Grimm S06E05 Recap

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SOME SPOILERS AHEAD.

I’m not exactly liking the direction Renard’s story is going in this season. Or the story overall for that matter. The story we were teased in the first two episodes – that of Renard being the villain for the season, hunting down Nick and trying to get rid of him – seemed to be potentially far more interesting than what we’re getting now.

I would have preferred to see Evil Mayor Renard instead of Being Haunted By Ghost Meisner Renard, with Nick and the rest of Team Grimm simultaneously trying to stop him and Black Claw from taking over Portland (Is Black Claw even still a threat? Do the writers remember they exist?) while investigating the stick.

Last week’s episode promised Renard’s comeuppance was fast approaching, but I expected it to come through Black Claw – the evil organisation that’s none too pleased with him right now – not Meisner.

After a disturbing visitation from Ghost Meisner – in which the deceased member of the resistance shows Renard five dead versions of himself lying in his kitchen – Renard decides to do get rid of him. Renard has him extracted from his person with a spirit vaccum and Ghost Meisner apparently possess the pawn shop owner who facilitated the extraction. Meisner knocks out Renard and he wakes up in an empty version of the pawn shop, himself and Ghost Meisner the only occupants.

I can appreciate that Renard is maybe going to get what’s coming to him from someone he knows and betrayed, rather than from an organisation he has little contact with given that the members he knew are dead. I say “maybe” because it’s not clear yet what Meisner wants with him.

That being said, the development of his storyline in this episode was lackluster. The entire episode can be described as such, in fact. The best parts were Monroe and Rosalie finding out they’re having triplets and the hippopotamus wesen biting off the head of the cicada wesen. Other than that, the entire episode was pretty boring.

Nick didn’t do much besides investigate the cicada wesen. A wesen that is effectively immortal and lives buried underground for seven years, resurfacing for one day in order to find a thick and beautiful woman for him to consume when he goes back underground.

The cicada wesen as a character was uninteresting and the CGI for his woge was some of the worst in this history of Grimm. As was the CGI on his intended victim, the aforementioned hippopotamus wesen that bit off his head right as Nick, Wu and Hank were coming to her rescue. It was a very unexpected, blink and you’ll miss it moment that shocked me at first, but once I’d processed what had happened I found it to be kind of funny; she didn’t need them to come save her.

Nick had to run home and deal with Eve/Juliette after Adalind found her barely conscious in the tunnels.

Either I missed something or the writers never explicitly stated that Juliette was living in the tunnels until now. Previously it seemed like she just snuck in there to examine the stick, not that she’d taken up residence. Nor did they illustrate that she was unable to leave or give a sense of how long she was down there. And if she had been there the entire time, wouldn’t Diana have been sensing her since she moved into the loft? If so, why has she only now mentioned it to Adalind?

Eve/Juliette finally finished her wall carvings and they’re the same markings from the stick’s cloth, which Diana has also been drawing and glow under the light of her magic pink eyes. It seemed like the wall carvings may have called Diana into the tunnels, or the stick did. Either she has a connection to the stick and/or its runes or it’s just her undefined powers doing mysterious things like they always do.

And in the latest of late apologies, Adalind apologised to Eve/Juliette for everything she’s done to her. This moment failed to resonate with me because the second it happened my immediate thought was that the time for said apology had long since passed. It was also random and didn’t feel earned, narratively speaking; there was no arc exploring their changing relationship and coming to accept one another and Eve/Juliette forgiving her. It just happened.