Director: Omar Madha
Writers: Alan DiFiore & Dan E. Fesman

Picture Credit: Fear.net

I am impelled not to squeak like a grateful and frightened mouse, but to roar…. – not so much a fairytale quote, but from John Steinbeck’s “of Mice and Men.

A guy in a red shirt is waiting for another as he hurries into the parking garage. Red Shirt follows him down, telling the guy that he’s going to get what’s coming to him. Red Shirt heads something behind him and turns, and I get the impression of a giant searching for his pretty…but it’s Red Shirt that dies in a confrontation with this mysterious guy, and Red Shirt? Looks about 70+ years old now. The killer drags the body off and puts him into a dumpster, closing the lid on him.

The next morning, Red Shirt is taken into a dump truck, and soon enough Hank, Nick and Wu are called to the dump truck and Red Shirt? He’s young again.

Red Shirt AKA Drake is identified and his address found and the guys go off to try and find their murder scene, as it’s on the route of the garbage truck as well. They talk to the landlord, who tells them about the fight he overheard between Mason and Drake, and possibly his girlfriend, Natalie – the guys already know that Drake has a domestic violence background.

In Drake’s apartment, thet discover that Natalie has left in a hurry, and they make arrangements for evidence team to come in. The cops find Natalie hiding in a hotel room, and when they interrogate her, she tells them how Drake hit her the night before, and how Martin, their downstairs neighbour came to help her. However, he left when Mason came in, as he had overheard the fight seeing as he’s their neighbour across the hall. The guys tell Natalie that Drake is dead, and Natalie assumes Mason is the killer. However, Natalie does admit Drake had heaps of enemies. She also admits, she was too scared to leave.

Of their two suspects, Renard orders them to start investigating Marty first.
They got to Marty’s junkshop and find a huge warehouse filled with things thrown away and find Marty working on something. He seems surprised at the news of Drake’s murder. Marty is a mouse of a man, and it’s hard to imagine how he would want to confront Drake. He admits he ended up doing nothing because he was afraid of Drake. As Marty continues to tell them about Drake, and how bad he felt about them, he shifts into a (aptly) mouse.

Juliet returns home, dressed in red coat that reminds me of episode 1’s case, to find she and their house under surveilliance. A couple in an organe pick-up takes a picture of her before she runs out to confront them and they leave.
Mason is a lawyer, smooth as ever, as he tells the guys about the confrontation last night. He takes a call from an opposing consul on a case, and as he grows furious with the other lawyer on the phone he shifts into a snake.

Research tells Nick enough about the snake – erm, Mason the lawyer – AKA the Lausenschlange and how a Grimm once defeated him. But it is to Monroe that Nick goes with a drawing of Marty, a Mauzhertz.

Pretty obvious imagery here with the names and all, Grimm, lol!

Monroe Tells Nick that they’re harmless and predictable, but that a “snake-dude” is lethal. He also says, that a lausenschlange and a mauzhertz should never be put together in a room as the latter could end up in dessert. As they’re talking, Monroe gets a call about a clocl-repair gig that leaves him incredibly excited and Nick takes his cue to leave.

At home, Juliet explains to Nick about the orange pick-up and the pictures, and shows Nick the license plate numbers she got – Go Juliet! Nick calls it in, but after he does, they hear something outside. He warns her to stay inside, while he goes out to investigate, gun in hand. It’s obvious they’re nervous after the attack last week, and this time, it REALLY is a raccoon that is making the noise.

Inside, the station calls back with an ID on the plate and promises Juliet he’ll have it taken care of. But she notes the address.

That night, at a garage an irate man is telling at someone about what sounds like a case. He orders the other guy in the room with him to leave, and the next thing, he’s and old – very grumpy – man.

And also dead.

The body taken out to a dumpster like Drake was and soon enough the next morning, he is found and the guys come in. Salazar, the victim, was found by one of his mechanics this morning. Archie, the guy who found Salazar, says no one liked him because he was pretty much like Drake. Horrible.

A beaming Monroe heads to his appointment the next day for his clock-gig and finds an office with a “For Lease” sign in the window. He looks up to the balcony above the hidden entrance and there’s a woman there talking on her phone. Thinking she might be his appointment, he calls out to her, which pretty much leaves him open to an attack and seeing that the woman has shifted into something else.

I think I need a Grimm-pedia. I need to be able to recognise these things as I see them!

Suffice to say, he’s knocked out badly.

Juliet is in investigation mode and goes out to the address Nick found. There she finds a woman who was taking pictures of her the previous day, playing with her kids. A passer-by alerts the woman to Juliet’s presence and she rushes her kids inside and is very obviously afraid of Juliet.

Marty goes to visit Natalie, who is packing to leave. She thanks him for her help and tells him she is leaving to start someplace new. She asks him to take Drake’s things away and asks after his Dad, who she says it must be hard for him to take care of. Marty, who is obviously smitten with her, is crushed when Mason appears moving boxes in hand to help her move.

Later, Marty goes out to the garage and the shiny red car that is Mason’s. However, Mason attacks him and tells him that Natalie and Marty will be his, before he proceeds to try and kill Marty. Marty is pretty much saved when two other tenants come in unexpectedly. He manages to get to his car and drive out, but he stops, clearly rethinking his running away.

Monroe wakes up battered and bruised at his appointment, a suitcase near him. He takes it to his Volkswagon Bug, and sees a red symbol smeared on it.

At the station, Nick finds out Marty had his car serviced by a garage….and there’s a big red arrow pointing to Marty right now. The guys head over to his apartment to interview Marty’s father, but find him already dead. Nick suspects that the death is what set Marty off on his killing spree. After years of being bound to take care of his father, he doesn’t have to anymore.

At Mason’s office, he is confronted by Marty, who tells him to leave Natalie alone. Mason is dismissive of Marty, but it only serves to make Marty more determined…until Mason shifts into his supernatural form and scares Marty into shifting into his. As Mason continues to deride Marty, Marty sees his father’s face, and yeah, proceeds to kill Mason/his father.

Marty goes to meet Natalie, with flowers, but driving Mason’s car. She’s pleased, but puzzled to see him. She asks after Mason, but Marty says he couldn’t make it to meet her and when she asks about him driving Mason’s car, he impetuously says he bought it. She eventually goes with him.

Monroe calls Nick in the middle of searching Marty’s car to talk to him about what happened, and Nick asks that they talk later. A bruised and battered and in pain Monroe agrees. Wu comes in after to inform them that they’ve found Marty’s car, at Mason’s office and soon enough, Mason’s dead body is found.

While all this is going on, Marty is attempting to woo Natalie by taking her to an expensive restaurant to celebrate her starting a new life – the both of them in fact, starting a new life. A cooly confident Marty bribes the restaurant to get a table. They have dinner together, with Marty trying to encourage Natalie to do whatever she wants. She blushes, clearly uncomfortable with his praise, and shifts the conversation to asking about his Dad. He smooth talks his way around that question, saying he can’t take his Dad with, and that he has to start living for himself. She buys it, and is impressed.

Right about now, a father at the table behind him starts scolding his son who is misbehaving and Marty is compelled to say something. He orders the Dad to stop talking to his son like that, and when the Dad is dismissive, he punches him out. From that moment, as Natalie is pulling him from the restaurant, the face of every man that he sees is his father and then he knows something is wrong.

In the car, Natalie praises Marty for standing up for the boy, and explains she had a Dad like that scared her. People like that, Marty explains deserve to die. As they continue driving he speeds up, telling a scared Natalie that he’s been going too slow his whole life and that he won’t ever again. Cops begin following him, and he proceeds to go faster, and there’s an atmosphere of a creepy craziness, with more than a little maniac in him.

The guys discover that Marty is heading back to his shop, and they arrive just after Natalie and Marty do. Hank and Nick go into the shop, and when they call out for Marty, a scared Natalie can’t resist calling out for them. Marty wraps his hand around her mouth and drags her away.

Through shelves of things, things that people three away, Nick and Hank begin searching the huge warehouse, trying to encourage Marty to let Natalie go. They eventually find them, and they try to convince him to let her go. Surrounded by mirrors, all Marty sees in them is not himself, but his father. It’s enough to drive him over the edge, to let Natalie go and to run, ducking through, to be honest, everything like a mouse in a maze. Nick follows him to a section of the warehouse filled with doors.
Marty attacks him, but Nick subdues him quickly. He tells Marty they found his father, but Marty refuses to believe him, telling him that his father is everywhere. Marty sobs, telling Nick that nobody knows who he is.

That night, Juliet tells Nick that she drove to the address that he found and that the woman seemed afraid of her. She can’t figure out why the woman would be afraid of her, and Nick says – foreshadowing, I hope – that the woman thought Juliet was something she wasn’t… like a Grimm? Or is this because of Nick?

That night, Nick goes to visit Monroe and when he sees him insists that Monroe tell him who attacked him, but Monroe genuinely doesn’t know. He shows Nick a picture – from his car, I think – and it’s of a scythe – a reaper scythe. Monroe explains that messing with the staus quo is bound to make certain people unhappy, and that his friendship with Nick, his helping Nick definitely qualifies as messing with the staus quo. A shocked Nick quickly tells him he won’t ask for his help anymore, but Monroe won’t hear of it – he wants Nick to continue to ask him for help.

When this episode first began, I thought I could see where it was going pretty early on – Grimm can be obvious in certain respects, but what I did not expect was the emotional complexity to Marty and his story. In one episode, the show made me feel for the “bad guy” even as he committed horrible acts.

While the focus on Marty built up his story, what time was devoted to two of the three important relationships in Nick’s life – Juliet and Monroe was very well spent. Juliet now knows something is wrong that she can’t quite figure out what and there are still hints – I think, please Grimm don’t let me wrong – that something is up about her.

A couple of episodes ago, I thought the show made it plain that Monroe was not as invested in this relationship with Nick as Nick seemed to be and this is an episode that addresses that, and firmly and emphatically delineates where Monroe stand s- with Nick – against anything else. He’s thrown his lot in with Nick and I doubt it’s going to be easy.

All in all, a wonderful, complex episode. What did you think of it?