Beauty and the Beast #3.4 “Heart of the Matter” Recap & Review

Editor’s note: Ian’s recap & review of “The Most Dangerous Beast” will be posted later on Thursday, July 16. Our apologies for the delays in getting this up – not Ian’s fault! Blame Comic-Con!

In the Beauty and the Beast episode “Heart of the Matter,” Vincent and Catherine seek the aid of a couples counselor to help them solve their pre-marital issues. Catherine’s newest case deals with a stolen heart… literally. Tess starts her new job as captain and is already feeling the strain. And JT throws himself multiple pity parties and even throws himself down the stairs. Don’t worry, he’s fine.

Two Sides of the Same Coin

I’ve very much enjoyed how each week the problems between Vincent and Catherine evolve and grow naturally. They don’t have a new set of problems each week, they have the same problems that they haven’t been able to figure out yet. Just like a real couple. As two sides of the same coin, their world revolves around one another, but they are frequently facing opposite directions when problems in their relationship arise. Those problems have now built to the point where they decide to seek some outside help and visit a marriage counselor, Dr. Glenroy (guest star Saul Rubinek). The good doctor helps untangle their issues to try to get to the, yup, heart of the matter. So let’s take a closer look at those issues that were brought up, shall we?

Avoidance

It makes sense that Vincent has avoidance issues. He was on the run, masquerading as a dead man, for ten years. Avoidance from day to day life and anything that could make him happy, he had to do this purely to survive. Not only that, but then there is the beast factor. He avoids that part of himself, and any situation that could bring out the beast within him. The problem is, just as it is for any normal person, avoiding, or ignoring, the problem doesn’t make it go away. In fact, in most cases that just makes things worse. He keeps suppressing his beast half and only letting himself go “primal” when it’s absolutely necessary. It’s understandable; last season he let his beast side rule his decisions too often. This frequently led to people ending up dead at his (clawed) hands. Even in the first season, where he had much more compassion in his heart, he found it hard to control his beast side. So his solution is to suppress it, but, as I have said before, I think that is just making his beast side more uncontrollable when he inevitably has to let it out. This isn’t going to lead to anything good for our hero.

Catherine, too, has avoidance issues, but hers are of a less extreme and much different nature. I think instead of avoiding difficult situations she throws herself into them. It’s personal relationships and a sense of normalcy that she tends to avoid. She rarely has time for anyone (especially Heather) or anything if it falls outside of her current mission. Her true problem, really, is obsession. Which leads into…

Saving Each Other

I started to wonder at the beginning of this episode why Cat is so obsessed with finding out who is behind these experiments. Yes there is the whole “bigger destiny” thing, but that really just doesn’t seem to be enough of a motivation. And yes, she and Vincent are the only ones left to know what is really going on after Agent Thomas and Agent Barnett were killed. But they were federal agents working on the case and it would be up to their superiors to go through whatever information they left behind and take it from there. Maybe she feels as though it’s her fault she and Vincent are involved in this and wants to do everything she can to get to the bottom of this to keep Vincent safe from people like Bob & Carol and keep him from having to beast out. I do believe part of it is her wanting to save him, as they have always done for one another, but the thing is… Vincent doesn’t need saving. He’s in a safer and more stable position than he has ever been, at least when it comes to outside threats. Maybe Catherine recognizes that and feels a void within herself in her need to be saving him, that she has supplanted that on the victims of these experiments. What if Catherine feels like she always needs to be saving someone? She has been go go go in her quest to protect Vincent since she met him and now that he doesn’t need that protection anymore she has to find someone else to protect.

The only time Vincent really needs “saving” is when he goes primal and is about to kill somebody, Catherine being the only one who can calm him down. He thinks that Catherine resents him for always having to bring him back from the edge. I can see this, as it touches on the issue of him feeling as if her life was better before he came into it. At least, he used to feel that way. And even though they love each other and admit time and again that they are better together, it wouldn’t be surprising if a part of him still feels that way. That no matter what they do her life will always be in danger because of him and she will continue to have to risk her safety and her job to keep the beast in check.

I think he has resentment of his own, in a way, because Catherine is the one that keeps putting him in the position to need to be saved. She plows into dangerous situations in her quest to save people (whether it be Vincent or otherwise) and he can’t let her do it alone and, of course, they end up needing him to beast out and she has to save him from himself. What a vicious cycle. No wonder he’s fed up with it. He keeps trying to have a life away from these types of things, avoiding and neglecting her (sometimes) valid reasons for being involved in these cases, and she keeps reeling him back in.

True, there is no nefarious intent behind either of their motives. The bottom line is that they love each other, would do anything for one another, and are in this together til the end. Although, as the good doctor pointed out, is their “better together” attitude a form of co-dependency?

Co-Dependent: Yes/No?

The theme of last season, according to the writers, was “Who Am I?” The couple was broken up and forced to figure out who they were separately from one another. Unfortunately, due to the structure of the season and its plotline, Vincent and Catherine rarely were able to actually be apart. Still, they did both have some individual growth. I think Vincent fared much better in this, in terms of the progression of his character, for he went through so much change. He began the season as a completely different person, robbed of his memories. Just because he eventually got those memories back didn’t erase the new persona he had created without them. That new Vincent was much darker, more inline with his beast side, and quick to use violence to obtain his goals. After he got his memories back, he became a blend of what he had been before his abduction and what he became after. It was a new internal struggle that he had to deal with, a battle between the compassionate and more humane person he had been and the rogue loner who would do what it takes to get things done. His discovery was that in order to balance all of these warring personas he would need the one person who had always been the key to that: Catherine.

For Catherine herself, she kept trying to move on and distance herself from Vincent. She even wondered why she felt this incessant connection to him after everything he had done, which led her to the revelation that a part of her felt like she owed him after he initially saved her from her mother’s killers. Even if she did feel like that, though, the true connection is her love for Vincent. That’s what draws them back together, no matter what the circumstances.

That leads into the theme of Season Three, “Who Are We?” They can’t be apart, they’ve figured that out, so who are they together as a couple? That’s the new question on the table and is a work in progress, as we’ve seen. Their engagement is a melding of two lives, but in some ways they have taken that too far. They are involved in every piece of each other’s lives and are constantly being pulled from their own individual pursuits. Vincent isn’t able to devote himself to his role as a doctor because he is always being pulled away to help Catherine. Meanwhile, Catherine has a yearning to do something bigger with her life and find people to save, but still wants to spend time with Vincent and be a part of the “normal” life he desires. So there’s a lot of back and forth going on.

Are Vincent and Catherine co-dependent? Not completely, but as Dr. Glenroy said, they do have the tendencies. They are fully committed to each other, but that is keeping them from fully committing to their separate wants and needs. As they are learning, that can lead to resentment. This week’s case showed that with enough time that resentment can lead to some very dark places. I doubt either of them would ever go as far as trying to kill one another, but it still is an important lesson for them.

Save the Cheerleader, Save the– Wait, Wrong Show

When it was revealed that JT’s power was the ability to self-heal, my first thought was, “Gah, I hope he doesn’t become some psychopath like Claire from Heroes.” I hated her almost masochistic need to hurt herself in that series and didn’t want the same to happen to our loveable genius. Unfortunately, when we first see JT in this episode he throws himself down a flight of stairs. Okay, I get that as a scientist he feels the need to experiment and run tests, but seriously? If I had the power to heal, I still wouldn’t put myself in harms way. Just because you can heal, it still hurts!

I feel like Mr. Forbes needs some counseling of his own. His emotions were kind of all over the place in this episode. He goes from elation over his new power, to fear about about what it could lead to, to excitement about a possible cure, to moping in a bar and whining that no one cars about him. He seemed to be in a different mood in every scene and it was a bit jarring to watch. But it’s understandable. I was just reading in a book on therapy about the myriad of emotions we can feel about one thing (excitement, fear, anger) and how that affects us and how we deal with it. That’s what JT is going through right now. He gets a really cool power (something geeks like him, and myself, dream about), but where this power came from, who created it, why they created, and the fact that it could lead to him drilling a hole in his head are all weighing on him.

The worst part is that he thinks that no one cares. In the case of Vincent and Catherine this is kind of true. Those two are always so wrapped up in their own issues that they often ignore, or dilute the severity of, the problems of their friends. The way they treated JT when he was in recovery and not able to mentally heal from the injuries he sustained last season was one thing. They wanted him to get over it, he was healed, he should be fine. However, that was before they all found out that JT was healed by the same serum being used on the other experiments. When they did know, and even after JT’s healing abilities came to light, they still act like they don’t care. Catherine goes on and on about wanting to save the innocent victims of these experiments, but ignores the victim that they have right in their own group! Frankly, I was surprised she was able to pull herself out of her own obsessive headspace to recognize JT’s pain. The guy learns that one of the experiments killed herself because her ability drove her to insanity and Catherine’s all, “I didn’t realize you were worried about this.” Uh, ya think? I get that Catherine and Vincent have pretty big problems of their own to deal with, but they frequently use their friends for their own gain and fail to support them in their times of need.

Luckily, JT has the unflinching support of Tess. His treatment of her in this episode really bothered me. He complains for the entire episode that no one cares about him and gets mad at Tess for not being around, but he’s the one who wouldn’t answer his damn phone! She was trying to call him for the entire episode and he says she doesn’t care? Get off your high horse, buddy. The woman has a job, an important new job, and can’t be there to hold your hand 24/7. But even though she is busy, her priority is still you and she tried to show you that by calling you and you wouldn’t answer! … Yeah, I know JT can’t hear me. The point is that Tess has done nothing but show her support for JT and his treatment of her really bugged me. I’ll let it slide, though, since he’s probably being driven insane by creepy genetic serums.

How It All Came Together

Helmed by newcomers to our show, writing team Ron Osborn & Jeff Reno and director Rich Newey crafted an episode with quite a different structure than we are used to on this show, but perfectly fits in with the more “romantic comedy” style of this season. The flashback concept is nothing new in terms of film making, but it was a fun element to use for this episode to deftly keep balance between the pre-marital issues our main characters face and the action of the stolen heart story. The counseling sessions nicely hit of each one of our couple’s issues, bringing much to light and giving growth to our characters. Catherine using what she learned to help solve the case was a great way to tie the two stories together.

Once again I have to praise the writers and show runner Brad Kern for managing to have such a wide variety of tone in this season, but keeping them all in balance so everything flows naturally. Some shows have great difficulty when mixing light and dark stories that it can seem jarring when switching between them and sometimes feel as if they are two separate episodes jammed into one. Not the case here. I find myself laughing, gasping or jumping at exciting moments, having my heart melt during the romantic bits, and nothing feels out of place. Kudos to the entire production team for their excellent work.

Much of that praise has two go to our two leading actors, as well. Kristin and Jay have such wonderful chemistry and their banter and bickering is seamless and perfectly timed. They must put a lot of work in being able to talk at the same time when answering questions and the results are hilarious. Nothing seems forced between the two of them and they never fail to portray the love these two characters have for one another. I’ve seen many shows where a couple frequently fights and you wonder why the characters are even together. Not so with these two. They may fight, but their love for one another never comes into question and that’s evident in the performances. My favorite scene has to be where they are stuck in the freezer. “I do love you.” “I love you, too, Vincent. … Now blast the freaking door down, will you?!”

Speaking of their arguments. One of the things I loved about this episode was that I found myself continuously switching whose side I was on. Not to say that I necessarily need to, or should, take sides. But most of the time when I watch a show where a pair of people have an argument I usually agree with one character over the other. Here it is so easy to see both sides of the argument and understand where each of them is coming from. At one point in the episode I’d be rolling my eyes with Vincent and angry at Catherine for pulling him away from his work, then at another I’d be yelling at Vincent for not believing Catherine when she was obviously on the right track. This makes the characters feel more like real people and very much like a normal couple.

When it comes to the episode’s A-plot– Actually, scratch that. Vincent and Catherine are our A-plot. When it comes to the episode’s B-plot of Mrs. Zalman’s attempt to kill her husband, I very much enjoyed that it turned out to have nothing to do with the season’s genetic experiments arc. Sure, the heart was serum enhanced, but the Zalman’s had nothing to do with it. In a strange way it’s just nice to see “normal” crimes being committed on the show once again. Which, by the way, I would think Tess would be happy about. I get her not wanting to cover for Cat all the time, but this didn’t turn out to be a beast case. If Catherine hadn’t gotten involved then the heart would have remained stolen and Mr. Zalman, a prominent figure and philanthropist, would have died. Seems like a win for the 125th in my book.

A part of the search for the missing heart that I liked was Vincent’s senses being thrown off by the meat factory. When they introduced his heightened tracking abilities last year it was obvious it would quickly become a power that would be a hinderance to storytelling. Thankfully they’ve been able to reign in this ability in a realistic way. First in “Primal Fear” with the air being too charged with electricity, and now here with all the blood confusing Vincent’s senses. Both would throw any predatory animal off the scent. Hopefully they keep this up. We don’t want Vincent to be too powerful, but we also don’t want them pulling technobabble reasons out of their butts about why they can’t beam up the away team. Whoops, wrong show again.

Finally, I just want to say how excited I was to have Saul Rubinek as part of the guest cast. He played the role of the marriage counselor adequately, but I really wish he had gotten a part with more meat to it. He is a phenomenal actor and can do so much more. I started watching Warehouse 13 again a few nights ago to get my fix because his part as Dr. Glenroy just wasn’t enough. I really hope to see him return to the show and they give him more to do.

To Sum Up

A really fun episode with our characters looking back, so that they can move forward. More tidbits of the genetic experiments came to light, moving the season’s main arc along at a good pace.

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