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‘Grimm’ Review: ‘The Inheritance’

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Scott Green/NBC

We’re creeping up on the very last episode of Grimm season three, and penultimate episode “The Inheritance” lays the remaining groundwork for what will surely be a crazy finale.

The episode opens with Juliette and Monrosalee frantically going on about the Wesen couple’s impending nuptials while preparing for a spaghetti dinner. It serves as a reminder of one of the season’s biggest storylines that will culminate, hopefully, in wedded bliss. David Giuntoli gets a fun moment as Nick where he jokes around that I really enjoyed, but the moment passes pretty quickly to give way to discussions of Trubel.

The stuff with Trubel is much heavier than the banter a moment before and provides a really solid glimpse into her background. She survived what sounds like an attempted rape and was then locked up for being crazy because she saw Wesen. It’s pretty heavy dinner conversation, to the least.

While the gang eats spaghetti and continues to connect with Trubel, a creepy guy is outside Nick’s house and gives him a call. The guy gets Nick to answer, but flakes and leaves soon after.  We soon find out that this guy is named Josh Porter and he’s trying to get his dad in touch with Nick as a last wish sort of thing. Josh’s dad, Rolek, is a Grimm and has several valuable possessions he wants to pass along before he dies. Josh isn’t a Grimm, which makes him incredibly frustrating to watch. His sheer disbelief and half assed humoring of his dad and his dad’s stories make him really hard to like.

When a Verrat agent breaks into their hotel room and tries to kill both men, I wouldn’t have been sad if Josh had gotten whacked. But no, his dad runs the bad guy through, which causes his son to throw a fit. Josh’s irritating reactions to the Grimm world around him honestly makes me wish the Verrat guy had succeeded. This holds true until almost the very end of the episode. C. Thomas Howell shows back up as baddie Weston Steward and finds his fellow Verrat agent dead.  The Porters find a place to hide and Josh remains insufferable.

Let’s get back on track here though. Besides spaghetti dinners and stabbing people in self defense, the episode also zeros in on more of Adalind’s shenanigans. Renard checks in on her and sees the nasty cut that occurred at the end of last week’s episode; he’s slyly pushing things and she pushes back. He delivers an especially brilliant line, “If I didn’t know you better, I’d be in love with you.” I’m not quite a Renard and Adalind shipper, but I love how Sasha Roiz and Claire Coffee play of each other. If their character could make it work, I would not complain one bit. However, it’s highly unlikely, at least for now. Instead, they’ll just get it on.

The next morning, Adalind is up early and full of schemes as usual. Renard crawls out of bed and doesn’t bother to put any clothes on, which leads to the show’s greatest moment of fan service since Nick ran shirtless on a treadmill in “A Dish Best Served Cold.” Renard might leave the “rage” out of #shirtlessrage, but he does seem pretty skeptical about what’s going on with Adalind. She lies about ordering room service and drops her robe to even the playing field a bit. Meanwhile, the veterinary office where Juliette works is probably really confused as to why some lady asked for coffee for two.

While Renard and Adalind were making the Hexenbiest with two backs, we get an interesting scene between Juliette and Trubel.  Juliette tries to bond with the young Grimm via planning some retail therapy. Their dynamic is a little uncomfortable still, but much less so than Rolek and Josh. As much as I want to understand his outsider’s point of view, the character is mostly infuriating. Rosalee’s freak out at the spice shop over planning for her wedding is also pretty uncomfortable. And then Josh meeting Trubel is also pretty awkward. This whole episode is overloaded with an anxious energy that seems to predict the impending final episode of the season.

At the precinct, Renard keeps pretty busy. He tells Wu to track Adalind and calls Nick and Hank in to talk about the dead Verrat agent and the Porters. Because he’s in the office, he misses Trubel’s call about meeting Josh and his dad’s trunk full of Wesen stuff. Trubel leaves Nick’s place with Josh and meets Rolek. Because she left, Adalind is able to use a magical skeleton key to break in without much trouble. She steals some of Juliette’s clothes and hair, but gets caught—briefly—by Renard. She uses her telekinesis to smash a vase into his head. Pretty sure he’s leaving the “shirtless” part out of #shirtlessrage this time.  The Zauberbiest woge and Batman-esque “Adalind” are kind of a giveaway.

While Trubel was with Rolek, his condition worsens dramatically, so Josh finally hauls him to the hospital, Trubel and Grimm memorabilia in tow. In one of my favorite little moments with Trubel’s character this week, she finds her way to the nurses’ station at the hospital and calls Nick again. In what must be serendipity, he and Hank are checking out surveillance camera footage of the Porters hauling the trunk out of the hotel post-Verrat attack. Trubel fills Nick in on everything, including the fact Rolek has a key. When Nick goes, “A key? What kind of key?”

I kind of want to slap him upside the head. You know what kind of key, Nick. You know. Less slick with phone calls is Josh, who gets scammed by a fake call from Weston. Nick and Hank arrive at the hospital in record time, but Verrat agents are on their way. Hank stays in the parking lot watching the car with the Grimm trunk, while Trubel takes Nick to meet Rolek. Their meeting is brief though. When Rolek asks for his cane, his condition rapidly deteriorates and he dies. Three Grimms, apparently, are just too much for one hour to handle.

Hank gives Nick a call from the parking lot and tells him Verrat agents are there; they agree Trubel should stay far away for her safety, but Hank should’ve been worrying about that sort of thing himself. There’s one of those “before the Macy’s commercial” cliffhangers with Weston driving right at Hank. Fortunately, he dives out of the way after the commercial break and things start to get really messy. Nick makes it to the parking lot—with Trubel who ignored his wishes—and they proceed to beat the crap out of the Verrat with Hank. As far as fight scenes go, this one is pretty damn good.

Nick heads back to the hospital to check in on the Porters; he finds Rolek is dead and offers his condolences and assistance to Josh. Josh asks what kind of cop Nick is, but he just answers with “I get that a lot.” Back at Casa Grimm, Rolek’s box of toys is dumped out all over the dining room table. Now that he’s met Nick and Trubel, Josh is a lot less irritating, but I wouldn’t be sad if I never saw the character again after this episode, even if he’s a potential Grimm. Pretty soon, they realize Rolek wants his cane before died because that’s where the key is.

What I really enjoy about this scene is that Hank is the one who figures out the puzzle to release the key. Once again, Grimm gives little moments to its characters to show how useful they are to the big picture. I really like that, because there are quite a few shows I watch that don’t really do that. It’s good for the fans AND the actors to have that sort of situation in play.

Meanwhile, Renard can’t find Adalind and he once again calls on Wu to track her down. Not to worry though. I know where she’s at. She’s continuing her scheme with the magical junk leftover from her mom that she acquired last week. She prepares a mystery brew from the book with Juliette’s hair and covers it with a pointy witch’s hat. Once the hat becomes erect, some nefarious looking smoke comes out of the tip and she begins to inhale. It’s not long before her shape starts to shift and she’s looking in the mirror as Juliette. I’ve gotta say, between this and that whole thing where Adalind cursed Juliette with amnesia and a thirst for Renard, there had better be a major throw down between the two women in the near future.  I know the actresses would kill it.

This transformation leads us into next week’s season finale. We’ve got Adalind as Juliette plotting to sleep with Nick, the big Monrosalee wedding, whatever’s going on with Weston, and a whole bunch of Trubel thrown into the mix. I’m ridiculously excited to see how things play out here. That said, I’m a little underwhelmed this week. It wasn’t a bad episode, but it definitely feels like that one last push to the finale.

My frustration over the irritating Josh Porter character didn’t help either, though I did enjoy his last moment in the episode where he stood with the entire gang and said that if he started seeing Wesen, he would know he wasn’t crazy—unless they all were. Cue a comedic pause. Still, that one moment wasn’t worth how insufferable the character was throughout the episode. Fortunately, there was plenty of quality character moments to make this one worth a watch, if not a rewatch.

Kenneth Lane
An occasionally ridiculous human being who will talk your ear off if you let him, recently earned his Master of Arts in English. While figuring out what he’s doing next, he’s dealing with his self diagnosed pop culture hoarding problem.

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