Grimm, Season 2, Episode 6: “Over My Dead Body”
Written by Spiro Skentzos
Directed by Rob Bailey
Airs Fridays at 9pm (ET) on NBC
This week is couples night on Grimm. Juliette and Nick seem to be making some headway on repairing their relationship. Monroe and Rosalee similarly meet up for an intimate dinner a deux and discover a shared love of zither music (I am not making this up) which persuades Monroe to finally make his move.
So for a heady moment there, as Silas Weir Mitchell descends on the luscious Bree Turner, it looks like we might see someone in Grimm get lucky.
No chance.
The series is predicated on no one getting together with anyone (or this that anything?). In Season 1, Nick only had to look at Juliette with a glint in his eye for a Vesen to come crashing through the window. To be fair, Monroe did enjoy one night of passion with Angelina, his Blutbad ex, but that only makes life more complicated for him when she turns up just before he gets to play tongue twister with Rosalee.
Even smooth talking Hank has struck out on the love front and this week, instead of exercising his charms on what he would call ‘a laydee’, he gets to bromance Monroe with a bottle of whisky while Nick goes looking for clues as to who has taken out a contract on the Blutbad’s life.
It isn’t exactly a huge surprise to discover that the icy blonde who arrived by private jet the night before and who has been entertained by Sean Renard – during which time both drop howling Eurotrash lines like ‘are you still mad about Vienna?’ and ‘I’ll never forget Tokyo’ – is behind the evil plot. A warning needs to be sent to all Vesen that consorting with a Grimm is a Very Bad Idea and Monroe is to be the sacrificial victim.
It’s also not much of a shock when it all goes horribly wrong for the baddies and Monroe escapes without so much as a broken talon. The result is to sink Nick a little deeper in a moral quandary, because not only does he persuade Hank to break the rules as part of helping Monroe, he discovers that his friendship with the Blutbad is putting him in danger.
It’s mild tension. I don’t see the writers getting rid of Monroe just yet, but hinting that someone in Nick’s inner circle might fall prey to the enemy faction leads to a pleasant expectation of further bloodshed. The fun part, as ever, is the Grimmology: the manuscripts, the antique weapons, the potions. This time Rosalee instructs the team on how to cook up the kind of brew which put Snow White out cold for a couple of centuries. Fortunately, its effect on Monroe is shorter lived, because we would all miss him.
Questions for next week: will Renard’s developing feelings for Juliette lead him to interfere with her relationship with Nick? And why is he called Sean and his brother Eric, when they live in a castle in France?
Cath Murphy