Synopsis of 4×02: After Monroe and Rosalee’s wedding, the team has to rush back to Nick’s house to figure out what the hell happened to the Captain and the mysterious man Trubel ended up killing. Nick has to deal with his lack of Grimm abilities while a crazy octopus Wesen is on the loose in Portland stealing people’s memories.

Rating: ★★★★☆

This week Grimm picked up right where it left off, on the cusp of Captain Sean Renard’s death. Yet after time of death is called, the mysterious blonde women who had stopped at his room entered it, somehow froze all of the people around her, and pulled a two headed snake out of her bag. The snake dug its fangs into the then-dead Renard while the other head bit the woman. Just like that, Renard surged back to life, the snake dissolved, and the blonde woman passed out.

Just another day in Portland, right?

Across the world, Adalind finally arrived at the royal castle. She was eager to see her baby, desperate even. Viktor hemmed and hawed before he let her in, drawing out her torment in a way that made me hate him all the more. He led her into the dungeons under the pretense that she would get to see her baby and then locked her in a cell. I called last season “Adalind’s horrible, terrible, no-good, very bad day,” and this season I think is part two of that. She dug herself a mighty fine hole and while I have a great deal of sympathy for her having her child taken, she is not without fault.

That’s probably why Adalind is one of my favorite characters. She dances between being in it for herself and being selfless. She’s a wildcard. I dig wildcards.

Renard is alive, Adalind is locked up, and Nick still doesn’t have his Grimm powers. Of course Monroe and Rosalee worked their tails off to try and find some sort of cure, but had no luck in this episode. This was taken to the next level when Juliet, later in the episode, showed up and asked them to slow down. There’s a part of her that obviously doesn’t want Nick to get his powers back. Who could blame her? She wants a normal life, and being with a Grimm won’t provide that for her.

Nick, Hank, and Trubel picked up where they left off in the previous episode. Trubel was tracking the memory-stealing, octopus-wesen. He had plans to attack another person involved with a government contractor, looking to steal more secrets. With Trubel following him, Hank and Nick kept tabs on her while investigating the case further. Unfortunately there are a few bumps in the road as peripheral characters prove to be tedious.

For one, the FBI agent who happened to be a wesen is still extremely interested in tracking down a Grimm. She asked Nick to step into interrogation with her and showed him her true face without any reaction. Therefore, after investigating the shooting and beheading of an agent at Nick’s house, concluded that it had to be Trubel who was the Grimm. Great for Nick, since his cover didn’t end up blown. Less great for Trubel.

The other tedious character is none other than fan favorite Sergeant Wu. To him I am definitely more sympathetic because he is caught between two worlds without the knowledge necessary to understand his predicament. Thanks to last season, he had a run-in with wesen that sent him to an asylum for a time to try to recover. With that haunting his dreams, the last thing he needed was to see the Grimm book in Nick’s house. He found it, though, and began to connect the dots which made him look into Trubel. Turned out she wasn’t a criminology student and she’s a suspect in a double homicide.

So on top of tracking down a memory-stealing spy, Nick had to worry about two other people looking into Trubel. All the while he had to continue to come to terms with his lack of abilities which puts the people around him in danger.

As a side note, Nick and Hank went and checked on their Captain and get to meet his mother. I like her, though I find her sudden appearance slightly suspicious and worrisome. How did she know he was in the hospital? Is she actually listed as his next of kin? She’d been a mystery for so long, putting a face to her seemed strange. Nonetheless, she is known and apparently in their lives at least for a time.

Back in Austria, Adalind continued to have a miserable time locked up in a dungeon cell. All she wanted was her baby back, and all she got in return was shoved into a damn cell and fed gruel. However, while she was having a small breakdown she heard laughing from another cell. Then a stone slid away to reveal a stream of light and more mysterious laughing. When she asked who he was the voice replied, ‘That’s for me to know and you to find out.’ There’s going to be another character in play, but it will be interesting to learn if he is friend or foe.

Finally, the episode came back to Trubel and her hunt for the octopus-head spy. He managed to infiltrate the household of someone connected to the project he’d been gathering data on. Trubel, doing the worst job ever of staying put, followed him and ended up getting knocked out. She woke up bound on the couch and avoided questioning. Also, she avoided breaking her cover as a Grimm by closing her eyes when the spy transformed. It ended up probably saving her and his intended victim, as she leapt at the chance to beat the crap out of the spy.

She got overpowered though and tossed to the ground and the spy began to try to take her memories. It was the biggest mistake of his life as he began to scream in terror as memories of death flashed before his eyes. The memories of every wesen she’d ever killed flooded his brain until he could do nothing except curl up on the ground and scream in agony. Apparently the one thing that can defeat this particular wesen is a Grimm with terrible memories. She shared her nightmares with him, which also said a lot about her, too. She kept all of those things in her head, tormented by nightmares of her own.

Nick and Hank showed up and saved the day. They caught the spy, Trubel was saved, and the Captain was recovering. It was a win-win for everyone involved, right?

The next morning, Nick and Juliet made breakfast while Trubel bounced out of there to go for a bike ride. While she was gone, Wu showed up to question Nick about Trubel. He had no choice, really. He didn’t want Nick to get in trouble for harboring a murder suspect, so my guess is his intentions were absolutely pure. However, while he was there somehow Nick and Adalind became linked. Nick could see where Adalind was and Adalind could see Nick’s home. Probably a side effect of the potion she used to steal his powers, it freaked both of them out and left viewers with a lot of questions about the implications of such a thing.

Of course while that was happening, Trubel got abducted by the FBI agent who figured out she was a Grimm. Just when things started to be okay, they got all messed up again.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32Bv–3Cbf0]

Leave a Reply