Beauty and the Beast is probably this fall's easiest show to make fun of. As a reboot of a curious Linda Hamilton/Ron Perlman romantic fantasy series from the 1980's, it's creatively bankrupt. The titular 'beast' is about as hideous as your average Calvin Klein model, the heavy Disney-ish prosthetics of the earlier series replaced by an eww! grosssss!!11!! scar on his face. Kristin Kreuk, already pretty vacant as an actor, is about as convincing as a tough New York cop as Dame Judi Dench playing Shaft. There's little that works well here, from the incidental murder mystery to the mutually hackneyed 'dark pasts' of the show's protagonists... but it would be crazy to say that this isn't a strangely compelling pilot. If everything is awful, does it become sort of... good?
