Don’t underestimate the power of love pepper spray
If you recall, Liam’s vendetta was course-corrected on the last episode. So, instead of wanting misery for the Ellingsworth, he is devoting all his energy to ruining Vincat’s lives [which makes a lot more sense and should have been the point from the start].
Liam’s new plan is to expose Vincent’s best beast crimes one at the time: the bike messenger, abc family beast and most importantly One Tree Beast [whom he literally unearthed]. So, basically Vincent is exposed as a beast, hunted possibly killed and Cat suffers for a long time until she dies of a broken heart or something like that. But it is OK, because little Chandler has a plan.
Heather’s plan is to pepper spray Liam. Yeah… OK, maybe not the most brilliant plan... but shockingly not the worst either. You’ll see. While we are on the subject, I have to say something about Nicole. This episode - like most this season - was cursed with an overload of exposition. No-one has been delivering this neverending information as well as Nicole. She manages to make the most obvious lines cute and funny. So kudos to her.
Back to the episode.
Cat’s plan [not much better than Heather’s] is to find the human inside of Liam. Which is obviously crazy, so…
JT’s plan is to supercharge V by extrapolating the superhuman serum from his blood which has Liam’s blood. That doesn’t sound complicated at all…
In any case, when JT is in the midst of perfecting the serum, he gets arrested for acting as V’s accomplice. Not to get technical here… but did they have enough grounds to arrest him? Sure, they could take him in for questioning, but everything they had was very circumstantial… They didn’t even have enough to arrest V at that point… But they do a few hours later when Vincent stupidly allows Liam to lure him to the cemetery where he gets caught standing over Curt Windsor’s recently exhumed body and a dead gravedigger. Oh V…
Vincent is taken to the DHS office where he meets with AGENT RUSSO [to whom Cat handed over the Liam case] and Director Hernandez [who might as well be wearing a giant DHS RED SHIRT]. You know what? I miss Agent Knox! If they hadn’t been so trigger happy last year he could have been the perfect handler for V this season! Come back Agent Longshadow!
Anyway… V reuses the “I was framed for Curt Windsor’s murder” excuse and I seriously don’t understand how anyone can buy that at this point. He is clearly connected. And has anyone ever wondered where the hell is Tori? They keep going on and on about Curt’s murder and no-one notices that she has been dead for months now! Not that I am complaining, but you’d think they would at least look her up every time they investigate her dad’s murder, don’t you think?
After re-accusing V of killing One tree beast – among others – the DHS agents give him the day to think about confessing… What the hell was that about? Either they had enough to charge him … in which case they should have thrown him in jail or… they didn’t have enough and V had no reason to confess! I guess it was the latter, but V thought cooperating was a good idea, because he still had Liam to worry about and wanted some help to catch him. So…
Vincent’s plan is to come out of the Beast closet. He does this by beasting out in front of Russo and Hernandez. It goes something like this:
“Hi, I am Vincent and I am a beast. I killed all those people, but I had good reasons, I swear. Also… there is another beast and he is way worse than I am so… join me?”
Russo is all “Sure, sounds fun… let’s kill the big bad beast” But Director Hernandez is more like “A beast in hand is worth two in the bush”. In other words, Hernandez just wants to get Vincent and worry about Liam later. Objectively speaking, I would agree with him. But… their discussion is interrupted by the aforementioned big bad beast who kills Hernandez [dressed in V’s clothes].
And this is where all the individual plans come together in order to form one MEGA CONVOLUTED MASTER PLAN:
For some reason, Liam doesn’t kill Russo. I am assuming he was supposed to deliver the message of “Dr Keller” killing his fellow DHS agent. However, Russo realises that Liam is the killer and Vincent is being framed. So he joins Vincat’s team at some unclear point in time.
After Hernandez’s deheartening, SWAT storm into the hospital and chase Vincent all the way to the rooftop where he jumps to a certain human death. Of course, he is supposed to survive the fall because he is a beast. HOWEVER he gets tranqued mid-air… so things get a little murky. Dead or not, the plan included V stopping his heart to make Liam think he was dead. Since when does he do that? Did he learn that from Carol by osmosis?
Anyway… For the plan to work, Cat has to actually fear Vincent’s fate because Liam will be able to sense her suffering or something. So beasts can smell pain, like dogs smell fear now? They could have simply said that Liam would be able to tell if she was lying… but why not throw another complicated beast ability in there… just for old times’ sake. So… Cat leaves the hospital without knowing if V actually survived… I have so many questions about this “plan” but for the sake of brevity, I’ll just go with it.
And this is the point where JT comes in. He runs into the hospital with agent Russo and injects V with the newly distilled serum – which looks like OJ – and V is alive and supercharged! Ready to take Liam by surprise and save Cat.
While JT is performing a miraculous beast revival, Liam abducts Cat, but not before Heather pepper sprays him. Turns out that was exactly what V needed in order to easily track Liam. So basically pepper spray saved the day!
Liam takes Cat to his underground beast lair… which is SO TOTALLY the set of the original 1980s BATB… Are you there Ron Perlman???
Liam has the mandatory “villain speech” and Cat counters with a humanity speech. It is an almost powerful moment. They come to a point where Cat suggests Liam might still be able to remember what it is like to be human… He looks at her intensely and I couldn’t tell if he was pondering how to break her neck, being moved by her good nature or was about to kiss her.
I knew Liam dying was a strong possibility, so I was more or less prepared… but due to the way he died, I thought a crisis of conscience was a given for Cat and/or Vincent [Liam was totally showing signs of redemption potential just before dying]. But no… they don’t give us one second of angst and they cut directly to the gang having drinks at Il Cantuccio. Not cool writers. I was not ready for a happy scene. 1) I was still crying about Liam and 2) Are Vincat so immune to killing beasts that they just go for drinks after? What was wrong with a deep/remorseful fire-escape convo instead?
But OK, fine… let’s go with it for now. The gang is happy, they are cute and good looking and not getting arrested or dying so yay. Only thing left for Vincat to do is to get hitched!
Cue sitcom-type montage of Vincat getting married on their rooftop to upbeat music.
END OF SEASON
They sure thought they were getting cancelled weren’t they?
About Destined: Except for the excessive exposition, I was quite enjoying this episode until the last 10 minutes.
Shows wrapping up their storylines in 8 minutes or less [yes I timed it] is a tremendous pet peeve of mine. It really drives me insane! And if they dare to do a time jump to a “happier future” I completely lose it. Yes, I am looking at you The Killing, True Blood, Life Unexpected and so many others. At least BATB didn’t do that! [yet].
I actually prefer to suffer through a cliffhanger or an ambiguous ending rather than a suddenly happy quick wrap up. I am sure most people disagree…
About Season 3: I enjoyed a lot about this season. I’d say I liked it better than Season 2, slightly less than season 1. My biggest complain about the writing was too many people explaining things all the time. On the other hand, I really liked the overall season plot involving Liam, but they took too many unnecessary detours. Had they focused on Liam and his vendetta against Rebecca and Alistair from the start everything would have been more focused.
As you can probably tell I am not 100% thrilled with the finale [or the last 8 minutes of the finale to be precise], but I was very excited about the last few eps of this season so I am going to focus on that and look forward to season 4! Till next summer beasties!
But don’t fret, I will still be around on twitter and blogging about other things TV. Take a minute to complete this poll:
MORE RECAPS
Hi Ale ~ no time right now to go into it but just wanted to say I agree with you on the 2 things that really annoyed me ~ 1. The argh sitcom ending with terrible chirpy song to boot was my 1st disappointed reaction to VinCat's wedding as well (and still is actually, except for the beautiful vows and Jay and KK being flawless, I wanted so much to have 2 mins of VinCat alone, sigh. Scooby gang is a dirty word now when they are ALWAYS around. 2. The way Liam was killed was WTF for the very reasons you mentioned ~ was Cat the Beast Whisperer just buying time to save herself? I guess she had to since she didn't know if V was coming to save her. Liam did seem receptive to change so having V just popup and do his thing was pretty cold after all the blah blah. If Liam was about to kill Cat when V arrived it would have made more sense to me. Too bad V was too weak after his attempt to fly ~ I wanted him to woop Liam's butt. Overall decent finale but could have and should have been great. I am just thankful there was no mushy JTnT to ruin it.
ReplyDeleteIMO BATB is still the most/1 of the most romantic shows on TV even though it's less romantic than S1. No other show focuses as much on how much the leads love each other! I think the Vincat chemistry is less intense/less of an emotional and physical connection. It's weird bc I feel like JR is more game physically now, but less emotionally and KK the opposite so it culminates in less of both. JR seems down for love scenes/physical sexy touching, but less tenderness now. V feels less vulnerable and emotional this season. There's less little tender touches, watery eyes, less longing eye gazing and emotional openness from JR. KK still does the eye gazing and little tender touches, but she pulls away from kisses first/quickly. JR seems down for french kisses and but grazes (weird to type), but maybe she's less so. IMO she makes the kisses pecks/not deep. She seems to be leading JR in what she's comfortable with. They're both less intense/emotional with their comments/looks/touches. Theories on the change: I think KK is less modest than JR so that could be it. It could be: it's boring after 3 years to kiss the same person, something happened between them personally romantically, 1 sided feelings, a fight. Maybe they made a conscious effort to back off the intensity/romance to not make their significant other(s) uncomfortable. Maybe they were uncomfortable w/ all the tweets about their hot intensity+ kissing. Maybe they're over the show and not thinking about it like they used to. Maybe their real life is just distracting them. Maybe they're such good friends now that it's hard to be intense and romantic. Speculation here, but there is a noticeable difference and the reasons could be harmless. Unfortunately, it makes me curious even though it's none of my business bc I notice. That being said they are still one of the most loving/sweetest couples on TV. A joy to watch. Still chemistry, but sweeter/lighter, different.
ReplyDeleteI meant I think KK is more modest than him, whoops!! And JR was always more down physically than her IMO. In a s1 interview he said he was excited they kissed bc they could make it steamier for fans. I just mean JR has even toned that down this season, but still less toned down than her. Maybe they got sick of the tweets telling them to date bc of their chemistry/ connection?! I had a male friend who I had great chemistry/flirting fun with and when people made a big deal out of it/told us to date it pretty much ruined that dynamic. They just pulled back from 1 another is how I see it, physically and emotionally, which is too bad bc they are magic and have a natural chemistry. Did they run from it/ step back from it purposefully? Did it just change bc they know each other better?
ReplyDeleteAnother highly entertaining recap!
ReplyDeleteBATB is such a muddled writing mess at this point, that it's entertaining to watch just to see what kind of outlandish plot leaps they will make and if they can include even MORE exposition in the script.
I'm more interested in the thinking of The CW brass at this point. I know there's a few bucks to be made here, but is this the best way to do it?
Very puzzling.
I think they back down from the passionate kisses because of JR significant other, I think they were more than friends. If you watch their interviews together. Both of them were single at the beginning of the show, then JR had a baby.
ReplyDelete