Picture credit: examiner.com
Director: Rob Bailey
Writers: Jim Kouf & David Greenwalt
“Soon he was so in love with the witch’s daughter that he could think of nothing else. He lived by the light of her eyes and gladly did whatever she asked” – based on the tale of “The Donkey Cabbages” in which a huntsman falls under the spell of a witch’s daughter who deceives him in order to steal his fortune.
Grimm episode 15
After a very long two week hiatus, Grimm is finally back!
This episode begins with a conversation between Adalind and Renard where it becomes quickly clear that Renard is using Adalind to get to Nick through a friend of his, ie Hank. Adalind is finding it a little bit difficult to bend Hank to her will and way of thinking which prompts Renard to give her something to help her along with a love spell. Renard is set on moving things along to get to Nick because him being on the ‘other side’ is not good for them. Nick isn’t really on any other side, other than being a Grimm, but Renard’s statement makes it seem like he might be talking about sides we, as the audience aren’t quite aware of just yet. Or maybe I’m overthinking things, I’m not sure yet.
At the house Juliet and Nick are having dinner before she interrupts by asking him a question. Before she even actually gets to asking him her question, Nick already assumes its to do with the state of their relationship and pretty clearly expects the worst until she gets her question out – she wants to learn how to shoot. She on the other hand is clearly rattled by the events of the last couple of episodes, including her kidnapping. Before the conversation can continue, their doorbell rings and Refrigerator Repair Guy (RRG) from earlier this season is there. What follows is a highly amusing apology from him about spreading around that Nick is a Grimm and an offering of a gift as an apology. It’s a little bit like he’s afraid Nick is going to go all “Grimm” on him and his friends, and the gift is an attempt to appease the Big Bad Grimm. Juliette walks in on the second half of the conversation before RRG leaves and Nick is forced to spin a story about a case of mistaken identity and the RRG and his friends assuming Nick was someone he wasn’t. It’s stronger than most of his previous explanations, that’s for sure.
Next, two Wesen seem to be ingesting the fumes of something brewing in a bowl that seems to give them a high and courage enough to storm from the room guns in hand.
The scene switches to the spice store from “Organ Grinder”, Episode 10, where we saw the black market for human organs. The shop owner Freddie, a Fuschbau is scared out of his wits when Adalind saunters in with a shopping list. She makes her purchases, though it would be more accurate to say Freddie gives them to her for free because he’s so scare of her before the Wesen addicts from the previous scene storm in after she leaves looking for the pharmaceutical grade “Jay”. They beat Freddie until he tells them it’s in the basement and they rush off to search for it. While they are gone, Freddie sets the alarm off scaring the addicts who rush to leave, Jay in hand. Freddie manages to bite one on the leg, but that addict shoots and kills him.
Hank and Nick are called to the scene and the case. Nick tells them about the basement and they go down to see the devastation left behind. Freddie it seems had a sister, Rosalie and Nick calls her to explain that Freddie has been killed.
Next we are treated to a brief scene of Adalind making something gooey with the aid of the vial of blood Renard passed to her in the first scene, and her own.
When Rosalie comes into the station the guys explain what happened to Freddie, but she seems almost unemotional at first, but it’s shock more than anything. The actress is pretty good at showing someone just about holding herself together, I think. Rosalie explains that she rarely saw her brother and they mostly spoke on the phone. All she wants to do is close up the shop and bury him. Nick tells her she can go to the shop, but only if one of them go with her until the forensics are done.
Nick goes with Rosalie to the store. She is overcome with grief at the sight of the blood still on the floor and shifts when she sees it, forgetting that Nick is there. When he speaks, she realises he can see her Wesen form and then realises who he must be which pretty much scares her even more despite his attempts to soothe her fears. He tells her that Freddie was dealing in human gallbladder, but that he suspects he was robbed for something else. Still suspicious of his intentions, Rosalie nevertheless promises to check to see what else is missing from the store. When Hank calls to tell him that they didn’t find anything illegal from the store – nothing but herbs and teas – Nick makes it a point to say in Rosalie’s presence that he thinks she’s clean. He gives her his card and they promise to call should they each find out anything. Rosalie mentions that he is nothing like she expected.
The addicts are attempting to suture the hole Freddie left in the one’s leg and that particular addict insists that they are going back to the store because there’s a fortune in there that the police will be done with soon enough.
Adalind finally makes her move on Hank and drops off some cookies for him. She is properly nervous and Hank accepts the gift, trying it in front of her. She elicits a promise from him not to give them away as she made them just for him. She leaves and Hank takes another bite.
Over a beer and classical music Nick goes to ask Monroe for some help about the things the police found in the store. However, the list the cops have are all scientific names and Monroe has no idea what they mean. He could however give Nick more information if he saw the things in the list. Next stop, the store, where Rosalie is cleaning up. She lets them into the basement where Monroe identifies the Jay, and describes it as something close to Meth, mixed with rat posion and helium. It is highly addictive opiate-like effect and can be used as a painkiller as well.
When Rosalie looks in on them, Nick asks her about the Jay but she doesn’t know anything about it. He asks for a list of things Wesen might kill for in the basement and she promises to make one. She stops Monroe as they’re leaving, shifting to Wesen form in front of him and prompting him to do the same. Nick looks on very astonished at what is happening and he hasn’t really seen Wesen interact like this, I don’t think. Rosalie realises that his human, cop colleagues don’t know anything about his Grimm nature and is puzzled at how his partnership with Monroe works. Monroe doesn’t exactly provide an answer, but it doesn’t matter to Rosalie. All she wants is for them to find Freddie’s killers.
At the house, Juliet comes home to find someone messing with their front door. She peers through the window at the top of the door and scares the life out of RRG as he is trying to fix the door. He explains that he knows Nick is busy and as he noticed the door could use with some fixing up, he thought he’d pop over and do it. Then he gives her the cherry pie his wife baked much to her amusement.
Back at the store, Rosalie is in the basement when she hears the addicts break in upstairs. She hides when they come down looking for the Jay, until her phone starts ringing and the addicts realise someone else is in the basement. She locks them in long enough to escape but they break through. By the time they do, she’s gone. She calls Nick and explains what happened and that she’s hiding out at her brother’s house. He sends officers to pick her up and at the station she IDs the guys that broke into the store.
We get a brief hint of an outsider’s POV into Nick’s life and how difficult it must be to balance the two, especially with his work colleagues as his life as Grimm meshes with his life as a cop so often. It’s not an indepth view, unfortunately. When Nick offers her protection at her brother’s house until the addicts are caught, she asks for Monroe instead of human cops, preferring someone she has something in common with.
Hank, in the meantime, has finished a considerable amount of the cookies. He wakes up, looking somewhat like he’s sleepwalking. He hears the shower going and goes into the bathroom to find Adalind in the shower, but when he opens the door, we see that there isn’t anyone there. He’s dreaming and her spell seems to be working.
Monroe comes to Rosalie’s place, and she explains that the guys at the store were Skalengecks (“scaled dudes”, no really, that’s what the Grimm Guide on NBC.com says) and that as a Blutbad, Monroe should be able to smell them.
Three guesses what Hank has for breakfast the next day? And refuses to share with Wu at the station as well?
Rosalie wakes Monroe up with coffee the next day before she tells him she’s going to the shop. Monroe calls Nick to tell him what’s happening and Nick tells him to go with her. Er, whiplash anyone? Scared of the guys who broke in the store the night before, and insistent about going back the next day even before she knows they’re caught?
One of the addicts, Clint Vickers’ car has been spotted and Hank and Nick rush off to check it out. Hank leaves his cookie behind and Wu eats it. This should be interesting!
At Vickers’ car, the patrolman points out a building he thinks they’re in and the three go in looking for Vickers. Vickers and his friend see them first and begin shooting before running off. Nick and Hank follow suit, but Hank begins to see visions of Adalind and follows them leaving Nick alone. Confused, Nick follows him, but the time spent following him gives the addicts a chance to escape. Hank in the meantime doesn’t know exactly who he was following.
Rosalie and Monroe are discussing her past, and her family who were apothecaries, as she once was, when Wu appears. He promptly collapses in the store and then either changes into a Wesen or gets the worst allergic reaction ever. At the building, Nick tries to cover for Hank when Renard shows up and asks for a report, but Hank admits it was his fault they escaped as he got distracted. Monroe calls then and explains that Wu is in trouble and confirms he’s got the worst allergic reaction ever. Nick explains that Wu found something at the store that he needs to check out and Renard and Hank buy it. Once Nick rushes off, Renard attempts to soothe Hank’s guilt, lowering his setting the scene for Adalind to get her claws into him even further, I think.
At the store, Rosalie and Monroe are working frantically to save Wu when Nick arrives. Wu in turn is getting worse. Nick wants to take him to a hospital, but Rosalie knows that the doctors will think of it as a mystery infection they can’t identify. Rosalie feeds him the concoction she was making and Wu kinda sort of loses it even more.
Hank calls Adalind to check up on her and invites her to dinner. She plays hard to get and turns him down and asks him to call at the end of the week to check in again to see if she’s free.
At the store, Wu seems to be okay – if the lack of pustules on his face is anything to go by. They take him to his apartment when Adalind explains that she saw this before when she was 17 at her parent’s store. The spell she says causes obsessive behaviours – if the right person takes it, it creates a deep emotional response, but if the wrong person takes it, Wu happens.
Nick explains what they found at the addicts’ place and Monroe explains that they will be out to score more. Nick finally voices a suspicion that he thinks Rosalie will know where the addicts could score more, and she admits she was addicted for 7 years before Freddie helped her get clean. She does indeed know where to score some, and helps them get an address/invite to a Wesen crackhouse in essence.
Inside the address she gets, Nick and Monroe find tents in a hazy smoke-filled floor. Monroe can’t identify anyone’s scent which forces them to check each tent specifically until Nick finds Vickers. They get into a fight, until Nick knocks him out. Unfortunately shots are fired off scaring everyone. In the rush, Monroe sees the second addict and follows him out but unfortunately the addict gets the drop on him, until Rosalie knocks him out.
At Wu’s apartment, Nick is questioning him about everything he remembers – which isn’t much.
At the store, Monroe comes in to thank Rosalie for saving his life. She tells him that she is going to stick around for the trial and that she’s going to keep the store open until she has to sell it. That part pleases Monroe and he offers to help for the rest of the afternoon.
Finally, at the gun range, Juliet impresses Nick with her expert marksmanship…strange for someone who professes to have needed lessons in shooting.
And Hank? He dreams of Adalind.
Is that some romance for Monroe and Rosalie I see? I hope so! They have an delicate chemistry, both scarred, both vulnerable and a great contrast to Juliet and Nick who have been slowly fracturing because of his double life. Then we have Hank and Adalind, a false relationship coming to fruition in the middle of all this. Relationship contrasts much?
Around what is a pretty straightforward case, it is Hank’s story that is of the most importance. Renard is stepping up his plans to get to Nick and isn’t afraid of using anything and anyone to do so. But thanks to Wu’s sweet-tooth, Nick is on some level aware that a spell occurred close to the station for Wu to get affected by it, and isn’t as blind as Renard would like to think. Does this mean Hank is going to figure out what’s going on? I don’t know, it would be good if he did, but I’m still hoping that if Juliet isn’t a Wesen, she should be the first to find out.
Other interesting bit – Rosalie calls Monroe his “other” partner, in effect voicing how split Nick’s life at the station is. Thus far, we haven’t seen that affect his closeness with Hank, though, as much as I wish it would. Are we going to see more of that as Adalind’s spell takes hold of Hank? I doubt it, because Hank is going to be obsessed with her and not necessarily caring about anything else. How is Renard going to use him to get to Nick? Time will tell!
