Still plenty of good stuff here
Note: This review contains SPOILERS.
This is an issue that has divided Beauty & The Beast fans for almost twenty years, and reading the reviews here, I can see a lot of people are still bitter. While the show certainly suffered the loss of Linda Hamilton, I personally found there was still plenty to enjoy in this abbreviated season.
For one thing, the season-long story arc served the show quite well. The second season's cliffhanger ending left a lot for the writers to explore. So much fuss was made way back in 1989 about the show being "retooled" to attract more male viewers. And I'll admit, there's probably a sizable portion of the potential male viewing audience that is attracted to the increased action and violence. But was the show really THAT different? We still have Ron Perlman and all the others giving it their all (and it was quite an emotional and yes, violent arc for Vincent). The late, talented Edward Albert got moved into a series regular slot. And I...
Love Endures
When the second season of Beauty and the Beast ended, I was one of the many people who wrote to get the show renewed. I had never done anything like that before, but Beauty and the Beast was a show to be passionate about.
I don't remember disliking Diana. As an audience, we weren't given much to work with where she was concerned. And it didn't help that she wasn't "Catherine."
What I do remember, vividly, is the relationship that developed between Vincent and Elliot Burch. For me, the third season was wonderful and wonderous because it showed love enduring. Both men loved Catherine and Catherine loved both of them -- though Burch's feet of clay prevented her from having a deeper relationship with him. (The first season episode where he's introduced even has Vincent acknowledging that Catherine is falling in love with Burch, so please don't think I'm being heretical.)
Seeing how loving Catherine changed Burch and made it possible for Vincent, and, to a...
Flawed, but still beautiful
The 3rd season of Beauty and the Beast definitely takes the series in a very different direction. As the new opening reveals, once Vincent gets past Catherine's murder he will dedicate his life to avenging injustice - in other words, he has been recast here as a sort of beastly Batman, searching the skies for the Beast Signal which will let him know that his services are needed. Much of the first five or six episodes are focused more on the gritty world Above than on Vincent's world in the tunnels - the photography is very different, with a sharper, darker overcast (much of the warmth associated with the tunnel worlds is lost). Additionally, character inconsistencies (especially with Roy Dotrice's "Father") undermine the overall fabric of the story for those of us who followed it closely the first two seasons. This is a much more violent show now, and it's much more "black and white." The new villain, Gabriel, who dominates many of the episodes, is simply evil personified - there...
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