2012 Beauty and the Beast series isn't what you'd expect.
The OG 1987 BatB series while beautiful and original in its own ways, still tells a classic fairytale - a heroine meets a Gentle Beast, who looks fierce and scary but on the inside is soft and kind and innocent and more humane than most people around her. And while the world perceives him as a monster, a predator, to her he is her Guardian Angel, their love, while misunderstood and frowned upon, is pure and holy. They save each other and it's glorified.
What 2012 BatB does, however, is a massive reality check.
It takes a fairytale and crushes it down to earth.
He is a Beast. Literally. But this one isn't so gentle, soft, and definitely isn't innocent. He's complex, as a real person would be. He's a healer, kind, caring and humane. But he's also very much a killer, a predator, trained, and ruthless. He decides for himself who lives and who dies.
She's no damsel. She's a cop, a warrior, a protector. And she's just as morally gray as he is, and just as ruthless (if not more).
He's a beast on the outside, she's got the same predator inside her. They are a matching pair. He starts out thinking himself a monster and hating what he is. She does heal him, but not by saving him, or changing him, but by showing him that what he has become is OK because she's the same and she's OK. She doesn't make him more human, she runs with him (and that doesn't happen right away either, it takes them both a lot of time and turmoil to come to terms with what they both really are).
They both make bad decisions and do wrong. They hurt each other and their loved ones, they light as many fires as they put out, because with being what they are and doing thing the way they do them it's simply inevitable. They try to do better.
Their relationship cannot possibly be healthy. And it's written as such. And over the course of the series they are made to eventually face the fact that although there is love between them, they are indeed in codependent relationship, and it will end badly, so they are forced to do the work to end that codependence and build a healthier relationship.
They are ambivalent and messy and imperfect and realistic. They don't fit into society but they are trying their best. They don't get a fairytale happily ever after, but they have each other and at the end of the day, it's enough.
