Has it really been twenty years?

Beauty and the Beast debuted in 1987. At the time, I was twelve, in Junior High, and living through hell. I was bullied in school every single day for four years. Savagely, without any relief or reprieve, I was tormented by a group of about twenty to thirty other students on a daily basis from sixth grade (when I moved from another district) to my Freshman year in high school.

I spent most of those four horrible years going, "Is it me? Is there something unutterably wrong with me that other kids hate me? What am I doing wrong?"

Against that backdrop of childhood angst came a very special show. I won't say Beauty and the Beast was my only fantasy escape but it was a very important one. Beauty and the Beast touched something in my heart like few shows ever have.

I wanted so badly to be like Catherine: competent, popular, brave, with a cool job,  and beautiful. And someone like Catherine was who I visualized myself being as an adult.

And, of course, there was Vincent, who I identified with more than I did Catherine. Part of the reason I was tormented was because I was different. I have a genius level IQ but, at the time, my social skills were a bit lacking. I was also a poor kid going to a disgustingly wealthy district, which didn't help much. And, to top it all off, I was just funny looking and I had some weird interests like backpacking and writing and gardening.

Vincent, I was sure, would understand what it was like to be the most unpopular twelve year old girl in school. (This is weirdly amusing in retrospect, but I know that's what I was thinking then!) While I idolized Catherine, I lay awake at night dreaming of finding a boyfriend just like Vincent. I wanted someone who would understand what it was like to be different. Someone like Vincent surely would. Sometimes the fantasies actually involved a man-beast (or, at least, a boy-beast); sometimes just someone with the same internal characteristics -- the sensitivity, the patience, the kindness, the empathy. And I saw myself healing my own personal beast's emotional wounds too. We would support each other, and be perfectly in love. I was twelve ... not much life experience, lots of angst.

And the Tunnels themselves were an amazing concept. A place where I'd be accepted for who I was ... I wanted to live there. I wanted the Tunnel folk for my friends. I wanted my own Tunnel chamber full of books and candles and neat antiques.

For a year, Beauty and the Beast was the show I absolutely lived for. I counted days, then hours, then the minutes, to the next episode. In those pre-internet days I scoured the news racks for any magazines that had any articles about Vincent and Catherine in them, no matter how small, and collected them all. I obsessively wrote Beauty and the Beast  fanfic (with a horrible Mary Sue, yes, why do you ask?) and I am very grateful that it was the pre-internet days or there'd be some very bad fanfic written by my very young self floating around out there! -- As opposed to the bad  Beauty and the Beast fanfic written by my adult self which is also out there for your reading delight, but anyway.

For a year, Vincent and Catherine were pure magic. Dreaming about the Tunnels kept me sane.

The second year rolled around, and as fans of this show know, the writers must've started smoking crack. Beauty and the Beast still stands today as the prime example of how to kill a TV show.  I remember, however, having absolute faith that Vincent would save Catherine even when all the evidence was the contrary, including reports that Linda Hamilton wanted to leave the show.

It was Beauty and the Beast. No show would ever kill a title character, right? And anyway, the hero always saves the girl. That was just the way of the world.

So at the end of season two, I convinced myself that Vincent would save Catherine during the series premier next year. Of course he would! He was Vincent. He had to.

And so, I obsessed over it for another summer, scouring the assorted relevant magazines for any clues to how Vincent was going to save Catherine. Because he had to. Right? What would Beauty and the Beast be without the Beauty?

When fall rolled around, and the first episode of the third season premiered, to my stunned shock, he didn't save her. And not only did he not save her, but the bad guys tortured her to death in a grim and horrific death. Owe. I cried. I threw things. I felt utterly betrayed by the writers.

Then I wrote a fanfic or two that brought her back from the dead -- something I later learned a lot of other fans also did. I also wrote a few where she died doing something heroic, and had a better death, because I was a morbid kid.

I did watch Season Three, because it still had Vincent in it -- and truthfully, I found myself liking the new heroine just a bit. After a period of mourning Catherine, I'd decided to like the show again -- and then, they cancelled Beauty and the Beast.

When it disappeared from reruns on network TV, I cried. Silly, perhaps, but I was a teenager. Yes, I know it aired on cable later, but for various reasons, I was never able to watch it or tape it. (Lack of cable, or lack of a VCR that would record, mostly.) Since then, I think I've caught part of an episode once, while on vacation in a hotel room, but that's been it.

Since then, I've read plenty of fanfic, I have some novelizations of episodes done by Barbara Hambly, but, for the last sixteen or seventeen years, I haven't seen a complete episode of the show.

Now I sit here with a the first season of Beauty and the Beast in my hands. It's a pretty case, with some nice artwork of Vincent and Catherine on the cover. The little girl who was once me would squeee for joy for weeks at owning this. And I'll confess to having a silly grin on my face when I got the box from Amazon this afternoon.

But ... part of me is scared, too. Because I loved this show (or at least the first season, before writer!crack happened.) I'm not that little girl anymore. That little girl grew up, saw some of her greatest dreams come true, learned to fight back effectively against the bullies, and learned to believe in herself. And how I see things, and the shows I love, have changed accordingly.

Beauty and the Beast was a show that made magic for me then. All these years later, will Vincent and Catherine feel the same? I dunno. It's been so long that I honestly don't remember much about the stories. I remember characters, impressions, great big details but not any specifics.

I think I've forgotten enough that it will be like watching it new and discovering it all over again. Now, I'm going to find out what I think of this show through the eyes of an adult. It'll be interesting. Hopefully, I won't be too disappointed.