The Trouble with Troubled Grimm S3E19 Nobody Knows The Trubel I've Seen

Previously, on Grimm! Royal conspiracies abound and that one feeb really has a hate-on for Renard. Viktor makes ultimatums for the demon baby baby Diana (interestingly, leaving out the one about Renard's mother from these edits), which are stymied by the collective wacky planning of the Scooby Gang plus Renard and the baby is absconded with by Mama Burkhardt! Yeah, nobody expects this to end well, even though this seems like something of an ending. It's the end of the baby's presence in the story to start with!

We're not taking on the epigraph of the episode because you all know it, you know why it's there, and if you don't, go look at all the show Twitter accounts for the episode. Except to mention briefly that, guys, we know you like the pun but it's really tacky to yoink an old African-American spiritual to use for a character that pasty white. Not exactly outright offensive, but really tacky. Quit that shit.

We'll move on from that to the most extreme close-up I think we've ever seen of Renard, really, was this entirely necessary? I can see the makeup lines on his cheek. As one does, he is drinking his sorrows away, though given that it's Renard I also doubt he's drinking to the point of being too physically or mentally compromised. Oh, there we go, now we're pulling back to a normal closeup. Renard looks like hammered shit. As you do when you get backed into a corner by your fucking pack of assholes family, and are forced to give up your daughter against her mother's will and without her mother's knowledge. At least I damn well hope he feels guilty for that, because dude. One thing that also strikes me about that kind of dick move, too, is that Renard hasn't done anything that morally bankrupt for a while. Even his actions in the royal conspiracy plotline and in furtherance of the Resistance haven't been on the nastier side of the scale, perhaps leading us to forget that this is a guy who started out ordering a hit on a cancer-stricken dying woman and sending Adalind to roofie his own detective for extortion purposes. I would almost argue that this means his moral arc is trending for the good, since he actually feels guilty about this, whereas we haven't seen a damn thing about how he feels about the other two actions. Anyway. Renard drinks, Renard crumples up the napkin that only exists to show us less subtly what he's thinking about (we're going to see some moments of astounding unsubtlety punctuating this episode, and no, we're not all that enthused by it), and exeunt Renard, pursued by a feeb.

Hi feeb! The music tells us that you intend to do Renard harm. Do you really think that's going to end well for you? Don't answer that, we know you don't think much. One of these days they're going to give us someone other than Waltz to contradict the Fucking Stupid stereotype of Hundjagers, but I'm not holding my breath. Contrary to customary Renard either doesn't seem to notice the feeb behind him or doesn't much care, which goes along with the drinking and the mood of moroseness. Standard back and forth shots between pursuer and pursued are standard, oh, hey, there's the frown of "the fuck is this shit" from Renard, so maybe he does notice? It's actually a bit hard to tell since he doesn't actively do anything about the feeb pointing a gun at him in an open street. We can take a moment to wonder if some of that is passive suicide impulses, or just that he knows the streets better than the feeb and thus can go dodging behind sudden cover. Feeb, you really have gone off the deep end, haven't you. A wild bus appears! The bus disgorges its passengers to give us some chaotic shots of the feeb (appropriately and subtly spotlit so we know who we're tracking) looking through the passengers for Renard. For such a big guy he's awfully good at Batmanning out of there when he wants to. Oh, hey, there he is! He's in his battlewagon and pulling out of the parking spot and away from the murderous feeb with some murderous glares of his own. Sucker.

Over at Chez Silverton-Burkhardt Juliette and Nick are having after-dinner beverages and discussing the baby. In one of the more subtle genderings on a TV show Juliette has wine and Nick has beer, although Juliette's background also makes me think wine is likelier for in-character reasons. At any rate. Discussing the baby, Nick offers the very valid speculation that Mama Burkhardt will raise the kid pretty much as he was raised, which seems likely. And Juliette questions Nick as to whether or not he buys into the prophecy hype. There's a knock on the door before he can answer! This late at night I'm betting the reason Nick insists on getting it is because it's likely to be something bad, whether that's cop-bad or Grimm-bad, either is possible. Both? In a way. It's Adalind, and how they did not see this coming I do not know. But they didn't, and they don't have a plan for it, despite that it's an entirely logical reaction to, in extremis and lacking any other allies, go to the people who helped you even when they had no reason to. Particularly when the baby's involved. Frankly, I'm surprised it took her this long. Adalind looks about as much like hammered shit as it's possible to when you're a woman on a TV show who hasn't been physically injured, hair all sticking up and eyes wet and sunken. So, yes, Nick lets her in to hear her out about what and why she needs help. Renard gave the baby away! Oh noes! Nick's "what are you talking about" is only slightly higher pitched and more nervous than his normal surprised/shocked voice, mostly the higher pitch. Adalind babbles out the conclusion of the last episode and Juliette, of all people, attempts to get her to calm down and to comfort her. Let's all note Juliette's strength of character here, she has every reason to stay aloof but she is taking an active role of comfort to the person who put her in a coma, fucked up her mind, and tried to kill various people she cares about. Let's all note Adalind's .... well, it's hard to say how much this has transformed her character because there's a lot of I and me type statements here, she needs her baby back. On the other hand, no, it's not likely that Viktor would be a good parent or even patron overseeing other surrogate parents, and she doesn't know who the baby is really with, so it's entirely possible this is genuine worry for her daughter's safety. At any rate, Adalind's changed enough to be willing to admit that her mother's death was caused in the long-term by her actions, and that's new. She also says she doesn't care that Nick's Mom killed her Mom, she just wants Kelly's help, which is not a change and goes to Adalind's willingness to use anyone who she thinks might advantage her. Sadly, Kelly can't help her, the police already released her and she's in the wind. Nick and Adalind (and Juliette at points) go around and around with this for a while, punctuated at the end by Adalind woge-ing out of sheer frustration. If she can't get help from them she'll go find it elsewhere! We get a nice long shot of Nick in front of Juliette after Adalind doorslams her way out, having interposed himself between her and Juliette (and to some extent having been hidden behind by Juliette), just to make sure we know they're shook up by what just happened. Nick doesn't think Adalind would make a very good mother. I... don't entirely disagree, but probably not for the reasons he believes that. Juliette actually feels sorry for her, and doesn't sound too terribly upset about Adalind scaring the crap out of her. Though given what else Adalind's done to her, a little jump-scare is tame. More wine is called for.

Over to the B-plot this week! It's a little odd to be having the WotW case be the B-plot, can we just say? it's an interesting transition choice to go from all metaplot all the time over to mostly metaplot and a B-plot that goes to worldbuilding more than procedural. We have a long dark empty stretch of road, a small dark figure against it, oh hey, I think she's a secret badass. Is she a secret badass? The music says YES. In all caps. Possibly in bold and dripping gothic bloody font style. I wish I were kidding, and whoever decided the music for Toboni needed to be this over the top should frankly be taken out back and beaten to death with his own shoes. She doesn't actually need the help, you guys, this is detracting from her acting ability, stoppit. There's a black knight on a chain around her neck, at least it's a sturdy but not over the top chain. There are no gothy spikes, though I guarantee if this were set even ten years earlier her hair would be all goth-punk spiked or something. Or maybe that's the music, which remains the "found this stray badass outside my local goth club I want to bring her home with me what do you mean she's gonna kill me in my sleep?" Honestly I think the twist would've gone better had they given us lost-and-scared music, because judging by her expression SHE IS. She's also a murdering crazy badass, but that's mostly because of the lost-and-scared. Come on, you guys, some subtlety would go a long way even when you've utterly spoiled the basic plot twist via hyping the hell out of your newly discovered actress. I appreciate the enthusiasm for promoting a new talent, but it seems to have made some people lose their sense of dramatic timing not to mention judgement on how much exposure is just enough exposure and how much is overexposure. Frankly, it started to sound like they were lacking confidence and thus trying too hard. It turns out she is pretty good, actually, that little pause and brace yourself as the truck pulls past her and over to the side of the road is maybe a fraction of an oversell? (Stage acting and wrestling [see also: Haven] will lend itself to that on TV. Closeups fuck with your ability to know what an oversell is.) But she's supposed to be young and untrained, too, so I'll take it. And then yes, of course the two guys in the pickup truck come after her and I can't actually figure out if this is for sure supposed to be staged as attempted rape, or straight up attempted murder. They don't start yanking her clothes off, is the thing that makes me happy about that, and the closest we get to sexual content is potentially "we're offering you a ride," which isn't delivered as salaciously as it would need to be for it to be clear in a Hollywood context. In a non-Hollywood context, I'd assume attempted rape and start murdering the shit outta the fuckers without pausing to see if they were Wesen, anyway. Anyway. They do woge out, by the way they flick their heads I'm thinking they do a full woge in an attempt to freak out the human they're about to commit violence on, and oh look there's blood on the leaves. Gee. I wonder whose that could be.

Roll credits, which includes Adalind's pilot hexen-face and none of Renard's All Shall Love Me And Despair. Well… that's marginally better than usual? Sort of. What is definitely not better is Renard driving into his giant underground parking garage and being confronted by enraged, exhausted Adalind. You know, I would actually like this series of scenes better if they'd made it clear that she was running around checking on what everyone knew, seeing how their stories check out, and then moving from there. Because fuck knows that's what you should do when people who have no reason to be your allies start helping you and then something goes very wrong. ASSUME THEY ARE NOT YOUR ALLIES. Really, shit like this is why we think Adalind would make a terrible mother in this particular instance, because she's not good at the conspiracy shit, she'd get found within a couple of days at most if she ran out of town and tried to make it on her own, and then no more Adalind and baby Diana in Royal hands. Screaming, near crying, more woging, the FX guys must have had a field day with this ep. I feel bad disliking a scene with Sasha and Claire, but the thing is it's nearly note-for-note the same damn thing she just did with Nick and Juliette. Her control's slipped further, and I don't know why they picked a take where Adalind starts out sounding like it's a question, not an angry statement on "how could you do this." Unless they actually are trying to sell us that her genuine love for him is overriding her awareness that he's a manipulative conspiring jackass, which it shouldn't be. Actually this whole thing is once again coming off like an oversell, and I have to assume that's how they wrote it, because I know that everyone involved in the making of this ep is both competent at nuance and subtlety and usually they seem to prefer it. Grumble sigh. Renard actually looks afraid when he woges out, too, probably because he just finally realized that one of his former pawns grew claws. Literal ones! I do really love Claire's delivery on her last lines, though, given the writing of them's kind of awful. Really? "One of these days I'll stop crying?" Really? You couldn't come up with a better threat? Sigh. I also wonder, given the level of emotion and the comment about not blaming her, how drunk Renard's meant to be in this scene. I'm guessing fairly, though he holds his liquor well - and that's in character for him - that it's damn near impossible to tell.

To the crime scene we go! Where indeed, the two Wesen from last night that attacked our baby Grimm (let's not all pretend we didn't see the sneak peeks, okay?) are very, very dead. In very messy fashion. Somebody has no training! Somebody also has a very large knife and that's a nice touch, the blood and cuts over the faces not obscuring their features but indicating that she was freaked out enough that faces bad, GIR. Oh, but she does have enough sense to roll the bodies! And she took the truck. That's smart, at least. Yes, Nick, three footprints and one set of drag marks and two bodies generally does add up to the third person who got dragged did the killing. Which often means a murder attempt gone very bad for the attempted murderers, the main question at this point will of course be motive, who were they after, etc. Have I mentioned lately how they're the luckiest bastards ever to have the tech for fingerprint scans on-scene? I mean, I believe this shit exists, I'm just going to reminisce about the days when you had to wait fuckall forever for results. It does have the effect of curtailing disbelief when lab results on Hollywood inevitably come back in no time flat, too! Handy, that. Hank has a bloody black knight! No, Nick's right, if it were on top of the blood it would've had to have been dropped after the attack, but blood and leaves on it now doesn't necessarily mean anything. Wu runs the IDs for them on his laptop, we will all have another moment of I-love-technology over this and it does tell us that the identities of these guys don't really matter beyond Wesen and also assholes. Their arrest record tells us that! It further tells us that one of them's dumb enough to have been caught and convicted of rape, multiple times (accurate; most rapists don't stop at one) and all that likely means is the other one's a little smarter. So, yes, they were aiming for attempted rape followed potentially by murder, but they didn't shoot it with the normal Hollywood level of titillation we're used to for that. I hereby mark this with a big large APPROVED stamp.

Over at Chez Monrosalee, it's tidying time! Which reminds me that I need to gather my recycling too. Anyway, they're picking up after either a party or a week to ten day's worth of drinking beer after dinner (I'm guessing a party given the different sized bottles, which implies interesting things about their social lives and whether or not at least Monroe's friends are comfortable with inter-Wesen-species relationships) and discussing what Monroe and company did to the Royals. Yeah, I'd be freaked too. Rosalee is taking the position of we fucked with the Royals and now we should be wary for the next ever, Monroe is taking the position of it'll be fine we took sensible precautions they won't find us. Both of these positions have some degree of merit, but I'm more on the side of Rosalee here with the justifiable paranoia. The Royals have way more resources than you guys, dude, and you have no way of keeping eyes and ears on them, you do not know what they might have found out. Be wary. Okay, I suppose practicing reflexes by flinging recycling around the kitchen is like being wary? No, really, as cute as this game of catch-and-sort is, it's also odd enough that I feel like it's supposed to signify something and I have no idea what that is. If it were me and A I'd expect it would be a combat exercise, not that we keep our sightlines in mind when sitting down at restaurants or practice holding weights in Weaver stance for minutes on end, shut up. Anyway. So, yeah, we have the underlying tendency to make even household chores into defense exercises, but Monroe and Rosalee never have exhibited this tendency. So my guess is this is just something intended to be cutesy? It's still odd, and it's throwing me a little out of the mood of the scene. That's fine, Adalind's throwing them out of the mood when she comes to the door! Rosalee and Monroe didn't expect her either! NOBODY EXPECTS THE HEXENBIEST INQUISITION! Her chief weapon is surprise. Surprise and determination. And a hell of an icky woge. I'll just come in again, shall I. She's still made up with improbable cleanliness for that much crying, because you can't have a woman not in makeup on a television screen, but other than that she still kind of looks like crap. Okay, maybe I'd put a little more flush or pallor, one of those directions, on her skin for being up for what seems like nearly 24 hours? But other than that. She's also more than likely using her feelings for manipulation here, because that hug is what pushes it from maybe she really is going around to anyone she thinks will help her to no, no she's playing vulnerable for sympathies. Monroe doesn't so much pick up on this as anticipate that she's going to be a problem. Because he's smart like that.

Over at someone's messy and unbelievably cluttered apartment, Nick and Hank are following up with next of kin, who identifies one of the vics as his brother. Yes, the vic lives with him, no, he doesn't know where he is. Because he's been murdered! The brother also recognizes the name of the other vic and is generally not too happy that his baby brother (by the looks of the two of them) has been murdered. Cue woge! And cue recognizing Nick as a Grimm, which naturally to a Wesen means imminent death or at least the threat of. Nick handles this with a surprising amount of calm and rationality given that at the start of the season we had the confrontation about his differing attitudes between humans and Wesen. In fact he seems to be treating this Lausenschlange as any other next of kin who has little reason to trust cops. The Wesen then looks over to Hank, who's all "don't look at me!" and backs up Nick's assertion that they're being cops today. Neither of them are physically approaching the guy, which probably helps. They go back to the investigation, which is what does he know about his brother's plans for the previous night (drinking) and was anyone else other than the other vic with him (not as far as he knows). Then the less standard question of what kind of Wesen was the other guy, which turns out to be a Klaustreich, continuing the trend of some types of Wesen are Good and some types are Evil and never the twain shall mix? Yeah, I'm still not the happiest about that. It's not surprising, Grimm seems to have reserved all its complexity and ambiguity for the overarching plots rather than the meta of the week to week Wesen, but given that I know the showrunners are capable of at least a little more subtlety than that, I'm still not that happy.

Meanwhile in a shitty hotel room somewhere not too far from the sound of sirens, which doesn't actually narrow it down at all in a city, our baby Grimm! With a hole in her boot prominently displayed, gee, I wonder if that's about to be a plot point. Starving, broke, living on fast food, whole nine yards. No door on the bathroom, even, which for her might be a selling point because of sightlines. Definitely a selling point in the set design because after she's rummaged through the wallets she seems to realize her hands are sticky oops. Oh, hello, bloodstains which are way too fresh. That should be dried blood by now, I'm just saying, someday someone's going to actually do that and I will die of shock. The nudity here is kind of gratuitous, I feel, but it does give us a good look at a pair of very deep, probably never got stitched up claw mark scars across her back. Just in case we were in any doubt about what might have caused her to be this broken. Assault, maybe rape, definitely seeing woge as a young woman and freaking right the fuck out. Poor honey. Please stop with the music. Please. Ow my ears.

Meanwhile at the precinct Hank has a list of known associates on their vics, several of which are dead or in prison but half a dozen are around Portland! Nick has snark. Nick please stop snarking about Wesen in the middle of the goddamn precinct. Even if it's a valid point. Maybe especially when it's a valid point, you're trying to keep secrets from Wu at least and oh why do I bother. Snark will be interrupted by Monroe calling with his Hexen-shaped problem, whispering around the corner in the kitchen while Rosalee deals with Adalind on the couch. As always in these situations, Nick is the least helpful. Oh just keep her there! Doesn't everyone want a pet Hexenbiest who's grieving to keep on their couch? Makes a great guardbiest! Ahem. No, no Monroe does not, and he seems to think Nick (and he, perhaps to a lesser extent) should've seen this coming. YES. YES YOU SHOULD. At least Nick apologizes for it before hanging up to run and deal with the truck. You know, that dayjob thing he's supposed to be doing. Rosalee is even more pissed at this turn of events, probably in large part because she didn't participate in the kidnapping false flag op, and as such doesn't even have the bonds of recently-in-combat-with for her to give a shit beyond get the scary Hexenbiest out of our house. I can't say she's wrong. I'd like it if she stopped stage whispering about it in the kitchen, the house isn't that big and Monroe's expression suggests he agrees with me. Be nice to the scary Hexenbiest and then get rid of her. Somehow. Rosalee pulls on her very best helpful apothecary face! I approve of this, and I expect to see it get used and refined to a spy-dissembling-face as she gets involved with more Council shenanigans. Yes? Please? Right now she wants Adalind to rest, which beyond being convenient for Monrosalee is something she needs right now. She's at the point of anxious and scared and pissed where she doesn't want sleep, she wants her baby back, but, no, take care of your own physical needs before trying to push beyond them. Particularly when you just popped out a baby a couple weeks ago, woman. Monroe and Rosalee have some of the greatest "the fuck you say?" "the fuck I do say shut up" expressions trading back and forth as Rosalee offers Adalind a place to crash as long as she needs it. I would note, too, that as Monroe expresses in words what we've been seeing these last few weeks by Claire Coffee's excellent acting, we get the verbal confirmation that this is a woman with nobody to rely on and nothing left to lose. And cornered animals are the most dangerous. Which is why Rosalee's trying to make her feel not cornered, but that's going to be awfully tough while refusing to help her look for her baby in a bit. I have rants forthcoming on this one.

Over at the not quite crime scene but the vic's truck! They have the truck, at least, but no surveillance footage, which is, yes, a good indication of planning on the perp's part. They snap on gloves and go to investigate the truck, tossing around ideas for who might have been with the killer on a road in the not quite middle of nowhere. Yes, the main options pretty much are either they had the perp with them or they picked the perp up and, yes, if they didn't know what they were getting into it is likely a woman. None of these are much of a stretch, they're just there to show the audience that the detectives are tracing through points A, B, and C. No blood in the truck, evidence of drinking. Lots of evidence of drinking, really, and continuing evidence that these snake brothers weren't the neatest of folk. And also ew. I do have to say, though, given the amount of ew in the truck it definitely takes a precise detective to spot the out of context fry, and I'm really glad they gave the heavy lifting in this exchange to Hank. I'm also really glad they gave it to a sergeant to track down fast food joints in the area (probably on a rough line from the truck to the murder scene if they're going to be sensible about it) rather than a database of fries. I love you NCIS, but sometimes your database fetish gets a little too prominent. I mean, okay, yes, I have a database of fries, it's called my memory of all the local fast food joints I've eaten at. Wu seems to have the same database! At least he has the same attitude of narrowing it down to a restaurant by the cut, although no, not really every restaurant has a different cut? Still, there's enough variation that it cuts down the list pretty drastically, to a manageable number of locations, and maybe they'll find someone who remembers the truck and the person who got out of it. We'll be over here giggling at Wu's deadpan.

And we're back to the Castle of Conspiracy, where Viktor is bitching about the feeb's incompetence costing him two more Verrat. I know I shouldn't, and I know it's in direct violation of both the bottle and the Evil Overlord list for Viktor to talk about Verrat like they're company cars or something, but it still amuses me this cavalier way in which he bitches about losing them. New henchguy, who is ⅔ of the way towards being actually named, points out that it was actually Danilov's man. That really won't save you if Viktor takes a dislike to your face, henchdude. A fact which Viktor reminds us of by pointing out that he can only kill Danilov once, what do you think this is, a comic book? He sounds more irritated than anything, though, and they move rapidly along to how did the Resistance know they were there. And we're back to Kelly again, via the attack on the feeb in his home. Viktor and his new henchdude know Renard and Nick as general factors in their plans, but they don't know the new woman. They also know Renard has contacts within the Resistance, which is, they decide, the first likely place to go tracking down a mysterious and deadly woman! This does say some interesting things about the prevalence of deadly women in the Resistance, perhaps in direct contrast to women within the Families who remain patriarchal to the point of having seen one woman working for them in three seasons. Through the halls and around the corner they go until they walk in on a guy reading The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and commenting about the dangers of women in a deep and sinister voice. Yes, folks, after a long wait and much speculation, here is Papa Renard! Murderboarding promptly drops a barrage of f-bombs.

For extra bonus classical references he refers to wars waged, kingdoms lost, hearts broken. Helen of Troy, anyone? No, that doesn't actually have anything to do with the Roman empire, but it's in the same general area of historical works which is, sadly, sufficient for television to link the two. The fact that he's reading the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire at all paints him as a strategist to be feared, and the fact that it's clearly an older edition indicates it came out of the castle libraries, which in turn indicates that he belongs here. Let's also note that Viktor and the henchdude stop dead when they see him, and Viktor actually turns either as if to go or as if to ask the henchdude "the fuck did you not tell me he was here?" Either is possible! The henchdude bows and greets him as "your Highness," which, if he's Papa Renard shouldn't he technically be "Your Majesty"? Is that a writer fuckup or is this indicative that there are a number of kings and one high king, whose form of address would be Your Majesty? Inquiring fucking minds! Either way, yes, this is a person with whom we do not fuck, and the henchdude fears him way more than he fears Viktor. At least when this person is in close proximity. Viktor greets him as Uncle, which is definitely our first anvil that this is Papa Renard, and Papa Renard tells Viktor not to go blaming his people for not telling him that he was here. Which lends some weight to the idea that that half-turn earlier was a "the fuck did you not tell me he was here." No, Viktor, it is never a good thing when your superiors want to surprise you with their presence, though he has considerably less urbane pointy teeth than Papa Renard. It's kind of hilarious, Papa Renard's smile is all genial grandpa who will nonetheless fuck your shit up in Sean Connery style, and Viktor's smile is that of a slightly more self-composed manic serial killer who's been startled out of his comfort and routine. We will note briefly that while we don't get a very good look at Papa Renard's ring, it looks more like Viktor's, gold with maybe a green gem, than like Renard's or Sebastien's or even Eric's, silver and subtler. This may be an indication of proximity to the throne, or it may have to do with personal preference? I don't even. If Eric was the crown prince he should've had a crown prince's ring. What brings Papa Renard here is Viktor's lack of progress in either the child or the investigation into his son's death. Tellingly, there is no shift in vocal stress patterns between conversational topics, though Eric's death comes first in order, so for the moment we're going to assume that no, there was not much in the way of real affection between Papa Renard and his son. The order is perhaps chronological rather than priority-based. Which makes the genuine (if very much subsumed and warped) affection that Eric Renard had for his half brother a little startling. A little. Viktor swallows at being reminded of his lack of progress, once again confirming that people imitate the patterns given to them and suggesting that Papa Renard doesn't have a much more congenial or bottle compliant Evil Overlord style. Sigh. Renard clearly got all his smarts from his Mom. Papa Renard would then like to know which of his children has sired this grandchild. Viktor considers it not as important as the fact that it is Papa Renard's grandchild, which seems to be indicative of grasping at straws. Now it's time for the threat! First by reminding Viktor that most if not all of his power (certainly all Papa Renard is aware of) comes from the Families, then by reminding him that Papa Renard will not allow the child to be raised not in the Family, lest the power of the Family wither and fade. I am now deeply curious to know why the fuck he thinks that. Is the family line dying? Is this some very obscure and backhanded reference to the whole motif of the elven races are dying? Is it the prophecy? Is it something else entirely? No, really, the fuck is this. The fuck is all of you. Whatever the reason, everyone clearly seems to believe that this child is a nexus point of a lot of probabilities, although I'm starting to get tired of everyone saying this without offering up proof. So far apart from the protectiveness of her parents, everyone wrecking shit or building shit to get at baby Diana has done so because they think she's a probability nexus, and that makes it incredibly circular. I would love it if they gave us either a reason to think that or an indication that someone has manufactured this circular logic for whatever reason, for shits and giggles and self-fulfilling prophecies. Till then, I will roll my eyes and rant about McGuffins. Papa Renard continues to deliver bloody threats, literally, he actually uses the word bloody, then beams and claps Viktor on the shoulders and expresses his faith in Viktor's ability to succeed. I'm sure that's very comforting for Viktor.

I'm displeased by the cut from Papa Renard's faith in Viktor's ability to handle it to Renard looking at the feeb's file. Displeased and twitchy. This is the kind of thing that goes on for episodes and ends badly. We don't get long to worry about that, though, because Nick's coming to check in on Renard. For all that I'm a little twitchy about Nick acting like he has that right, it's about time someone took any interest in Renard's well-being, because he's broadcasting I Am Done And Vacationing In The Land of Not Coping these days. Not that anyone can blame him, but someone with that much potential power turning unpredictable? NOT something you want, just for starters. I will give Nick massive cookies for finally getting his stupid head out of his stupid ass and sharing information oh my god so many cookies. I disapprove of their chosen tactics, but at least they're sharing information! Yes, Adalind has come to visit all the players in their merry false flag op, yes, she's fishing for information, will you all be a little more concerned about this? No. No they will not. Renard doesn't know how to make it better for her, that's because there's not really a better for it to be made, and discounts the possibility of Nick talking to her about it. I… am actually with him there, I think his assessment of Adalind is accurate and more to the point I think his assessment of Nick's inability not to blab everything is also accurate. Unspoken or not. Note that Renard is always saying the child, not my daughter or Diana, classic distancing technique but still useful to remember and Sasha's playing it off exactly right. I severely question Viktor's lack of use for Adalind; you can always use a chaotic weapon in the middle of your enemies! Particularly when you know more than she does. I'm just saying. I disagree that the feeb is more important, but it's a nice topic shift to something tangentially related while letting Renard avoid anything that smacks of feelings. Can't have that. Feeb's been reported missing by his bosses, no contact, Renard confirms for us and to Nick good boys sharing information, that he thinks he saw him on the street the other night. Yes, I'd saying going rogue is a genuine possibility. Alas, Hank as surveillance and needs to interrupt! Not without a last attempt to bond with Renard, who's having very little to none of it. Nick, this does kind of qualify as too little too late, though to be fair for a long time he didn't know there was anything this big to worry about. See also: the importance of sharing information, boys. Surveillance! Brings them to fast food cameras which do finally give them their first look at the baby Grimm, not that they know it's a baby Grimm yet, and everyone is duly shocked and dismayed to find a young woman whatever the species as the one who's their purported killer. Could be a problem! Might be a problem for Monroe to help solve, because that's got to be a short list of potential Wesen, right? Of course right. Nick, stop staring at the chess piece, I don't want to make infinite Batman jokes. They're no fun. Particularly when the background music coming up is making all the jokes for me.

Back to the whole shoes thing, look who's trying on a pair of shoes! In a boutique store, no less, she didn't roll that much money from the vics the other night, so she's clearly not intending to pay cashy money for these. She tells one of the clerks she'd like to see how they look with these pair of pants, gets pointed towards the dressing rooms, and it's a short hop from there to playing guess-which-theft-technique. Oh look! She's caught the attention of some girl looking at herself in the mirror. No points for guessing what happens next. I don't know if I buy this setup as much as I did the last one, as so much of this one hinges on coincidences of personality. Still, it's the kind of contrivance that isn't too intrusive, and is kind of necessary for the furtherance of the character if not the plot, so we'll allow it. Instead of trying on the pants she takes a bit of newspaper out of her bag and a lighter. So, it's the distraction version! Right, then. She passes the pants back and claims to go looking for something else, which is when the clerk is called away to deal with the fire and New Girl can just walk right out. With her ill-gotten gains and some excessively Matrix music SERIOUSLY YOU GUYS. CALM DOWN. This actress is doing fine on her own she does not need the constant hammering of the This Is A Badass bell. I'm going to beat you with that Neil Degrasse-Tyson meme until you quit that shit. It is excessive, irritating, and is going to start actively detracting from the poor woman's performance. Cut it out. The sad thing is the music as a whole is what's bad, the one rapid and more bass heavy beat that cuts in as the pursuer comes out of the boutique isn't bad, if they'd just started at that moment in the scene and then kept going. The jangling industrial tones that kick in at the park are fucking overweening. Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds like Patrick Swayze or Kurt Russell is about to finish some shit in a dive bar in the 80s. That's how bad it is. The pursuer follows New Girl and demands her boots, and here's where the coincidence gets a little cringeworthy again. It's still required for the narrative, and it's still pushing the boundaries of What Is Everyone In Portland a Wesen? incredulity. Still, we all know how this is going to turn out, so let's keep moving on.  

After the break we're still moving on from this fight scene, which is neatly choreographed to imply people with no actual fight training, fighting. Viciously, I might add. A lot of dynamic shots here, surprisingly steadier cams at first than expected oh, that's why. So we can catch the jogger going by and seeing a fight going on! The jogger is a good jogger and calls 911, like you do. Now the fight speeds up, the camera gets shakier and blurrier, and New Girl gets the knife back. She does, in fact, go for the face with wide slashing arcs, slightly wider than the normal person tends to reach but the impression they're going with here is that she's trying to destroy the fucked up image she's seeing. And then, you know, stabbing the other woman in the shoulder, it looks like from this angle. Because kill it with knives? We can work with that. Then grabbing her bag and running with a genuinely terrified look on her face. Poor kiddo.

Over at Chez Monrosalee, Monroe is doing the adorable thing and tucking Adalind in on the couch. Again. Whatever his reservations about her, he's clearly determined to treat her as a person in distress at least for the time being, which speaks well of him and consistently of his character. Ahem. There's a knock on the door! It's Nick and Hank! Monroe, not unreasonably, assumes they're there to talk to Adalind. Hank definitely does not want to talk to Adalind and Russell's delivery, as serious as things are between the two characters, cracks me up. Poor Hank. He doesn't like working with Adalind, he doesn't like having to feel sorry for her (and he probably feels obligated to, given her situation, even if the sentiment isn't actually there) and no, he doesn't want to talk to her. Best Russell. Anyway, fortunately for Hank and all of us, this isn't about Adalind, this is about the new what-they-think-is-a-Wesen. Monroe's up for a Wesen talk but would rather do it in the trailer, on account of, as he puts it, "better to let sleeping Hexenbiests lie." Especially sleeping Hexenbiests with way too little sleep lately and way too much stress, who wasn't your friend to begin with. Monroe grabs his coat and sneaks out of the house to the tune of that creepy fairy tale chimey lullaby-y music that seems to be at least partly his leitmotif. Bonus points for the creepy half-woge twitch she does in her sleep. Eek.

In the car on the way there Monroe opines as taking on a Klaustreich and a Lausenschlange at the same time takes some serious balls. You can say balls, Monroe, just because ours are on the inside doesn't make them any less present. Or some serious Wesen power; Hank would like to know what kind of Wesen she is! Monroe offers some suggestions, starting with an eye gougey thing (aushacken is the second half of that, at least) and moving onto something that sounds like fet-eed (fetid? would go with the smell) tai-ay-day. I have no idea what language that even is, let alone what it's trying to be. The last one is sangrianta manos, which is pretty much bloody hands, which doesn't give us any clue as to the animal derivation or any other such thing but definitely sounds dangerous? No, we don't like the sound of any of them either, Hank. Monroe requests more information because he, too, cannot work with insufficient data! Except at that point Nick gives him the finger. No, not that finger, the other finger, the I'm on the phone finger, since they're getting a call out to the latest site! And it turns out this victim is still alive! Though probably not for long. Seems like Monroe is going along for the ride, too, as there's no time really to drop him off if the victim is still alive and there's that added urgency to the thing. Dead bodies tend to be a lot more patient than living ones.

While they head out to that, our baby Grimm is unfortunately well-versed in the art of disguising bloodstains. Oh honey. I have to say, I have a lot more sympathy for her reactions than I did for Nick's bit of embarrassment squick. Partly that's down to Nick being a cop and trained for dealing with somewhat unusual things every day, or at least non-civilian things. Partly that's down to gender, because people are way more likely to attack an untrained woman even when they know she's a Grimm than an untrained man. And partly that's down to her utter and complete isolation and terror at seeing monsters and not knowing what to do with them. I do wonder a little how this reveal would've played had they left the script hints in and gone ahead and not told us. I think the answer is better, but then I've been judging NBC's PR machine harshly all season and I'm not gonna stop now. The boys pull up to the crime scene, Hank being the Best and also a better cop than Nick is, is the one to tell Monroe to stay in the car. Yes, really. I would love to know why the fuck they're doing CPR on the woman, yes, of course you're losing her, LOOK AT THAT BLOOD LOSS. These are some of the more bizarrely incompetent paramedics we've seen, the fuck is wrong with you two. COMPRESSION BANDAGES. PRESSURE ON THE WOUNDS. No, she's dead now, pretty much only so that Nick could catch the death-woge and confirm to Hank that they're dealing with a Wesen. Thanks, guys, because you couldn't have done that some other way? Also I'm still waiting for a chance to see Nick and/or Trubel haul out the sunglasses and do the David Caruso thing, because really. Well, this gives them a location to be checking around, I think they're supposed to be in southeast Portland somewhere? I don't remember a street namecheck anywhere, though.

At any rate, back in Monroe's house Adalind is waking up! We believe this! Totally. I was actually holding out for it not to be a dream and that to be the hitpanther at the door with SURPRISE WESEN COUNCIL SHENANIGANS to try and talk to Rosalee about, because I'm not a good person and this ep is muddled enough with the metaplot anyway, what's one more. Okay, mostly it's that I'm not a good person. Alas, it's a dream, though our primary indication of that prior to her opening the door is actually the silence, rather than the lighting or anything else, which is an interesting choice. And then it's Renard with the baby and he's smiling and someone wanted to be able to write that in the script again, didn't they. You guys. I promise you don't have to soften Renard that much to make people happy. Really I swear. We liked him just fine when he was a conniving scheming sonofabitch who was the most competent person on the show, and we'll like him just fine if he only softens fractionally on account of baaaaaaaby. I will give them some credit that this is Adalind's dream and she's still half in love with Renard so yes, of course she'd dream him soft and happy about her and the baby. She'd also dream cackling evil Viktor, too! Much more scream-worthy and not in the good way. At least now she will wake the hell up and make spur of the moment decisions. These do not look like good decisions, Adalind. Oh my god. Don't… why do I bother.

In case we were unclear about who she's about to call, hello Viktor and your evil goatee! He's decided they've underestimated a him, and since he goes on to delineate all the things they don't know about this him, it's Nick, not Renard. I just want to ask, what the FUCK were you fucking IDIOTS doing before now? Including the not at all dearly departed Eric? How do you not know his lineage, his history, WHY HAVE YOU NOT WORKED UP A PROFILE WHY IS THIS AMATEUR HOUR. You can bet your sweet bippy Renard has files on all the fuckers he might encounter in the course of his machinations, even if they're only mental. At the very least he has a collection of sources for information so he can work up a profile in not much more than an hour. And then we wonder why the fucking Resistance, as amateur and riddled with informational security issues as they seem to be, is still alive. Never mind. I believe we've found the answer. What we don't have an answer to is who's competent enough in the Royals to be maintaining their power. I'd like to pretend to believe that it's not just their money that's keeping them afloat. (What competence kink I have no competence kink look over there my lies are now the Brooklyn bridge.) I still don't understand how the fuck they have failed to guess who Kelly is. She comes attached to Nick! YES PUT SURVEILLANCE ON HIM. Oh wait, you don't have the profile workup that tells you that he gets stupid and reckless when he's nervous. Never mind. If you were competent this wouldn't be happening. Oh, hey, Adalind's calling, that's like better. For my blood pressure. Not really. I'm kind of amused that someone in-universe finally used Hexenbitch, though! And someone specifically a bad guy, in case we were in any doubt that the slur is a slur. What follows is a ten-second or so encapsulation of why Adalind should not be this baby's full-time parent, because she spills almost everything. She's lying with some degree of the truth, using the threats that the Royals made against her with probably some of her fears about Meisner, Sebastian, and Renard, and then she gives away the baby's gender. Yes, apparently Viktor did not think to check in the hour or so he had the kid. I'm amazed baby Diana didn't telekinesis him to death simply because nobody checked her diaper and said this. Like, seriously. What is wrong with all you people. Besides not liking people and not wanting baby shit all over that bespoke suit, but come the fuck on, that's why he has underlings. Incompetent ones. Argh. So no, he didn't know, and now Viktor will take his knowledge and use it to beat Adalind upside the head with oh yes your baby misses you she's upset no you can't see her. No, I'm sorry, if the baby really were that upset the castle would be leveled. Hang on, Kelly, why didn't you let her go back to Vienna again? Let the MacGuffin solve all our problems! By which I mean create a massive power vacuum but still. No, he smugs and oozes all over our screens about how the baby's got the best of everything, is delighted to know she doesn't know they don't have the child, maybe if he's not being a moron realizes this means that Renard knows either more or less than that. (Namely, either Renard doesn't know the Resistance got the child, or he arranged for it and didn't tell Adalind.) Basically, this is information he can use, and he's going to make her come begging to him for scraps again after he's decided how to use said data. I continue to be unimpressed, because there's a lot of ways he could do that even without stopping to think about it. Leverage with Renard. Leverage with Nick. Pressure on Nick's contacts once he establishes who they are, which Adalind could tell him if he just asked. Speaking of failure to profile. We won't even touch the part where she's using the landline to dial the castle and therefore Monroe and Rosalee will see that number in their monthly bill and be all confused. Argh. There is nothing about this scene that is not frustrating, but most especially the stunning lack of competence at plotting and conspiracy on both sides. Adalind sits down and has had enough of this shit and declares herself done crying. Writers. Please. We do not need to be hit over the head with it twice in the same episode, and Claire's good enough that she could sell this on body language alone. I promise. No? No. Ow my toes.

Speaking of women who are fed the fuck up, hello New Girl! Why is there Banksy-style graffiti. Who the hell knows. She's coming up to her rooming house? Or something to that effect, and apparently she's late on her rent. And since she's stayed past checkout she needs to pay for another day/week/whatever, and cranky manager is cranky. He doesn't go chasing after her, so it is only crankiness and general unfriendliness for these two to surl at each other. In the course of surling, and I believe it is only because she owes money and hasn't given any indication of paying, he takes a moment to note that she looks an awful lot like a homicide suspect whose picture must have just gone up on the board for it to be that prominent on the board and in his mind. Why yes. Yes she does. Suspicious surly manager will now go calling the police, like you do when you're a civic minded person. No, in this case I actually do think it's less making trouble for a potential deadbeat and more oh shit he might have a murderer on his hands, that looks like genuine concern on his face. He's just surly. Upstairs in the apartment New Girl is having one of those typical shower breakdowns that happens to people (usually women) under stress and after violence. Grimm gets about ten points for not sexualizing it nearly as much as other shows do, though. Bless This Berto.

Back at the crime scene! Monroe looks like he's either smelled or eaten something foul, and by his words it's less the crime scene and dead body and more the Skalengeck. I'm reminded of all that time I spent in the Herp exhibit at the National Zoo; I wouldn't call it a bad smell but it was a very distinctive smell. Sadly, it's also a very potent smell which means Monroe isn't picking up any other Wesen. Have I mentioned how much I appreciate that they're keeping Monroe's scenting ability, even if its consistency is about that of plot? Hey, speaking of consistency, Monroe mentions disguising one's scent and Nick (in an otherwise incredibly clumsy line, you guys, do better, I know you can) brings up the wolfsbane incident again. Hello flashback! That, as far as I can tell, has no purpose other than to serve as a flashback to Nick's first time out. You know, I appreciate that they want to indicate to us that this is a first-time Grimm and that can be scary, but I really wish you would try this little thing called subtlety. Because this episode has patches that are about as unsubtle as Captain Hammer to the forebrain. No, wait, actually that's the best form of flashback, it's subtly reminding us how clumsy and awkward the show was in the beginning! That's not actually a good thing, though. Monroe continues tracking the Skalengeck and her attacker and, hey, just as Hank grabs up this nifty lampshade of not having to explain to people, here comes Wu! They've got a hit on the suspect! And Wu recognizes Monroe! Who he hasn't seen since the zombie romp, that is one way of putting it. Let's also not forget that Wu's encounters with Monroe have been more or less odd, starting with the whole staring down at him on the couch in his underwear thing, moving on towards the zombies, and, yeah. that's just adding to the list of reasons of what the fuck is a civilian doing at a crime scene. Said Wu's face. No one is even taking the easy route out and saying that Nick or Hank were out to lunch with him and there wasn't time to drop him back home. This is an EASY LIE TO TELL, especially given that they had a live victim until the EMTs of idiocy decided to address the breathing problem instead of the circulation one. No? No. Nick has to interrupt to ask about the suspect, and there's a lot of 'umm'ing before everyone says their bit. Yeah. No one is comfortable with this, least of all me. Wu gives them the location and checks if they want the streets blocked off, no, but they'll go try and track her down. And do what with her? This is the question.

Back in the hotel room New Girl is getting ready to leave town, packing her stuff and giving us a look at her weapons, or some of them. She has a machete! A girl after our own hearts. Though I question the wisdom of putting it under your jacket on your back unless you've got a jacket specially designed for a quick draw; that's more likely to go under your shoulders if you've got a long enough torso for it. If it's going on your back, you should have vents. Ahem. The police are on their way! The police are frantically attempting to figure out what they're dealing with. Monroe is on the side of shoot first and figure it out later, and I am on the side of never, ever have a character say he has no idea what he just said unless it's a joke about jargon-filled dialogue and the character's lack of fluency in said jargon. Just don't do it. It makes you and thus the scene sound like you have no idea what you or it is doing. They're coming up on the hotel just as New Girl comes out, so, okay, they'll pull over and split up and hopefully corner her, yes? That works a lot better when your subject isn't vastly awaranoid. It's not paranoia when they really are coming after you repeatedly and often. Hank announces them as police, though, in one of those authoritative crowd-stopping (hopefully) bellows, because he is a good Hank and a good cop. No, she's still going to try to run, sliding over the top of the car and freaking out Monroe in the process. Yay, Blutbad! Because those aren't scary at all. It turns out there is a big enough gap at the collar of her jacket (I'd be willing to bet there wasn't one when she put it on, and this one's been modified, but you never know) for her to grab the machete out and have at it at Monroe. They manage to get her off of Monroe but then she's onto Nick, who is notably not fighting back and just protecting his head with his arms now that she's down to fists. Which means it's Hank's turn to get her off Nick! Into all of this chaos Monroe manages to get at least Nick and Hank to stop and hold her at a stop, long enough for him to reveal that she's totally a Grimm. Too bad the Twitter advertising campaign and sneak peeks spoiled all the drama of that revelation, because I'm pretty sure that would have been good for a few f-bombs.

After yet another commercial break Monroe is trying to talk the not entirely with it Grimm down. Monroe, sweetie, even normal Grimms want to kill Blutbaden on sight, I don't know what makes you think you're going to succeed in talking this one out of trying to kill you. The handcuffs help! Especially since New Girl seems to be fully in the grip of one of half a dozen post-traumatic type episodes, there's a number of candidates. Whatever the specific type of fit, she's clearly not processing reality well right now. Nick has to yell a couple of times to get her attention and, sadly, he doesn't pick words she understands. They haven't figured out yet that she has no idea what a Grimm is, and all of this is gibberish and frightening her further. Okay, apparently she has heard the word before, but not in any context that means anything good to her. And they're not making any progress trying to explain it to her. In part, this is because they're not trying very hard. In other part this is because she's not exactly in a mood or in shape right now to listen and pay attention to what they're saying, so somewhere else it will be! Because out on the street is not the best venue. Monroe will now refuse to get into the back seat with her, as any right thinking Wesen with an ounce of self preservation would. A couple lines of shuffling later and Nick is in the back with the new Grimm, Hank and Monroe up front. Please no one start a fight in the backseat of a car when Hank is driving. We love our Hank, but Jason Statham he is not. She backs up to the corner because, well, she is, and says they're going to try to kill her. Well, no, but Nick will totally clock her one if she tries to attack even with her hands cuffed behind her back. Hank would like to know what they're going to do with the feral Grimm, likely so he knows where to go. We don't know! Isn't it amazing! Nick attempts to explain to her that her previous victims were Wesen. Nick, if she doesn't know what a Grimm is, how the everloving flying fuck do you think she's going to know what a Wesen is? Predictably, she doesn't. Can we not have Nick do the explanations from here on out, because so far all he's done is fail miserably. Monroe likely would not mind if someone not Nick did the explanations. Monroe would also like it if he didn't do the explanation right now. All of this chaos leads to Hank once again pointing out that they can't just drive around, they have to actually do something with her. Quietly not pointing out that they can, in fact, arrest her for assault, assault with a deadly weapon, assaulting a police officer. A number of different things! Nick tries to get her to be at least a little more cooperative, my guess would be that if she had talked he would have taken her to the trailer or at least to a nearby place where he could get stuff from the trailer, but she isn't, so he doesn't. Arrest it is!

Meanwhile back at the castle of ludicrous incompetency, Viktor is taking a phone call! And reading the book Papa Renard apparently left as a message, maybe? Ow my brain. Viktor, I don't think you're going to learn half the lessons you should from Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, though right now he's evincing some of the most intelligent conspiring we've seen from him. If you think this is damning with faint praise, congratulations, you can read subtext! Viktor has a job for Adalind after which he claims he'll let her see her baby. Or arrange matters so he can. I have all of the facepalm because really, dude, are you not going to plan for the future? Adalind. ASK FOR PROOF OF LIFE OH MY GOD. You fail at hostage situations. So hard. Yes, many babies look similar, but there's usually some kind of birthmark and for a baby like this that should be doubly true, right? Arrrrgh. Stop writing your characters as dumber than they can be, people, it's very frustrating. What Viktor wants is a depowered Nick, which he claims she can achieve via having ingested his blood before. I… can't quite enumerate all the ways in which that shitty magical theory makes my brain hurt, but we'll start with the fact that Adalind's been engaging in a LOT of blood magic and had a child of weird and unknown powers and has some weird and uncertain origin powers of her very own at this point. As far as sympathetic magic goes, while it is all linked it's also incredibly fucking muddied at this point, and I wouldn't place odds on such an attempt not hitting Renard or the baby instead. Probably Renard, he's got fewer apparent defenses against that sort of thing. It's just not a very good idea as far as it's a very, very high-level type of working that will require ridiculous precision to pull off. Precision usually means focus, something Adalind is decidedly lacking these days unless it's about the baaaaaaaby. So, y'know. Bad ideas all around! Unless the only thing Viktor really wants is Adalind to go sow confusion among his enemies, which she is certainly capable of. I have my strong reservations about Viktor's (in)ability to cash in on those, though. Adalind is doing the whole peeking out from the curtains thing, which does not create an atmosphere conducive to thinking she might side with the Scooby gang, and doing the shifty-eyed look of conspiracy and plotting. No, she actually is shifting her gaze from side to side like she's either reading something in her mind or planning something with many variables.

That cut to Theresa Rubel's record does not make me happy in this context. That cut implies that Nick's going to get depowered and she's going to have to take over the superpowered fighting for awhile. On the one hand, I do think they should be whumping Nick a lot more than they are. On the other, I'm not sure this was the way to go about it. Hank's discovering that the poor woman's been in and out of at least one mental health facility and probably others, since she originates in New York. City, not Rhinebeck, but I think we can all twitch a fair bit over the possibility that they got someone who looks like she could be related to Nick and turns out to be from the SAME FUCKING STATE and then ends up traveling across the country? Yeah, I'm suspicious as all hell. It jives with what Kelly said, too, about women get the Grimm wakeup call younger; how much younger in this instance will be left up to discovering Rubel's juvie records. Which does take time. No assault or murder charges, surprisingly, which all that means is she's been really lucky and any surviving Wesen are just glad they survived a Grimm. Particularly with Nick holding up the rust-colored bloody knife. Oh hey here's a notebook that looks familiar! Wesen sketched on every page, not a bad hand there, and some really over the top phrases. Like really a lot over the top, which is not helping with the general air of overdone this episode's got. I would totally accept the existence of such a notebook, sketchbook, what have you! People draw things to get them out of their heads, it's a common enough trait. Or write down words, what have you. I just take issue with "I will not be broken! These monsters will not destroy me!" and other things that bear any resemblance to coherence. In my worst hypergraphic fits, and what Rubel's been through certainly qualifies as a stressor bad enough to bring on any compulsive disorders she might have lurking, my most coherent writings involved song lyrics. The bulk of it involved items on my mind, or tasks, repeated over many sheets of paper. So, while I can buy "I will not be broken" it should be repeated way more times than it is on the page. And I don't buy the coherence that uses a specific and more immediate locational article than the generic plural noun article. I still want to know if they're trying to write her as a reject 90s goth or if this is just someone's misspent youth coming back to bite them. Nick comes with the notebook to give us some expo-dump about how they haven't booked her on charges yet, they're just holding her as a suspect BUT they'll book her for murder unless she behaves on this field trip he's taking her on. I am pleased to note that Nick doesn't trust her even to cuff her in front. I am less than pleased by the fact that she looks like she thinks she's getting hauled off and beaten, raped, and/or killed. I mean, it's a completely valid reaction, it's just also cringeworthy and does not help me in the wanting to give her to someone with WAY more training in the care and feeding of traumatized young people than Nick has.

I would also like Nick to move the trailer ever again. This place is the least secure place in the history of supposedly secret locations for secret knowledge. Dumbledore would do a better job, and his idea of secrecy is OH HEY LOOK I'M PROTECTING A THING LOOK AT ALL MY SECURITY SYSTEMS ISN'T CERBERUS CUTE. At least the key's somewhere else, and they have Monroe in the event of needing a Wesen guide, and Nick can improvise a fair bit of anything else between his own experience and Rosalee's apothecarying. Still, that's a fucklot of knowledge. Be a shame if anything happened to it. (I really do expect them to burn the trailer, in the literal sense of bonfire into the night, maybe as a season or midseason finale. It's too much of a treasure trove of data for Nick to keep it.) She has the good sense not to want to go into a shady-looking trailer in the middle of a deserted trailer park in the middle of night! Well, I suppose that's what happens when you're living in a horror movie, you start to get the smart reflexes by surviving long enough. This way she has room to run, maybe, if she has to. Which would be why Hank keeps a hand on her, and he really does not like any of this. At all. Hello, identity issues with what kind of cops you are, nice to make your acquaintance with this lampshade Rubel brought to the party, care to pull up a chair and stay awhile? No, no more identity issues right now (maybe the next few eps, we hope) but one of the big fuckoff Grimm journals that we still weep about the boys eating fast food over. I've given up on the white gloves. Personally, I'd be concerned about that leather being human skin, as freaky as her life's been so far, but no, it is just leather and parchment, probably. There's some very, very nice moments where the only acting is going on in her eyes and tiny head movements, staring at Nick like what the fuck is this is this a joke are you playing pranks on me, except if it's a prank he really hasn't had time to set it up. And she seems to be either sane enough to recognize that or desperate enough for validation that she doesn't question it beyond facial expressions and slowly dawning realization. I think the "what is this" is more a request for explanation beyond the drawings than a "you have got to be fucking kidding me," though maybe a little of both! It's never easy when everything you think you know about yourself and the world turns out to be about half-true. At best. Rubel will now endear herself to us for at least a little while by dashing for the trailer at the mention of moar data give to Zim Grimm. Nick and Hank would like to be sure she's not trashing the place; no, she's just poring over the first journal out on the table. Some organization in there would really help. (A: I think my librarian urges are showing. I want to invent Dewey decimal for them in Grimm-verse.) She also wants to know what Nick means by the truth, nobody jump up with Jack Nicholson imitations all at once, now, and he tries to explain that no really he sees them too. The second repetition of this seems to get through to her, fortunately, Hank will bring them coffee for the long night because he is The Best and nobody is saying a word either about how she looks like she's going to cry or about how she's created three bodies. I mean, self-defense is accurate in all cases, but she has no witnesses to the first one, just the vics' criminal records. It might be enough, but apparently we're leaving the police work behind on this one for now. That may come back to bite you in the ass, guys.

At the end of the day Renard is packing up to leave, still looking like the wrong end of a dog. Oh hey look Miss Schade is here to see him! Wu has on the biggest "This can't possibly end well" face I think I've seen all episode. Or maybe that's "Here we go again." Both are true! It takes Renard a second or three to decide if he wants to see her anyway, though he does resign himself to the whole thing. No, this is not going to end well. Adalind is calmer, or more able to pretend she is at least, and starting out at a comfortable distance with the desk at least symbolically between them. Sadly, it doesn't stay that way. Renard's admission of self-loathing is at least as much a manipulative gesture in her direction as her behavior is a manipulative gesture in his, so there's that? It's also, let's all note, true, given that his body language is open and honest and we did see him drinking earlier. Renard also keeps giving her the "the fuck are you up to, Adalind" look as she advances, giving him a speech that sounds like it's leading up to a reconciliation bid of some kind. The fuck are you up to, indeed. It ends with "at least I know our baby's still alive", so, not quite a bid for reconciliation but a hopeful note that's meant to explain why she's hugging him. Renard still doesn't seem entirely sure why she's hugging him, or entirely inclined to trust her. GOOD. DON'T. Not that he can see that conniving smirk on her face, but STILL. DON'T TRUST HER. He seems to be taking her home which, okay, fair, it's not as though his condo hasn't been compromised all to hell and back, and it makes a nice visual contrast to when she was standing in his way as he pulled into the garage earlier this ep. Oh look, the feeb's still stalking him. Go away, feeb. Nobody likes you.

Juliette brought Chinese! Four boxes at least, maybe some eggrolls or crab rangoon shut up what I order enough of it. For strategic profiling purposes. Ooh noodles. Nick's home, and he brought company, which he delivers in a rather hesitant voice. Because they've managed to become a decent couple again by the power of communication, she can tell that means it's not someone she knows or approves of, and that Nick's worried about her reaction. I'd guess she assumes Adalind to start with, given the givens, but no, instead of the blonde troublemaker we have the dark-haired Trubel, complete with finally namedropping that when everyone is hesitant and Juliette's trying her best to be a good hostess. Maybe people should call you Teresa, kid, names have power and going by Trouble (or Trubel, or whatever) is not exactly conducive to a long and healthy life. Unless you live in Haven. Then it's even less conducive to a long life.

Next week on Grimm: Grimm in training! Including but not limited to, Lebensauger punching, Monroe and Rosalee being cute and cuddly examples of Wesen, and Trubel's inability to control her mouth around those not in the know. Although my guess on that last is that Nick and Hank fail to explain that not all cops are in the kehrseite schlichkennen. BOYS. DO BETTER. I'd love to know their explanation for her being out at a crime scene when they were just investigating her as a murder suspect. I'm not holding my breath that we're getting one.