Sunday, April 8, 2012

Grimm, Season 1, Episode 16: The Thing with Feathers




“Sing my precious little golden bird, sing! I have hung my golden slipper around your neck.”

I need to brush up on my fairy tale lore, because I’m not recognising most of these references.

Nick is stressing with hank because he’s taking Juliette away for the weekend to ask her to marry him (though I have to say his choice of venue doesn’t impress me. “Whispering Pines for the rest of your life” sounds like a retirement home, a funeral parlour or a graveyard).

Meanwhile a woman called Robin is trying to flee a farm. Alas, her rescuer is having car trouble and she has to rain check her rescue and return home – where we see she is a bird wesen and deathly afraid of a cat wesen who is holding her prisoner and preparing her a really really vile milkshake. And their house just happens to be the place that Nick stops for directions looking for his romantic graveyard getaway.

In their cabin, Juliette can watch the 2 wesen and she sees cat wesen force bird wesen inside – she insists that Nick get involved and he calls the local police. In the house the cat wesen is forcing her to eat the vile milkshake, forcing it down her throat. The police arrive and leave without making an arrest – which perturbs Juliette watching, how little the police can or will do.

Seeing Juliette still unhappy he calls Grimmopedia Eddie to get some information on the guy – a Klaustreich, an alley-cat wesen that have a bad reputation with women.

The next day Robin runs into both her would-be-rescuer (who wants money and is arranging to help her at 6:00) and into Juliette in the local shop – and Juliette offers to help but her husband is there as well. The stress makes her go birdy and be seen by Nick’s Grimmy vision – who, of course, calls Eddie who describes her as a Zeltenvogel – almost extinct that produce highly precious golden egg (and with Rosalie he now has a second Grimmopedia!)

Later robin takes the chance to flee to her rescuer and Nick and Juliette see her – Nick going to see if she needs help. Which is fortunate, because her rescuer just got Klaustreiched to death, but he doesn’t get there in time to save Robin, only to find the clawed up body.

Nick rushes to Robin and the Klaustreich’s home and it’s to the rescue fight scene- and brings her to their cabin. But the sheriff arrives and he’s another Klaustreich, cousin to the first. Robin runs and Nick is forced to chase her to protect her and leave Juliette alone with her gun. He catches Robin but the egg in her neck has grown too big and is almost cutting off her air – he has to cut it out (after consulting Rose and Eddie amusingly upset because he’s gone to a different Grimmopedia).

The kitty wesen arrive for their golden egg but Nick takes down the sheriff and, leaving Juliette and her gun with Robin, takes off after the original Klaustreich, captures him and breaks the shiny golden egg which, for some reason, makes it worthless (if it’s value is its gold content then it wouldn’t matter if it were whole or in shards or even in dust).



Of course, after the drugged magic cookies of last week, Hank is still obsessing over Adalind – and has taken up stalking her – which gives him the chance to see Adalind kissing another man. Hank threatens him to keep him away from Adalind – and he reports to Captain Renard who is happy to see his diabolical plot working. But Adalind doesn’t seem best pleased with matters – and how dangerous it is for her.

While at the graveyard cabin (y’know if they hadn’t had that awful tagline it would have been so much better) Juliette takes the opportunity to talk about the Grimmy things that have intruded into her life.

After much drama Nick gets round to asking Juliette to marry him – but she refuses because he is keeping so many secrets from her.

Eddie’s romantic life also proceeds as he helps Rosalie set up her shop – and they find her brother’s many false passports which, presumably, will be relevant later.


So we’re a small, teeny, tiny step closer to Juliette being told the truth and for Hank to stumble into the big bad Grimmy world – but it’s only a miniscule step and with only 2 episodes left I’m beginning to despair of any of this being revealed of there being any real meta development or an actual coherent storyline for this entire season

And having Nick leave town for the weekend (and happening to stumble across more wesen) meant that Wu and Hank were even more cut out of the story than usual. Instead we have Hank increasingly being set up as a weapon to be used against Nick

I had hoped for some activity from Juliette and I’m glad she was more involved in the plot this week, but she was still more action. And the only other woman in the episode was, again, cast as victim.

As we approach the close of this season I think that Grimm has been rather disappointing. It had a lot of potential, but spent so much time on monster of the week episodes that nothing developed – and the meta development, when it did happen, was both slow and too late.