Review: Beauty and the Beast, “The Watcher” and “A Distant Shore”

Beauty and the Beast
Season 2, Episodes 15 and 16, “The Watcher” and “A Distant Shore”
Original airdates: April 7 and 14, 1989

It’s Catherine and Vincent’s second anniversary, and he’s just about to finally take that fateful step off the balcony and into her apartment when the phone rings.

A visibly irritated Catherine takes the call only to panic and usher Vincent away.

The voice on her phone is a stalker, and he’s been watching from another building, and now she somewhat improbably has the problem of trying to protect Vincent and herself.

I say improbably because she keeps ducking Joe’s attempts to help and bring in the police to keep the discovery of Vincent from happening.

But again, it’ll be the word of a crazed stalker vs. a well-known assistant D.A., and talk of Lionmen should only hasten his admittance to Bellevue.

Joe does excellent work with his growing exasperation at her deflections of help overtaking his concern and affection for her.

Catherine’s friend Jenny is a welcome reminder of the life she’s turning her back on as her attachment to Vincent and Below grows.

But the story churns out for its appointed time, making me desperately wish for a Voodoo cult or a banjo-plucking intruder or anything really to spice the episode up.

It only livens up at the very end as Catherine nearly perishes when her attacker locks her in a car trunk and pushes the vehicle into a Central Park lake.

Vincent arrives barely in time to dispatch her would-be assassin and pry the trunk door off to rescue her.

Meanwhile, Catherine had begun to slip away from this life, walking through a limbo resembling the Quantum Leap opening credits.

“A Distant Shore” has Catherine visiting California on business.

Part of her case involves circling a rock group, but we are not getting character-has-to-protect-rock-star-from-threats-on-her-life plot because this is a cold and unfeeling universe.

It’s an excellent episode, though, filling out what Vincent and Catherine’s preternatural bond is capable of.

Letting them walk in each other’s dreams, and at the climactic finale, Vincent telepathically warns Catherine to watch her corners.

It’s another where you can see the effort of working around Hamilton’s real-life pregnancy at the time, culminating in actually doing a mini clip show of sorts.

On the plane ride home, she reflects on her relationship.

At the same time, a highlight reel of the greatest smoldering glances plays, reminding the audience that putting lyrics to iT.V.trumental T.V. themes rarely works out well.

Next week, I will see you in court, and a suitor will try again.

Other Thoughts

• We’ll be getting into the effects of Hamilton’s departure on the third season soon, but it’s interesting that already the writers knew they would have do something with this relationship, I imagine we would have gotten a lot more phone callus interruptus. Maybe finally getting a tasteful fade to black, “No! They totally just read poetry!” to appease the censors on the third anniversary.
• It’s odd that with backdoor pilots being a staple of the ’80s, “A Distant Shore” wasn’t a setup for Joe to be a fisL.A.t of water in L.A. or find the tunnels of the Los Angeles riverbed housing their community. More often than not, the limited scope of the series was a virtue, but it was also nice to see the show open up its possibilities every so often.
• The band briefly seen, Phoenix, is impressive in how platonic late 80s hair metal it was. My clothes turned into stonewashed denim just watching.

Have You Read: Review: Prime Suspect 4, “The Scent of Darkness”