Grimm: Map of the Seven Knights
February 20, 2016 7:58 AM - Season 5, Episode 10 - Subscribe

Monroe gets a call that may bring Nick closer to his ancestors; Captain Renard helps a mayoral candidate; Trubel confronts Eve about Nick and Adalind.

"History is the nightmare from which I am trying to awake." -- James Joyce, Ulysses
posted by oh yeah! (25 comments total)
 
Silas Weir Mitchell is such a good, good actor. His scenes were amazing. He and Bree Turner should just get their own show. They could play siblings. coworkers in a software development company, a café owner and a tea supplier, neighboring farmers, teachers, parents of small children -- I don't even care. I just love them.
posted by amtho at 8:25 AM on February 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


Bree Turner's second-earliest IMDB credit. She's adorable. It's from 1997.
posted by amtho at 8:37 AM on February 20, 2016 [1 favorite]


Silas Weir Mitchell is such a good, good actor.

I really hope this show opens some doors for him in future. Reading the Random Roles AV Club interview linked in the recap was interesting, and confirms what I was thinking when I asked Silas my question at this DragonCon panel - he's so good at playing the crazy-eyed manic type, be it as villain or comic relief or some combination of the two that, but I think Monroe is the first part that has let him show that he can do more than that.

Wasn't expecting them to pick up the mystery of the keys again after all this time. Wonder if they'll cross paths with Victor and/or Diana in Europe.
posted by oh yeah! at 10:29 AM on February 20, 2016


(forgot to say I'm the one asking the first question in that segment of the panel)
posted by oh yeah! at 11:43 AM on February 20, 2016


Does anyone know what the incredibly dull mayor campaign plot is about? It's so boring watching the captain film political ads, and seems disconnected from any other plot. I almost miss the royals.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 5:20 PM on February 20, 2016


I'm crossing my fingers that Silas Weir Mitchell will drop by The Flash and/or Legends of Tomorrow for another Prison Break mini-reunion. Portland isn't that far from Vancouver, right.…?
posted by nicebookrack at 7:06 PM on February 20, 2016


Well, I'm wondering if the mayoral campaign will lead to an investigation of Renard or, disastrously, the operations of the police department. Really, the whole time Renard has been involved in this political stuff, I've felt a nonspecific sense of foreboding about it.
posted by amtho at 7:54 PM on February 20, 2016


Silas Weir Mitchell is such a good, good actor.

He's not very good at faking crying, though.

The oddly-specific shot of Nick's 6-pack of Freshly Squeezed led me to this article from last year on Grimm's placement of local products.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 10:43 PM on February 20, 2016 [2 favorites]


I adore how hyper-local to Portland Grimm is; it's one of my favorite things about the show. So much urban fantasy & scifi is set in LA / NYC / Generic Gritty Fantasy City (filmed in Vancouver), it's hard to feel any sense of place in the story. But in Grimm we have Portland, Wesen (Murder) Capital of the World!
posted by nicebookrack at 11:17 PM on February 20, 2016


My wild guess about the mayoral candidate is that he's working with the Black Claw and will out himself as Wesen on TV once elected, OR that he's working with the anti-Black Claw crew and will declare anti-Wesen martial law or whatever.
posted by nicebookrack at 11:21 PM on February 20, 2016


He's not very good at faking crying, though.

What?!? I thought that scene was amazing. Maybe you fake-cry differently? He seemed genuine, if unexpected and not behaving the way I'm used to seeing people behaving -- but that's OK, I've never actually had a friend deal with this specific set of circumstances. The death of his uncle hit so suddenly, his affection for his uncle hit suddenly the previous night, Monroe's an emotional guy and also a strong guy, it's going to be a unique experience.
posted by amtho at 6:34 AM on February 21, 2016


I enjoyed the heck out this episode, moved the plot forward and Monroe got a chance to kick ass. Though I think his uncle would be upset with the lack of gloves when handling the books.

I do hope the Black Claw plotline resolves better than some others. I never felt the Royals plotline was cleaned up satisfactorily. The King and some princes are dead, what about the rest? And what happened to Nick's enhanced Grimm powers? And at the beginning of the show, Renault seemed to be an underworld kingpin with his fingers in everything. But I chalk that up to the show runners still feeling their way through the characters.

Bree Turner was also great in an episode of Masters of Horror called "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" written by Joe Lansdale and directed by Don Coscarelli, both of whom I'm like.
posted by beowulf573 at 7:41 AM on February 21, 2016


"Really, the whole time Renard has been involved in this political stuff, I've felt a nonspecific sense of foreboding about it."

Yeah, you probably should on this show. I just don't care about Rosalee's stalker or the mayoral campaign, but I have to reasonably assume those plots will all blow up and end in tears sometime. Though the last episode having Renard be all "Oh, the opponent is basically a mobster and we know about it, let's out him" was pretty damn creepy and reminding me of the old days when we didn't know if Renard was good or bad.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:10 AM on February 21, 2016


Argh, Renard, not Renault. Again I'm reminded to finish my coffee before posting.
posted by beowulf573 at 9:22 AM on February 21, 2016


Though I think his uncle would be upset with the lack of gloves when handling the books.

Yeah that made me cringe! Like his uncle's body want even cold yet and they were like "screw historical artifact preservation rules!"

I feel the same foreboding about the mayoral campaign and the stalker. The writers for this show has a good way of bringing things together so I'm looking forward to hire they tie in. Like I knew the keys from season one would come back. And I think Eve is here to stay. I love it when shows go full throttle with plot and characters and don't try to maintain some kind of status quo.
posted by numaner at 9:49 AM on February 21, 2016


I feel like Nick's super senses have just become sort of a given. There was a bit not long ago where he flexes his super hearing and it's just treated as a "yeah okay" by everyone else.

I similarly was fine with Monroe's mourning reaction.
posted by phearlez at 1:54 PM on February 21, 2016


Remember the librarian's mantra: "The information contained in the book is more important than the book.". That being said, would it kill them to take HD photos of each page and back them up in a couple of different places? As Eve said in a sudden attack of Passive Voice, "The trailer was burned.". That could happen again.
posted by Mogur at 2:45 PM on February 21, 2016 [5 favorites]


That was the most entertaining episode of the season so far. Old books! Woot!
posted by homunculus at 11:42 PM on February 21, 2016


Yeah, I'm really hoping they're smart enough to take photos of the books and back them up on a secure server somewhere - but I doubt that will happen. Because TV drama. But I love this episode. Feels like stuff is happening and I hope they progress the plot more soon with the keys and whatnot - which it seems like they are, finally.
posted by Crystalinne at 4:08 PM on February 22, 2016


They better back up those books with pictures, but if there are 20 books that might take awhile. That also presumes that these folks don't end up being occupied with some other drama and/or day jobs as well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:04 PM on February 22, 2016


From my tiny experience with book preservation: it's not an easy and cheap task if you want to do anything beyond just taking photos of a page with a camera and have that image be high quality enough for later reproduction as well as stored on a medium that would last for as long as possible. Real book preservationists are trained to unbind a volume (if possible), take crystal clear photos of flat pages at the perfect angle (involving a camera rig that costs an arm and a leg), and then rebind the volume as close to its original style as possible. When a book is too fragile for that they will photograph the pages with curves and all, but still transcribe what the words running into the binding are.

They basically need to take those books to a very powerful museum organization or the Library of Congress to get the kind of preservation that those books deserve.
posted by numaner at 4:45 PM on February 23, 2016


Man, Monroe's uncle would have been such a great resource for that .... :(
posted by amtho at 5:08 PM on February 23, 2016


My spiritual Wesen people is definitely the Buchbaten.
posted by nicebookrack at 8:21 PM on February 24, 2016


Well, despite my earlier-in-the-season complaints, looks like they're picking some things back up where they left off, with the return of the keys. Nice.

My initial suspicion when they first started the Renard political stuff was that it was some of the Portland powers-that-be doing a trial run/grooming for Renard himself running for political office or being offered a job in the Mayor's office (either late this season or beginning of next.) Which of course would cause problems for Nick and Hank and Wu - no non-Wesen boss would give them the leeway they've got now, and you know Renard is pulling all sorts of bureaucratic shenanigans covering up the weirdness of all these Wesen-related crimes. But given how hard they're going with Black Claw, I think some of y'all are right - Renard's political "career" is going to wind up connected with Black Claw and/or Hadrian's Wall in some way, and it's all going to go sideways.
posted by soundguy99 at 8:04 PM on February 29, 2016


On rewatch -- and reread -- boy, I was unnecessarily and unjustifiedly snarky about Silas Weir Mitchell above. Sorry.

This episode did feel ... quite rushed, though? Like, we go from Monroe has an uncle to Monroe's uncle is HERE RIGHT NOW to Monroe and his uncle are amusingly and endearingly similar to Monroe's uncle is dead in what, 30 minutes? I wanted more of them being eccentric and obsessive together.

Also good in this: Monroe gets to let the beast out! Nick was kind of stolidly ineffectual fighting the Anubises; Monroe straight-up destroyed them.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:24 AM on December 8, 2021


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