Beauty and the Beast, episodes 2 +3 - oct 18 + 25

Two weeks ago I started to watch Showcase's "Beauty and the Beast" series, and I found them wanting. Last night I watched the show again, and my opinion didn't change.

Here's the developed premise. Catherine is a police officer who seeks to uncover the truth behind her mother's murder 9 years ago. Vincent was a soldier in the US Army, who became a lab rat for an attempt to create a "super-soldier" and experienced an epic fail on one hand and is legally dead on the other. 9 years ago Vince saved Cat from some unknown assassins and Cat had had issues ever since – a fact that didn't prevent Cat from developing issues, or becoming a policewoman.

Sounds straightforward, almost cliché-like? That's because Catherine and Vincent are clichéd characters that… do not have any connection to the titular fairy tale.

Let me elaborate. In theory, I suppose, the show's scriptwriters and producers took the original fairy tale (or the Disney version of it) and adapted it to a more feminist outlook (i.e. Cat and Tess the police officers). They also modernized it, as opposed to a more historical setting used by the CBS show in the past.

But… you can borrow someone else's material and change it only so much before it becomes something else – original content, for example. In Showcase's case, this resulted in a show whose titular 'Beast', Vincent, has more in common with the Hulk of the Marvel comic- and movie-verse than with the original Beast.

Well, that may be unfair. One of the ideas behind the original fairy tale was that to a newly married woman (Belle) a husband is something of a beast or a monster that changes to a handsome fellow over time. In time that mated to a concept that there's a monster inside any man (the werewolf legend, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Hulk, etc.) so in a certain way Vincent the super-soldier is an heir to that tradition.

But… as the Hulk had shown, one does not need to be called a Beast to get in touch with their inner monster, and Vince, with his super-soldier situation is more closely connected to the Hulk than to the original Beast. Hence, the show's title actually impedes and restricts the character's development rather than helps.

The same goes for Catherine. The original/Disney beauty (Belle) may've been passive and old-fashioned girl by modern standards, but Disney at least made it work: Belle did indeed save the Beast by the power of her love and turned him back into the handsome prince (implying that love can make a man out of any monster) without being a sort of a warrior princess as Mulan or Rapunzel (from "Tangled") are.

In turn, this means that there was no reason for Catherine to have become a police officer to become a Belle-like character that keeps Vincent human (as shown by Showcase's latest episode). In fact, her occupation appears to be at odds with her character role, or rather – diminishes it, because Catherine and Belle are too different to be similar. Sounds stupid, I know, but still true. Two different characters act differently in the same situation and to create Catherine as an independent character and then expect her to be a stand-in for Belle just doesn't work – at least in my opinion.

In particular, that concerns Catherine's relationship with Joe Bishop, the police medic. Obviously, he's supposed to be a rival for Catherine's attention with Vincent and the more socially popular one – sort of like Gaston in the Disney movie. And it's true that Disney's Gaston was a 2-D character, a braggart and a blowhard, but in case of Catherine and Vincent it's the same. Cat is a cop obsessed with justice and little to no social life; Vincent is a suffering vigilante without any social life. As I wrote before, BtVS's Angel and Buffy has done something very similar before much more successfully; and as for DC Comics' "Batman" series – they basically own those heroic types. Just like Disney's Gaston, Cat and Vince are clichés and Joe Bishop, on the other hand, is much more likeable character.

Of course, that is also because of acting: Kristin Kreuk (Cat) and Jay Ryan (Vince) simply are not very convincing actors, they appear stiff and wooden, pretending to like each other so obviously, that nobody believes them. Or, more precisely, Jay Ryan is stiff and wooden; Kristin Kreuk appears to be overacting instead. (So does J.T. Forbes – Austin Basis.) Either way, the end result is the same: total lack of acting credibility from the show's main characters at the very least, and as for the plot…

Yes, there supposed to be conflict not just between the show's protagonists and their opponents, but also between themselves. Sadly, coupled with Kristin and Jay's poor acting (not that Austin improves things any) this makes the conflict very glaring and obnoxious, making one wonder just how long can the two go on and why should Cat and Vince have the relationship? Maybe that is the show's intention, but I doubt that it intended to approach this situation from such a direction.

Case in point: the next episode, where, will Cat and Tess deal with the case of an abused boy left for dead, the villains approach Cat with an offer of exchanging information about the death of Cat's mother for Vincent. Cat will waver and Vincent will plan to give himself up in return for Cat's safety. How more clichéd can you get? I have no idea, and am not sure that I want to find out – i.e., I am not sure that will continue watching this show. Considering that the show's audience has already gone down by 0.78 million views between just the first two episodes, I'm not the only one either.

Comments? Critiques?

Beauty and the Beast, ep 1 - Oct 11

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.