‘Grimm’ Review: ‘Lost Boys’

“Lost Boys” is not the spin on the familiar Peter Pan story you might expect, but this episode of Grimm isn’t the typical installment of the show either. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been singing the praises of Bree Turner as Rosalee, but this episode, the third of the show’s fifth season, is when a gospel choir should join behind me as a back-up. I might be getting a bit ahead of myself in handing the entire show over to Turner’s character though, because this is Grimm, not The Rosalee Calvert Show. Nick and Adalind make important steps forward too, while Meisner gets more mysterious and handsome as the episode goes on.

One of Nick’s big steps forward opens the show: he actually sold his house. Considering he was only really spitballing a move in last week’s episode, this seems pretty quick, but considering everything that’s happened to him there, I can’t really blame him. It still feels a little abrupt though. While the movers pack up everything and send it to storage, Nick heads upstairs to help Adalind with Kelly. I still say a romantic relationship between the Grimm and the currently suppressed Hexenbiest is a bad move right now, but the dynamic between the two is still interesting to watch. A conversation about how long Nick has lived there takes an odd turn toward “firsts.” Adalind was the first Wesen that Nick ever saw, while he was her first Grimm. Before things can get any weirder, one of the movers interrupts. Adalind grabs Kelly in his baby carrier and heads out. Moments later, we get Nick leaving the house for likely his very last time. I expect to feel heavier about it, but honestly, it’s high time he got out of there.

At the spice shop, Monroe is going over Rosalee’s sales from the day before. He’s thoroughly impressed with her work and soon she agrees that she kicked ass. Pretty soon the cute married couple moment passes, because Rosalee has a flashback while trying to find the right herb to fix Monroe’s tea. She spots the bullet hole left from an encounter with Hexenbiest Juliette last season. When Monroe finds her, she notes that a weird as it sounds, she misses Juliette. I appreciate how the show is having not just Nick, but the rest of the gang mourn her character. However, before things get too mopey about Juliette, Rosalee confirms that she’s even happier that the bullet, that was fired because of Juliette and triggered the flashback, missed Monroe. I really like that they can distinguish between who she was and who she became in their reflections back.

With steps forward and looks back behind us, this episode’s Wesen of the Week story kicks into gear. We see a woman in dirty clothes frantically running through the woods as the sound of children crying for their mother echoes behind her. She catches her foot, goes rolling down a hill, and cracks her skull on a log that boarders an open path. The children follow behind and I immediately understand why this lady went running: these kids are creepy as all hell. There are four of them and the combination of their obsessiveness and the woman’s desperation to get away from them in the middle of the woods suggests quite a bit more than a camping trip gone wrong. That’s even taking into account how kids are calling total strangers “mom” these days. The kids run back into the woods, but not before Big John, perhaps the creepiest of the kids, cuts off some of the dead woman’s hair and runs back into the woods. They watch as the woman’s body is found and agree to find a replacement mom soon. Oh, and their eyes woge. Yep, these kids are Wesen.

While we recover from how creepy that whole situation was, it’s time for Nick’s next big step: he’s got a new place. This place isn’t a house in the ‘burbs though. In fact, it isn’t even a house; it’s a loft inside a paint factory. It’s more of a compound than a dream home. There’s a keypad and a surveillance system in place. When Adalind asks about ways in, Nick rattles off a list of inconvenient possibilities including roof access and prohibition era tunnels. The space is relatively sparse, because Nick understandably doesn’t want things from his old home there and didn’t want anyone else to know where they’re living. Adalind and Kelly have a relatively spacious room with sliding steel window covers to keep out pesky things like sunlight and nefarious schemers. It’s an efficient setup, but I don’t get how Nick made it happen so quickly. To be honest, it doesn’t feel permanent to me and I cringe a little at the idea of it being their home for seasons to come. It isn’t a home. It’s a Batcave or a Fortress of Solitude… except it’s not at the same time. I think it’ll take as much adjusting for me as it will for Nick and Adalind. Actually, adjusting to only one bathroom might be worse. Regardless of my apprehensions, Adalind seems gung-ho to adapt. Nick gives her a credit card to cover basic needs, like food, and the key to what was once Juliette’s car. The dynamic here is so bizarre. I think it’s important that it is, because a smooth transition would make no sense, but neither would a rockier one. Nick gets a call from Hank regarding the woman in the woods and heads out. Later on, while out with Kelly, Adalind bumps into a former co-worker from Berman, Rautbort and Associates who says she should consider coming back to work for the firm. It’s an interesting development to Adalind’s personal arc, so I’m excited to see how that plays out.

In the woods, you see a sort of make shift housing structure. Those creepy children are talking about “mother” getting away. Big John adds the lock of hair he cut off of her head to a box containing other locks of hair. This kid might not be the creepiest thing we’ve seen in five seasons, but he definitely takes the children’s title. He talks with a younger looking boy, Peter—clearly the group’s Pan figure. Peter is glad their “mother” is dead since she left them. Their sister has a hacking cough and needs attention, so they agree to head out for medicine, leaving her and another boy behind. Elsewhere in the woods, Wu is explaining to Nick and Hank what they know so far. As I see Nick walk towards the body, I’m struck by one question. When did Renard let him back on the force? I mean, sure, he worked last week’s case under his nose, but no onscreen end of his suspension after Renard got so snippy? Regardless, I’m happy Nick is on the scene and we don’t have to watch Hank suffer through working with know-nothing Pogue. Wu identifies the body as a missing woman named Wendy—a Pan reference I didn’t catch until a second viewing—and they agree to look into the case file.

Speaking of important Renard scenes, while Nick and company are dealing with poor Wendy, he arrives to work to find Meisner waiting for him. Instead of having a handsome-off, they express mutual concern over their respective potential deaths.  I guess that’s what you do when you’re in their line of work.  They play catch up. Meisner explains that the king is dead and Diana is safe, though it’s a bit odd for him to say “from what I’ve been told” when he was piloting the helicopter that Diana magically dropped her evil grandpa out of. That said, he quickly admits he was there when explaining that Viktor is now in charge and has custody of Diana after making a deal with the Resistance. It’s all so convoluted, isn’t it? That’s politics for you, even if magical babies are involved. It’s a measured encounter. I hope we get to see more interactions between the two men in the near future.

Peter and Big John arrive at the pharmacy hoping to steal some cough medicine, but the bigger boy spots a mom yelling at her misbehaving child and seems poised to attack her. Peter talks him down, but I’m finding it hard to sympathize with these kids despite their clear personal traumas. I blame the box of hair. Back at the precinct, Nick and Hank are sharing the last known footage of Wendy Henley with Renard. They didn’t know what to make of the missing person case, but the fact it’s now a potential murder doesn’t really do much to help matters. They agree to contact Ben Henley, husband of the once missing woman. Meanwhile, the Lost Boys have wandered into the spice shop, where Peter looks for medicine with Rosalee’s help. Big John breaks a bottle, which provides a distraction for Peter to try and steal some goldenseal. Rosalee goes after him and Peter woges, revealing himself as an Apgadniaks. He lunges at her, but she’s unfazed and pins him to the ground. He explains how his sister is sick and how they’re homeless orphans. Rosalee, who has managed to be sympathetic to both Juliette and Adalind, has some room in her heart for this kid too. She lets him have the medicine. Monroe arrives moments later and Peter scrambles out the door. Monroe isn’t happy about what happened. In fact, he’s understandably cynical about the story Peter shared with his wife. Monroe’s belief that children are the future and cannot be trusted results in a conversation about Monrosalee’s own possible future children.  Cute couple stuff follows, so be warned.

In what I assume was a purposeful tonal shift, the next thing we see is Wendy’s body being pulled out of a drawer in the morgue, where her now widower waits to identify her. I mean, the writers at Grimm know how to do messed up, but it’s still nice when it’s subtle like that. Ben has something of a breakdown over finding out his wife is actually dead, the accusations he faced, and the questions left unanswered. Nick and Hank can do little but watch. It’s sad. Meanwhile, Peter and Big John are back in the woods; Big John is fixated on how pretty Rosalee’s hair is. I hate the little creep. You can clearly see the idea developing that Rosalee should become their new mom. I guess she shouldn’t have said anything about having kids earlier. This is Grimm after all.

We soon see Monroe on the phone from his clock repair business while Rosalee works at the spice shop. She leaves him on the line when she goes to see Lily, Peter’s coughing little sister. Monroe hears everything, including the part where the kids kidnap Rosalee. Of course, he hauls ass to get there, but it’s too late. Her phone is there, but she’s gone. Silas Weir Mitchell gets to deliver one of his most intense performances as Monroe in a while here. Moments later, Monroe gets a hold of Nick and Hank and they head his way, even as Rosalee heads into the woods with her “children.” Peter, who was almost sympathetic earlier, feels like a sociopath-in-training now. They drag her into their forest dwelling with Lily excited she’ll get to sleep next to their new mother. Fortunately, Nick and company are on the case and pretty soon they have security footage to work with at the precinct. This footage ends up leading back to the woman who died earlier in the episode. It isn’t long before Monroe is sniffing her corpse so he can catch her scent when they head into the woods to find his wife. Yes, I just wrote that sentence.

In the woods, Peter brings Rosalee a blanket and talks about him and his siblings being abandoned by other mothers they’ve loved in the past.  Turner’s performance as Rosalee is a thing of restrained beauty here, because she embodies the compassion and patience of her character, even though you know smacking these brats upside their heads makes the most sense. Peter, in his creepiest line to that point, explains that although it’s hard, Rosalee will get used to being loved. I see so many restraining orders in these kids’ futures, it’s crazy. Of course, Peter manages to outcreep himself moments later with a promise to murder her if she tries to leave. Fortunately, Monroe arrives in the woods with his nose ready to hunt. Unfortunately, Rosalee has to sit through dinner with the kids, who are already in competition over who she loves more. It’s kind of heartbreaking, if it weren’t so unsettling. After dinner, Rosalee has to tell the kids a story. She recounts a story about a Grimm and a Blutbad, which in turn reveals these kids don’t even know what Wesen are. The kids, with the exception of Peter, get sucked into Rosalee’s story, but eventually they all fall asleep and she takes advantage of this to escape. However, while she was telling the story, Nick and company were getting closer and closer to finding her. Dangerously so, as Monroe is almost killed by a trap the children set. Unfortunately, Lily coughs herself awake and Rosalee ends up stuck in another one of the traps. They pull her out and call her a bad mother, and honestly, it’s a wonder Rosalee hasn’t beaten all of their asses at this point. When the boys woge and approach her, she also woges, which startles them back to human form. Lily, however, now woges, because she, like Rosalee, is a Fuchsbau. It’s a fraught moment, disrupted when the rest of the gang arrives. The kids are quickly overpowered and somehow Rosalee still feels sympathetic towards them. At the precinct, she tries to connect with the kids again, but Lily now hates her. It’s a shame, but it shows the capacity for caring Rosalee is capable of.

While I’m still so thrilled by Bree Turner’s performance this week, it’s not the end of the episode quite yet. At the loft, Adalind can’t sleep and asks Nick to join her and Kelly in the main bedroom. She admits it’s weird. He basically does too. He then joins them. It’s not even a romantic moment really, but it’s tense and meaningful. Monrosalee also have a moment together, where they reflect on the childrens’ lack of a stable Wesen identity. Sadly, the next scene discloses a pretty questionable fate for the boys: recruitment into the Wesen Uprising by Warden Hooke with a cry of “Occultatum Libera!” More importantly though, the episode reveals Trubel’s fate; she is, unsurprisingly, with Meisner. That’s a lot to chew on, but it fills me with excitement to see what will happen with her next episode. I’m also looking forward to more development with Nick and Adalind, though hopefully it’s just as co-decorators of that dreary loft for now.