Grimm

Grimm

Episode 4: Lonelyhearts

By: Carlos Uribe

Grimm is a show about a guy who hunts fairy tale monsters.

Spoilers Ahoy!

This week's fairy tale creature was some goat thing that was a serial rapist. He was creepy, but more on that later. After a girl gets run over and then suffocated by the bad guy, the cops investigate the crime. Thanks to some clever police work, they figure out the bed & breakfast that she visited the night she night died. There they discover the bad guy, and Nick sees his goat face. The rest of the episode was spent trying to prove he's a serial rapist, which meant searching his house and following him to see what he does. They eventually do discover he's a rapist and they manage to catch him. Until the end, the show was following it's formula that has become utterly predictable by now. In the end there's a hint that he gets away.

Which is so scary because he's the creepiest guy they have gotten so far. Not only is he someone who has serially raped a lot of women, he only lets them go when their pregnant. They don't remember him because he uses gas that induces hallucinations and makes them not remember his appearance. His mere touch can place a woman to completely and utterly fall in love, making his entire crime unnecessary for him. His creepiness factor is completely raised when he eats a couple of LIVING frogs. Oh, and do you know those kernels, the small cages you place your dog in? He places his VICTIMS in there until they are pregnant. Let me repeat: this guy is effectively creepy, and he worked extremely well as a villain. The idea that he's gotten away with it, and the knowledge that he would commit these crimes again, is simply disturbing.

Grimm is also starting to lay out it's mythology more. The troll that followed Aunt Marie and tried to kill her has a relative, a reaper. He's hoping to seek revenge on Nick, and goes to the police precinct to look for him. He's not given a full answer but he does get a visit from the police chief. Up until this episode, he's been there being all evil without earning it. This episode, he makes the visiting reaper bow to him and then chops his ear off when he doesn't listen to the man. The police chief then orders him to get out of dodge, refusing to let the Grimm get hurt. The reaper is confused on why the police chief is protecting the Grimm, but I imagine the police chief has nothing good planned for our protagonist, being a bad guy and all.

There was a certain point in the show when Nick is shopping with his girlfriend. It's not that their relationship is any important, since she's rarely shown, but this scene with her was an effective one. Nick is looking at a happy couple, wondering how their attracted to each other. This whole episode was about a creature who could make any woman completely attracted to him, so it was some philosophy on the real world coming from someone whose experience the Grimm world. It was short-lived, but I hope the show does more of these kind of scenes. These are the kind of scenes that make your series from just another show to an important one. It's part of what has made Buffy such a classic, and it's what Grimm could use.

Grimm had it's best episode yet, and it's been exciting to see this series grow week-in and week-out. It does need to shaken it's formula up a bit now, especially since it's starting to become evident exactly what's going to happen next. A formula exists to set up the basic story structure of an episode, but a formula also exists to be messed with and to surprise a viewer when something goes out of the equation.