Grimm: Highway of Tears
November 28, 2014 7:18 PM - Season 4, Episode 6 - Subscribe

The latest attack against Rosalee and Monroe makes Nick want to become a Grimm again more than ever; Victor learns of Kelly Burkhardt's role in abduction of Adalind's baby.
posted by oh yeah! (20 comments total)
 
Always happy to see Erick Avari get cast, but too bad he was just your average bad Wessen of the week instead of role with potential to return.

I guess they're not going to do anything more with the Nick-Adalind mind-swap? I figured it was going to happen again while she was still imprisoned, and they'd have to go break her out to keep Victor from learning too much about the Resistance, but now that the cat is out of the bag about Nick's mom being alive & involved, that's moot.
posted by oh yeah! at 8:15 PM on November 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


So aside from Monroe and Rosalee being threatened by a different pure-blood organization than in the comics, everything's back to normal. Also, Nick really needs to get hooked up with broader Wesen society, so he can send people to, like, safehouses when they get involved too deeply with this stuff. He's going to run out of boarding space!
posted by Small Dollar at 9:56 PM on November 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not much to say about this episode. Weakest of the season thus far, really.

Agreed.
posted by homunculus at 12:33 PM on November 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'd really appreciate some explanation of why there are so many Wesen in the Portland area. I mean, they don't have to weave it into the storyline (although why not?) but some tossed off line about whether or not this is a high concentration or if we're suppose to think they are thick on the ground everywhere and we don't perceive it-- I'm surprised at how much I like this show now that it's over its biggest problems, but do they really have to do a monster of the week every week? It seems to keep adding new roads but never building anything on the ones they've established, like they're aggressively avoiding fleshing things out, when they've already set up enough that might "exclude" a new viewer, but I find I either want to figure out what they're on about or I don't, and sometimes the possibilities are more exciting than what it turns out to be. I kept hoping episodes I missed would explain some things, but they never really did. Still, it's kind of fun, but I keep wishing it would be more while I'm pretty resigned to what it is. I'd rather find out the climate and room for isolation or ancient migration or something is responsible for so many kinds of Wesen to be in one place rather that find out which new historical figure was a secret Grimm/Wesen.

So, what does everyone else think: is this a lot of Wesen or are they suppose to be everywhere?
posted by provoliminal at 8:33 PM on November 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, extrapolating from interbreeding between different kinds of Wesen being so taboo, there has to be enough of each type around to keep everyone from having to marry their close relatives. So, I vote that they're supposed to be everywhere. But also, if they mostly all came to the US in immigration waves (I forget, have we had any Wesen with Native American origins?), it would make sense that there are magnet cities.

(But, mostly I think the math would never scale, much like trying to figure the homicide rate from "Murder, She Wrote" episodes, the Wesen population will always be whatever the story demands.)
posted by oh yeah! at 6:19 AM on November 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'd really appreciate some explanation of why there are so many Wesen in the Portland area. I mean, they don't have to weave it into the storyline (although why not?) but some tossed off line about whether or not this is a high concentration

I think there was a tossed off line at some point about how Portland has so many Wesen simply because a lot of them have moved there to be part of the growing and thriving community. There are wesen everytwhere, but the Pacific Northwest has a larger concentration than most places. It's a magnet city, like oh yeah! said.

This wiki page lists all the types of wesen seen so far, btw.
posted by homunculus at 9:45 AM on November 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Ah, I've been wondering if we'd ever see a Griffon wesen, and apparently there's one in the comics. I don't think we've seen a flying wesen on the show yet.
posted by homunculus at 9:50 AM on November 30, 2014


Someone somewhere did clock the average homicide rate of the area, which does work with the show, so I dunno (it's far more believable than other shows), but if we're to believe this is an established "Wesen city," then other things make more sense, like having a Royal presence and why there are so many types when some are natural enemies, etc. We never really get explanations of how they function with a government, there's just different factions that seem to run off fear and tradition, but Rosalee could never run a shop or be part of a council if there wasn't some amnesty or cooperative something, but so many things wouldn't be so unknown and primitive if they could organize openly. It comes off like a bunch of unaffiliated Mormons on their separate compounds. The area kind of makes sense because they could be pretty isolated but have access to a greater community.

Since they know a wide group of other types of Wesen and had a diverse wedding attendance and seem pretty popular, this "purity" faction can't be the norm.

I had no idea there was source material. Are they sticking to it?
posted by provoliminal at 11:45 AM on December 1, 2014


I thought it was interesting that just after I complained about the sporadic then dropped graying we saw of Nick post-curse last season that we saw it here as Nick's Grimm-ness came back. Was that a callback that meant something, I wonder? Or just their visual shorthand for his re-grimmifying?
posted by phearlez at 12:38 PM on December 1, 2014


Since they know a wide group of other types of Wesen and had a diverse wedding attendance and seem pretty popular, this "purity" faction can't be the norm.

Oh, I think you could easily support a system where people are willing to socialize with each other so long as they don't bring one home to meet mother. Guess Which Vessen is Coming to Dinner, as it were.
posted by phearlez at 12:42 PM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think the Hitler Wesen was dropped from this week's opening theme, which is always a plus. God, that thing annoys me so much.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 1:37 PM on December 1, 2014


Eh, I think it would boil down to breeding, like it did in the Sookie Stackhouse books, if anything, much like the creepier traditions in the more isolated, hill people tribes of some Wesen, which I don't remember them ever getting into general "rules" for. Like it never seems clear if something is a necessary part of breeding or some creepy tradition. Is marrying a non-Wesen more acceptable than the wrong Wesen? Nobody seems to know what anyone else knows. Monroe and Rosalee are plugged in enough to know what's rare for Wesen, but they're both way more well rounded and progressive than some family shacked up in the woods and they still seem to rely mostly on folklore and word of mouth. I'd suspect fear and ignorance are strategic tools of the ruling class if I had any idea who that would be.

For all we know, they may have to breed with non-Wesen to produce children. I still have no idea what the Royals are. We know Grimms don't have to mate with other Grimms.
posted by provoliminal at 2:28 PM on December 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


In the One Night Stand episode the female Naiads (mermaid) Wesen HAD to breed with non-Wesen humans because Naiad men are sterile. In the Tarantella episode, Lena's husband doesn't know she is Wesen. So it would seem marrying/breeding with a human is more acceptable. I am curious about the Rosalee/Monroe child issue.
posted by miss-lapin at 2:10 PM on December 2, 2014


(On the other hand, we do see different types of Wesen working together-not just Rosalee and Monroe, but this new secret government faction of Wesen, for example.)
posted by miss-lapin at 2:11 PM on December 2, 2014


like having a Royal presence

Renard is, AFAIK, the only royal in Portland (and a literal bastard), and I swear it was at least suggested in earlier seasons that his presence there was more about him (supposedly) choosing to remove himself from Europe and the whole drama and intrigue of the royals. So I'm not sure that there's really an "official" Royal presence in Portland.

Of course, it soon became clear that he was still keeping his ear to the ground and keeping himself involved, at least indirectly, but whether this was simply self-preservation or part of a larger plan to gain power and influence while supposedly being off in the hinterlands and out of the game remains to be seen.
posted by soundguy99 at 6:57 PM on December 2, 2014


the sporadic then dropped graying we saw of Nick post-curse last season that we saw it here as Nick's Grimm-ness came back. Was that a callback that meant something, I wonder?

It sure seemed to me that Nick was a better fighter than usual at the end, so I kinda suspect it was meant to be a callback, and that Nick's got the "Super-Grimm" powers back.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:03 PM on December 2, 2014


I had no idea there was source material. Are they sticking to it?

People have referred to the comics in past threads, so I finally went looking on the web - I've been enjoying the show as is, so I didn't feel any particular urge to find "source material" - and the only thing I found is that there was basically a one-year run of comics (Wikipedia) from May 2013 to April 2014 published by Dynamite.

I don't know if the show runners consider the comics canon or not, but since the comics didn't even appear until two years into the show's run, I don't know that I'd really consider them "source material."
posted by soundguy99 at 8:03 PM on December 2, 2014


The comics began 2 years AFTER the show premiere. There are also novels-which also started last year. I believe there are two now and a third in the works?
posted by miss-lapin at 12:20 PM on December 13, 2014


The only other source material I can think of is the stories collected by the Brothers Grimm. Grimm seems to borrow liberally from other mythologies so I'd be hard pressed to refer to "source material."
posted by miss-lapin at 12:23 PM on December 13, 2014


Well, extrapolating from interbreeding between different kinds of Wesen being so taboo, there has to be enough of each type around to keep everyone from having to marry their close relatives.

Although wesen/non-wesen marriages don't seem to be taboo? which does relieve some of the "hard to find a unrelated partner of your species" pressures that would lead to local concentrations of wesen.

Some species, at least, do seem rare: ones that Monroe has heard of but never seen. I forget the name, but one from last season: the luminous-skinned moon-faced wesen that were on the run to meet up with the few remaining of their kind in Alaska.

There certainly seem to be enough wesen in Portland to maintain a parallel economy to serve their specific needs? The spice shop mostly serves the wesen community; I think we've also seen a wesen bar; and Bud + friends suggest that there are entire sectors of the economy which are mostly operated by wesen.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:51 PM on November 22, 2021


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