Grimm: Hibernaculum
April 10, 2015 6:45 PM - Season 4, Episode 17 - Subscribe

Nick and Hank investigate a rare wesen that leaves victims frozen; Juliette seeks revenge on Adalind; Captain Renard continues to have mysterious bleeding and visions.

*Renard sleeps with (or hallucinates that he sleeps with?) Juliette
*Monroe is traumatized by memories of the Wesenrein trial
*Juliette goes to the Spice Shop to ask for Rosalie's help, but storms out when she sees Nick there.
*Rosalie & Monroe finally learn about Juliette's transformation. Now everyone but Wu knows!
posted by oh yeah! (16 comments total)
 
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So confused by that Juliette/Renard kiss. Was it real? Or was it just a dream he woke up from before the really trippy visions began? The latter seems more likely, since it seems like it would be an unforgivable betrayal of Nick, but I kind of needed more indication of 'just a dream' than him waking up alone, since it's not as if Bad-Juliette would have stuck around to snuggle.

The fact that Juliette had that moment of disturbance after trying to kill Adalind, that she went to Rosalie for help, gives me some hope that this whole arc might not be leading up to a tragic end for the character. I can't tell if this is just the writers continuing to wring drama out of the Nick/Juliette relationship, or if they've given up entirely and are going for the Sleepy Hollow-Katrina ending.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:01 PM on April 10, 2015


Anyone else thinking, "Maybe it's a terrible idea to wake up the entire sleeping frozen people pack?" Do you need to be flashing your lights and talking very loudly right now? Are you going to be able to fish out one dude out of the entire pack? Oh yeah, and then they all start freezing when they run out to kill you? And how would you put them all back without being attacked?

Also, what do you do with a species that attacks when freezing? Maybe they don't WANT to be killing other people. I know Grimm likes to do those ethical dilemmas, but...

And how did they position a frozen Sven to drive a taxi if you can't move them?

This plotline was just terrible.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:32 AM on April 11, 2015 [4 favorites]


Yeah, the plot seemed like they had some ideas for scenes they wanted to do, then tried to string together a plot that would get them to all those scenes. I mean, if the guy freezes to death if removed from this group of other people, how were you ever going to arrest him? But nobody ever had that thought? There wasn't even the faintest discussion of "hey, if we go after this guy, we are automatically sentencing him to death, making us straight up judge-jury-executioner style vigilantes, are we okay with that?" (I mean, normally Nick generally tries to be non-fatal if possible and bring people in, but that clearly wasn't workable here...which they knew because they already had a guy freeze to death in a jail cell.) Heck they could've even said, "well, we know where he'll be until spring, we'll pick him up and bring him in then". But nope, they went in with a total non-plan which could've ended up killing like a couple dozen of these folks and yet it all barely seemed to register to them that they almost committed a mass murder. I am forced to blame such unforgivable stupidity on the writers and not the characters.

(Also I was pretty sure there were not two other guys in the car in the opening scene where we saw the car break down, which added to the rough patchwork feeling of the whole plot.)

On top of which I have plenty of trepidation about where the Juliette plotline is going. (I just hope her [apparently?] sleeping with Renard doesn't result in Yet Another Pregnancy. Seriously, no more babies.)
posted by mstokes650 at 11:55 AM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I'm afraid that Juliette's arc is heading towards her either being cured or killed, neither of which would be as interesting as having her simply learn to live as a Hexenbiest.
posted by homunculus at 2:18 PM on April 11, 2015 [2 favorites]


I dunno, I think she'll live as a Hexenbiest, but she might be more of an enemy towards them, especially if being one makes you evil in the end or something.

Yeah, I was all, "what the fuck are they going to do with the guy if they catch him?" They had no plan other than to kill him, I guess? I know some species of vesen (oh, the poor Spinnetod) don't really have an option to not kill and sometimes you're just going to end up doing it, but this was so halfassed even the cast was all, "Let's forget we ever did this" in the show.
posted by jenfullmoon at 11:32 PM on April 11, 2015


And how did they position a frozen Sven to drive a taxi if you can't move them?

Maybe he was only partially frozen in the barn, but, how would you abandon the cab & corpsicle on a busy city street without being seen? And then once the 'crime scene' got called in, the police would look at the security footage of the area and see Nick & Co. driving & leaving, the crime scene was too big & public for Team Grimm to have control over all the potential witnesses, not like Renard covering up for Nick's zombified bar fight. Yeah, I'm with everyone else, this was a dumb plot. I was too focused on the Juliette stuff to give it much thought as I was watching.
posted by oh yeah! at 7:10 AM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even after they put the Varme Tyv back underground, there's still just too damn many frozen bodies laying around in public, and frozen bodies in 50-degree weather is just way too implausible. Like, the victims of last week's poisonous touch Wesen (Foltersee) could be sorted in the official records as "death by misadventure" and whatever toxicology lab report that mentioned large doses of exotic poison could be "corrected" without anybody noticing. Corpsicles all over the place is another matter entirely.

Which line of thinking just emphasizes how important Renard is to all this - the guy's gotta spend an enormous amount of time fudging the police records about all these Wesen-related crimes. If he dies, Nick's in real trouble, it'd be about a week before some deputy chief notices that this Burkhardt fella winds up investigating all the weirdo crimes and most of them remain officially unsolved.

Also, the bit about the Varme Tyv getting no use from other sources of heat besides draining it from humans was just too far over the line - heat is heat, dammit. And what good would being inside or in a car do them, if being next to a campfire doesn't help? Either the ambient temperature helps keep you alive, or it doesn't.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:15 PM on April 12, 2015 [1 favorite]


Seriously, no more babies.

Heh heh heh . . . . . I will betcha that Monroe's existential freak-out about how we never know how much time we have on this planet will lead directly to him seriously considering when or if there should be the pitter-patter of little feet around the Monrosalee household. I think there's another baby on the way.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:20 AM on April 13, 2015


Absolutely nothing in this episode made sense. This is the worst writing, by far, we've seen yet in this show.

We deserve an apology.
posted by MsVader at 10:53 AM on April 13, 2015 [2 favorites]


Terrible, absolutely terrible. I agree that the viewers deserve an apology. If only human heat will do, why is the basement heated?! Why did the car even matter anyway? Why live in Portland and not New Mexico or Texas? Why not wait until summer and then go after your killer instead waking them up? They seem to freeze and die pretty damn quickly, how did carrying them back to the house not kill them once they dropped to the ground and started freezing/dying?

How is it ethical to allow an innocent shopper to be traumatized by dead body? You're cops, investigating a burglary. Why not just "find" the damn body yourselves? Hell, why not bury the damn thing in the woods beside that stupid trailer? This was Under the Dome levels of bad. Stupid, asinine, lazy writing.
posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 3:31 PM on April 14, 2015


I didn't think it was that terrible, but it did feel a lot like the writers liked the image of the big-pile-of-hibernating-bodies (which was genuinely quite creepy) and wrote outwards from there.

Also felt like they really wanted to do another horde-of-zombies scene.

(Come to that: what ever happened to the "Nick has SUPER ZOMBIE POWERS NOW" storyline? It seemed to just quietly fade away, or did I miss a handwave of "all better now"? Nick did have super hearing ability in the woods, but that seemed more like a he's-a-Grimm-innit thing.)

This was Under the Dome levels of bad.

Easy now. Soon.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 8:28 AM on April 16, 2015


This was Under the Dome levels of bad.

Easy now. Soon.


I wish we could have a badge for surviving bad television.

  • Under the Dome Survivor

  • Helix Survivor

  • posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 9:49 AM on April 16, 2015


    • The Strain Survivor

    posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:13 PM on April 16, 2015


    So true, We had a deal, Kyle. And, yet, I do kinda want the second season to start because of the (always teased but never really used) Ancients. I know I will be disappointed and enraged and OMG BUT EPH IS SO GODDAMN STUPID. I CAN'T EVEN.

    Breathe.
    posted by Ik ben afgesneden at 12:32 PM on April 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


    I started listing to this Grimm podcast recently - was curious to see how they'd treat a badly written episode, and, I think they did ok. They pointed out something I'd never noticed, which is that the writers often drop a visual reference to the episode # into the script - the Gunderson brother who attacks the nurse does it on Rte 4, mile marker 17.
    posted by oh yeah! at 5:56 AM on April 18, 2015 [2 favorites]


    On rewatch:

    Monroe's existential freak-out about how we never know how much time we have on this planet

    I thought that his "time" explanation was pretty much just Monroe trying to deflect Rosalee's questioning away from "actually I was having a post-traumatic flashback"? and unsuccessfully so, as she did eventually gently draw it out of him.
    posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 11:34 PM on November 27, 2021


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