Grimm: Bad Night

May 14, 2016 1:43 PM - Season 5, Episode 20

Nick fears he may lose everything as he continues battling Black Claw; Renard ramps up his campaign as election time draws near; Wu tries to gain control of his new reality.

"We have to distrust each other. It is our only defense against betrayal." - Tennessee Williams

AV Club - Everything pays off as Grimm heads for this season’s reckoning

posted by oh yeah! (7 comments total)

This was mostly just setting up the finale, not a lot to it, but still, things I really liked:
-Trubel's comments during the whole magic stick conversation
-Wu getting a handle on his situation really pretty fast, tbh
-Hank getting a handle on his 'situation' pretty fast as well
-Just in general not feeling like they're dragging things out at all

I am surprised by how much Renard really seems to have bought into the Black Claw party line. Guess he figures they're going to do it with him or without him, so he should jump onto the winning side. Naked opportunism is still more believable from him than being an actual fanatic, IMO.
posted by mstokes650 at 7:27 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is Diana the head of Black Claw?

Also: does Renard _really_ buy in, or is he a) conscious of being watched, or b) somehow manipulated by Diana?
posted by amtho at 9:20 PM on May 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Is Diana the head of Black Claw?

From what I remember of HW's 5 minute guide to Black Claw for the crew, they have been responsible for unrests around the world for the past several years. It's entirely possible that they had their own goals but now they're being usurped by Diana (her abduction might have just been her rescuing herself).

I appreciate that this show lets the characters be smart. Like with Wu knowing what he's seen of Wesen mythology, he could definitely learn to handle his "infection", and Hank going with his detective's instinct and not being "blinded by love" so to say. It's kind of refreshing compared to how idiotic a lot of other characters on other shows have been behaving.

I honestly could see Renard buying into Black Claw. And if I was a Wesen, I'm not entirely sure I could resist the ideals either. The killings and violence is definitely not what I would want. But not having to hide yourself is pretty great.

Diana is definitely cool with the campaign manager making eyes at daddy. That's not going to end well.
posted by numaner at 12:18 PM on May 16, 2016

Yeah this is actually a pivot for Renard I can buy. He's always been somewhat ambitious and we established him as connected to the resistance - an effort to stop being pushed around by others with power. So that he might be willing to go along with an inevitable effort to reveal themselves and gain some autonomy - as well as personal power, which he covets - I can accept that.

Really the Diana-as-powerful is what's working least well for me. Not that it's totally out of the blue, with our seeing her telekinesis when she was fleeing with Nick's mom. But just that a very powerful child with an undeveloped moral sense is almost impossible to write in a satisfactory way. The only way I see them coping with that is the hexenbiest suppressant, which doesn't really work long enough to let her grow up as a normalish kid.
posted by phearlez at 8:55 AM on May 17, 2016

Huh. I actually was not at all expecting Renard to be a True Believer, or even accepting the Black Claw revolution as inevitable. I guess he and Campaign Manager Red were having some serious off-screen socio-political discussions in between bouts of wild sex. Manipulated by Diana is a possibility, but considering he basically just kidnapped a Grimm's wife and son and is forcing them to be his public "family", if he was actually pulling some kind of double-agent thing he would have admitted it to Nick when they met at the station. (Seriously, he was taking a hell of a chance on Nick not just losing his shit in the face of such provocation, ripping his head off then and there and damn the consequences. If Renard is playing double-agent, that would have been the time to admit it and defuse the situation.)
posted by soundguy99 at 8:11 PM on May 17, 2016

Nobody's all, "hey, wait, Renard has a family we didn't know about for years?" In our political climate where we end up knowing what kind of underwear every politician's wife wears, he can suddenly pull two kids and a baby momma out of his ass and nobody's all, "how'd that happen?"
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:17 PM on May 18, 2016 [2 favorites]

local elections are almost never that scandalous IRL unless there's some corruption involved, like the dirt that Renard has on the other guy. I don't even know if any of the local people I just recently voted on are married. I gloss right over their family stuff when I'm reading their profiles and jump straight to the issues.
posted by numaner at 12:55 PM on May 19, 2016