Grimm: Into the Schwarzwald
March 12, 2016 5:46 AM - Season 5, Episode 12 - Subscribe

Nick and Monroe uncover a long-hidden treasure in Germany; Renard helps Hank and Wu track down the Black Claw assassin; Rosalee and Adalind have an unwelcome visitor at the Spice Shop.
posted by oh yeah! (9 comments total)
 
Thank you, team Grimm!

I loved Monroe's enthusiasm for the antiquity. He is truly a great friend.

Nick is inscrutable; it seems he almost never gets to express emotion, but on those rare occasions when he gets an opportunity, he does well. I guess that's part of being the central character on a show like this?

I don't really have a sense of what Nick _wants_. Is that part of being a grimm? You just keep doing stuff because it's your duty? Some kind of primal drive toward that?

Is he motivated by a deep-seated sense of the importance of fairness? The rule of law? Does he have to overcome a constant inherited distaste for wesen? Love for them?

What is it like, having this set of abilities? Does it come with an associated drive?

Both he and Renard are motivated by drives to which we aren't privy. In Renard's case, that seems to be a feature of the character, but I really feel like I should understand Nick more...

Probably I'm missing something. Maybe it's too subtle for me?
posted by amtho at 6:31 PM on March 12, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think a lack of more introspection from Nick is for sure an issue at the show's age. You - and by that I mean me- could ignore it a long time because he found a way to fold the Grimm job into his existing calling as a cop, which he seemed to like and be good at. You could cut him some slack for not having the time to get too introspective about it considering the roller coaster life it's resulted in, with various family threats and powers coming and going.

I think the show also hasn't done a bad job at revealing things organically and sometimes having other folks seem amazed Nick doesn't know some stuff, like when they explained how the vesen know Nick is a Grimm when they change in front of him. This also worked okay with the slow shift of Monroe from reluctant helper to friend & ally; a certain amount of "wait, we never talked about this?" made sense, particularly since everyone made it kinda clear to Nick that a lot of past Grimms were pretty awful people who viewed the vesen as sub-human animals that deserved to be made extinct. Maybe you don't bring this up over dinner with your vesen friends if you think you're just using this very ugly and bloody legacy in the service of society for maybe the first time in ever.

But it sure seems like the time has some, specially with the Initiative (I can't for the life of me remember what they actually call them) operating as some sort of structure. At some point you'd expect a sensibly intelligent person to ask himself what he wants to work in support of and how he expects to stay alive to retire.

I enjoyed the ... it's a stick.
posted by phearlez at 9:39 AM on March 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


I enjoyed the ... it's a stick.

So...piece of the true cross maybe? I feel like since the show has made Hitler a wesen and put the blame for most fascist uprisings on them, they should go all out and make Jesus a wesen too.
posted by oh yeah! at 11:36 AM on March 15, 2016


That seems very brave for network television. And is there any mythology about the true cross having healing properties?

Also makes me wonder whether anything has been said to imply that the grimm are a form of vesen as well.
posted by phearlez at 11:50 AM on March 15, 2016


Isn't show 100 traditionally the point at which a show becomes syndicatable?

It seems to me like in the run-up to this milestone the show has deliberately dropped and/or wrapped up some of its long-running plots. The Royals are done with; the Wesen Council is no more; and now the mystery of the keys has been solved. (And in kind of a rushed way: it took the show years to find two keys, and then this season we suddenly find three more and then oh, actually we don't even need to find the last two, we can handwave it away with X-marks-the-spot and a bit of handy lockpicking.)

Feels like table-clearing to open up space for the Black Claw / H.W. storyline.
posted by We had a deal, Kyle at 12:31 PM on March 15, 2016


That seems very brave for network television. And is there any mythology about the true cross having healing properties?

I don't actually expect them to do it, I'm just being sarcastic because I found wesen-Hitler/Black Claw responsible for all social unrest to be poor writing choices. As far as the true cross's healing properties, isn't that why people would buy purported Christian relics (true cross, saint's bones, anything a pope touched, etc.)? I've only heard of people selling pieces of the true cross as a sign of an obvious fraud, like selling someone the Brooklyn Bridge, but the buyers must expect it to do something miraculous.

Isn't show 100 traditionally the point at which a show becomes syndicatable?

Traditionally, yes, but not as important anymore now that there's streaming. And TNT already bought Grimm syndication rights, but the ratings must have sucked since they've buried it a 5am timeslot.
posted by oh yeah! at 12:59 PM on March 15, 2016


Isn't show 100 traditionally the point at which a show becomes syndicatable?

Nope, 70
posted by phearlez at 1:50 PM on March 15, 2016


I also dug the fake-out with the first attempt to open the box in Portland - the slow zoom in, the nervous glances, the rising music aaaAAAAAANNNND . . . . . . . nope.

I'll be annoyed if the whole long "somebody from Rosalee's past is coming" was just a set-up for showing that Adalind is getting her powers back.

I think the True Cross thing could totally be the way they go, because why not and Crusades. (And a priest apparently leading the guardians of the box in Germany.) I bet the priest eventually shows up again to explain all this.

It seems to me like in the run-up to this milestone the show has deliberately dropped and/or wrapped up some of its long-running plots.

Agreed, although this may have been more of a "general housekeeping" kind of thing - no small number of reviews/recaps over the years have noted that the show can get lost in its own multitude of plots and mythology. Paring things back to a couple of story-lines tightens up the show, especially since the odds are against another five years. (Not saying that I've heard or read anything about the show being in danger, just that not a lot of network primetime fiction shows hit the ten-year mark.)
posted by soundguy99 at 7:17 PM on March 16, 2016


Kackenkopf
posted by homunculus at 3:14 PM on April 9, 2016


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