**"In the unconscious of every man there is hidden a feminine personality, and in that of every woman a masculine personality." -- Carl Jung, the Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious**
In its first two seasons, it magnetized a sizable convocation of steadfast female fans, to the bewilderment of those outside its demographic. Its appeal was pointed and specific: it's an unabashedly mythological depiction of a woman's relationship with her own inner power, her own daemon lover. The beast-like but handsome Vincent (you gotta love Ron Perlman) exists solely for the sake of Catherine (Linda Hamilton), running to her side at the merest tremor across their perfect, empathic connection. Time apart from her is spent brooding in subterranean caverns, musing over poetry and dreaming of his Beloved.
To those of us whose archetypal buttons were not pleasantly pushed by it, it seemed saccharine and lugubrious, padded with syrupfest music montages, poetry recitals, and long, soft-focus shots of tunnels and mist-shrouded nights. Much as I love Perlman (head over heels in love with Hellboy, me) and Hamilton ("Hello, Dr. Silbermann. How's the knee?"), I couldn't generate the interest to stick with it beyond an ep or two.
*SPOILER ALERT*
Then comes season three, and all hell breaks loose. It's evidenced on Netflix: those hardcore fans denouncing it in harsh, betrayed wails... and I can see why. If it's a truism that a TV show necessarily jumps the shark when a baby is born into it (and I think it is: kids change everything, onscreen and off. It necessarily becomes a whole new ball of wax), then Beauty and the Beast's producers went whole-hog, no-half-measures, jumping over that baby-shark clear into a new, vast and interesting realm. No longer is the show about Catherine, who is killed in the first episode after giving birth to Vincent's child. Suddenly it's about the men who loved her (plus a very likable female FBI agent) who devote their lives to unravelling the puzzle of her demise, and to finding the baby, who has been kidnapped by a fascinating and malevolent tycoon.
Which brings us to Stephen McHattie, a maestro specializing in sociopaths of all rank and hue across a really impressive spectrum. This one, Gabriel, is one of his greats: quiet, deliberate, slow-moving, sinister, soft-spoken, controlled, seemingly fearless, spectacularly deadly. When he must address a necessary but disliked minion, the voice remains steady and calm but his eyes are so heavy with contempt it seems a Herculean feat to keep them focused. He uses everything at his disposal to communicate the stygian darkness of this man to us: the strangeness of his face with its angular bone structure and thin, curling smile, the vastness of his presence, and, most markedly, a wildly proficient wielding of stillness as a dynamic force.
As Gabriel slowly becomes obsessed with Vincent, the series comes to life. Once he is vanquished, the vitality drains from it and the final episode feels bland, colorless, pedestrian. Most of the characters in the series (Vincent included, beloved as he is) never achieve a full three dimensions, since each is written to have a single (or, at best, dual) driving motivation. It is Gabriel, despite spending the bulk of his time watching from the shadows, who does the most changing across the span of the season. We see him travel from an apparently invulnerable omnipotence down into the furnace of his own destruction, impelled by the depth of his own fixations, and that's an ancient and recurring motif that never gets old.
RATING: 2 stars
MCHATTIE FACTOR: 5 stars
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