Beauty and the Beast 2.05: "Reunion" Review!

Vincent (Jay Ryan) regains more memories by reconnecting with an old Army buddy, while Catherine (Kristin Kreuk) enjoys some girl time with old gal pals at her ten year high school reunion. What could be more perfect? Not always the case in Beauty and the Beast, as both our leads' paths connect in the worse possible way, another beast of the week case. 

In Monday nights new episode, entitled "Reunion", we see a new beast and this one is after Vincent. He first shows up in Cat's bedroom during her gal pal get together before the reunion. He attacks Cat and tries to kill her, but one of her high school friends rushes in, just in time. The beast jumps out the window, only to appear later as one of Vincent's old pals, Zack (guest star, Blair Redford), a friend from the Army that he served with in Afghanistan.

This episode gave us some good insight into several characters, including our beast Vincent, Cat, and Gabe (Sendhil Ramamurthy). It's always fun when a show does high school reunions. I think it's fun to explore certain characters' histories. In this case, we got a great glimpse into Cat's past. She was a track star, she wasn't super popular, though, and she even helped out some geeks along the way. She was actually uncomfortable when a former high school mean girl noted she didn't have a plus one with her. Yet, our Cat doesn't need a man by her side as she is confident on her own.

We see Gabe is going out of his way to help Cat. This time, he was helping her find her bio father, but he ran into all kinds of problems with files being under wraps and hard to track down. Even Agent Reynolds (Ted Whittall) stops by to check in on Cat after she was attacked by the beast. I think if I was Gabe, I could put two and two together and figure out that Reynolds has a connection to Cat.

Tess (Nina Lisandrello) makes a few appearances and more annoying comments about Gabe being in love with Cat. I know he likes her, and probably wishes he could be with her, since she is such an awesome lady. Tess gets him to admit feelings for her, yet I do not like it at all because I fear it may cause too much discord between Vincent and Cat later in the season.

J.T. (Austin Basis) was back this week. That was a plus because I do enjoy his character. This episode made me feel sorry for J.T. because I know Vincent wouldn't trust him or even listen to his skepticism of Zack's intentions. J.T. noticed a lot of red flags about Zack and tried to get Vincent away from him, but nothing seemed to work.

When Zack got Vincent to a bar, we saw he was trying to elicit some memories from Vincent, but his intent really was on retrieving just one particular memory: that of Gabrielle, a woman Vincent had a relationship with before he deployed for Afghanistan. It's not a good thing for Vincent not to remember since Vincent apparently stole Gabrielle away from Zack while he was deployed. Which left Zack with such a grudge against Vincent, that he killed Gabrielle. 

That's the point in the episode when things began to click. I realized that Zack wanted to kill Cat in order to even things up with Vincent. Zack later showed up at Cat's reunion and tried to kill her; but he failed because Cat always has her beast, aka Vincent, by her side to save her life. I think that's one of the best things of the show, you can always count on Vincent and Cat to save each other, no matter the cost.  

All the beast drama did make Vincent think without Cat's love he might have gone off the rails by now. We were treated to a sweet moment, a VinCat kiss, after an awesome beast fight. Yes, Vincent killed Zack and I was glad. I don't want anyone trying to kill off our beauty. Despite Vincent not having all his memories back of his time with Cat, they are slowly moving in the right direction. I think this development is something all beasties will love. They're growing closer and becoming one of the best couples on recent TV.  

After Vincent takes off, we see Cat sitting in the gym of her old high school as Gabe walks up. As the two converse, Cat is seen flipping through old pictures and in her graduation photo she discovers a familiar face in the background, Agent Reynolds. Cat has discovered her bio father at last.   

In the end, I enjoyed this episode. It gave us great insight on heretofore unknown history, plenty of VinCat scenes, some beast action, and a good story. I look forward to the next episode, entitled "Father Knows Best". I can only imagine what that will bring to the table. Guess we will have to wait until next week to find out more.   

Beauty and the Beast season 2 airs Monday nights at 9/8c on The CW.

"Reunion" was written by Eric Tuchman and directed by Fred Gerber. 

Photo Credit: The CW