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Whenever Grimm goes on hiatus, it hurts. It’s not a physical pain exactly, but the withdrawals are real.
The only solution is “Revelation.” The episode opens where the last one left us hanging – at Monroe’s, with his parents poised to attack Nick in full woge. Nick, as careful and understanding as always, hits Monroe’s dad, Bart. He explains, “I am so sorry! I really didn’t want to hit you. Although, they did just try to kill me.” Monroe’s parents, infuriated by their son’s engagement to a Fuchsbau don’t cotton to his friendship with a Grimm either. Words are flung back and forth and the elder Blutbaden leave in a huff.
Nick’s bad timing agitates Monroe, who accuses Nick of using him for his cases more than actually caring about him. As a fan of their bromance, this scene irritated me, especially since the situation was really instigated by Monroe neglecting to tell his parents about Rosalee in the first place. Of course, I also understand the need to take out your own internalized frustrations on the next available target. Nick is full of apologies and leaves. Meanwhile, Rosalee heads to the spice shop. Bree Turner delivers a flawless “slide down the wall while crying” here. I love Rosalee and really feel for her here. At this point, I’d be fine with Nick lopping off the heads of Monroe’s parents. Back at Monroe’s, he sits by himself while the clock ticks. It’s sad and uncomfortable.
At the same time, Nick and Juliette are talking about two out of three of the episode’s big plotlines: the scalp hunting serial killer and the messy situation with Monrosalee. Wisely, Nick is drinking a beer. Elsewhere, the murderous Wildesheer is enjoying some refreshments of his own: he eats some fiery coals while sitting near a campfire. I think I’d prefer the beer, but whatever floats your boat.
After the opening credits and some commercials, the show returns with that third big plotline. Our favorite schemer Stefania is summoned by Viktor to talk about Adalind. While the two villains plan, Sebastien calls Renard and fills him in on what’s going on in Vienna. I feel like this segue was expertly done, because it establishes the Hexenbaby storyline within the context of all the shenanigans going on in Portland. The call is brief and ends after Hank and Wu enter Renard’s office to talk about the serial killer. Wu has a rather poor footage of a student film to share with the gang, because it managed to catch the Wildesheer, however briefly. The footage also seems to show a guy in an alien mask in some kind of shorts. You know: the usual quality student film stuff.
Getting back to Monrosalee, a very apologetic Monroe drops in on Rosalee at the spice shop. She drops those four dreaded words: “We need to talk.” The two have a very serious discussion of what it would mean for Monroe to alienate his parents—something he is more than willing to do for Rosalee. They bond a bit, before Monroe mentions Nick showed up too. I’m pretty sure the implication here is that Monroe would throw his parents to the side for his fiancée and his best friend. Honestly, who could blame him at this point? They’re pretty damn awful.
Also awful? What happens to the guy who finds the Wildesheer’s illegal campsite set up in the woods. Yet another officer, things quickly delve into horror movie territory the moment he’s told he shouldn’t approach the suspect, because—as you might guess—the suspect appears, woges, and attacks. The real surprise here is that there is another Wildesheer. A similar twist was used in the episode “Cold Blooded” earlier this season, but it’s no less effective here. The dude was a goner from go.
Monrosalee, reconciled at the spice shop, wake up. Monroe quickly decides to call his parents and put everything out there, although he knows there’s a good chance it will result in his being permanently estranged from his parents. Earlier, Rosalee had warned him about the consequences of such familial alienation, but he clearly doesn’t care at this point. His mother, Alice, answers and they decide to meet at his parents’ hotel room.
Back at Nick and Juliette’s, Nick is complaining about taxes again. Fortunately, the conversation shifts back to the scalp stealing murder spree taking place thanks to Juliette. Nobody wants to hear about taxes. Ever since Juliette found out about Nick’s Grimm powers and officially joined up with his Scooby Gang, she has had the most contagious excitement about finding things out and researching the Wesen in Nick’s new world. It adds a great counterpoint to characters like Monroe and Rosalee, who have insider knowledge.
She fills Nick in on the history of scalping and what it means culturally, which ties back to the Wesen Nick had researched in the previous episode. Essentially, scalps equal power. Nick jokes about watching his hair, which pisses Juliette off a little. She knows Wesen have gone after him before and she worries that the fact Nick is both a cop and a Grimm will make him a double prize. As someone who thinks Nick has some of the best hair on television, I’m hoping he stays on alert. Their exchange concludes with a call alerting them to the violent murder of that officer in the woods. Want to go back to talking about taxes, anyone?
Monroe arrives at the hotel to talk to Bart and Alice. Monroe is on the defense, apologizing for not telling them his fiancée is a Fuchsbau, but pretty quickly pushes that it’s irrelevant. Bart starts getting angry, his eyes go red, and he rants about mixed marriages, while Alice tries to restrain him a bit. When Bart’s eyes go back to normal, he rails into Monroe about his vegetarianism. Listen, Bart. It’s Portland. It’s going to happen. However, Monroe’s dad thinks it’s a slight against Blutbaden and shows shame in who he is.
It’s an interesting battle between expressing personal identity and collective identity. When Nick gets brought up, Monroe explains that he’s a different kind of Grimm. When Bart calls Nick a vegetarian, Monroe’s eyes glow red and his mom has to play the middle again. The conflict gets even more emotional, and Silas Weir Mitchell acts the hell out of it. It might be the strongest scene he’s enjoyed this entire season. When he leaves after making an ultimatum, you can see cracks in his parents’ veneer. Alice is upset and Bart is still an ass.
In an entirely different time zone, Adalind is woken up by Renard, who is calling her to warn her about Stefania betraying her to Viktor. She questions why she should trust him, and he confesses he thinks her unborn baby is actually his. He informs her that he has dispatched Sebastien and Meisner to retrieve her and take her someplace safe. Renard’s agents arrive and split up: Meisner stays with Adalind and Sebastian watches for Verrat. The Verrat arrive pretty quickly and Meisner has a brilliant plan: taking off his shirt to show off his muscular physique and tattoos. He crawls into Adalind’s bed and she goes to the door to pretend they’re “spending time together” to the Verrat trying to claim her.
There is a commercial break for added drama, but the show resumes at the hotel—a rare instance where Grimm doesn’t milk the suspense at the expense of the fans’ sanity. The Verrat try to take Adalind and question Meisner, who gets pretty sassy with them while showing off his pecs. When they grab her, Adalind’s baby reacts and she’s clearly in pain. A pen starts to shake on the table and Meisner shoots one of the Verrat. Before the other Verrat can do anything, the pen flies into the air and goes directly into his eye. It’s incredibly gross and incredibly awesome. Meisner and Adalind then make their getaway with Sebastien; the double agent then explains Stefania and Viktor’s nefarious plans to Adalind, before dropping her and Meisner off to find a secret location to keep her safe. After wandering through the woods, they find a place belonging to Meisner’s family where they can stay safely hidden.
Back in Portland, the police arrive to the scene of the Forest Service officer’s gruesome death. Wu points out that there are pieces of him all over the place. Between this and the previous pen scene, the episode certainly shows it isn’t for the squeamish. Nick, Renard, Hank, and Wu realize there is more than one killer, thanks to the evidence left behind at the scene. I imagine Nick thinking, “Oh boy, two Wildesheer!”
While the cops work the case, Rosalee is minding her spice shop. Juliette shows up to offer her support after the messy night before with Monroe’s parents. Juliette explains to Rosalee why Nick made his visit the night before—the murder investigations and their likely Wesen-nature. The scalping thing catches Rosalee offguard, but Monroe shows up to derail their conversation for a moment. When asked about how the meeting with his parents went, he offers, “Let’s just say, ‘It went.’” He apologizes for his behavior the night before, which quickly loops back to the Wildesheer case. Monroe and Rosalee are both disturbed by the possibility. Monroe hurries off and calls Nick at the precinct; apologies are exchanged and plans to figure out what the deal with the Wildesheer are hatched.
Alice and Bart prepare to leave Portland after their sour meeting with their son, but Alice is hesitant. Bart, being the ass that he is, insists they leave and even leaves Alice behind when she refuses to go. Alice asserting her independence in an effort to mend her relationship with her son makes me warm to her quite a bit. Maybe she isn’t so bad, at least compared to her husband. While they’re dealing with their conflict, Stefania is dealing with some issues of her own. The Verrat are dragging her to see Viktor because Adalind escaped. He blames her, but she quickly turns things around and offers that the betrayal is from someone in his inner circle. Yikes! This makes me worry a bit for Sebastien. I could see him being not long for this world once Viktor figures things out.
Alice, having broken away from her husband, shows up at the spice shop to talk to Rosalee. She attempts small talk, which Rosalee rebuffs, before they get to the heart of the matter: Rosalee’s relationship with Monroe. Alice’s words are careful and awkward, but they’re miles away from the sort of stuff said in the previous episode. She recognizes her son’s love for Rosalee and hopes the love is truly reciprocal. Dee Wallace and Bree Turner play this scene wonderfully. Alice asks Rosalee if she would be open to a Wesen ritual where the two participants woge and sniff each other. I couldn’t type the name of the ritual if I tried and it sounds silly, but it’s clearly a very important bonding ritual.
When Monroe arrives back at his place with plans to meet Nick, he’s surprised to find his father waiting there. Bart explains how Alice had refused to go, he left for the airport, and she still never showed. He was surprised at her and went to Monroe’s to find her. Monroe, clearly exasperated, doesn’t have time for his parents’ conflict. He explains Nick is on his way. Bart, still an ass, doesn’t get how anyone could be friends with a Grimm. Monroe explains his own friendship and we get a nice little flashback to the very first episode of the series, when Nick though Monroe might have been the Blutbad with a murderous Red Riding Hood fetish. Fortunately, he wasn’t. Monroe explains how he and Nick have saved each other’s lives several times over. Bart goes on a rant about killing Wesen, which leads Monroe to reveal that they have to deal with some Wildesheer.
Nick shows up and offers to deal with it at another time, but Monroe asserts that there is no other time. He makes his dad leave; Bart goes outside to woge and howl. It’s a little awkward for Monroe and Nick. Monroe excitedly tells Nick about the Wildesheer in a book he had from his childhood; Monroe has this funny moment where he talks about how much he loved the story because the Grimm gets demolished. They quickly depart to the trailer to find a way to dispatch the Wildesheer. However, they don’t know Bart is watching from a distance. Uh oh!
At the trailer, Nick and Monroe dig through research and prepare some weapons. Nick finally finds a workable theory for taking out a Wildesheer: cutting their hair. They plan to go to the quarry, but alas, the sounds of hell that signal a Wildesheer’s arrival can be heard outside. The scalp-coat wearing Wesen arrive and proceed to tear Nick and Monroe apart—not that they aren’t putting up a valiant effort. It’s just that these guys are crazy aggressive. Nick and Monroe get thrown about some more and try to take some scalps of their own, but it’s to no avail.
Eventually, a third surprise Wildesheer shows up—once again reminding me of the twist in “Cold Blooded”—and the fight continues. The fight rages on, when Bart suddenly throws himself into the mix. Now it’s a solid three-on-three. Nick manages to give the Wildesheer their fatal haircuts, one after another. To be honest, I was worried we’d get another cliffhanger, even though I know next week’s episode is meant to be Wu-centric. Bart shares an ominous Wesen warning though, that when Wildesheer are afoot, bad things are going to follow. You know, besides scalping folks.
Maybe those bad things involve Adalind’s baby? The episode shifts briefly to her and Miesner in the woods. She starts to feel some intense labor pains and cries out into the night. Meanwhile, Nick, Juliette, Monrosalee, and Monroe’s parents are having the most awkward dinner ever to close the episode out. When Juliette asks about wedding planning, Bart woges which causes a chain reaction at the table. Nick, carving the roast, gets up with a knife in hand and tells everyone to calm down and they do. Bart, who is still kind of an ass, says there’s a lot to get used to. And there certainly is.
“Revelation” was exactly what I needed. After weeks without the show and an anxiety inducing cliffhanger, I got everything I wanted from an episode of Grimm. In fact, it felt like a call back to old Nick and Monroe dynamics from the first two seasons, which was nice. I’m into the developments with Monroe’s family and I’m excited to see some real development with Adalind having her baby. Next week should be really exciting and I can’t wait to see what happens.
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