“Turn back, turn
back,
Thou pretty bride,
Within this house
thou must not abide.
For there do evil
things betide.”
It’s the long awaited wedding! Complete with wedding
rehearsal and lots of people rushing to defend why Nick must must wear
sunglasses. At the rehearsal dinner everything’s wonderful and friendly with
old hatchets being buried et al. Awww
Speaking of “awww” Nick and Rosalie come home to a smoke
gilled house because Truble is trying to cook for them (awwww).
While they’re all preparing for the wedding, Rogue FBI Agent Steward who works for the Royals is Up To No Good and Adalind is using nefarious magic to impersonate Juliette and visiting Renard. She expresses all kind of worry over Adalind while Renard warns Fake!Juliette that Adalind is super dangerous. Fake!Juliette also plays on the love spell between them, claiming she’s confused and that they have real feelings for each other. She kisses him, says it was wrong, then leaves telling him to call. Renard looks thoroughly bemused. She this a taxi as her imitation spell wears off.
Adalind calls Juliette to warn her that she think Renard’s obsession is returning – and offers a potion which Juliette quickly rejects. Adalind doesn’t give her time to say more before hanging up.
But Dieta makes a play for “worst sister ever” and gets
drunk, puts on Rosalie’s wedding dress, declares it cursed (since her weddings
wearing that dress ended badly) and spills red wine on it and tears it. The day
before the wedding. Which has them turning out early the day of the wedding
begging a bridal shop to let them buy a dress early; it’s way beyond Rosalie’s
price range but Monroe’s parents (after
his dad has made a huge shift of opinions) will pick up the bill. Dieta
wakes up with the most epic guilt of all time, but Monroe assures her (between
them) that Rosalie and him kind of hated the really old fashioned dress.
Renard calls Juliette to say, though fond, he doesn’t
want to start up a relationship and, no, she can’t come and see him. Which
confuses Juliette and they have an argument before she hangs up over whether or
not she visited last night. Adalind calls and continues to stir things up and
leaves as Juliette again – leaving just as Renard finds her storage unit and
spell casting gear – but Nick doesn’t answer his phone
Nick and Truble have a Grimm road trip moving the Trailer
to a more hidden location and they talk family and Nick’s mother (who is
awesome) and the fact one of Truble’s parents had to be a Grimm. They also talk
about being a Grimm, the possibility of living a normal life and whether they
would choose it. When they go home Truble is becoming uncomfortable living with
them – she doesn’t want to live off them forever though Nick is pretty happy to
have a Grimm around.
Nick goes into his room and finds Adalind – disguised as
Juliette – dressed in negligee – then not dressed in a negligee as she leads
him to bed. She leaves afterwards, running into Truble who is suspicious – and follows
her and sees her transform into Adalind.
Juliette returns and they get ready for the wedding, but
Juliette finds the discarded negligee Fake!Juliette was wearing and is
confused. They go to the wedding, watched by Truble. In the car, Juliette asks
Nick about it and we get more confusion. Juliette thinks he was with another
woman anger, hurt, confusion. After working through it, Juliette starts to put
2 and 2 together
They arrive at the wedding and Nick tries to reassure
Juliette but she calls their life “infected” by Nick being what he is. She
doesn’t know if she can keep going – despite Nick’s wish to propose.
Renard rushes to Nick’s house only to find Truble. After some
quick recapping he holds up a potion – if they don’t get Nick to drink it,
something terrible will happen. Renard steps out the door with the wedding
address – and is shot 3 times. Agent Steward walks in to finish the job and
sees Truble. He chases her down, woges – and realises he just cornered a Grimm
who then beheads him.
Truble calls 911 for an ambulance for Renard before hurrying to the wedding in his car with the potion for Nick. The emergency services arrive for Renard – including Wu. Investigating, Wu finds Truble’s Wesen book – including a section on the Aswang.
At the wedding Hank reassures Monroe who is nervous (and
knows Hank can’t be nervous because he’s been through it a million times. Hank
protests that it only felt like a million times.) In all the chaos, Nick forgot
his sunglasses and has to wear Monroe’s father’s prescription sunglasses.
The wedding begins, Juliette being icy cold to Nick. The wedding
itself and the vows are all beautiful and funny and real. They’re married
successfully. Everyone applauds happily, a few people wogeing in the crowd.
Which is, of course, when Truble arrives with the potion. Grimm panic takes the crowd. In the following mob Truble drops the potion – and Nick loses his glasses.
When the wedding party gets to shelter (parents of the bride and groom running interference), Nick is confused – how did everyone know she was a Grimm? Monroe points out she came in while the whole crowd was woged – woges Nick didn’t see. Monroe woges in front of Nick – his eyes don’t turn black, he doesn’t see the woge. Adalind has robbed Nick of his Grimmovision.
Nick, Hank, Truble, and Juliette flee out of the back
door and drive off to see Renard – who is in hospital coughing blood and not
looking well.
Adalind is on a plane to Europe.
Adalind disguised herself as Juliette to have sex with
Nick – which is rape. Nick did not consent to having sex with Adalind, he does
not want sex with Adalind – he consented to sex with Juliette. The show didn’t
come close to acknowledging that. In fact, Nick has to comfort and reassure
Juliette about his rape – she is presented as the wounded party, she is the one
who feels sickened, she is the one who considers Nick’s rape a last straw and enough
to call everything off. This isn’t presented as Nick being raped, but Juliette
being victimised by magically induced cheating. Not only is she presented as
the chief victim here – but she takes out her angry on Nick.
Next season is going to present a whole lot of
interesting elements – does Nick choose to be a Grimm or not? And it’s not just
Juliette – but the entire legacy that the Trailer represents (as we saw with
Rolek and his own legacy). What will happen to Renard? What about Adalind? Will
Tuble be a regular? Will Wu confront Nick about them lying to him? I hope for a
lot… but I’m also wary since there was an epic cliffhanger at the end of the
last season – but zombie Nick was resolved pretty quickly and without any long
term story affects.
This season has been interesting in that it managed to
keep meta-plot running throughout; Grimm likes it’s “random wesen of the week”
far too much. And this season wasn’t free of them – especially since several
episodes maintained the meta through the Austrian Hexenbaby storyline which
felt very unrelated to the main plot. Similarly, even when covering an issue
that is personally pertinent to the characters (like Monroe’s parents) there
was a need to insert a wesen of the week as well. But, between the Hexenbaby,
Adalind, Rosalie and Monroe’s wedding, Truble and Wu’s initial wesen exposure
there were a lot of plotlines that were directly relevant, which was certainly
a step up.
I do think some of the plotlines were maintained through
some odd characterisation. While I appreciate Adalind’s rage over her child
being taken, for a whole long time Adalind saw that baby as nothing more than
an asset to trade for her powers; she wasn’t interested in motherhood. She
seemed to transform over night. And while I can see Renard, Nick et al trying
to keep the baby’s location a secret as much as they did, they must have
realised Adalind wasn’t just going to accept that and how dangerous she would
be when riled – the secrecy from her was ill-thought out to say the least.
We have seen Juliette step in, a return of Kelly, the
arrival of Truble and even the which has gone a long way towards addressing the
problems with the women being primarily passive and victimised on the show.
What hasn’t improved is the POC involvement. We still
have Hank and Wu. Hank is fully in on the secret but he’s still very much in
the background – in fact, as we add Juliette and Truble to the mix, he seems
more background. There’s a lot more that could be done with his character – and
should have been done. Hank just walked Rosalie down the aisle – since when did
they have that kind of relationship? Why didn’t we get to see that? I want to
see Hank bring more to the team rather than be the figure that is often
presented on screen, but primarily as someone for Nick to bounce off.
And Wu? Aaaargh, we had an episode about his family, his
friends, his community, his culture – and it all veered off with Nick and Hank
deciding it was better to drop Wu in a mental institution than actually tell
him the truth. So close to him becoming more than the wise-cracking comic
relief and then they dropped the ball. I only hope that him finding Truble’s
book is going to be a second chance at addressing that – but he also better be
really angry about it.
We have reached the end of season 3… and no LGBT
characters. Not one and with a cast that is, frankly, pretty damn large when it
comes to recurring characters and utterly, overwhelmingly huge when we add in
characters that appear for one episode. Not one. Not one teeny-tiny-token.
