Beauty And The Beast #3.2 “Primal Fear” Recap & Review

Last Thursday gave us the second episode of Beauty and the Beast Season 3, titled “Primal Fear.” While Vincent and Catherine deal with the trials and tribulations of moving in with one another, J.T. fears what the serum he was injected with could be turning him into. Meanwhile, another genetic experiment (guest Zach Appelman) is on an electric rampage in his quest to survive.

Coming off of the premiere’s dark and intimate character piece, this episode loses none of that characterization while hitting more of a variety of moods all in perfect balance. Even with the themes of fear and commitment, along with the threat of an electric-powered killer, this whirlwind hour of television was just plain fun. It’s been a long time since this show has had the freedom to do an episode like this, the second season being very constricting in that consideration in its plot and character conflicts. This year’s story-arc looks to be a little more freeing, allowing the character’s the chance to live their lives in addition to their involvement in the hunt for super-human genetic experiments. With the premiere getting the set-up out of the way, the writers are able to dive into the nitty gritty of “normal” life, which leads to some very funny moments.

They wanted normal…

Living with someone isn’t easy, especially when you’re romantically involved, and the moving-in process is one of the hardest bits of the whole shebang. It’s hard enough when two people are buying a place together, but much worse when one of them is moving into the other’s already established home. The first scene between Vincent and Catherine was perfect in its realistic portrayal of this step in their relationship. No beasty-ness required, this would have played just as well on any other show. But that element does lend itself to some much deeper layers for our characters. It’s not just the fact that Vincent has been living on his own for the past year, with his best friend before that, and hasn’t been able to have a stable living situation with the constant threat of Muirfield hanging over him for more than a decade. While this is all certainly important and adds to the mix of commitment issues, the fact is that Vincent is a beast. He has animal instincts within of the kind that relate to a predator in the wild; the urges and drive to be a loner, a hunter on the run. It’s another aspect to his internal war and the main drive behind Vincent’s fears for this episode. Catherine has always been the key to keeping the beast within Vincent calm, but when she is the one putting the beast on edge…

Speaking of, I’m glad they’re building off of the issues from the previous episode. Too many shows wrap up all the problems by episode’s end and ignore they ever happened to make room for a slew of new problems. It’s nice to see our show incorporate what came before and allow those issues to evolve naturally. Based on that, Catherine’s fears involve her controlling personality and is worried that this quality of hers has gone too far this time. She’s worried that Vincent thinks she has forced him into this whole destiny thing and that will make him question their relationship. It’s nice to see the writers acknowledge her faults and, even better, to have her acknowledge them. Catherine is controlling and I feel it is another trait of hers that stems from her mother’s murder. She was helpless to stop that from happening and has done all she can to be in control of any situation she comes across.

Luckily, Catherine was wrong about Vincent, though her anger towards him is understandable with his evasive attitude. And while I agree that the two of them need to talk about their problems without the fear of scaring each other off (which, at this point, would never happen), I don’t think it’s wrong at all for Vincent to talk to JT, or even Heather, beforehand. It helps him gain perspective and come back to Catherine with a clear head. Cat does the same thing with Tess. Even with being engaged and soon to be married, they will always need their friends. Where would those two crazy kids be without JT and Tess?

Not Just the Cliche Nerdy Professor

JT’s fears have been confirmed; he was healed by a strain of the same serum being used on people like Tyler Zane and this episode’s Alton Finn. In fact, the serum JT was injected with was meant for Finn in the first place, leading to Finn’s desperate struggle for survival, and makes me wonder what kind of effects it will have in JT. How much has it changed him already? This is JT’s question throughout the episode. Is it changing more than just his body and having an effect on his personality as well? I believe it certainly could judging by what we have seen so far. Finn being driven to kill seemed to stem more from his desperation and fear of imminent death. Tyler Zane, on the other hand, completely changed in personality (at least according to his wife) and became antagonistic and paranoid. However, JT standing up to Tess’ brother was totally the “old JT.” He always stands up for those he cares about. That was one of my favorite moments in the episode, by the way. I cheered when he said, “You owe your sister an apology, birthday boy.” Tess’ elated smile following that was the cherry on top.

Speaking of Tess, I had been really excited to meet Tess’ family and expand a bit on her character. I got worried, though, when it turned out to be quite a short scene and was more about JT than her. My fears faded with the revelation that she will be trying out for the Captain position at the 125^th precinct. She hasn’t had much in the realm of her own plotlines since the first season and this is, in my opinion, much better than an affair with her boss. They seem to be fulfilling all my wishes I had for this season, which included a bigger role to play for Tess. One can wonder if she actually deserves the job. Tess from season one? Definitely. But she became just as absent from the precinct as Catherine during the second season. Surely there are other people there that actually do their jobs. I do hope she gets it, though. It would be interesting to see how she would handle the frequent cover-ups necessary when dealing with beasts (and things of the like). Gabe had much more power as an ADA. Would Tess continue to risk her job in this new position? I’m looking forward to seeing if that causes any conflict between her and the rest of the team.

I just want to make a quick mention of Heather. She had a slightly larger role here than in the previous episode, but still gets the short end of the stick. The poor girl gets her thunder stolen by her sister getting engaged right after she does, then she gets dumped and no one has any time to console her. Luckily she had her funny moments with Vincent. But having her as a side character again is not a good enough reason to have brought her back. I was hoping it would turn out that her husband-to-be would be the big bad of the season, possibly getting engaged to Heather to ingratiate himself into the trust of our core group. Alas, alack, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Now that that plotline is over for Heather I’m just wondering… what are they supposed to do with her now?

How it All Comes Together

Written by Roger Grant, this episode had perfect balance in tone between the light humor and the darkness of Alton Finn’s deadly plot. He’s written some great episodes for the show, but I really think this may be his best. The story arc for the season is moving along at a good pace and we get a much better taste of it here than what we got in the premiere. Tyler Zane was a two dimensional character, that didn’t even speak, and someone that I didn’t care what happened to him. Alton Finn, with an electric performance by Zach Appelman, was well developed and made you really feel for him. He was truly a victim, driven to his dark deeds by what had been done to him and a desperation to survive. Thankfully, in a new spin on Catherine’s abilities to calm people, she was able to talk down not only Vincent, but Finn as well. Which is lucky, since it looked like he would have won and killed Vincent. I hope he survive’s the extraction of his tumor and our characters gain an ally in their fight. Most people outside their circle end up dead pretty quickly, so saving these victims of the genetic experiments and getting them to join in the cause would certainly help to expand the world of our show and keep things interesting.

This episode was directed by a newcomer to the BATB roster, David McNally, but after this great outing I’d love to see him return. I’m not too familiar with his work, but he did direct one of my favorite movies, “Coyote Ugly.” It’s a romantic dramedy, much akin to our show, and I’m sure his experience with that helped him with the tone of this particular episode and in bringing out the comedic side of our actors. As said earlier in this review, we don’t get too much of a chance for light-hearted moments and this episode was full of them. It was refreshing and the actors seemed to feed off of it. Jay Ryan, especially, showed off his comedic acting chops. Usually he has to play the tortured soul, which he certainly does well, but here we really got to see his funny side. I hope we get to see more of this as the season progresses.

David McNally’s other credits include the creation of a short-lived show entitled “Justice” that aired on FOX back in 2006. Mr. McNally directed several of the episodes of the crime drama, something that also fits with our show’s style (at least back in the first season). However, it doesn’t seem as if he has directed anything with the kind of action and special effects that are part of the BATB package. You’d never know it, though. The action sequences looked great. No doubt thanks to the show’s magnificent crew helping the director’s vision come to life.

Director of Photography Michael Storey certainly brought more light to this episode than we had in the premiere, but some scenes were still a bit dark. I don’t know if there are still technical mishaps between when they shoot it and when it is aired, as co-exec Stuart Gillard mentioned last week, but maybe it is also a new visual style for the season. For it’s not just the lighting, but the colorization as well. Colors seem deeper and bolder. Mixed with the darker lighting, it does bring a different tone and mood to this season. While it is something I enjoy, it was a bit too noticeable in the previous episode. Here, however, it was kept mostly to the action scenes, so it fit in nicely.

Speaking of those action scenes, I loved how the music composed by team James Guttridge and Sean Hosein played into them. The techno drum tracks kept up the excitement and the music was blended with the sound effects of the explosions created by Finn, adding a wonderful layer to the scenes. Tracks from this episode, as well as others, are being shared on their Soundcloud page. Make sure to check them out at https://soundcloud.com/hitowermusic.

Quick mention of how the actors looked in this episode. I thought everyone looked great, for the most part. I really like that Nina is back to having longer hair, I felt the style they gave her for much of last season just didn’t work for her. Kristin’s shorter hair, on the other hand, is looking really nice and I liked the cute ponytail. However, I hated that blue jacket she was wearing. It just didn’t match with the rest of her outfit and I don’t think it’s a good color on her. She wore a shirt in the previous episode of that same color that I also didn’t like. She looks best in reds, blacks, tans, and whites. Not blue.

To Sum Up

An episode that built off the set-up of this season’s premiere in a great way, evolving the conflict between the characters and blending the mix of genres within it perfectly. Best episode I have seen in a long time and certainly one of the funniest we have ever had. It brought the show to a new level and I can’t wait to see more.