New Show on CW – Review of Beauty and the Beast

New Show on CW – Review of Beauty and the Beast

Posted on Oct 15, 2012 in Beauty and the Beast, newshows by Tempt_ed 1 Comment

When I hear the words “Beauty and the Beast”, the visuals of a typical fairy tale start forming in my head. The typical fairy tale has a beautiful princess or prince, a bad mother or a witch, and somebody to save the princess or the prince. When I saw the promos of Beauty and the Beast, I realized TV channels think that old fairy tales have to be retold in the format of our era.

Let me begin with saying that there is no fragile and helpless beauty or an ugly and scary beast. In fact, five minutes into the story and you realize how predictable it is. I agree that there is some kind of suspense that writers are building. Frankly, however, by the end of the episode, I couldn’t care less about the ‘big’ secret in the next episode. You will know why when you watch this episode.

As a young girl, Catherine witnesses her mother’s brutal murder. She is saved from her mother’s killers by a mysterious animal/man in the dark. Fast forward a few years and the girl is a detective in the New York police department. Never mind that she never looked the part even for a minute in the entire episode. When a “thriller” starts on such a note, you can predict what’s going to happen next.

In a nutshell, the first episode is about how Catherine meets the beast. I’ll not spoil your suspense by revealing the beast’s name – let’s just call him beast. Catherine and her partner Nina get a new homicide case. While working on the case, Catherine comes to know that a piece of evidence is related to her mother’s murder case too. That evidence leads her to eventually meeting the beast.

Catherine is beautiful but the beast isn’t scary enough. The story line is predictable and clichéd. I wish the pace of the story was a little slower to introduce the beast later. A little suspense about the identity of the beast would have been better considering that the series is in a procedural format with a new case every week. The supporting characters didn’t have much to do in the first episode. I hope they build some story around them too otherwise they will be as good as the cardboard characters.

The guy playing the role of the beast could have been rougher and scarier. He in fact comes across as a really nice guy with some minor genetic problems.

Irrespective of my disappointment with the pilot episode, I would still like to watch the next one. I am hoping that the pace and character development will get better.

In the end, I feel that the producers and writers could have done a lot more with the plot and story line  Sherlock anyone?

Tags: 2012, beauty and the beast, beauty and the beast cw review, cw, fall, new show