of Catherine's mom.
Sounds exciting? Perhaps, yet Ryan and Kreuk pull off the Gothic angle much more poorly than Boreanas and Geller did. When those two interact, it's the weakest part of the show, at least of the pilot. Guess they're just not a good couple, they lack the chemistry!
And speaking of what was lacking, DW came back today to Spike channel, at least from the first two seasons out of three. Its episodes were intermingled with episodes of other Spike series, like "1000 ways to die" and "Repo games". Coupled with the fact that throughout September DW's Facebook page was bombarded with links to the show's clips, all connected... to the upcoming Halloween makes me wonder if DW doesn't plan to return with a fourth season or something like that, or at least a holiday special. Got to admit, it was missed and its' return was appreciated.
So, a rather lopsided new show, and an old one coming back (at least temporarily). It could've been worse.
You're welcome.
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