Grimm: Bad Night

"You're gonna be the one who's self-winding tonight..."

The end of the season is so close you can almost taste it.

Hank is with Zuri, blissfully unaware that she is working against him. Wu is learning to control his inner beast. Nick is fruitlessly looking for Sean, who is (as usual) in bed with Rachel. But there's a definite feeling that things are moving fast; no more stories of the week now as Nick brings Monroe and Rosalie fully on board. And so we begin a chain of events that I'm certainly not going to try and summarise.

For Hank, of course, it's a trap. And we're back to the old days of tension and mistrust between Nick and Renard; it's fascinating how Renard's character has shifted from sinister to ally to once again being an antagonist. He's complex. I like that.

The stick is interesting, too: the point is made that it's significance is not its healing abilities, not directly, but that it proves (or, as Douglas Adams said with the Babel fish, disproves) the existence of God. That's big. No wonder the crusader Grimms hid it.

As we wait for the election results Adalind won't tell Bonaparte where Nick is; she isn't there of her own free will and still has loyalty. She's in a horrible position but I like her. But Bonaparte holds all the cards as we end with the revelation that Hank was just being used as a distraction so HW could be utterly destroyed and it's people massacred-  including Meisner. A bad night indeed.

And it gets worse. Not only does Renard win in a landslide but he rubs "his" family in Nick's face on television. This episode is awesome and Earth-shaking. On we go to the two part finale...

Grimm: Inugami

"He's doing this for us."

A very odd, Japanese-themed story of the week this episode, dripping with such stereotypical themes as honour and obligation. Still, the murders are visually interesting and the killer unexpected. Oh, and there's origami. But the A plot doesn't particularly impress in an episode where we're looking for the arc stuff to provide the main entertainment value.

Arc-wise, Nick finally learns that Adalind is getting her powers back- but only from Rosalie, which isn't good. Rachel sleeps with the real Sean this time, and encourages him to marry someone else (presumably Adalind) as some rather unconventional pillow talk. It's becoming increasingly clear that something is happening to Wu, and Adalind is hired for her new job (weirdly, she's allowed to keep Kelly in the office) precisely because she's a Hexenbeist.

Rosalie and Monroe explore that tunnel leading out of Nick's and find, as well as some delightful skeletons, evidence that it leads out into the open air. But Monroe overhears Eve taking to Adalind, warning her a at from doing anything to hurt Nick. It's almost as if some of Juliette is still in there...

The cliffhanger is Rachel visiting Sean alongside a fast-aging and very striking Diana. This is all very exciting; who cares about the story of the week when so much is happening? I'm loving the arc stuff but I wish they'd do something interesting with the general format of the show.

Grimm: The Believer

"Is this a tent revival?"

A story set in the disturbing world of religious brainwashing this week as an evangelical preacher uses the fact that he's a somewhat devilish-looking Wesen to expand his flock. The old Wesen council would not have approved. The story does a good job of exploring the ethics here, though; is he doing any harm? Most of his "flock" seem to be reformed ex-criminals, after all. But a gang of religious fanatics led by his wife, alas, end up murdering him because he's "possessed". Still, the lack of didacticism is commendable.

Behind the A plot there are constant reminders of Renard's ongoing mayoral campaign, but Eve is determining bed to get to the bottom of his possible connections to Black Claw, going as far as to magically impersonate him and hear what's going on. Little does she realise that she's expected to have sex with Rachel. Oops.

Aside from this, though, and an analysis of the cloth holding the magic stick from a professor friend of Monroe's there's not much arc stuff this week, a situation I don't suspect we are likely to see again this late in the season. But the story of the week is one of the better ones.

Grimm: Skin Deep

"You may have the face, but I have the boobies!"

A metaphor for plastic surgery and other dodgy quackery in the beauty industry this episode as we get a story-of-the-week about an elixir of youth with bad side effects which is acquired through killing people. It's a ice idea, even if the execution is a bit ho-hum.

In more arc-related news Nick learns from Eve what's been happening with Sean and all the dodginess surrounding his rather sudden mayoral campaign. And then Sean himself announces to Nick and Hank that he's running, and asks for their support. How very awkward.

Also interesting is that Eve seems to be dreaming of being Juliette. But the end is particularly arresting as Eve manages to assume the appearance of Sean...

As a cog in the machine that is this fascinating season, the episode does its job. But this isn't one of the episodes we will be remembering after the finale, I suspect.

Grimm: Lycanthropia

"Yeah... but who attacked whom?"

It's a neat and elegant, if simple, story of the week this episode as we inevitable get the Grimm take on werewolves: they're the result of an incurable disease for Blutbaden. All this plays through as the A plot for the episode,  it a nice little twist at the end raises this from the unremarkable to the rather good.

In more arc-related news Sean meets with Adalind but doesn't have a lot to tell her about what happened to Diana. They part awkwardly, but at least the series is acknowledging that this is a dangling plot thread that will have to be dealt with at some point.  What's more intet sting is how Sean noticed how Adalind's Hexenbeist powers seem to be returning. How will he use this knowledge?

We also have Eve telling Nick and Hank about Sean being made to run as new candidate for mayor by Rachel Wood, and how all this has to have been planned before Andrew Dixon's assassination. All this stuff is fascinating, and that's the point; the stories of the week on Grimm right now are perfectly decent but the arc stuff is what we're really interested in and it just isn't foregrounded enough.

Grimm: Silence of the Slams

"There's a ceremony for everything..."

We're back to a regular story of the week, albeit with arc elements, about a masked Mexican wrestler who tries to make it big by getting a magic mask (Wesen-related), for which innocents died and which will give him glory for a price- if he follows instructions and only uses the mask in the ring. Predictably, he doesn't. Take away the particular context and it's a typical fairytale, one that works well, particularly where the protagonist, as here, is well written and acted and imbued with proper tragic flaws. I won't pretend I enjoy these one-off episodes as much as those which are more arc-based, but this is a good one. And I have absolutely no interest in Mexican wrestling.

It's still interesting how both Nick and Adalind are keeping secrets from each other- the magic stick and the return of her Hexenbeist powers respectively. This isn't at all healthy for their budding relationship and is bound to explode at the worst possible moment, probably in the finale. And now we have Eve watching the footage of Andrew Dixon's assassination and noticing Rachel Wood's odd behaviour; her confrontation with Sean hardly lessens her suspicions.

We end with Sean ringing up Adalind and claiming to have news about Adalind. The arc stuff is still there and still developing, and for an episode of the week this is a good one but, well, can we foreground the arc stuff a bit more please?