This review contains spoilers.
1.15 Any Means Possible
After that kiss last episode, I'm thrilled to say that my favourite couple continues to move forward apace. You heard me - apace - as in right from the word go we have Catherine and Vince in flagrante delicto rolling around in his sheets (his because the sequence has all the dark blue ambiance that marks Vince's sad warehouse hideaway rather than the warm yellows of Catherine's). It's also appropriate for the way he loses it mid-lovemaking to turn monsterous and send her flying across the room, proving that this was just a dream - even though the relationship is getting real.
Other things happened in this episode? We were given two heavy hitting new cast members - Edi Gathegi (Armando/Darwin from X-Men: First Class) and Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder from Heroes) joined the show and breathed some much-needed life into the group outside of the Cat-Vincent-JD circle.
Gathegi is Kyle, an agent within Muirfield who's stepped up as the powerplayer. He's set directly above Evan now that he's decided to join them. Evan is all about chasing down the "cross-species creature" (read:Vincent) even though Kyle really doesn't want him to, what with the danger and everything. Though to be fair, everything Evan's done since aligning himself with Muirfield makes me want to shake him and demand that he "look at his life, look at his choices." Funny since I couldn't stand him half a dozen episodes ago.
Ramamurthy is Gabe Lowen, a DA who's busy running around the department poking people with sticks to get their back up. He does a good job of it too. Cat's on guard, Tess is making more poor choices in regards to her extramarital affair with Joe (which makes me furious on so many levels and themes that I actually don't have enough space to discuss it here because smart women being stupid is a huge pet peeve), and there are two new guys on the block who are apparently blunt objects. Lowen and Joe are forming a task force to, surprise surprise, hunt down the "vigilante" (read:Vincent).
Speaking of the "cross-species creature", "vigilante" and Cat try to figure out how to get Vincent's butt covered on Darius' death. It's not a storyline I care about. We've seen doctor-Vincent recently but in my favorite non-romantic scene of the episode we got to see some of soldier-Vincent. He goes into a shady shop looking for someone specific and out comes the ex-soldier who knows about how to deal with dangerous people without any mutations, who can talk about guns like I talk about types of cookies, and who can project that edge of straight-backed strength that comes from bootcamp and commitment. Growth like this should've happened earlier in the run of the show for Vincent but now we have it and I love it. It makes him ever more real.
Speaking of Vincent, did you see how awesome he and Catherine were? They went to a party and there was formal wear. I'm just shallow enough to have enjoyed that. I'm also deep enough to have adored the fact that they sat down and talked about Vincent's concerns about intimacy and his problems he's had in the past. This is how adult relationships work. People have issues. Sometimes they have issues with sex. If you want to be with someone, you get around those sex issues by working on them with your partner and oh man, did Cat and Vincent work it out at the end of the ep.
"Whoever you were with before, she wasn't me," Cat tells him and it's true. The entire scene was an exercise in sexual intimacy that doesn't get shown on TV nearly enough. The love scene was steamy but mostly it was deeply loving and connected. I believed they were in love with each other and in the last moment, when his eyes glowed and the deadly monster threatened to come out, Cat touched his face, accepted it and there was no hint of danger anywhere to be seen. Just an ending so satisfying, I almost needed a smoke afterwards.
Read Rachael's review of the previous episode, Tough Love, here.
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