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Pilot
Season 1, Episode 1
PilotCatherineandVincent1
Air date October 11, 2012
Written by Jennifer Levin & Sherri Cooper
Directed by Gary Fleder
Episode Guide transcript
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Pilot is the first episode of Beauty and the Beast. It aired on October 11, 2012.

Overview[]

Detective Catherine Chandler is an intelligent, take-no-prisoners homicide detective who works with her police partner, Tess. Many years ago, Catherine saw her mother being murdered by two gunmen...two gunmen who would have killed her as well, except for the fact that something stepped in and saved her life.

Today, Catherine has grown into a competent and strong woman, but she still believes someone human saved her life, not an animal. While investigating a recent murder, a clue leads Catherine to Dr. Vincent Keller, a man who was apparently killed while serving in Afghanistan in 2002. Of course, it turns out that Vincent is actually alive, and he's the same man who saved her life. But he's been in hiding for the last 10 years because his condition leads him to turn into a beast when he becomes enraged.

After meeting with him, Catherine makes a deal: she'll keep his secret if he can help her with her mother's murder. Their partnership continues to grow and, of course, the pair find themselves drawn to each other.

Episode Recap[]

SPOILERS AHEAD!

In Fall 2003, Catherine Chandler is a recent Ivy League graduate working as a bartender. Her workmate goes off early, leaving Catherine alone to finish closing up. When finished, she heads out to her car only to find it won’t start up due to having left her vanity mirror open. She calls up her mother, Vanessa Chandler to come to her aid. While they’re fixing Catherine’s car, two men pull up. Catherine assumes they’re there for the bar and tells them they’re closed. They get out of their car and Vanessa, recognizing them, urges Catherine to get in her car. They shoot Vanessa dead and proceed to chase after Catherine through the woods. She trips and the men catch up, aiming a gun and ready to kill her. Suddenly, a beast appears and rips the men apart. A frightened Catherine stares in horror at the beast as it stares back, though it runs away, leaving Catherine in shock and distraught.

Nine years later… The story moves on to show Catherine living in New York City, now a Homicide Detective. She is first shown meeting up with her boyfriend, Zeke. He is distant with her, revealing that he has dumped her by text and is out on a date with a new girl. She gets back at him by informing nearby security that he has pot on him and walks away. She is called to a crime scene at a hotel where we meet her partner Tess Vargas who tells her she should have tasered Zeke. The the body of fashion editor Ashley Webster is found in the bathroom of the hotel. CSU manages to get fingerprints off one of her buttons.

At the precinct, Catherine gets a match to the prints and finds they belong toVincent Keller, a former medical resident turned military serviceman who has been dead for the past 10 years and has no living immediate family. Her and Tess head to St. Benjamin’s hospital where they interview a former colleague of his. She reveals that he had two brothers who were killed in the 9/11 attacks and he enlisted straight after. She tells them of his former roommate, JT Forbes, a medical researcher.

He lives in an abandoned warehouse where Tess and Catherine show up to interrogate him. When they ask him about Vincent Keller and inform him his fingerprints were found at a crime scene, he feigns ignorance, though close-ups of Vincent discreetly spying on them reveals JT is well aware his former roommate is alive and is living with him. When Catherine wants to look around the place, JT manages to brush her off by saying he has a class to teach and they leave. He goes upstairs to demand answers from Vincent who responds by handing over a newspaper clipping of Vanessa Chandler’s murder, revealing to JT that Catherine is a woman Vincent saved 9 years ago. Vincent further reveals that he has been watching Catherine over the past 9 years and JT panics at how close she has come to discovering them. He also freaks out over the fact that Vincent has broken his self-imposed rules about not entering buildings and not coming into contact with anyone. Vincent argues that he’s starting to feel like he’s living in a prison and has given up working on an antidote for his condition after several attempts have proven futile. JT warns that if Catherine gets too close to them, it may come to the attention of Muirfield and they’ll both end up dead.

Back at the police station, we are introduced to Evan Marks when he and Catherine are examining Ashley Webster’s body. He’s unsure of the cause of death but reveals that she has a bruised sternum and cracked ribs which suggest someone performed CPR on her. When Catherine goes to leave, he asks her out on a date to a premiere. After Catherine has interviewed the husband Alex Webster and while she’s interviewing Ashley’s assistant Emily, Evan returns and tells her the DNA from the hair found at the crime scene is cross-species. At home, while examining crime scene photos, she recognizes the blue car which Tess pointed out to her at JT’s warehouse so Catherine heads there the next day with a warrant to search the place.

While Catherine is looking around the warehouse for JT, Vincent attempts to hide from her but she hears him and demands he step out where she can see him. He has no choice and shows her that he is still very much alive. She demands to know what he was doing at the crime scene and he tells her he tried to resuscitate Ashley and that she had been poisoned. Evan calls just in time to confirm that it is nicotine poisoning which killed her. She becomes suspicious of the how Vincent knew Ashley had been poisoned if he wasn’t the killer, but Vincent simply tells her he could smell it. She begs him to help her as he is a witness but Tess arrives at the warehouse looking for her and he pleads with her not to let anyone know about him.

Back at the police station, Catherine rings the FBI looking for someone to speak to about cross-species DNA. Later, while discussing the case, Catherine deduces that the product which contained the nicotine poison had to have come from the beauty closet at the magazine headquarters, run by Ashley’s rival Chloe London. Chloe insists she did not kill Ashley and quickly dismisses the detectives in order to attend an editorial meeting. They find Ashley’s things in a box and rummage through where they find pregnancy tests. Catherine then gets a call from an FBI agent arranging to meet her at a New York subway platform.

As she hands over the DNA to the agent, he pulls out a knife and goes to attack her. An undercover agent joins him, though she successfully fights them off and kills one of them. Then an undercover female agent slowly approaches her and a fight ensues between them, ending with Catherine falling onto the train tracks. As the agents stare down at her, the beast appears and kills them both. He kicks Catherine’s gun to her and runs off down the tunnel. Catherine, recognizing the beast, chases after him screaming at him to come out. A train suddenly appears forcing Catherine to run for it but the beast leaps across the tracks, grabbing her and pinning her against the wall as the train goes past. It is then revealed to Catherine that Vincent Keller is the beast who saved her 9 years ago.

They head back to the warehouse where Vincent cleans up her wound and she questions him about how he became the beast. He reveals that he enlisted to serve in Afghanistan where he was chosen to take part in an experiment called Operation Muirfield. They were injected with what they believed were vitamins and steroids, but it ended up changing their DNA so they developed heightened senses, quicker reflexes, strength and speed. The project went awry when it was discovered that every time they experienced an adrenalin rush, they would ‘beast out’ and become destructive. The project was shut down and all soldiers were eliminated except Vincent who managed to hide and escape. Vincent proclaims that he is a monster but Catherine believes he is a hero who saves people. He says he does it because it reminds him that he used to be human. Vincent then demands that she leaves but she wants answers about her mother. He argues that he doesn’t know anything about her mother and tells her never to come back as she’s on Muirfield’s radar now.

Back at the police station, Catherine works out that poison was placed in Ashley’s hair dye making it the murder weapon. They go to see Evan to double check where he informs them that bed bugs found in Ashley and her husband’s bed reveal that her husband had been sleeping around. One of Alex’s mistresses admits that he told her not to say anything or she would look guilty due to the fact he and Ashley had a pre-nuptial agreement so he would lose everything if he was caught cheating. Joe refutes this, saying a pre-nup never existed so Alex was free to walk from the marriage. Muirfield agents arrive at the precinct to collect the bodies of the agents who attacked Catherine in the subway, leaving her suspicious. She then goes to see Vincent to warn him about it, especially as she dropped her cellphone on the tracks and they most likely have it. He tells her again that she needs to stay away from him but she presses him again for answers about her mother. It causes him to lose his temper and partially beast out to scare her off.

The next day, Catherine confronts Ashley’s husband with the knowledge he cheated on her with multiple women and tricked them all into believing he had a pre-nup, arguing that while he didn’t kill his wife, he is the reason she is dead. She demands a list of the names of every woman he slept with during their marriage. They then head back to the magazine headquarters to confront Ashley’s former personal assistant. They reveal that she is the one who is pregnant by Alex, not Ashley and that she was also the one who signed out Ashley’s blonde hair dye, making her Ashley’s killer. The assistant says she's not even pregnant anymore because she lost the baby.

Tess hands back Catherine's cellphone which the Muirfield agents had found and expresses her concern at her sneaking off and secret conversations. Evan reveals he’s found six cases where cross-species DNA appeared plus offers to accompany her to her dad’s engagement party. Later, Catherine shows up at the warehouse to see Vincent, to explain to Vincent that the reason she’s so hung up about her mother’s death is she believes it is all her fault due to the fact she left her vanity mirror open. He then tells her that it wasn’t her fault and that those men had been tracking her mother. At her father’s engagement party, as she stares out of a window, the camera pans to show Vincent on an opposing rooftop watching her.

Quotes[]

Vincent: They told me I could be part of something great, make a difference. It was called Operation Muirfield. They told us they were vitamins, antibiotics, steroids that would protect us.
Cat: What were they?
Vincent: Like I said, I should have asked questions. All I know is that they changed our DNA. Heightened our strength, our reflexes, our senses.


J.T: Why did you stop helping with the antidote?
Vincent: Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. That's why!


J.T: You broke every rule! No interacting with anyone, no entering a building -
Vincent: I know what the rules are, okay? I made them. It's been years. It starts to feel like a prison in here.
J.T: What prison has a flat screen and an Xbox?


Vargas:This is where he lives? A chemical plant?
Cat: He's a researcher, maybe he works from home?
Vargas: Or maybe it's a meth lab.
Cat: Just my type.


Cat: Everyone told me it was just a coyote or a bear. This thing I thought I had seen was just a result of my concussion or post traumatic stress. No, the men who killed my mother were beasts. I believed them. Until now.

Cast[]

Starring[]

Co-Starring[]

Guest Starring[]

Gallery[]

Videos[]

Pictures[]

This gallery only shows the official pictures released for the episode your're looking for. A more complete gallery can be found here. Any future additions should be done there.

Behind the scenes[]

  • The pilot was filmed in Canada from March 22 to April 2, 2012. It aired in Canada, on the channel Showcase, one hour before it aired on the CW in the united states.
    • Deadline was one of the many showbiz websites to report where the pilot was filmed. [1]
  • Nicole Anderson, the actress that portrays Heather, was originally going to appear in this episode but her scenes were cut from the pilot because the episode was too long. The following was taken from on interview with Cooper and Levin. “We love her,” Cooper explains. “It was that our cut was 55 minutes. It was just long. So she’s going to be in the second episode, the first episode after the pilot. We think she’s a great get. She’s adorable with Kristin. They seem like sisters together.

Trivia[]

  • This is the first episode of Beauty and the Beast.
  • This episode was watched by 2.78 million viewers in the USA.
  • We meet all of the main characters of Beauty and the Beast for Season One in this episode, as well as Vanessa Chandler, and Thomas Chandler.
  • Catherine meets J.T and Vincent in this episode and finally discovers what saved her nine years ago from being killed.
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