Grimm--"Bad Moon Rising" Review

    In this episode, Juliette treats Nick like a strange bug, Hank gets upgraded to a real character and Nick and Hank stop a pack of creepy inbred Wesen from doing some messed up stuff.

     Juliette must fall in love with Renard. It has to happen, because it would be awesome. The possibilities with that storyline are so interesting—much more than her being Nick’s preexisting girlfriend.

    I didn’t love Juliette a lot before her coma so I may be biased, but it just seems like she could be nicer to Nick. I get that it’s hard, she doesn’t remember; but obviously he’s devoted to her, he’s not insane, and he’s really pretty cute, so I would be a little less horrified if I were her. It’s like not only does she not remember him, she also doesn’t appear to get why she would have liked him in the first place.

    She was plenty nice to Monroe, though! It was smart to bring Monroe in because it helped show the audience how her brain works around the Nick-shaped gaps in her memory. Of course, there must be some weird illogical blank spots. Like how did she meet Monroe if Nick wasn’t involved? Did she just abruptly have a stranger over for dinner?

    The scene right after Nick explains everything to Hank is the best. Hank adapted very well under the circumstances and was completely awesome. “Coyotl, right?” “Yeah, Hank. That’s the second one today.” 

Just a side question, how has Hank been seeing all these Wesen? Is it just that after a certain point anyone can see Wesen, but only Nick can see them before that point?

    It might seem like Hank’s adjustment was too easy, but frankly, I was just super relieved. Everyone knows that if Hank had gotten really upset, he would have eventually come to terms with it and basically there just would have been a chunk of episodes in the first half of the season where he felt betrayed by Nick and really angry, and then they would have kissed and made up. Instead the writers decided to skip that entirely, so hopefully that means they’re planning on doing something more interesting with Hank.

    The case-of-the-week had a distinctly rape-y feel to it from the very beginning, didn’t it? But then I thought, “well, they wouldn’t probably wait so long if they were just going to rape her”. But no. Apparently it’s a ritual gang-raping. So, there’s that.  Ugh.

    How could the Coyotls immediately tell that Nick was a Grimm? What distinguishes them? Do Grimms have any special powers aside from seeing Wesen and having an ancient tome of knowledge? I really want them to. If this is a true fantasy/sci-fi show, it’s going to turn out that Nick is actually destined to become the savior of the world or something equally epic.

     Sgt. Wu gets the best line of the night with: “Hey, so, let me get this straight. In the last six hours you arrested six villains, saved a damsel in distress and reunited a family, while I filled out three dozen overtime reports and scrubbed out the coffeemaker. Yeah. We’ve all put in a rich, full day.”

Here's a picture of Monroe since you didn't
get to see him enough in the episode

    This show needs bits of Wu and Monroe to bring some levity to the overall (and increasing) darkness of the show. Although, there were a fair amount of pretty great throw-away lines peppered throughout the episode. 

    Overall, I enjoyed this episode. I loved last episode’s emphasis on Renard and I loved this one’s emphasis on Hank. If a show only concentrates on its main character, it gets boring fast. But if it weaves all the characters together into a legitimate, complex storyline… Well. It’s fantastic. Grimm can still be kind of awkward in some respects but each week’s story has been really fun and the overall progression is exciting.

Extraneous notes:

• Hey, it’s Willa!
• Hey, it’s Stanton Parrish!
• I liked how Nick and Renard both talked around each other. Saying what they meant without revealing what they know. It would be so complicated, remembering who knew what. Renard knows that Nick is a Grimm, but Nick doesn’t know that Renard knows, or that Renard is a Wesen prince. What?
• Honestly, doesn’t anyone else kind of wish Adalind would come back and she and Nick would have some awesome UST? 



Connor Trinner--AKA guy from Enterprise

• Carly’s dad looks like that guy from Star Trek: Enterprise (that insult to the franchise). But he's not. He's some guy from Lost and Supernatural.

Mark Pellegrino--AKA Carly's Dad

Credit:

Director: David Solomon

Writers: Stephen Carpenter, David Greenwalt, Jim Kouf, Richard Hatem