"We're below the city. Below the subways. There's a whole world of tunnels and chambers that most people don't even know exists. There are no maps to where we are. It is a forgotten place, but it is warm, it is safe, and we have all the room we need..." - Ron Perlman as Vincent
Beauty and the Beast: The First Season DVD Review
By A.J. Carson
Just in time for Valentine's Day, television's unlikeliest romantic duo finally arrives on DVD. No, not The Odd Couple, although the romance between Catherine and Vincent in Beauty and the Beast: The First Season is pretty darn odd.
Catherine Chandler (Linda Hamilton) is an attorney at her father's New York law firm. While leaving a party one night, she is attacked by a group of thugs who have mistaken her for a potential whistleblower. Severely beaten and her face slashed, Catherine is left for dead in Central Park. She is found by a mysterious stranger who takes her home to nurse her back to health. Because her injuries are so severe, her entire head is bandaged, including her eyes, allowing her to only hear the dulcet tones of her savior, Vincent (Ron Perlman). Vincent is gentle and caring, but when she decides to remove her bandages, Catherine realizes that he is part man and part lion. Vincent was adopted as a foundling years ago by Father (Roy Dotrice) who discovered him abandoned outside of St. Vincent's Hospital. Father, an outsider himself, took Vincent to live Below, a series of underground tunnels and caverns beneath Manhattan. There, Father serves as a sort of leader of the tunnel dwellers, society's castoffs who have finally found a place where they can fit in.
Catherine stays Below for ten days before Vincent brings her back Above. By that time, she has formed a strong bond with Vincent. He can even sense her feelings from a distance, realizing, for example, when she is in danger. And she is quite often in danger, especially after taking a job as Assistant District Attorney.
The season starts out strongly. The first episode - "Once Upon a Time in the City of New York" - is lushly romantic, balancing mildly sappy dialogue with tense action. And how can you fault a TV show that uses the reading of Great Expectations as a plot point? In "Terrible Savior," Catherine must determine whether or not Vincent is the "man-beast" vigilante attacking criminals on subway trains. "Masques" follows Vincent on the one night of the year he can roam freely Above - Halloween. The episode doesn't completely take advantage of what could have been a fascinating juxtaposition of life Above and Below. In this episode and others, the series begins to settle into a lulling sameness. In a typical episode, Catherine's investigation of a case leads her to become physically endangered. Vincent, sensing that Catherine is in trouble, ventures Above to save her. Television shows thrive on repetition. The key is to find a way to make this repetition seem fresh. Beauty and the Beast doesn't exactly succeed at this, leaving some of the episodes too predictable.
The production design of Beauty and the Beast is an odd mix. Some of it looks great while some of it looks, well, beastly. Many of the set pieces, including Vincent and Father's cavern, the spiral staircase, and several of the tunnels, are really impressive. This is especially true of Vincent and Father's cavern which is decorated with a variety of baroque items Vincent found on the street. The sets are marred by extremely unconvincing special effects and process shots. The clarity of DVD enhances the flaws of the technology used in filming these scenes. All of the ragamuffins who live Below seem to be dressed in perfectly stitched rags with artfully smudged faces. Still, this is meant to be a fantasy, so perhaps the show can be forgiven for romanticizing the homeless.
Vincent's makeup (designed by Rick Baker) is pretty incredible, capturing both the suppleness and ferocity of the character's lion-like appearance. Sure, it looks as if he borrowed his hairdo from '80s hair band rocker Kip Winger, but Vincent wears a hood often enough that we can ignore his overly teased tresses. Despite a few unfortunate outfits, Linda Hamilton's Catherine looks as fresh and fashionable today as she did twenty years ago.
Familiar faces in season one include Ron O'Neal (Superfly), John McMartin (East Side/West Side), Ray Wise (Twin Peaks), Dorian Harewood (Boomtown), Delroy Lindo (Kidnapped), Albert Hague (Fame), Edward Albert (Falcon Crest), Eric Pierpoint (Alien Nation), Ellen Albertini Dow (The Wedding Singer), Paul Gleason (The Breakfast Club), Cliff DeYoung (Relativity), Beah Richards (Beloved), Richard Herd (T.J. Hooker), Chris Mulkey (Twin Peaks), Robert Pastorelli (Murphy Brown), James Avery (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), Jeffrey Nordling (Once and Again), John Amos (Good Times), Milo O'Shea (Romeo and Juliet), Herb Edelman (The Golden Girls), David Clennon (Once and Again), and Armin Shimerman (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine).
The twenty-two episodes that make up Beauty and the Beast: The First Season are divided onto six discs. Amazingly enough, all six discs are housed in what, from the outside, appears to be a standard DVD keepcase. Two interior swinging arms hold two discs apiece. The two remaining discs are affixed to the interior front and rear covers. Even with all six discs jammed into such a small space, viewers do not have to remove one DVD to get to another - each DVD is individually accessible. This packaging is a terrific space saver, allowing a six disc set to take up the same amount of room as a single movie.
There is one tiny inconvenience, but the space-saving capabilities of the set override it. The keepcase is clear, allowing the double-sided coversheets show through to the inside of the case. The interiors feature episode titles, original airdates, and brief plot synopses. Because discs one and six attach to the interior front and rear covers, the discs must be removed in order to read the episode guide. Really, though, this is a small price to pay for gaining room on your DVD shelf.
The static menus are drab but functional. Viewers can choose to play all episodes on each disc consecutively or individually. There are no scene selection menus, but chapter stops are included. One of the chapter stops is helpfully located immediately after the opening credits.
