Picture credit: sciencefiction.com

Director: Clark Mathis
Writers: Akela Cooper & Spiro Skentzos
Guest Starring: Valerie Cruz

 

 

 

 

 

“We shall see the crumbs of bread… and they will show us our way home again.”  – Hansel and Gretel

 

And, here is the recap to episode 10 – a little later than I hoped, unfortunately. Episode 11 coming soon!

Have you ever associated Hansel ad Gretel with the term ‘Organ Grinder’? Me either.

Two boy-men are running shirtless through the forest, being chased by well, hello Ugly, Pointed Nose People! One of the boys, Steven (who’s injured), falls into a river, while the other is captured and returned to a camp/farm where we see people burning an emaciated body in a huge fire.

Oh, ew, okay, Grimm really isn’t pulling any punches on the well, Grimm-scale here, because next thing? Steven is floating downriver, dead with a crow picking at his eye-balls.

Now, on to relationship advice, how’s that for a quick switch? Nick comes to Monroe for help with his relationship with Juliet. He’s worried that with him being a Grimm she’s in more danger – and please, oh please let her already be some sort of Grimm-creature already – and has decided that she needs to know his secret, especially after the attack of the Giant that on the show at least happened last week. Marie’s warning to break-up with her is playing on his mind a lot. Monroe advises him against it because, and this part is interesting, humans are not built to believe in Blutbads and the like. Creatures like that just don’t compute. It’s cute how Nick asks him to “Blutbad” to prove to Juliet he’s not a crazy person.

Annnd, cue Hank calling with news of Steven’s body. And this is where it gets much more interesting, and not sparkly – Nick finds two puncture wounds on the side of Steven’s neck. He’s too pale, and the cold water and the river and the rocks aren’t enough of an explanation for the state of his body for the guys. Hank also points out a puka shell necklace, like he saw on his first honeymoon to Hawaii.

At the morgue, the coroner tells them that Steven had lost about 7 pints of blood, and that the vampire-teeth marks were just big enough to be IV needle marks, put in the neck because it’s the fastest way to get the most blood. His cause of death, though, was drowning because he couldn’t do much else after having that much blood loss. Steven’s prints get the guys a PO Box number, which is the only place they have to start investigating because, according to Hank, there is nothing but forest around where Steven’s body floated from. There is no recognizable place from where he could have come from.

At the PO Box place, they pick up the mail that Steven was getting, but the owner doesn’t offer them much more help than that. On the way out, though, Hank notices that a kid walking in is wearing the same necklace and the guys show her a picture of Steven, and ask her some questions. She’s standoffish and isn’t giving too much away, and claims that she traded for the necklace. Nick comes clean and the girl sends them to Gracie, who sells them.

Gracie does recognize Steven, and is devastated at the news. She cries out, and a guy next to her hears her and comes to her defense – it’s her brother. The siblings tell the guys that the last thing they heard was that he had ranch work. They last saw him after they took him to a free clinic. Nick takes a necklace before he leaves.

The guys head down to the clinic to talk to the office manager, Tom. Tom tells them they treated Steven for a spider bite and that the head of the clinic, Dr Levine treated him for the bite.

Oooh, Valerie Cruz!

Dr Levine tells them the only thing she trated him for was the spider bite, and that he was healthy otherwise. Just as they’re leaving, they’re called to a horrible accident, where the victim had been transporting human organs, and blood in a non-medical, non-transport-any-authority vehicle. The paramedics transport the victim onto a stretcher, and just then he transforms to an Ugly Pointed Nose Person – this show needs to come with a Grimm Dictionary before the ep starts!

The guys run the victim’s prints – no id, his license, which is fake, they have a credit card with a woman’s name on it, and the car was stolen, so it wasn’t much help either in trying to find out their victim’s ID. Which is when Wu makes his grand entrance and asks if they’re depressed – ah, Wu, you do make the smallest things fun!

But also, he doesn’t have much – the phone’s a bust and without a warrant the provider won’t give them any information. The guys decide to try and match the blood found at the accident to Steven’s blood type.

I think Nick needs a Watcher, or a Willow for research, or maybe just Eddie in the trailer helping him figure things out because I can’t figure out how he does hours of research and still finds time to go to Monroe to tell him about the Geiers – the Ugly, pointy Nose People.

I swear, I thought he was calling Juliet for dinner, but nope, it was straight to Monroe’s, for a dinner of beans. Monroe, who cooks him dinner and gets to listen to everything about the case and Geiers until he interrupts and points out that Nick never asks him anything – like his favorite colour, and the hottest Bond babe and yes, Nick asks, and yes they’re well on their way to being an old married couple!

Monroe’s favorite colour is red, by the way.

That’s about all the normal conversation they try, before Monroe explains that Geiers harvest human parts because, well, to quote him, “our exotic animals are you”. So basically, human parts make Grimm creatures better enhanced. Monroe’s heard of a place that sells these enhancements, and Nick sends him on an undercover mission to get as it turns out $300 worth of crushed human gallbladder.

The next day, the guys get confirmation that some of the blood in the accident does match Steven’s, but not all of it. Nick realizes that the street kids in the city are being targeted, and Hank suggests expanding the search for similar reports of street kids being taken to out of state, and while he’s doing that, Nick gets a call from the lab confirming that the gallbladder Monroe spent $300 on was really human gallbladder. It’s the news Nick has been waiting for, because he makes his excuses to Hank, and heads off to the store Monroe took him to the night before.

The shopkeeper runs, naturally he does, until Nick catches up with him. He’s just as afraid of his supplies as he is of Nick, but as Nick points out he’s the one that’s captured the shopkeeper. But, all the shopkeeper has is a phone number and the delivery guy is the only person he’s ever seen. The shopkeeper assumes as a Grimm, Nick killed him, not that it was an accident. As he leaves, he sees some street kids outside, and remembers the necklace he bought for Juliet.

And so cue, the weekly 30 second cameo for her – she’s pleased at the necklace, and she totally cottons on to Nick, the “big softie”, wanting to take Gracie and her brother out for dinner that night. She agrees, and they set off for the fountain and Gracie and Hansen. Gracie definitely accepts the invitation, and Hansen comes around – eventually.

Through dinner, Hansen is still standoffish, but Gracie is pretty open about things, including how they ended up on the street – sucky parents about covers it. Some quick questioning by Nick gets another name of a missing kid they know, one that disappeared because he said he found a job. Gracie mentions Kevin, the other guy that ran through the woods with Steven, but was recaptured. Nick continues to question the kids, but Juliet takes a different tack in the questioning, and manages to get Gracie to admit she liked Kevin, and that he asked her to go with him, much to Hansen’s disbelief. After that, the kids leave, with Nick’s card in hand.

Later, Juliet subtly points out that she, like Gracie, knows what it’s like to have a guy disappear on her. She wants to continue their romantic evening, but Nick gets a call with an address for the number he got from the shopkeeper.

At the clinic, Gracie goes for a check-up because she’s sick, but she also happens to lay out everything that she told Nick to the very friendly Dr Levine, who does not look happy Nick is still around.

The guys and Wu explain to Renard where they’re at in their case, Wu explains that the one number dialed from the man in the organ-harvest accident led them to an address that turns out to be exactly the one Nick got from the shopkeeper. Renard, and SWAT go with the guys to the address. The guys are almost attacked, but Renard, it seems is a crack shot and their lead dies. At the back of the trailer they find a drying house of sorts, where organs – lots of human organs are being dried out.

Back inside the trailer, Nick is in time to hear a call ring out on the dead guy’s phone and when he returns it he finds it goes to the clinic.

Later that night, Tom the office manager, kidnaps Hansen and Gracie and takes them to a house, the house from which Steven and Kevin tries to escape. As they’re led away, Hansen breaks his necklace, and starts leaving a trail of puka shells from the driveway.

At the clinic, the guys find a nurse closing up and get her to open the clinic right back up again. No one’s there, but Nick who’s seen she’s a Geier threatens her – not as a cop, he’s careful to say. Seems like he’s getting a little more comfortable with his Grimm heritage here.

At the house, Dr Levine reveals herself as the doctor behind the organ harvesting, and decides to start with Gracie as her next patient. Outside, the guys and a SWAT team head up to the van the kids arrived in, and are about to go into the house, when Nick sees he’s stepping on the shells leading to a shed outside instead.

Levine wants the harvesting to be finished that night, but while they’re planning this, Nick and Hank are coming up to the shed, only to have their element of surprise running by someone at the house seeing the SWAT team and shooting. In the gun-fight after that, Levine escapes, and Nick goes after her. He follows her back out to the forest, where he doesn’t realize she’s above in the trees watching him until it’s too late, and she attacks him. In the fight, she falls into the fire pit that she kept there for bodies.

Renard enters his office to find a package on his desk, a wooden box with the symbol of a Reaper sickle on the lid. He opens it to find the ear of the Reaper he encountered at the beginning of the episode, which is about when a phone call comes reminding him to control Nick. Renards points out that Nick is a Grimm with a conscience and that if the Reapers are concerned about him, they should come take care of him themselves.

The case in and of itself, was gruesome, but came with the bonus of Valerie Cruz, who I’ve loved since she did the short-lived Harry Dresden series. Nick is struggling more and more with his identity, and Juliet, in what little screen time she has is showing more and more too, that the way things are between them – Nick being away all the time and her waiting for a call – is troubling her. It seems Monroe has been successful in convincing him not to tell her, but he adores her and I wonder how long that will last. As much as Juliet is lacking in an overall presence on this show, the writers are getting more adept at having what time she does have mean something and is affecting Nick. It’s on a slow burn, it seems, I’m guessing to last the 22 ep pick up they got.