‘Grimm’ Review: ‘The Wild Hunt’

Can you believe we’re 12 episodes into the third season of Grimm? Friday’s episode “The Wild Hunt” managed to pack in a lot of stuff, which is great, since it’s the last episode we’ll be seeing until the end of February thanks to the Winter Olympics. Not that I’m bitter or anything. (I am bitter.) In fact, it was packed so tightly, it overflowed.

The episode opens with scenes of a grungy looking guy speeding, which catches the attention of Portland Highway Patrol.  Meanwhile, Monrosalee are prepping to go out to a fancy restaurant. Monroe, looking dapper as hell, paces back and forth waiting for Rosalee. When she enters, she looks absolutely stunning, and Monroe recognizes this. They’re adorable. At the restaurant, they swap stories about their first times. He offers a “you tell me yours, I’ll tell you mine” exchange and she reveals it was with her brother Freddy. Monroe explains his was his mom. Before you get to creeped out, they’re talking about woging. Oh Grimmuendo.

The highway patrolman catches up with the speeder and, once again, Grimm channels its inner horror movie. The grungy dude was a Wesen and he proceeds to maul the guy. Juxtaposed with this violent sequence, Monrosalee get back home from the restaurant and proceed to be as cute as ever. Monroe nerds out over clocks while Rosalee clearly has her “I’ve had enough of this, but I love you” face on. When she takes time to see the cuckoo clock Monroe was rambling on about, she’s surprised by a beard bearing an engagement ring and a call of “Will you marry me?” It’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen on the show. Sweetness doesn’t last for long though. The killer Wesen is shown dragging the body of the patrolman away; he then proceeds to scalp the corpse. Somehow, this sequence was even more disturbing to me than any of the blood and violence from this past week’s American Horror Story: Coven. It’s a good thing there’s a break here. Hello, opening credits!

Only moderately less horrifying than the scalping is the talk of taxes that follow the commercial break. Nick deadpans that they’re as fun as a barrel of dead monkeys, while Juliette mentions that she wants to get in touch with Nick’s mom. Almost as soon as she says that, Nick gets the call from Hank about the dead patrol officer. Reaching out to your possible future mother-in-law and investigating a gory scalping both trump taxes in my book too. Can I just say that it’s hilarious that Nick’s mom’s email begins with bheadr? I mean… really?

Back at Monrosalee’s place, the newly engaged couple is basking in the afterglow of the night before. They’re all cuddled up and planning their wedding. Things go downhill fairly quickly though, when Rosalee mentions meeting Monroe’s parents. Even if I hadn’t seen commercials for the episode or read spoilers beforehand, I’d know something wasn’t quite kosher about those guys. While Monroe wallows in the terror of introducing his dear old mom and dad to Rosalee, Nick and Hank arrive at the crime scene. Somebody who isn’t Wu fills them in on what went down and we get to be totally grossed out by the dead guy’s exposed skull. There’s some foreshadowing here about the use of scalps as a battle trophy and sign of prowess that’ll resonate again later.

At Casa Monrosalee, Monroe finally hunkers down and calls his parents about Rosalee. Even as just disembodied over-the-phone voices, I’m not feeling them. They ask awkward, invasive questions in a way I’m sure we’re all far too familiar. Things are pretty rough at the precinct too. Renard’s gathered everyone together to watch the video recording of Officer Aguilar (the scalped patrolman) in pursuit of the guy who ended up killing him.  This whole sequence has that “found footage horror movie” vibe going on. Renard elaborates further, establishing that this particular nutjob is killing men in uniform. Cue a nice close up on Wu and his fellow uniformed officers making their best “well damn” faces.

The episode adds another story wrinkle with a visit to Vienna. Sebastian catches Adalind to warn her about Viktor. I’m still adjusting to Alexis Denisof as a Grimm character; I’m sure he’ll shake off the Wesley Windham-Pryce thing soon enough though. He has Adalind identify three photographs of men, though she only has vague comments about them. Viktor explains they are associates of Renard’s, which she brushes aside, before mentioning the letter Renard had left in her room. The note exposed Viktor’s cameras in her bedroom, so she lies and claims Renard’s letter revealed that Nick had killed her mother. There’s a lot of flashbacks here and some nefarious plotting about Adalind’s baby daddy that follows.

While Adalind is being gossiped about, Monroe drops in on Rosalee at the spice shop. While they’re busy being cute, Monroe’s mom calls to announce that she and his dad will be in town to visit him and meet Rosalee. The Fuchsbau is justifiably wary, and Monroe isn’t particularly excited either. Monroe’s overbearing parents soon give way to some more gossip about Adalind—this time via a phone call from Sebastian to Renard. Sebastian updates Renard on what’s going on; this particular scene feels a little like filler, but it’s necessary to push things forward. Meanwhile, Adalind’s baby is trying to burst out of its mommy’s belly like a facehugger.

It’s about time for our serial killer to knock off another day player. In this case, a Green Beret gets in a fight with him and does a pretty good job of stomping the crap out of him. Before he woges, of course. We’re spared the slaughter of the Green Beret, and jump back into the chaos of Monrosalee’s prep for Monroe’s parents. While the banter is pretty adorable, things start to get a little tense when Rosalee asks about what his parents know about her. She’s understandably self conscious; Bree Turner and Silas Weir Mitchell put in a lot of work last week and continue to do a fantastic job juggling their characters and strange Wesen family dynamics.

Nick gets home to find Juliette has successfully engaged his mother with some back and forth emails. Juliette catches him up and there’s this fun moment where Nick acknowledges how new this stuff still is to him. David Giuntoli’s delivery was especially amusing to me here. The show is clearly watering the seeds planted last season—a fantastic usage of mythology. The next morning finds Wu introducing Nick and Hank to the dead Green Beret. While we avoided the creepy gore of the first murder, we still get to scope out the guy’s scalped skull. Gross, Grimm. Gross. Back the precinct, they process things and pinpoint the location of the car.

Meanwhile in Vienna, Adalind’s baby is pressing its creepy skull face right to her belly and she’s screaming her lungs out. In an episode that has a pretty messed up villain of the week, these scenes are almost as unsettling.

Back in Portland, a kind of awkward mouthy guy is outside the serial killer guy’s hotel room screaming at him to stop whatever he’s doing. What is this Wesen doing, you ask? He’s tanning scalps. It’s pretty gross, y’all. A few moments later, the killer Wesen tosses the mouthy guy out the front door of his hotel and steals his car. Nick, Hank, and Renard show up, but the Wesen gets away. They do find the remnants of his tanning operation, which is pretty gross.

You know what isn’t gross though? Shohreh Aghdashloo is back as Stefania! I’m curious as to what she’s been up to since we last saw her; at the moment, she’s giving Adalind something to chew on. Literally. I love the dynamic between the two actresses. Before I get too excited, we’re back at the precinct. Nick has results from the hair found in the murderer’s hotel room—it’s not just the two victims, but over twenty other unrelated samples. Hank approaches the Wesen issue and it’s not long before the two detectives are researching the Wildesheer. Meanwhile, the Wildesheer killer dude is creepily staring at the Portland Police Department from a distance. Wildesheer are a blood thirsty and brutal type of Wesen that pride themselves on their warrior prowess and sew cloaks of hair from the scalps of the fallen in order to absorb their power. Out in the woods, our psychotic little Wildesheer models a hair coat that doesn’t look far removed from the jacket Macklemore wore in his “Thrift Shop” video. He then tosses a print out into the fire. It has a picture of Nick on it, with a big circle around it. Yikes!

Monrosalee prepare for dinner with his parents—he pulls out the plates with the family crest and a Blutbad corkscrew—but his parents arrive early. Rosalee doesn’t get a chance to clean up from preparing dinner, which makes her a little frustrated. However, what really wrecks the evening is when Monroe’s mom and dad give her a hug—they woge in anger over the fact she’s a Fuchsbau. Monroe never told them. He never told them they were living together either. His parents rant on and Rosalee can’t take it. She’s hurt and angry. Meanwhile, Monroe’s parents remain awful. Monroe almost flips out on his dad. Just then, Nick knocks on the door. Probably to talk about the Wildesheer, but his poor timing means he’s getting a face full of Blutbaden.  Monroe’s parents go to attack Nick and Monroe tries to jump in between as the screen fades to black. “Oh #*@% !!!,” it says. Followed by the all too familiar “to be continued.”

Yup. Grimm has done it again. It’s bad enough to end on a cliffhanger, but to taunt us too? We won’t be seeing the resolution to this mess until after the Winter Olympics in February. Until then, there’s quite a bit of story to chew on: Juliette contacting Nick’s mom, Adalind having the Royal baby, the Wildesheer on his hair coat murder spree, Monrosalee dealing with Monroe’s parents, and Nick having to deal with all of that. The only thing missing is addressing Nick’s super powered death state, which hasn’t been seen in a while and still needs quite a bit of explaining. I can’t wait to see what happens when the show returns, but I can’t say I’m in love with the wait. Until then, I’ll just have to ponder what’s going to happen and so are you. #*@%, indeed.