Customer Reviews

Beauty and the Beast - Episode 5: Masques [VHS]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vincent (without a costume!) crashes a Halloween party. He does so in the hope of meeting the guest-of-honor, a writer named Brigit O'Donnell whose work has meant a great deal to him. Vincent and Brigit hit it off quite well, "escape" the party, and movingly communicate about the things that are very important to them. They do run into Catherine along the way. Some bad folks are after Brigit, and the episode mixes gritty violence with romantic elements. It is a powerful episode, and Brigit O'Donnell is one of the most compelling guest characters the series ever created. There is a beautiful romantic finish between Vincent and Catherine.

In 1998 I conducted a poll among Beauty and the Beast fans asking them to rate the 44 episodes of the first two seasons on a 1-to-10 scale. 31 fans participated. "Masques" finished 5th out of the 44 episodes.

I placed "Masques" 6th in my own personal 1-through-44 rank-ordering of the episodes.

On Halloween (Samhain) the one night a year when Vincent can walk "our" world in relative safety, he attends a party, hoping to meet Bridgit O'Donnell, a writer whom he admires. There, Catherine sees him, and follows he and Bridgit when they leave, which sets in motion a chain of events both despairing and enheartening.