'Feed the Beast' Recap: 'Be My Baby'

​Written by John Edward Betancourt

THIS IS THE EMERGENCY SPOILER ALERT SYSTEM...YOU ARE ADVISED TO READ AT YOUR RISK...

It's been one hell of a ride on Feed the Beast this season, and a philosophical one at that. Every single week we've been privy to a tiny examination of the human condition on this show and last night's episode decided to have a little fun with its explorations for a change by not outright tipping its hand as to what we were learning about our characters and in turn ourselves. Because for a better part of the hour, it seemed as though Pride, and the dangers that come with it was our focus...but that simply not the case.

The real meat and potatoes for 'Be My Baby' revolved around one thing...the need to let go of the negative things we hold on to, and the the dangers that come from not doing that because holy cow, everyone suffered last night for keeping their pain so close to the chest and the results from that choice were ugly to say the least. Take for example...The Tooth Fairy. Our intrepid gangster has always lived in his father's shadow, trying desperately to please him and make him proud and well...by not being his own man and staying true to himself, he suffered for it greatly last night by suddenly becoming a vengeful son of a gun who went on a murdering spree in the hopes of making dad proud. Granted, he's a gangster and bloodthirsty as is, but it's clear he wanted to do business differently as the head man and it's sad to see a man who is capable of good things, especially considering we discovered he's madly in love with Dion, fall like this.

But the most spectacular collapse of the night came by way of Tommy and T.J. as their anger and fury over past events came to a boil last night. Tommy's breakdown was perhaps a tad more subtle, since his constant preoccupation on Rie and Dion's affair finally sent him into forgetful mode, forcing him to miss both grief group and picking up his son, and it also put him on a scary path where he began to question whether or not his son was truly his. Thankfully he steered clear of digging any further on that before it went out of hand...but T.J., well he put the hurt on his bully like no other as we finally found out that his plan was never to empty six rounds into the kid; it was to bring him down by planting that gun in his locker for the police to find and take the little punk to jail. It was a stunning move on sweet little T.J.'s part, since he seemed incapable of doing something this malicious and ugly. But, he has been pushed to his limits and well, this is the end result of months of bottling up his powerful emotions...

Oddly enough though, only one character truly figured out the importance of letting go of the past to move forward in life and that was Detective Giordano and ironically enough, his story turned out to be the most tragic one of the night. Faced with hurting his daughter and possibly dragging others into an outright war with Patrick's family over his vendetta with the Tooth Fairy, the old gumshoe simply hung up his fury and anger to focus on his family and well...it was clearly a case of too little, too late because once Patrick caught up with him...things ended in horrific fashion and that was quite the heavy way to end this episode. All the pleading, all the kindness that Giordano sent Patrick's way meant nothing. There was no stopping the Tooth Fairy on his mission for redemption, and that cost the dear Detective his life and who knows what kind of repercussions will come from this since Giordano was the only person willing to stand up to the guy.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect about this episode however, is that for the penultimate story before the season one finale...there was no epic build up. Sure there are a few unresolved plot threads but television shows are often preparing us for a shocking finale, one that leaves our jaws dropped and that simply was not the case here. Outside of Patrick demanding a third of what Dion owes him...everyone was simply left broken and adrift in life and that's quite the bold move storytelling wise. So at this point, all we can hope for is to see how everything gets resolved when it comes to Aidan's decision to end his life and what will happen next for T.J. and his bully and of course, what consequences arise from Patrick's killing spree. Either way, it should make for one different and incredibly interesting season finale, until next week.

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