“The Demon came home, and he declared that the air was
not clear. ‘I smell the flesh of man’”
We have a woman how is really really excited about the
ground smoking. This is apparently some kind of volcanic thing and she’s a
scientist judging by the sciency things she’s saying and how excited she is
about the ground smoking. As she returns to her truck, a man grabs her bag and
rants and raves she give it back, it doesn’t belong to her, she hasn’t shown
respect. She pepper sprays him, making him let go and giving her chance to
drive off. As she leaves, talking on the phone, the man Woges into a wesen with
really big horns
At the police station, poor Hank is being hovered over by
Nick, Wu and Renard. He’s on holiday – he has a 3 week holiday, and he’s still
working. He hasn’t taken a holiday in 4 years and they’re physically removing
him from the building
At home, Juliette is still being besieged by Nick
visions. She flees the house screaming at the visions and jumps into her car.
She drives off – and a vision of Nick sat next to her replays another memory –
she flails at it and loses control of her car, crashing. See, this is the
problem with talking to imaginary friends while driving.
She ends up in hospital, visited by the real Nick. She
tells him that whatever they gave her is driving her out of her mind and that
she needs him to stay away from her, she can’t see him any more.
To Vienna, we’re having a big character tour this week,
to Adalind who is miserable with morning sickness. And isn’t happy to have a
visit from Frau Pech who has arranged a visit between Adalind and the Queen of
the Scwatzwild Roma (oh, no, really? We’re going to go the “mystic gypsy”
route?) Frau Pech tells her she needs to go – to find the true value of
motherhood, she needs to know what her kid is worth. Yeah, that’s a different
take on the “value of motherhood”.
The scientist returns to her home to find earthquakes,
weird residue on the table – and a big fiery monster. The latter is probably
the most concerning.
And at Monroe’s Monroe and Bud are getting excited over a
football game while Nick is all depressed in the background. They’re trying to
cheer Nick up after Juliette sliced and diced his heart. Nick goes to bed and
Monroe and Bud lament at how they’ve failed with Bud still a little surprised
that a Grimm can hurt like that. Nick gets a distraction, a dead body to
investigate! While Juliette goes to see the Nameless Latina Lady (give this
woman a name already!)
The dead body is Jill, the scientist (a geologist) and
they find her house has burn marks – and she is covered in burns, including
burned hand prints on her arms and neck. Nasty. They also find her camera with
her science speak and melted plastic on her table.
At Nameless Latina Woman’s, Juliette explains her problem
and is given a drink to help clear her mind. She tells Juliette all her
memories are coming back at once, she needs to focus on one and follow it. She
needs to interact with it, become one with it and be part of its memory.
In Austria, Frau Pech takes Adalind to the Roma camp where she meets a not-very-welcoming crowd and the queen in her tent and her silent sons. To establish the child’s value they need to test its bloodline – the blood of the child itself. Then men pin Adalind down screaming while the queen approaches with a large, bladed object
Afterwards the queen
confirms that Adalind wasn’t lying (no-one trusts a Hexenbiest) and the blood
of the baby is royal. Everyone has a celebratory drink except Adalind who the
queen won’t allow to touch alcohol. The queen will offer €5,000 if it’s a boy and €750,000 if
it’s a girl, of sound mind and body delivered within 24 hours of birth. Frau
Pech thinks they can get more in Budapest but Adalind doesn’t care about money
– she wants her powers back and if she doesn’t get what she wants she sees no
reason to continue the pregnancy.
Back in Portland, Nick and Wu speak to Jill’s boss. He
tells them Jill was attacked and tells them what she was doing – driving them
out to the location. There he talks about how the vent is overactive and he
pockets some rocks while Nick gets the heebie jeebies. When they return to the
truck they find it has been pelted with rocks and wrecked. Wu calls it in while
Nick follows his heebie jeebies. He finds the man who accosted Jill who woges.
Noticing Nick notice the woge, the man runs, to be tacked by Wu. While held
down the man rants about them not showing respect and going to die, how they
can’t stop it.
At the police station they find the name of the man,
Marcus Hemmings, who has a string of arrests for property damage around
mountains, seeming to be an eco-warrior. And his wife died 15 years ago the
same way as Jill. Nick also reveals he’s Wesen (Renard: Who isn’t these days).
With Hank away and being in the know, Renard offers to help Nick. After a
potent pause
Back to Juliette. Oh yay. Who is building herself up to
find one memory from the deluge. She focuses on one memory and remembers her
part of it – going into the memory (everything fades into black and white
except her in colour). She follows the memory of them moving in together
through until she opens the fridge and is returned to the present (it’s current
fullness doesn’t match how empty it should have been in the memory)
Back at the police station thy question Marcus who says
he wasn’t threatening Jill, he was warning her about what would happen if she
took what wasn’t hers. “His property.” A Vuclanalis will rise and he wants his
revenge and won’t stop – and is beyond Wesen like him. Renard mentions that
Vulcanalis was a priest of Vulcan, the Roman god of fire and Nick has the ME’s
report – Jill was cooked from the inside out. They realise this may have to be
taken off the books. And the ground starts shaking. Wu has his own research,
apparently there have been lots of attacks on people taking rocks from
volcanoes around the Ring of Fire – take a sacred rock, there’s hell to pay.
Oh and Jill’s boss, Tom, pocketed some rocks from the mountain. Cut to bill and an angry volcano monster. Renard and nick run in and point guns at the man made of glowing magma (Bill’s still screaming so I guess he’s not THAT hot?) Bullets do as little as you would think. The magma man runs (why? Burny burny!), leaving a trail of fire behind him and Nick chases him without so much as a heavy duty fire extinguisher. Until the burny bloke burns a hole in the floor and disappears from view.
To the Grimm trailer where Monroe complains at the lack
of decent coffee and Nick finds something. He’s found what Marcus is – a Taureus-Armenta a bull-Wesen known for it’s
nerve, courage and valour, always being the first to step up against impending
threats. And they find magma blokey, Vulcanalis, but it’s all in Latin
To Renard, who
speaks Latin where they find that the creature is apparently to blame for
Vesuvius erupting in revenge for Pompeii folk stealing rocks. Also Renard wants
to know if Nick has a lot of these books. Realising that Portland may be at
risk, they take the book to Marcus. He thinks they’re fools to keep provoking
it – but he joins them at the vent, to collect lots of rocks. Many many rocks.
They take them to
a steelworks and place the rocks between 2 giant containers – presumably of
some kind of coolant. Marcus will stand near the rocks to act as bait.
Volcano man
arrives – and Monroe woges in panic before he can get it under control – while
Marcus taunts him. The tanks are full of liquid nitrogen – they spray Volcanis
and turn him into rock. Marcus then shatters him with a sledgehammer,
shattering him into obsidian. Rather anticlimactic really but he wasn’t really
something they could fight.
Juliette, feeling
all maudlin now she had a happy memory, digs out the engagement ring Nick got
for her. She goes downstairs and pulls out the memory of Nick proposing to her.
Mystical Roma in tents. Mystical Roma in tents who talk
about buying and selling children. Are we really going down this route? Really?
Because “mystical roma who steal children” totally isn’t a trope right
I am taking Hank’s holiday to be the actor needing some
time for other projects and him not being put on the back burner to “make room”
for more Nick and Renard. I may be being generous with this.
I am tired of Juliette, so very very tired. Since the
first season she has always been the outsider, clueless person everyone works
around with added levels of her being kidnapped, threatened, menaced or
victimised. And it’s got 10 times worse in the second season, she is in endless
peril all the time to such a degree that I know nothing about her character.
literally I know she’s Nick’s love interest, I know she speaks Spanish, I know
she’s a vet and I know she’s in peril. That’s it – she’s been a main character
since the first episode of season 1. It’s becoming really hard to care whether
she gets her memory back, stays in Portland, learns the big secret or whatever.
The only reason Juliette concerns me is because of the effect she has on Nick.
And if they’re including weird stuff like gods and
ghosts, rather than just wesen I’d like more explanation.
ETA: Changed the title because IMBD seemed to. And I put season1 instead because of the joys of auto-suggest :)
