State of the Blog

Okay, it's been a day or so since we got word on Haven, we're slightly saner or at least less stuck in a permanent state of squee, and we have a lot of shit to organize. Fortunately we're both awesome at that, so we present to you the results!

Haven: We currently intend to recaplysize the remaining back eps, which is to say s2, and have that up on the blog starting around June, as we did with s1 last year. When s5 comes back in the fall, we plan to have the usual weekly post up on Saturdays. Now with 200% more swearing! Standard warning for backlog posts applies: there will be spoilers, they will be for the entire run of the show so far.

Sleepy Hollow: While Grimm is on hiatus for the Olympics, we plan to start working on s1 of this show. We've been watching since the pilot, but at the time we were still working our way through Person of Interest mayitrestinpeace, and thus didn't have the ability to devote time to a new show. While we're regretting that now, we'd like to make it up to y'all by providing new analysis of the content over the long, painful wait for s2. As with all backlog posts, they will be in light of all the information acquired over the course of the season. I really cannot urge you highly enough, if you haven't already seen the full season, to wait to read our posts until that time. Coming from us, who seek out and devour spoilers like John Noble devours scenery… let me put it this way. We did not see the twists in the finale coming. The foreshadowing was there. We cannot turn analysis-brain off, and these twists impressed us. Which is why we're blogging this show.

Grimm: This season has been rocky. You may have noticed. We have hope that that'll shape up; the writers, actors, crew, everyone very clearly would rather be doing exciting metaplot than boring procedural stuff. (Note that procedurals don't have to be boring; see also Haven and Sleepy Hollow. Just that Grimm is, right now.) That said, we're in a position to finish out the season and reevaluate where we want to go with it. Right now we're working on the assumption that we'll continue, since numbers for renewal are looking good. Assuming both of these things happen, what we'll probably end up doing on weekends where Grimm airs simultaneous with Haven next fall is plan for Grimm posts to be published the Sunday after airing. This gives us a little more breathing room. A little.

A word of warning for those who might be new to the blog as we start Sleepy Hollow: we swear a lot and, for future reference, we speak on many adult subjects in recaplyses, as these are adult programs which often touch on a number of issues. Please keep this in mind, and read and share responsibly.

Behind the cut, a compilation of shows we're watching and why! Also quoteboards. Always quoteboards. 

I've Got A Theory. (It's A Demon.)

All right, Havenites. Gather ye round the campfire (and you better believe in this weather we have one) where we speculate wildly and with frothing glee on just what the shit is going on in our small town in Maine. By the time we'd finished the full recapalypse for the finale, the word count stood at about 15k, at the lower edge of our larger recaplyses, it was dinner time and we'd started at breakfast, and we knew that we were going to end up with at least a small shitpile of wild notions. So! Separate post it was. We are sorry that it took this long to get the post finished up. We're not sorry that we're posting it on the heels of the best news ever, aka 26-ep pickup for the next two years. So we'll be sticking around awhile longer, looks like. We do currently plan to work our way through the s2 episodes, probably aiming for posting during the summer again; a longer state of the blog will go up tomorrow once we've exhausted ourselves from squee. (K: That's not quite as dirty as it sounds.) (A: Speak for yourself.)

All Happy Families Are Alike Grimm S3E12 The Wild Hunt

We open with a high-speed chase and a quote from Brother and Sister, which is not Hansel and Gretel no matter how much the two get confused. It is, however, from the section of fairytales that's about a sister saving her brother after they're exiled/lost in the woods/fleeing from a murderous stepmother. I'm not quite sure who I'd count as the sister in this episode - we might need to wait for the second half of the two-parter for that - but I'll take a guess at it being maybe Juliette. Maybe even Adalind, considering she lies to save her ass which has the benefit of saving Renard's ass as well. Or there's another player to come in the WotW plotline! Who knows. We're discounting Rosalee for the moment, since she's out of the picture at the end of the episode, but that's not to say things couldn't change drastically before the end of this arc. And we're beginning under the assumption that the Wild Hunt refers to Herne the Hunter, I'll leave you to wiki-wander around that one. Because I'm giving like that. This assumption, granted, is largely based around a conversation with the Grimm Writers account and Herne's hunt being the more common in fiction, but that's where we're starting from.

Another Such Victory Grimm S3E11 The Good Soldier

Previously, on Grimm! Well... nothing, apparently, relevant to this episode. We start instead with a quote that sparks a debate between us at Murderboarding over whether this particular phrasing is Biblical or the original Hammurabi, thereby cementing us as overeducated for this show forever. The point, whichever the original text, is justice. Or possibly vengeance. On certain shows, this episode being one of them, I get the two mixed up.

We will also, now that we've established ourselves as paying fine attention to detail, note that this episode contains at least one fairly graphic portrayal and some discussion of self-harm, so if you're triggered by such things this would be a good episode to skip. You're not missing much in terms of the Royal plot, little more in terms of the Monrosalee. If you like, you can skip down till you see a picture of the Monrosalee and start there, which may be the first time we've ever used the pictures in that particular context. Usually they're just there to break up the endless walls of text. Huh.

Dirty Little Secrets Dirty Little Lies Grimm S3E10 Eyes of the Beholder

Previously on Grimm: Hank made sad faces at Zuri, nobody was enamored of that choppy cutting or what it implied, Juliette's friend Alicia showed up and attempted to explain to them about abnormality, everyone facepalmed but thought maybe they'd get through this without anyone shrieking about DON'T DO THAT.

Доверяй, но проверяй Grimm S3E09 Red Menace

Previously on Grimm! We start out hoping that Sasha doing the previouslies is just a sign of Russian to come, and then are very wary after we get past Hank's injury and go straight to the summation of Renard and his half-brother both sleeping with Adalind, who's pregnant, and Sean heading to Vienna to start moving some pieces about the board. Sometimes with lethal results. Well, this should be fun.

Cut to the title card, which is for Koschei the Deathless, which is not a fucking Wesen figure goddammit, he is a mythical figure on par with La Llorona or El Cucuy. And then the music starts up and we both sit bolt upright, because while not the Eurhythmics, that? That is one of the original versions of Sam the Sham's Little Red Riding Hood, a song that was played in the turntable.fm room (alas, turntable.fm, we knew you well) in the s1-s2 hiatus, which Akela Cooper ran and I'm pretty sure it was one of her songs. And now we want access to the Grimm writers' room soundtrack, 'cause you know there is one. Or several variations, most likely. Anyway, while this could be the Cascadias or the Cascadias standing in for the foothills of the Alps (because seriously, have you been to the Alps? trust me, once you're on a giant bus with an Austrian driver winding through a backroad with infinite switchbacks, you will appreciate the goddamn Alps in a visceral and terrifying way - and yes, A has pictures of the Reichenbach Falls somewhere), the music tells us it's supposed to be Portland. (Appropriately enough, because the difference between the Cascadias and the Alps looming at you is… kind of the difference between Giuntoli and Sasha.) Nick turns out to be out running behind some poor high school or college aged girl in a red jacket, who starts out looking wary of this potential predator and then just has this "oh fuck you" look on. Yeah, I'd have that look too if I were working out and this guy was jogging at something like a sprint and had enough breath to say a polite g'morning as he passed. Particularly for freaking me out. I kind of assume Nick's got his hood up because he doesn't want people to start wondering who the freak of nature who can do this is, but on a Doylist level it completes the transformation of Nick from confused maybe-prey figuring out how to defeat a bunch of predators to a predator in his own right. Which is about the only reason for the prolonged nature of this callback to the pilot scene I can see. Both a signifier of transformation and perhaps foreshadowing of Nick's predatory instincts taking over and causing trouble further down the road, given that the Blutbad in the first episode was clearly contrasted with Monroe as having let his predatory instincts run away with him, as opposed to a Blutbad who knows how to calm the fuck down and live with others.