Director: David Solomon
Writer: Catherine Butterfield
Picture credit: Grimm Wiki

“Forgive me for the evil I have done; my mother drove me to it; it was done against my will.” – This quote is from a German fairytale, The Donkey Cabbages. In it a young witch is driven to steal the fortune of a huntsman by her mother, and the huntsman ends up as a donkey in a field of cabbages.

A very tired Nick is searching Marie’s trailer with the key she gave him when she was attacked, searching for something that fits it. He isn’t having much success, but while he’s searching, we also see Renard being held at gunpoint in the police garage by a guy he seems to know and who works for his cousin. This is a family who doesn’t mind if their minions – Woolsey – pull guns on other family members. It seems Renard’s mysterious cousin is pretty pissed at him.

Back at the trailer, Nick accidentally spills some ink and drops the key in it. When he picks it up he sees that there’s something engraved on it and he presses it to a piece of paper to try and figure out what it is. Just then Juliet calls and reminds him he’s going to be late for their dinner reservations if he doesn’t get home soon.

Renard, John, is taken to an abandoned building where his cousin is waiting. The cousin tells him their family is concerned and wants the key or they will take the Grimm and get it themselves. Renard doesn’t take kindly to his family’s threats and kills his cousin and Woolsey.

So, thus far we know Renard comes from a powerful family that wants Nick’s key and Renard’s plan in trying to get the key involves Adalind getting Hank under her love spell in order to get the key. Is it to ensure Nick remains alive? Or just to ensure his family doesn’t get the key and whatever it leads to is his only?

Nick and Juliet head to dinner discussing Hank’s mysterious date. He hasn’t mentioned her to Nick, or to Juliet when he set up this double date. Needless to say Nick is shocked to see Adalind, his would-be murderer at Hank’s side.

Nick isn’t actually hiding his reaction to Adalind, but no one is calling him on it just yet. Adalind is courteous, friendly and everything you’d expect her to be, which pretty much highlights how off Nick is acting in comparison.

Renard goes to visit a woman, someone he knows who seems to like the smell of violence about him, even if it did delay him for their evening appointment.

At dinner, Adalind is telling Juliette about her work, all very normal, dinner conversation, while Nick is glowering at her from the opposite end of the table. Adalind and Juliet seem to be getting on really well too. A phone call interrupts Adalind’s conversation with Juliet, the office it seems, and she excuses herself to get it. As soon as she leaves, Nick mentions that she seems to be good to be true before he excuses himself. Once he leaves, Juliet apologizes for his behavior and it seems Hank has noticed that he is extremely off as well. Juliet however genuinely seems happy for him and asks him about how long they’ve been together and Hank answers more than a little bewildered, that he woke up one day and couldn’t stop thinking about her.

In a staircase leading to the restaurant’s rest rooms Nick tries to warn Adalind off Hank, but she tells him that she has no intention of stopping something she claims to be is exactly what it looks like – two people falling in love. Nick doesn’t buy it, and he’s determined to stop her and anything further is halted when two women come down the stairs heading for the rest rooms. He takes refuge in the men’s bathroom, finally giving vent to his rage at the situation before Hank storms in and tells him they have a call – two dead bodies. He also asks Nick what’s going on, but Nick excuses his behavior by saying it’s something he and Juliet are going through and he doesn’t want to talk about it. Hank seems to buy the excuse, telling Nick that he’ll cover the scene until Nick gets there after dropping Juliet at home.

At the woman’s house – Catherine asks Renard if her debt will be paid, if Adalind pulls off the full extent of her plan, and Renard assures that it will be, and refuses to entertain the idea that Adalind won’t. He is concerned that Adalind tends to have her mind of her own, and warns Catherine that once the key is found that those who helped will be rewarded and those who did not will be forgotten.

So thus far, we know that Catherine and Adalind are connected, and that Adalind is paying off her debt – her mother perhaps?

As atmospheric as this episode seems to be, it is thus far more than a little like an info dump. Adalind’s reasons for helping Renard and the key’s importance to him could have been done much earlier in the season.

Nick arrives at the scene and meets Wu first, who happens to eat his chapstick while talking to Nick. When Nick calls him on it, he genuinely does not know what Nick is talking about. Their further conversation is interrupted when Hank comes up with IDs on the men – Anton seems to be Renard’s cousin’s name. Wu thinks that as they both had guns in their hand, they might have shot each other, but neither Hank nor Nick pay much attention to him.

Once he leaves, Hank immediately asks Nick what he thinks about Adalind, and Nick tries his best to convince Hank that he doesn’t see this working out, and when that doesn’t succeed, he moves on to trying to convince him that as cops, they should keep their personal and professional lives separate. Hank however has an excuse for everything he says and points out that if he gave Adalind a chance, he might actually like her. After that, he goes to double check under the other car at the scene and finds a cell phone and calls for an evidence bag. Wu hurries over with one and then promptly eats what looks to be the rest of his chapstick much to Nick’s disbelief.

At the station, Renard asks Nick and Hank for a report on the scene and they give him their entire case thus far, including that they found the cell-phone. It’s broken, but that does little to soothe Renard. His concern increases when Nick tells him about his theory that a third person was involved. By all appearances Renard is acting as usual when he leaves. Hank takes off leaving Nick to take the phone to evidence, leaving Nick and Wu together discussing how he’s been having stomach problems, but Wu doesn’t think it has anything to do with what he’s been eating. But as he walks off, he passes out in the middle of the floor, drawing everyone’s attention, including Nick’s and giving Renard the perfect opportunity to steal the phone still on Hank’s desk.

Adalind returns to her apartment, and immediately changes to her Wesen form when she realizes someone is there – her mother, Catherine as it turns out. Catherine is there to warn Adalind to make sure that everything turns out the way the Captain wants, and also reveals that Adalind is still in love with Renard. Hank calls and asks to stop by, but Adalind puts him off explaining that her mother is visiting. Consider that Hank is sitting outside her apartment in his car and can see that her mom is indeed there, and she’s not blowing him off for another guy, I get the distinct feeling he is not thrilled (and wouldn’t be above pulling a gun on dear old mom) at someone else keeping him from Adalind, even if it is her mom.

At the hospital, a doctor tells Nick that Wu is suffering Pica, an eating disorder where a person eats non-nutritive substances. The doctor tells Nick that he will be discharged the next day, but that he needs help.

Nick goes to Monroe to tell him what’s been happening, and their conversation leads him to question if Adalind could have done something to Hank to make him fall in love with her. Monroe thinks that’s entirely possible and offers to call Rosalie to ask her about this. Nick urges him to call her now, despite the late hour.
Meanwhile, at his office, Renard replaces the sim card on the phone the guy’s found with another – it makes sense, I guess, and is safer for him if the phone leads nowhere, rather than disappearing completely.

Rosalie takes the guys to her store, certain that from what they’ve told her, they’re dealing with a potion. She gives the guys her books to go through to try and figure out what the potion could have been, and figures out that Adalind might have come in to get some supplies from Freddie and offers to check his records. She finds a shopping list of ingredients for a potion that takes a person from completely in love to being dead. Which uh-oh. Added to that, if the relationship between Adalind and Hank has progressed further to the physical, it’s highly unlikely that they will be able to break the spell. Nick insists they try and Rosalie offers to try an antidote, but they have to find the potion that uses the recipe.

While this is happening? Renard returns the phone to Hank’s desk.

At the store, Monroe and Rosalie are busy researching and flirting –w hitch is extremely cute and intense in their own way. Rosalie remembers Wu and that she had thought he had been struck down by a spell that had been meant for someone else like Hank.

At Adalind’s place, her mother is combing her hair, while she is complaining that something is hurting her. We can’t see her face, so we don’t know what it is, but Renard calls distracting her and tells her that things have to be set in motion. Adalind tells her mother he wants it to happen now and from Catherine’s reply, it seems to be sex with Hank that they’re talking about. Also, the thing hurting Adalind? Leeches on her face.

The next morning, Nick comes in to find Hank at his desk already. Hank explains that he’s already taken the phone down to evidence, and Nick apologizes for not doing so himself, explaining he had been helping Wu when he passed out. Hank in turn expresses his regret at not sending Adalind flowers for their aborted dinner date and Adalind is still in her apartment with Renard listening in to her conversation. She double checks that Nick is there listening to their conversation and knows Hank is coming to dinner at her place, until Nick asks for Hank’s phone and he tries to have a normal and yet threatening conversation with her. It seems she’s been waiting for Nick to realize that she has Hank under a spell. Once she hangs up, Renard calls her incredibly powerful and they do have this moment, where they seem to be on the verge of ravaging each other before the scene cuts away back to Hank.

I should say they do that well too!

At the station, a tech comes over with the phone and tells them that the sim card in the phone was new, with no information. An old phone with a new sim doesn’t make sense to them, and as Nick runs through all this, it seems as if Hank has something important to add, but in the end, all he had to say was that he is going to take Adalind flowers tonight for their dinner date.

At the store, a sleepy Rosalie finally finds the potion recipe and wakes up a passed out Monroe to show him. The name of the potion? Translate is: Death for Love.

At the station, Nick goes to Renard to talk about his concerns about the shooting. He’s worried it’s too clean and he explains that he really does think there was a third man in a separate car. Renard listens and it becomes obvious in this scene, to me anyway, that Renard is somewhat of a mentor to Nick and someone Nick genuinely trusts in his professional life. He’s the only other person, aside from Hank, that we see interact with Nick with some depth in his work life and Nick trusts him. However, he tells Nick that the families of the two men are en route to claim the bodies and the case is pretty much going to be out of their hands soon in essence. During this conversation, Monroe calls and asks Nick to return to the store. Hank is in incredible danger.

Rosalie explains that the potion Hank took causes obsessive behavior to the extent that the brain overloads and the body eventually shuts down. Monroe also adds that this potion explains what happened to Wu. Wu as it turns out wasn’t cured when Rosalie tended to him, all she could do was tend to his symptoms – lesions etc. But now that she knows the potion, and a possible cure, she could cure them both.

Wu is their first stop, and they interrupt him while he’s eating his carpet. Nick breaks down the door in time to stop him from choking and he and Monroe hold him down while Rosalie administers the cure – through a double-pronged inhaler. Yup, it’s going to be interesting watching them trying to do this to Hank.

Once they realize it does work, Nick calls Hank, but he’s already at Adalind’s apartment, flowers in hand. Hank refuses to be distracted from his plans, even if Nick is calling about a case and hangs up on him. They rush out to her apartment.

But, they’re too late. Dinner lies abandoned in the apartment, with their clothes on the floor. Mission accomplished, Adalind leaves. When Nick, Monroe and Rosalie arrived, Nick is intent on killing Adalind, while Monroe is trying to come up a plan that isn’t going to get them all killed or in trouble. When they get to the apartment, the door is open and they follow the trail of clothes to the bedroom to find Hank unconscious (in a coma in bed). The potion changed now that he’s had sex with Adalind and Rosalie tells Hank the only way to break a blood version of the potion is to kill the Hesenbiest whose blood was used in the potion, something Nick doesn’t have a problem with.

Adalind calls and tells Nick she wants the key Marie left him, or Hank will be dead by morning. She wants to meet him in a park and he agrees, but Rosalie warns him that the only way to break the hold she has on Hank is with the blood of a Grimm.

At the park, Nick tells Adalind he hasn’t brought the key, and all that he wants is to settle their differences – violently. It’s enough to get her to attack him, while back at her apartment, Monroe is anxiously pacing. They are e waiting for Hank to wake up – it will mean Nick’s won.

At the park, Nick finally gets the upper hand on Adalind and kisses her and being Adalind she bites his lip, and ingests his blood, thereby breaking the curse on Hank. Nick watches her as the spirit of what looks to be a Hexenbiest leaves her.

At her apartment, Hank wakes up to find Rosalie and Monroe watching over him, and at the park, just as Nick goes to check on Adalind, she wakes up. His blood made her human. Devastated she leaves and Nick lets her go. Monroe calls and it seems they haven’t yet escaped without the awkward explanations – Hank wants to know what they’re all doing in Adalind’s bedroom.

Adalind goes to her mother’s house and immediately, Catherine can tell that she’s human. She’s furious with Adalind, for letting them both down because she knew what getting that key would have meant for them. Just then Renard appears, and for the first time, Adalind looks afraid. Adalind voices something I’ve been curious about – she questions how Nick could have known what his blood would have done to her – Renard doesn’t know about Monroe or Rosalie and I do wonder if he ever will? He seems to think Nick knew because he was smarter than Adalind, which to an extent he was – he isn’t an indiscriminate killer, he happened to become friends with the Wesen he meets. Renard seems to be laboring under his own ‘myth of the Grimms’. To him this proves that Nick could be an asset to him and that his mistake was trusting Adalind.

Catherin jumps right on that bandwagon and calls Adalind an amateur. Renard calls her useless and Catherine washes her hands of her. Adalind leaves then.

At the trailer, Nick is looking at the key again, trying to figure out what is engraved on both its sides by using the ink from earlier in the episode. Together, it seems the sides of the key are a map.

Finally, the Adalind/Hank bespelled storyline comes to satisfying end. Hank is the hunter, who manages to escape the clutches of the evil witch’s daughter.

So where to begin with this episode – lets start with the not-so-good – the background on Adalind and the importance of the key should have been established much earlier in the season. The early parts of this episode did feel a little like an information dump in regards to both.

The good – everything else? Renard’s plans are closing in around Nick at the beginning of the episode – he is tense, dark shadows under his eyes and for all Juliet could be part of the reason for that, it didn’t seem like she was all of it because she acted as if everything was back to normal between them, despite the unsuccessful proposal last week.

Renard’s plan comes to it’s own unsuccessful conclusion this week, despite his protestations to his cousin that he had everything under control. Everything he has been planning since the beginning of the season just got shot and he isn’t anywhere close to the key. How desperate is this going to make him? What will he do next to get the key? Go after Juliet?

Nick in the meantime is finally beginning to decipher things about the key – like it doesn’t open anything in the trailer, but it does have a map that could lead to something it will fit in. Coupled with the implications of an entire, powerful Wesen family being after the key, I am so curious as to whether we’re going to find out what it leads to this season, or if the key and whatever it unlocks is going to be part of the underlying Grimm mythology of the series?

Another interesting bit revealed to us – a Grimm’s blood can change Wesen into humans. Not certain if it only applies to Hexenbiest in this scenario, but it does make me wonder if we’re going to start learning more about what it means to be a Grimm – until now, and Marie, we don’t really know much about his family’s past and their legacy, aside from killing Wesen. Is that what the key leads to?

Adalind is completely out in the cold – cut off from her mother, who she thought she was close to and Renard, the man she still loves. Where is that going to leave her?

Monroe and Rosalie are wonderful together – I am so glad she’s been included in the cast, because they both bring out a tenderness in each other that is a lovely to watch. I also vote for an episode where Monroe and Rosalie go on a double-date with Nick and Juliet!

I’m also dying to know how Monroe explained being in Adalind’s bedroom to Hank when he woke up!