- When she was a teenager, Catherine "Cat" Chandler witnessed the murder of her mother. Cat would have been killed too, but someone - or something - saved her.
- In autumn 2003, 19-year-old Catherine Chandler witnessed her mother, Vanessa, shot and killed by two unknown hit-men who chased Catherine into the nearby woods to kill her too, where she was saved by a mysterious humanoid beast. In present day 2012, Catherine, now a successful New York police detective, is still plagued by memories of that mysterious beast as well as her mother's unsolved murder. "Cat" continues to believe there was a conspiracy behind her mother's killing and refuses to accept the police report being that it was a robbery gone wrong since the two men looked and acted like professional killers. Cat and her detective partner, Tess, are investigating the murder of blonde fashion editor Ashley Webster at a hotel. During the search, she finds fingerprints of deceased doctor Vincent Keller on the corpse. She learns that Keller was only helping Webster, whose death was the result of a previous poisoning. Ashley's husband Alex had been cheating on her; one of his mistresses killed his wife. Cat runs into Vincent as he again saves her during an attack by hired killers in a subway tunnel. Vincent is revealed to be a former medical doctor who enlisted after his two brothers died in the September 11, 2001 attacks. While in Afghanistan, he was part of an experimental unit of soldiers who were subjects in a "super-soldier" program that was terminated. He is the only known survivor following the termination of members of his unit with extreme prejudice. Vincent's DNA was mutated and he developed the ability to transform into a creature very human-like in appearance but with a beastly mind. Vincent's only ally is J.T. Forbes; Vincent's childhood friend and a professor at a university in New York who has been hiding Vincent from the government agents who have been hunting him for the past 10 years. Police medical examiner Evan Marks suspects something behind the mysterious "animal attacks" that seem to follow Catherine around wherever she goes and he becomes determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.—Larry B.
- [Fall 2003, late at night, the Salty Dawg Saloon]
(The location may be Westchester County, NY; the original Salty Dawg is in Homer, Alaska.)
Two barmaids are closing up at the end of a busy evening. The pig-tailed brunette, Catherine Chandler (Kristin Kreuk), is behind the bar counting out tips. The blonde, Lila (Britt Irvin), indicates she would like to leave early. We learn that Catherine is an ivy-educated (Princeton, magna cum laude) soon to be lawyer.
(Britt Irvin has been in two other series with Kristin.)
Catherine closes the bar by herself and drags the trash out to a dark and lonely parking lot. When her car will not start, she calls her Mom, Vanessa (Khaira Ledeyo), who shows up with jumper cables. Suddenly a car pulls up and pins the two women in its headlights. Before they can react, the mother is gunned down in a volley of shots. The stunned girl sees that she is next and bolts for the dark woods. There is a wild chase through the darkness - until the girl trips and falls. As the men stand over her ready to fire, suddenly a wild beast rips them apart with ferocious growls. Catherine looks up even more terrified as a man-shape stands over her, and then it is gone, leaving her huddled on the ground in shock and tears.
In voice-over she says she was told it was a wild animal and the real beasts were the men who shot her mother. She believed it until now.
[New York City, night time, present day]
Catherine (Cat) is driving fast through the city streets, blue lights flashing in what looks like a brand new smoking hot Dodge Charger. (She is not a poor student anymore!) She screeches to a halt at the entrance to an event. We learn she did not become a lawyer; she is now a plain-clothes detective. She confronts her date, Zeke (Daniel di Tomasso), who blows her off because her job is a turn-off. Instead of being crushed, she gets right back in his face. As she strides away, she alerts security that he is carrying pot.
[Entrance to a five-star hotel]
She meets Tess Vargas (Nina Lisandrello), her partner in the Special Crimes Unit. As they hurry to the crime scene, we learn that Cat has a history with men who are "bad boys".
The dead body is a woman, Ashley Webster, who was not a guest of the hotel. She was a top level executive editor of a fashion magazine and her husband is Alex Webster (Yannick Bisson), a big fashion photographer. They were a page 6 power couple, often in the news. Cat tells her boss, Joe Bishop (Brian White), that CSU lifted a print off a button.
[SCU squad room]
Cat runs the print through the computer and it matches Vincent Keller, MD, a soldier who was killed by enemy fire in Afghanistan, 2002 but most of the report has been redacted. Cat searches a database of doctors and finds he was an ER resident at the local St. Benjamin's Hospital. Her boss says find some colleagues and see what they know but Catherine sits staring at Keller's picture (Jay Ryan), lost in her thoughts until Tess breaks the spell.
[St. Benjamin's Hospital]
Cat and Tess question a nurse who remembers Keller. He was a nice guy who lost two brothers in the Towers and enlisted right after. They find that Keller had a roommate, J.T. Forbes (Austin Basis), a medical researcher.
[A crumbling former chemical plant in the shadow of the Brooklyn Bridge]
The two women use flashlights to explore the dark and creepy warehouse and come to a door marked Office. JT answers their knock and makes light of their questions about Keller, who is long dead.
Outside again, Cat stands looking up at the dark windows, lost in thought. Inside, we see the face of Vincent Keller, very much alive, as he scowls down at her.
JT is upset that Vincent has brought this attention on them. Vincent shows him an old newspaper clipping of Catherine: "Murder Victim's Daughter Claims Beast Saved Her". Vincent says, "That was her". Now JT goes ballistic. He wants to know how Vincent's prints are at a crime scene. Vincent says the woman was in trouble, he tried to save her. JT complains that if Vincent is keeping tabs on this Detective Chandler, she may begin to ask questions, alert Muirfield that he still alive and get them both killed.
(Operation Muirfield may be named for the famous golf course in Scotland)
[Back at the Police Precinct, Autopsy]
Cat questions her friend and forensic scientist, Evan Marks (Max Brown), about the cause of death. He says the head wounds are too superficial to have killed the victim. She has some rash - possibly poisoning? But the rest of the trauma suggests someone tried to give CPR. And he did find a hair he can check for DNA.
As she leaves he tries to ask her out but she gets a call that the husband came in for questioning. Evan says it is always the husband and Cat replies in this case the prime suspect is a dead guy.
[SCU Squad Room]
Cat and Tess show Alex Webster a picture of Vincent. He doesn't know him. He claims he was at his studio all night. He shows them the proofs he was developing. They see that he has an ink stamp on his wrist and ask if he was at a club? He says he dropped in at a fund raiser on his way to the office and his wife didn't go with him because she had just landed a big promotion. (Cat is examining the photo he took of a beautiful model). She asks if the promotion would have earned her enemies and he says talk to her assistant, Emily.
[SCU Squad Room]
Emily (Tamara Hope) empties her purse on the table. She admits that maybe the Beauty Editor, Chloe London (Alex Paxton-Beesley), was jealous of the promotion.
Evan shows up and pulls Cat aside. He says the Mass Spectrometer was probably just dirty but he wanted to give her a heads up because of the connection to her Mom's case: the test indicates cross-species DNA.
[Cat's Apartment]
She sits staring intently at her computer screen. Notes about her mother's case are pinned all over the walls. She is watching video from the hotel's crime scene and suddenly notices JT Forbes car sitting at the curb.
[Back to JT's warehouse]
On the way she gets a call from Tess; JT has a solid alibi for that night. Cat wants to search the place anyway. She enters the upstairs area they had not seen before calling "Mr. Forbes?" She knows someone is there; she can hear him.
Vincent speaks from the shadows: "He's teaching class".
She makes him step out of the shadows. "You're Vincent Keller. You look pretty good for a dead guy." (However, Vincent does have a huge scar on his right cheek.)
He tells her he did not kill that woman. He saw her fall and hit her head. He tried to resuscitate her. He thinks she had been poisoned.
Cat asks how he could know that. Just then her phone buzzes and it is Evan telling her he found lethal doses of nicotine. She asks Vincent how he could possibly know the woman was poisoned if he didn't kill her. He says he has a sharp sense of smell. She says she still needs his help; at least he was a witness. And, there was a hair found on the body that matches an old murder case (her Mom's).
Vincent glances involuntarily at the newspaper clipping on the table. Cat sees her own picture and she becomes frightened. "Why do you have that? I need to know why."
Just then Tess calls out to her from below. Vincent draws back into the shadows. "Please. No one can know I'm here." Cat wants to know why everyone must think he's dead but he just pleads with her. She says "We're not done here", and goes to head off Tess.
[SCU Squad Room]
There are pictures of Cat and her Mom, smiling. Cat is trying to call an FBI agent who worked on her mother's case nine years ago but he was transferred.
Tess is briefing the other detectives. The nicotine couldn't have been ingested; that would kill in seconds. So it must have been absorbed through the skin, which would take two to four hours to work. So the question is: what was the victim doing in that period of time?
Catherine is staring at the picture of Vincent, lost in her thoughts again until Joe breaks though. She says to forget about the dead veteran; you kill a fashion editor with beauty products.
[Headquarters of the Fashion Magazine]
They question Chloe London if Ashley could have been killed by something from the beauty closet: a supply of beauty product samples available to the staff for testing. Chloe says everyone signs them out and logs it. She admits she has just replaced Ashley as editor but says she didn't kill her.
Cat and Tess rummage through boxes of Ashley's belongings. Cat finds a box of pregnancy tests with two missing. Tess says maybe Ashley was cheating and the husband found out.
Cat gets a call from an FBI Agent McCleary who wants to know why she called about a contaminated DNA sample in a nine-year-old case. They agree to meet.
[Subway Platform, Down-Town Seventh Avenue Train to South-Ferry]
Cat meets Agent McCleary (James Binkley). She gives him the sample in a plastic bag and he says they'll take a look. Something makes Cat wary and she notices people coming up behind her. McCleary pulls out a switch-blade and takes a slash at her. Cat reacts quickly and proceeds to kick the very crap out of McCleary.
She is grabbed from behind as McCleary comes back to stab her but Cat spins and forces the henchman onto the blade. She draws her gun but it is kicked away. Cat punches McCleary and again knocks him flat.
There is one henchman left: a woman who seems eerily calm. They fight over the gun but Cat is thrown off the platform to land on her back between the tracks. While she is semi-conscious, the bad guys recover and prepare to finish her. She dimly sees something flash across the platform and shred the bad guys. Their bodies hit the tracks near her. Cat looks up to see the silhouette of a man-like figure looking down at her, then it races away down the tunnel. She gives chase, dropping her cell phone on the tracks.
Cat is screaming at it while having flashbacks to the night her mother died. Suddenly a train bears down on her. The beast-figure flashes across the tracks and carries Cat to safety against the tunnel wall. She turns and sees Vincent. "You're him."
[JT and Vincent's Place, his bedroom]
Cat sits on his bed; Vincent tends to her scrapes. She cannot get him to talk about it. She asks "How about a drink? Can you drink?" He says it is not a good idea for him but he goes to get her a beer. She looks over his table of chemistry experiments. "My Mom used to always have these sorts of things lying around. She's the one - nine years ago."
She won't leave the questions unspoken. "So what happened to you? Did someone do this to you?"
Vincent tells the story of losing his brothers in the Towers and enlisting in such anger he failed to ask the right questions. He was tapped for Operation Muirfield, an attempt to create super-soldiers by changing their DNA. It made them stronger and faster but had horrible side-effects: when their adrenaline kicked in, they became uncontrollable monsters. So the order was given to shut down the project and eradicate all the subjects. Vincent survived by hiding out here, searching for an antidote. No luck yet.
"But you do go out there", says Catherine. "And you save people. You saved me and you tried to save Ashley Webster." Vincent says he guesses it reminds him of who he used to be.
"A doctor?" asks Cat.
"No" he says. "Human."
Cat touches his face and looks at him with such empathy, Vincent is startled. He says she should probably leave now. She pleads with him to explain why he was there on that night, nine years ago. He refuses. He insists that she leave now; that agent on the platform was from Muirfield and now she's on their radar too.
[SCU Squad Room]
Tess says Cat has a "sex-glow" but Cat ridicules the idea. She says she is excited that she found the murder weapon. Ashley signed out four products the day she died but CSU only found three. The killer probably took the fourth.
[Evan's Lab]
They ask him if there is a way to tell if Ashley absorbed the poison through her scalp. He says he'll check her hair follicles, then he holds up a test-tube and says his guys found these.
Tess asks are those bed-bugs? He says yes, the rash found on Ashley was actually bites. And since these are blood-suckers, they carry the DNA of whoever has been rolling around in their sheets. The victim wasn't pregnant; it was the hubby who was stepping out. Cat asks if those mini-vampires can tell us who with?
[A Restaurant Scene]
The hostess (Mishael Morgan) is the same beautiful girl in Alex Webster's photo-proof. Cat asserts "You were having an affair with him."
The woman says Alex told her to say nothing; it could make her look guilty, especially because of the "prenup": if he cheats, he loses everything. "But I didn't kill her."
[SCU, Joe's Office]
Cat tells him they now have bug DNA evidence to prove Webster was cheating with at least four other women. He had access to the poison and he had motive: the prenup. But Joe says there was no prenuptial agreement; if Webster wanted out, he could just file for divorce.
Joe looks up and sees an FBI agent ["Silverfox" (Peter Outerbridge)] waiting for him.
Cat asks Tess what's going on. Tess says "Bodies from the subway." Cat remembers Vincent telling her that she is now on Muirfields radar.
[Outside in the alley]
Cat sees soldiers loading the body-bags into a van. One shows her his paper-work: authorization to transfer the remains of McCleary. The FBI agent comes up behind her and says it is not polite to interfere in the affairs of other people, Detective Chandler. She stares after him, furiously.
[Back to JT's warehouse]
Cat approaches stealthily but Vincent scares her when he comes up behind her. She tells him some military guys just showed up and took the agents from the platform away. She had to come here and warn him that her phone was lost on the tracks and if Muirfield got it, they might trace him.
He says this is why she has to stay away from here. Cat says she doesn't need all the answers but last night was the first time since her Mom died that she didn't feel crazy.
Vincent loses it and turns beast on her, throwing a trash can into a car and roaring with an animal growl, "You are crazy, showing up here alone. I could kill you in less than a second. Now go." (roaring)
Cat is terrified and sprints for her car. Vincent comes down from his rage and is ashamed.
[CSU Interrogation Room]
Cat is speaking to Alex Webster and his lawyer: "Sometimes things aren't what they seem; you can't tell who the real monsters are."
(Frequently, in this series, statements have meanings on several levels.)
He protests he didn't kill his wife. Cat says they can prove he was having affairs with at least five women and made each one think the only thing standing in their way was some pretend prenup.
"Mr. Webster, I don't think you killed your wife. But you are the reason she is dead." Cat asks for a list of all the women he slept with during his marriage; he owes it to Ashley.
[Back at the Fashion Magazine]
Cat and Tess confront Emily, the assistant. The missing pregnancy tests were used by her during her affair with Alex Webster. That's why there were saltines in her purse. Cat shows her the sheet in Emily's handwriting signing-out the hair product that contained Ashley's poison.
"But there was no prenup. He lied to all his women, just like he lied to the woman he was with the night you killed Ashley."
They lead her away in handcuffs. Case solved.
[SCU Squad Room]
Tess asks Cat "Is everything OK between us?" There have been secret conversations, executing a search alone and now Cat's phone was found in the subway. "What were you doing on the F-Train?"
(Actually, the F-Train goes nowhere near South Ferry; in the scene it is clearly one of the Seventh Avenue trains: 1 or 2)
Cat doesn't answer and Tess says "OK, if you ever want to talk, I'm here."
Evan comes up laughing. "Hey Devlin and Prada - nice work." Tess says OK as long as I'm the Devlin.
(Ironic, since Nina appeared in The Devil Wears Prada (2006).)
To Cat, Evan says he's not letting her celebrate her big case alone; he's taking her to her father's engagement party. Also, he tells her he found six more cases with the same corrupted DNA.
[JT and Vincent's place one more time]
The two guys are playing chess when Cat just walks in on them. She says Hi and Vincent says Hi and JT doesn't know what to say. He throws his hands up and leaves them alone.
Vincent says "Wow. You look ..." She is wearing a sexy dress.
She says "I'm going to an engagement party."
She says she knows he wants to kick her out but she understands what it is like to hide out because you feel undeserving. In fact the reason she keeps pressing about her Mom's case is because Cat fears she is the reason her Mom is dead. (She left the vanity mirror open and drained her battery).
"Vincent, I just found six cases of you trying to save victims around the city. You're not a monster. You saved my life - twice."
(It is actually three times at this point)
Vincent says "Catherine, wait. You're not the reason your Mom is dead. I'm not sure why but they were tracking her that night. It wasn't your fault."
She looks at him with amazement and gratitude and tears in her eyes.
[Cat's Apartment]
She is writing. Voice-over reveals it is to her Mom: "It seems like everyone else has moved on."
[The Engagement Party]
Cat is with Evan. Her voice-over continues: "Mom, there's not a day that goes by that I don't think about you."
She kisses her father (Rob Stewart) and dances with Evan.
"But Mom the good news is: I'm not crazy. I was saved by a beast. He didn't get there in time to save you but he's still out there. And I have a feeling that, now, we're going to have to save each other."
The final image is of Vincent, looking wistfully down from the rooftop as he watches Catherine look wistfully into the night, then turn away from the window and return to the dance floor.
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What is the broadcast (satellite or terrestrial TV) release date of Pilot (2012) in Spain?
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