“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the
ceremony of innocence is drowned…”
Grimm is back, and after the exciting events and
revelations of last season finale, I have high hopes for what we’re going to
see this season.
We begin with a ship full of containers – and one of
those containers is making rather a lot of noise. Arriving in Portland, the
harbour patrol check the container that is leaking blood. Going inside they
find more blood, mangled body parts and writing on the wall in blood in French,
some dead bodies – and a furry, savage, angry Wesen that promptly attacks them
while roaring – some kind of sabre-toothed feline Wesen.
This all happened yesterday. Today we’re catching up with
the events that happened
last episode, with Nick fighting Akira Kimura and his mother making an appearance
at Nick’s house. She pulls off Kimura’s shirt, saying he’ll come round soon, to
check if he has been sent by the “Dragon’s Tongue”. She looks at his tattoos,
confirms that he has grimm-o-vision, then when sirens sound outside she
disappears. Cavalry arrives, including Police Captain Renard (who Akira tied up
last season), giving Renard a chance to see the tattoos on his back.
No sooner have the police left than mummy Grimm (Kelly)
reappears saying she has to get to Kimura – which is going to be fun with him
in police custody. Kelly fills in the gaps of her death – his father did die,
but the woman in the car was her friend Gina – she’d sent them both away in the
hope they would escape the people trying to kill her. They misidentified Gina
because they attackers took her head, thinking they’d killed a Grimm, and the
bodies were badly mangled in the car crash. Kimura is the only link to who may
have betrayed Kelly. She and Aunt Marie let Nick believe she was dead to
protect him from her many enemies, something Nick is, unsurprisingly, not best
thrilled about.
Juliette is still in a coma after being scratched by the
cursed cat – and Eddie and Rosalie are researching the cat and a cure. Their
results are disturbing enough that they rush to Nick to tell him the news since
he’s not answering his phone. When they arrive they see they place is trashed
and smell both Kimura and Kelly – both Rosalie and Eddie Woge to smell better
and, of course, Kelly leaps on Eddie (though since when the Grimm fighting style
against a Blutbad is “big bear hug” I don’t know). There follows a classic
misunderstanding scene. Lots of frenzied recapping of who everyone is, time.
The infection Juliette has causes dementia-like symptoms,
including memory loss and the first thing they have to do is stop the
degradation as soon as possible by stopping the disease getting worse – which takes
a potion that needs 16 hours to brew.
Kelly fills Nick in on what she’s been doing for 18 years
–first trying to find the killers of his father and her friend, then
discovering that the royal families of the Wesen and their servants (like the Verrat)
were trying for a resurgence and causing all kinds of problems. She also wants
him to give her
the coins to have them destroyed.
Meanwhile, Renard goes to the hospital to check on
Juliette and sees her super dark eyes. From there he goes to see Nan
Hexenbiest, Adalind’s mother to ask where she is since he knows she’s responsible
and he’s not pleased by her putting Juliette in a coma. He believes that
without Juliette to tie him to Portland, Nick could become a loose cannon,
uncontrolled.
Hank, meanwhile is dealing with the revelation of Wesen
and has taken to taking pills and hanging out with a gun. Nick wakes up to find
his mother trying to be domestic – things are still rather tense between them.
But the tension is cut by them finally getting the case of the savaged men on
the boat.
Joining Hank and Wu they realise the FBI will get
involved since it’s a foreign ship – and they see the blood bath. And among the
French words scrawled in blood is also a picture of a scythe – the symbol of
the Reapers.
Back at the office, because of the Reaper connection, Nick isn’t mad thrilled
about handing the case over to the FBI (y’know, just once I’d like to see a
show where a police officer realises “hey, this isn’t my jurisdiction. Let me
hand this case over without whining.)
Captain Renard has a word with Kimura, since, with the tattoos
on Kimura’s back, he now knows Nick definitely has the coins – but Kimura tells
him about the second Grimm being present. Having 2 Grimm present disturbs
Renard and he contacts someone, speaking French, to let them know and to have
them keep it secret
Which is who Nick returns home to – and Kelly is an awesome cleaner, managing to have fixed all the damage to the house. Melting a little towards her, he takes her to the Grimm Trailer (infinitely less cool than the Bat Cave) which, apparently, Kelly and Marie bought when their grandfather died. We learn that, while being a Grimm is inherited, there’s no guarantee that everyone in the family will be Grimm. They have a nice little Grimm storytelling session among the weapons – and Nick shows her the coins. To destroy them they have to be taken to the Greek island where they were forged. And they confront the separation – Nick, rather maturely, doesn’t judge her for the decisions she made given what’s out there, but he wish he hadn’t been without her. Nick also asks for input on the case he has – she recognises the Reaper sign and asks what he knows of them (oh, Reapers? Yeah, I killed 3 – which is kind of an awesome moment) and she asks if one of them were French (foreshadowing for Renard? He’s the only French Reaper we know) and she finds a picture of the sabre toothed Wesen we know did the killing – and it’s worse than Reapers. But first she needs to see the bodies to be sure
We then segue to a castle and guys with British accents,
so I assume Europe, where some men (presumably Wesen Royals or Verat) are
torturing a member of the Resistance for information when he gets a call from
the sabre-toothed Wesen confirming his arrival (though he has to chide his
minions for continuing the torture while he’s on the phone – it’s little
touches like that that take a bad guy from decent to awesome).
Adalind’s mother can’t find Adalind so decides to reverse
the potion herself for Renard – but that involves going shopping at Rosalie’s.
Rosalie recognises the ingredients for what they are (fast tracking their
research) but also finds it suspicious that a Hexenbiest would just happen to
be making such a potion – so Nick goes and has a little visit to threaten her
if Juliette dies, as you do – but he’s convinced she doesn’t know where Adalind
is.
Ok another info-dump time from Kelly. The key, remember
the mysterious key? They key has a map on it, one of 7 maps on 7 keys. The keys
were held by 7 knights, the ancestors of the Grimm. The Wesen worked for the 7
Royal Families and some of the Grimms worked for the Royals to keep the Wesen
in line (whether the Royals are Wesen I don’t know, I’m drowning here) and the
knight went on the Crusade that sacked Constantinople – and the map is a map to
where the city’s treasure was buried. And among the treasure was something so
powerful it could let the Royals rule the world.
Confused? You will be
The problem is the Royal families must know Nick has the
key because no-one else has the influence to send a Morident (the sabre toothed
killing machine) and this is probably confirmed by said Morident calling the
folks in the castle torturing people. Nick can’t think how anyone knows he has
the key so she urges him to speak to Kimura and find out. Which is a shame
because Kimura has just been poisoned.
And the FBI agents are lured into a trap by the Morident who kills one of them and leaves Agent Kinnegar to call Nick to let him know she’s a hostage and if he doesn’t come, alone, he will kill her as well.
Naturally Nick and Kelly set off, with Kelly giving him
tactical advice since Morident aren’t just dangerous killers, they’re crafty, cunning,
patient and deceive people. Ion the spooky abandoned plant, both FBI agents are
dead.
Or so he thinks – when his back is turned when he gets a call from Eddie about the cure being ready, one of the FBI’s bodies stands, morphs into the Morident and attacks…
To be continued.
Ok there was a lot packed in this episode, but I think
that was mainly because they left a gazillion threads hanging at the end of
season 1, it left them with a lot to catch up on. It actually did a really good
job of recapping and jogging my memory of all those dangling plots and themes.
Frankly, it’s almost overwhelming how much information
was dumped on us this episode. It’s gone from a completely shallow first season
with no world building to massive info dumped second season
I give it great props for world building, for meta plot,
for excitement and for tension – but I have to take some away from the sheer
amount of development crammed into one episode. Nick says at one point that he’s
getting a headache – me too!
