“It is not more
surprising to be born twice than once; everything in nature is a resurrection.”
The gang are trailing Nick as he hunts a nice family of
tasty innocents; they run inside and lock the door while Zombie!Nick batters
his way through. The wife and kiddies hide in a closet while the husband
barricades the door and reaches for his gun. Hank and Monroe rush to intervene
but Zombie!Nick is hard to stop. Hank tries to throw something large and heavy
at Nick’s head – and he catches it, from behind, without looking. Impressive –
but Hank recovers quickly and uses his action as bait to force Nick to chase
him out of the family’s home.
They run into the barn, up to the hay loft and draw
weapons, hoping to wound Nick – he falls threw the rotten floor of the hayloft
which gives them chance to imprison him while Juliette, Rosalie and Renard
arrive. They shoo the husband back into the house with a false name (the name
Eric made up for Nick).
They prepare to go in – but Monroe stops them; they can’t take him in human guises. Monroe and Renard woge – the first time Hank has seen Renard’s Wesen face but he just says “I wish I could do that.” Eternally establishing Hank’s awesomeness. They fight and Zombie!Nick smacks them around and throws them about quite easily despite them hitting him with clubs, shovels, fallen wooden beams and anything else they can get their hands on. They can’t stop him and eventually Hank pulls a gun and begs Nick not to make him shoot him –Nick pauses – and Juliette and Rosalie rush in from behind with their HUGE NEEDLE full of zombie-cure.
Nick collapses to the floor and starts twitching. Just in
case they don’t have enough meds, they hurry to take Nick back to the herb
shop, rushing him away before the police arrive. They try to look after Nick on
the journey back while Monroe hopes Renard will make his brother pay for this.
They get Nick back to the shop and give him a second dose
– while Renard heads back to the police station to handle the fallout. Monroe
and Hank are both very gungho for revenge against Eric and they have to restrain
Nick when he starts moving in his unconsciousness.
Renard gets a text that whatever he wanted is done and on
the news – he checks the news and finds that Crown Prince Eric from the
Kronenburg family was killed in an explosion in Vienna. Renard is quite
savagely satisfied. He then makes a call, in German not his usual French, to
someone else with lots of ominous undertones. Wu updates renard on the bar
fight – one person died making it a murder case. But all they have is the name “Thomas
Schirack” and the CCTV footage is missing and destroyed – thanks to Renard. He has
kept one of the hard drives though showing Nick on his rampage – I think that’s
going to come back to bite them in the future.
At the shop Monroe and Hank wonder why the Royals want a
Grimm so badly and Nick wakes up, confused and wondering why he feels so beat
up and why he’s handcuffed and why is everyone else looking so battered? He
dregs up his memory and they carefully recap him and Nick has a guilt spiral
(Monroe assures him that no-one was badly hurt – so there’s a bubble to burst
in the future). Nick and Juliette go home so Nick can rest.
At the police station Hank convinces Wu that Nick was there and injured so had to rest – and Wu comments on how lucky it was only one person died. Hank goes to talk to Renard and they discuss making sure their stories unite and finger a Thomas Schirak in order to protect Nick. Meeting at the Spice Shop for everyone but Nick to discuss the death. There’s a general consensus that Nick’s not exactly at fault, but that, legally that’s a really poor defence. They all agree (uncomfortably but not reluctantly) to lie to protect Nick – but worry about him finding out (and how could he not – he’s bound to hear about the murder?) But agreeing to lie is the first step, Renard coaches them on the details they will need to remember to keep their stories straight.
At the police station it’s apparent the detectives
working the case don’t have a lot to go on (“Schirak” is described as “big” and
a “monster” which isn’t helpful) and Hank has a “I know you took the CCTV but
we’re totally not going to talk about it” conversation with Renard. The
detectives get Rosalie and Juliette’s names from Renard and go question Rosalie
Back at Nick’s, Juliette finds Nick cold and nearly
impossible to wake up – she hurriedly calls 911 and Nick wakes up, completely
fine. Juliette tells him he felt like he was dead while he was asleep though he
assures her he’s fine.
The detectives leave Rosalie and go to speak to Juliette
and run into Nick- which means,
inevitably, Nick learns that someone in the bar fight died (honestly, did
anyone expect to keep this a secret from Nick?) They question Juliette while
Nick listens with his enhanced Grimmy hearing, the stress of Juliette’s cover
up leads him to crush a cup to shards in his grasp. The detectives leave and
Nick wants to turn himself in – they can’t all lie to protect him when he
killed someone.
He drives to the police station to turn himself in and runs into Hank – Nick walks past him but Hank brings out the big guns: Nick tried to kill him. And Monroe and the Captain and he hit Juliette. They had to work together to bring him down. Hank warns him if he’s turning himself in he does it alone (what does that even mean?)
And Renard gets another mysterious phone call – this time from his mother who is quietly happy about Eric’s untimely demise. That’s it. Will one of these foreign callers pass on some information. Nick arrives and it’s Renard’s turn to talk him out of it – he shows Nick the CCTV of the fight but the CCTV shows a different element; the man Nick killed was the one who came at Nick with a knife. Renard follows up with an excellent speech of how they walk in two worlds, when they have reasons they can’t explain to the courts – justice isn’t the obvious or basic. He continues his winning streak of awesome speeches by making it clear it was Eric’s fault and that Eric would have succeeded if Nick turns himself in: he will have removed a Grimm.
He goes out to the main room – and just greets the detectives, he doesn’t confess.
And in Austria, Adalind continues her 101 tasks to get
her Hexenbiest powers back; now
having to sew the flowers she collected into the cadaver of Frau Pech. And
once this rotting body is sewn back up, Adalind has to cut the thread with her
teeth – she is not enjoying this ritual. Strange white smokey gas billows out
from the incision on the corpse.
Her next task is to fill a big jar with blood, gore and goo from the corpse. This just gets more and more fun. She then has to smear the goo over her stomach where it is absorbed – leaving a skull imprint behind before it too is absorbed.
Hmmm… I am… discontent. I don’t exactly hate the story or
am angry at the plot or anything… it’s just last season we had the Royals
raising their ugly heads, plotting between Renard and Eric, we had the Verrat
and the rebellion all slotted into place, we had long quests and epic plots –
we had this thing with the keys of shiny Templar gold: there was a lot going on
on the mystical/Wesen side with the added bonus of Juliette, Hank, Renard,
Rosalie, Monroe and Nick all working together. It felt large, it felt epic and
I was REALLY looking forward to this season…
…and in the first 2 episodes Eric dies off-scene in an
explosion, Nick zombies out on the plane and kills Samedi, derailing the Royal
plot almost accidentally and we move on to a police cover up plot with
additional “is Nick sick/zombie/going to lose it elements and a big slather of
guilt? It feels like all the big build up of season 2 has just been deflated,
the plot lines clumsily and hurriedly severed and a new direction chosen.
About the only plot line continuing is Adalind who is
continuing to perform her gross-out in 20 steps. And Renard still gets to show
off his language skills with cryptic and highly uninformative conversations.
