Beauty and the Beast (1987) S1 E16

## Plot

A man with an Australian passport and an accent to match arrives in New York City. When questioned why he was in Kenya, he claims that he did safaris. He also claims that the purpose of his visit is tourism. Is this what airports were like in the 1980s? I was too young to remember 9/11. While in the men's restroom, the man shaves and changes into a suit. We see that he has three scars on his left cheek from something with claws. Catherine sees him talking to Joe, and he introduces himself as Jeff Radler. His Australian accent has been replaced with an American one. He's coming to work with them. He's taking over the Arranger appeal. He's not familiar with the case though, and the brief is due on Friday, so Joe tells Catherine to go over it with him. Sounds like me on every homework assignment ever. We see that his briefcase has a false bottom that hides all sorts of fake passports, IDs, degrees from different schools, and multiple types of currency from different countries. What, was going to an embassy to exchange it too hard back then? Or is it all counterfeit and he didn't want to get caught? He shuts his briefcase when Catherine comes in with the Arranger transcripts. She apologizes if she got angry earlier in Joe's office, but this case means a lot to her. She had to interview all the victims. The youngest was a four year old girl. When they put Arranger away, that was the moment that Catherine knew she belonged here. She doesn't know what she'll do if his conviction is overturned. Jeff promises to look over the files that night at his hotel room. The first issue is the admissibility of the videotape testimony. They also claimed that the judge erred in his instructions to the jury. Joe gives Catherine Holloway's notes on Arranger and asks her to drop them off at Jeff's hotel on her way home. When she gets there though, she sees him heading to Central Park and follows him to a fence. He remembers when the carousel there was open. Catherine follows him into the tunnels. It's revealed that he knew Vincent, and we see another flashback of them as kids. He leaves, and Catherine sees that Vincent carved his name into the wall. The next morning, she tells Jeff that Holloway's notes are incomplete, but they might still be useful. He's going over a few possible precedents for the videotape issue. She tells him that there's a case in the 19th Circuit that's right on point. He says that she must be mistaken; there is no 19th Circuit. He thanks her for Holloway's notes. That night, Catherine tells Vincent about him, and she thinks he knows about the World Below. His name isn't familiar to Vincent, who tells Catherine that he's the one who scratched his name into the tunnel wall a long time ago when he was just a boy. When she mentions that he ran all the way across the park from the carousel to find his name, Vincent asks her what he looks like. When she mentions the scars, Vincent realizes who he might be, but he doesn't want to tell Catherine until he's certain. He opens an old chest full of things from his childhood and goes through it. He finds a model of a carousel. Catherine finds a crumpled up piece of paper that Jeff threw away and shows it to Joe. It's for the Arranger case, and it's *very* rough; like he's not a real lawyer. Joe tells her to give him a break. That night, he packs pliers and a flashlight in a duffel bag. There's another flashback of the kids from the World Below riding the carousel at night. A cop on a horse showed up and chased after them, but lost them before they got back to the drainage tunnel. In the present, Jeff breaks the lock off the gate with the pliers. When he opens the secret entrance to the World Below though, he finds Vincent on the other side. His real name is Devin. No one has called him that in twenty years. He and Vincent hug. Aw! Vincent thought he was dead, and he quotes Mark Twain about how reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated after someone in the U.S. published his obituary. Yes, there were basically hoax celebrity deaths back then too. They searched for Devin for months. Father was afraid he was lost in the maze. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He just had to get out. Twenty years is a long time. He wasn't sure if anyone would still be home. There were a few dark nights where he thought he imagined the whole thing. Vincent tells him that Catherine saw him at the carousel last night and followed him here. He tells him that she's more than a Helper. Devin and Father never got along very well. He came back because he's been having dreams about the tunnels. He's been all over the world, but he dreams about a hole in the ground. Vincent tells him that it's not strange when that hole in the ground is home. They go back to Vincent's chamber… and then Father enters. He's clearly in shock at seeing Devin, having also thought that he was dead. There was never even a hint of him after he left. He knew the names of their Helpers. He could've sent word through them. Father asks him if he has any idea of the pain and grief he's caused. They agree to start over. Father asks him what he's been up to, and he says he's currently an attorney at the D.A's office. Father says that's a considerable achievement. He always knew that once Devin applied himself, he'd do great things. He was in Kenya last month, running safaris. Before that, he was a monk in Tibet. He's been just about everything by now: A professor, a knife thrower in a carnival, a decorated soldier, a famous chef, a doctor, etc. He delivered a baby. He had to perform a C-section, and he was absolutely terrified, but he did it. Father rips into him for performing a major surgery with no medical training whatsoever. It reminds Devin of the aftermath of the incident with the carousel, right after he got his scars. Father yelled at him back then too. He was the oldest of the boys, so he was responsible for what happened. Vincent looked up to him. He risked his life for a joyride. It's revealed that he blames Father for not being able to save his mother from dying while giving birth to him. When Vincent finally speaks up and indicates that Devin crossed a line, he leaves in anger. Vincent tells Father that was his pain talking, not his heart. He and Vincent got into a bad fight when they were kids. After he punched Vincent and made his nose bleed, Vincent scratched him and gave him his scars. In the present, Vincent meets him on the set of stairs where the fight happened. All he took when he left were his scars and his knife that Vincent used to carve his name into the tunnel wall. Devin and Father were always so hard on each other. Devin is well into his 30s now, but when he walked into that chamber, he was 14 again. He wonders if Father was always so hard on him because he reminds him of his failure to save his mother. The baby he delivered and the mother are both doing fine. The parents named their child after him… or rather, his alias at the time, Harvey. Later on, Vincent visits Catherine and tells her everything. Father won't speak of it, but he can sense how troubled he is. Devin still seems lost, despite all the places he's been and the lives he's lived. Catherine agrees with Father that he's irresponsible. His charade may lead to Arranger being set free, allowing him to molest more young girls. Vincent tells Catherine that Devin would never allow that to happen, but she points out that he knew the boy Devin used to be many years ago. She can't allow this to go on. Vincent tells her that he had other friends who grew up with him, but Devin was the only one irresponsible enough to dream dreams that included him. Years after he left, he would still hear his voice in the whispering gallery, or see his face reflected in the mirror pool, and then when he turned, he'd be gone. If Catherine exposes him, he'll be gone again. She apologizes to Vincent and says she has no choice. She visits him the next morning and calls him Devin. She won't have him arrested, because she knows what that would do to Vincent and Father, but she wants him off the Arranger case and out of this office. She agrees to give him the rest of the day to get everything sorted out and figure out what he's going to tell Moreno. He does this because he never figured out what he wanted to be when he grew up. Sounds a bit like me. Vincent tells Father that Catherine won't expose him, but he's agreed to resign. Father agrees with her that it's for the best. Vincent asks him how he can say that. He tells him that some relationships can only bring them pain, no matter how much they wish otherwise. He knows that Vincent loved Devin like a brother, but he left both of them for over twenty years without so much as a goodbye. Vincent tells him that last night, he made sure Devin would leave again. He blames both of them, and asks Father how he could be so hard on him. He says he was hard on him as a child because it was for his own good. His escapades endangered himself and all the other children, especially Vincent. He knows what happened that night at the carousel, and he knows why it happened. Vincent absolutely *snaps* when he hears this, and yells that he has no idea about what happened that night. For as far back as he can remember, Father was always harder on Devin than on anyone else. Father says he always tried to be fair, and Vincent tells him that no one knows better than him how hard he tried and how well he succeeded. He was a father to him and to anyone who needed one. He was always there, for more children than he can name, but never for Devin. Vincent asks him how he could shut Devin out when he needed him. He doesn't seem to realize that he did. It was a year after he lost his work, his good name, Margaret, and his home. He would've frozen to death that winter, if it hadn't been for a woman named Grace. She told him about the tunnels and showed him the way down here. Slowly, he began to live again. Grace was Devin's mother. And Jacob is Devin's father. After Grace gave birth, Father didn't want to set Devin apart from the others, and he always intended to tell him. I love scenes like this between actors like these. They're the Shakespearean kind that go down in television history. Captain Kirk, Spock, Sarek, Captain Picard, etc. If you're wondering, yes, George R. R. Martin wrote this episode. Catherine visits Devin, and points out that no one is asking him to leave New York. He reminds her that she wasn't all that concerned about his future this morning. She knows how much he means to Vincent, and how much it would hurt him if he left again. He snaps and asks why it always has to come down to Vincent and how he's going to hurt him. Catherine brings up the night with the carousel. He brings her there to tell her what really happened. It all started when Father refused to get him a knife. He said they weren't toys; they were dangerous. Devin saved up and bought one anyway. Someone told on him to Father, and he thought it was Vincent, which led to the fight. He found out later that it was somebody else: Mitch. Oh, shit. He even shows up in the flashback, but you'd never know it unless you looked in the credits, which I did. Props to the kid who played young Vincent for putting up with that makeup, even if it was only for a few scenes. Anyways, Father had already taken away Devin's knife, and he tried to take it out on Vincent. That's how he got the scars on his cheek. Father was angry at him for fighting, and a few days later, he came to the carousel with Vincent and some other kids. It was his idea; he pushed the others into it. It worked like a charm, but then the cop showed up. He caught Devin, but then Vincent roared and distracted him from a tree. The cop pulled out his gun, but Devin knocked him over by throwing a rock at him, and then he and Vincent ran back to the tunnel. They saved each other that night. Father knew some of what happened. They left out the worst parts, but he heard enough. While Father was yelling at Devin, he wondered if he did it deliberately. He claimed that he wanted Vincent to get caught to get back at him for the fight. He called him a freak and said he hated him. The other kids wanted to go on the merry go round during the day when it was open, but Vincent couldn't because of his appearance, and Devin goaded the other kids into it by calling them chicken and pointing out that Vincent had never been on a merry go round before. He felt bad about blaming Vincent for the knife, so he wanted to do something special for him. He's not sure why he never told Father the truth. Vincent and Father show up. They never learned how to talk to each other, but Father is listening and learning now. Devin tells him it's too late for that, but Vincent tells him that it's only too late if he wants it to be. He thinks he's been set up, and asks what this is supposed to accomplish. Father admits that it might not accomplish anything, or it'll make Devin hate him even more, but whatever happens, he deserves to know the truth. Father tells him that he's his son, what his real name is, and how he first met Grace. When Catherine got Vincent's message, she tried the office first, and found the finished Arranger brief on her desk from Devin. It's rough in spots, and the language isn't turgid enough, but she thinks it'll keep Arranger in prison for a long time. Turgid is defined as tediously pompous or bombastic, so she's probably joking about that part. On the envelope is a message from Devin: Yes, he's a fraud, but he's a good fraud. Vincent doesn't think he'll stay for long. Even as a child, he dreamed of seeing the world, but now, no matter where he goes, he'll know that he has a place to come home to. He decides to go to Alaska, and says his name is Devin Wells.