Ha! At last! After months of build-up and many roadblocks along the way, Catherine and Vincent finally kissed once again. I think garage doors around the world were probably opening and closing due to the frequency of the fangirl squeeing that took place at 9:58 or so on Monday night. I'm also doing a little bit of this:
So the BatB writers definitely took an ambitious path this season, first having Vincent forced into a dark and heavy situation that led to some harsh actions isolating him from Catherine. Then once Vincent finally started to get back to being himself, Cat was behaving in a wildly out of character way, continuously disavowing her feelings for Vincent while taking up with the increasingly whiney Gabe. Was this a brilliant dichotomy of sending both Vincent and Cat to a dark place just to bring them back together in a satisfying way? Sometimes it felt that way, and sometimes it was just frustrating, more so with regard to Cat's conduct than anything else. But there's no question that despite my and other viewers' quibbles in this area, the season has been bursting with fascinating, unpredictable, exciting stuff. Now all of the often beautiful, often slightly baffling madness has sent us hurtling back into VinCat territory, and it's not a moment too soon.
I'll be using some lyrics from Jessie Ware's "Wildest Moments" to supplement my review this week. Truth be told, I've had this song earmarked for use once Vincent and Catherine started to come back together. It centers on a love very similarly based on passion and destiny, hampered by a fear of destructiveness, yet incapable of not caving to its own power. Because ultimately, the worst moments are all worth it in exchange for the wildest moments.
"You and I, blurred lines,
We come together every time
Two wrongs, no rights,
We lose ourselves at night
And from the outside, from the outside,
Everyone must be wondering why we try,
Why do we try?"*
In "Catch Me if You Can," much of the action revolved around the gang trying to capture Sam and bring him to justice. Following on from his capture of Muirfield orphan Xavier last week, Sam now had a new bargaining chip, since he'd injected the poor bastard with beast serum and had him chained up at home. I thought Vincent did an excellent job of tracking Sam and dealing with the ridiculous comments he got from the disapproving Gabe and Cat, who were beginning to sound like carbon copies of each other. It took a lot of guts for Vincent to use his beast abilities, and he only did it because it was the sole option for getting Sam and preventing more of the villain's mischief. In fact, thanks to this work on Vincent's part, the scoobies were actually able to find out about Xavier's capture in the first place.
I guess Cat had just let herself drift to a place where Gabe was the crutch letting her deny her feelings for Vincent, and agreeing with her new boyfriend in such an incredibly passive way about pretty much everything has been an extension of that. It's a protective measure against another broken heart, but it's a fruitless and hurtful method for everyone involved. It's sad that Cat felt enough pain to use this method of intense serial monogamy to escape acknowledging her real feelings. I'm just glad she couldn't keep it up forever!
It was too funny when Gabe actually had the nerve to show up at Vincent's place, pouring himself a drink no less, to try and talk Vincent into staying away from Cat...for honor's sake. I literally had to say out loud to the t.v., "yeah, I'm sure Vincent's gonna get right on that." In one of several excellent callbacks to last week's superb dream sequences, Vincent also finally said "Screw you, Gabe" in real life. Very satisfying!
We also had some more pitch perfect moments of sage wisdom from J.T. this week, further cementing the touching and humorous bromance between him and Vincent. From the gummy worms and investigating to J.T. assuring Vincent that it's wrong to try and fully suppress his beast side or to do anything merely as part of a plan to impress Cat (I completely agree), the J.T. scenes were wonderful. I wish Tess had anything close to this level of great material lately, but I'm hoping the show will get back to giving her more to do than dispense rather confused romantic advice to Cat.
Given the fact that Vincent and Catherine are incapable of staying out of each other's way, it stood to reason that they ended up in her car together...quite soon after Cat assured Gabe she was planning to avoid Vincent. Teeheehee. The car crash aftermath was a wonderful combination of cute, funny, and sexy as Vincent and Cat argued in very close physical quarters. Once Gabe called and expressed his chagrin over their being together, the awkward and hilarious scene got even more delightfully absurd. I also enjoyed that Vincent got the last word on beasting out, successfully facilitating their speedy exit from the vehicle without any outsiders noticing his powers. It's awesome to see Vincent embrace the beast side of himself without guilt, just being the badass hero he is and standing up for himself in the process after Cat and Gabe's criticisms.
Also, this exchange?
Cat: "What are you doing here?"
Vincent: "What are you doin' here?"
Cat: "I asked you first."
Vincent: "What are you, like six? I'm trying to look for Sam's next victim."
So adorable and classic.
"Wait on, thunder sky,
Wherever there's smoke, there'll soon be fire
What could bring bad luck,
I've been looking at you too much..."*
Wherever there's smoke, there'll soon be fire
What could bring bad luck,
I've been looking at you too much..."*
The climactic scene with Vincent trying to save Xavier from Sam's evil plotting while forced to do so in an oxygen-free zone was fabulously nail-biting. What makes Sam such an effective villain is that he's simply let go of any sense of morality outside of his own brand of justice for his son. In his own mind, he's completely right to kill his way to some kind of answers (we still don't really know who the culprits are that he's after, but they must be fairly terrible if they're worse than Sam). So it came as no surprise that he was willing to murder Xavier and Vincent via bomb just to protect his agenda.
However, we finally got to see The Old Catherine back in action once she figured that out. This connected nicely to the reemergence of The Old Vincent in the police station hostage situation a few episodes back. After all, here we finally had Cat kicking ass and taking names with no hesitations at the notion of Vincent's life being in danger. Let's not forget my favorite Cat moment from this week: "if Vincent's dead, you're dead."
"In the middle of it,
We walk, we walk the line
Looking back I miss it,
Our wildest moments
Are you thinking what if,
What if we ruined it all?
My wrecking ball"*
We walk, we walk the line
Looking back I miss it,
Our wildest moments
Are you thinking what if,
What if we ruined it all?
My wrecking ball"*
Hence, and in addition to the semi-repulsed reaction she had to Gabe's offering her his key earlier in the episode, we were clued in majorly that Cat couldn't stay away from Vincent. Even as she numbly went through the motions of repeating to Gabe that she's with him, not Vincent, clearly that was no longer the case. The tenuous connection between Cat and Gabe has been worn thin as his demands on her only emphasize her inability to disconnect from her epic ex.
"Baby in our wildest moments,
We could be the greatest, we could be the greatest,
Baby in our wildest moments,
We could be the worst of all"*
Fantastically, the final scene was a sort of real life do-over of Cat's dark dream from last week, ending in a development that was anything but nightmarish. Catherine went to Vincent's to explain that she had to stay away from him now that Sam was apprehended and they basically have no excuse to hang out anymore. Yet, perhaps she wasn't quite ready for the sight of Vincent's huggably cozy bathrobe and that cutely pathetic little Smart Ones or whatever he was microwaving for himself. Because the more Cat tried to back away from him in words, the closer they got as intimate looks were inevitably exchanged, betraying the truth. I absolutely love that Vincent's done playing the polite card in listening to the never-ending tapestry of lies that Cat has been weaving lately. He agreed to her terms, but then swept her up in a steamy embrace, one to which she had zero objections.
What did you think of this week's episode? What would you like to see happen in next week's BatB? Share your thoughts in the comments!
*lyrics are taken from the song "Wildest Moments" by Jessie Ware.
