Monday, March 28, 2016

Grimm 5x14 Review: "Lycanthropia" (Full Moons and Subplots) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“Lycanthropia”
Original Airdate: March 25, 2016

“The world is full of obvious things which nobody by chance ever observes.”

Nick and team battle it out with a Lycanthrope this episode, and open up a few new subplots along the way (as if we didn’t already have enough of those). Let’s talk Grimm, shall we?

THE CASE


In this episode, we meet Mr. Doyle Baske, who is young and rich and possibly a werewolf. As he’s driving his BMW to his mom’s house, she calls and asks if he’s almost there and lets him know she’s put a roast in the oven for him. He explains he got held up at the office, but is on his way. It’s raining (because, Portland) and the roads are slick. Just as he rounds a curve in the road, his tire blows and he crashes into a tree. He seems rather apathetic about his smashed car but very concerned about the setting sun in the distance. He takes off running but the sun sets before he reaches his destination and he runs into the woods. Moments later we hear some hapless hikers screaming.

Can we just stop here and address the fact that if you’re a werewolf, perhaps you should be a little more careful about leaving the office on time during your special time of the month? I mean, it’s not like you can’t plan for this. And the stakes are pretty high for you to be so nonchalant about getting a late start.

A trucker finds Doyle the next morning, unconscious and covered in blood. When Wu, Hank, and Nick arrive at the scene, Doyle spins a story about being attacked by a man and his dog. But Doyle doesn’t have any dog bites on him — he only has human bites. So, maybe he’s not the werewolf? Or he bit himself for good measure?

Doyle explains to Hank and Nick that he tries to get out to see his mom once a month (of course you do, around the full moon, perhaps?), and that he works in commercial real estate. He’s really dodgy about everything else, though, and obviously wants to get out of there and out of the line of questioning.

When the lab runs tests on Doyle’s shirt, it reveals three blood types, all of them human. Hank suggests calling Monroe and Rosalee since this might be Wesen related. Monroe employs his super sense of smell (which was conspicuously missing just a few episodes ago), to catch the scent in the woods of whomever else was involved in the attack.

Monroe finds the two dead hikers fairly quickly, and deduces that it must be the work of a Lycanthrope. Apparently, in the Grimm world, Lycanthropia is a genetic mutation that pops up extremely rarely in the Blutbaden line. Naturally, it only manifests during the full moon. I feel like with all the time Grimm has spent discussing Blutbaden throughout the seasons, we probably should have known about this sooner.

The blood on Doyle’s shirt matches the two dead hikers, and because there’s three nights of the full moon per month, the team has two more nights to worry about Doyle killing more people. Meanwhile, Rosalee and Monroe set about trying to research if there’s a cure to Lycanthropia or not. Apparently, there’s not. In days of old, parents would kill any child with the disease by burying them alive. Eek.

Nick and Hank go to apprehend Doyle at his mom’s house, hoping that locking him up for the next two nights will keep him from killing anyone. Doyle makes a run for it, which gives Hank and Nick great cause for throwing him in jail. But just as they’re about to shoot him with a tranquilizer dart, he woges and it becomes clear that though he is a Blutbad, he’s not the Lycanthrope.

He finally confesses that his mother is the Lycanthrope and he was trying to stop her the night before when she murdered the hikers. If he hadn’t been in the car accident, he would have been able to get to her house in time and lock her up for the night. Now, he’s at the precinct and she’s all alone.

Hank, Nick, Rosalee, Monroe, and Doyle all race to Mrs. Baske’s house but she’s already turned and is in the woods. Monroe breaks out the super scent again to track her. The team splits up as they enter the woods, which seems like an incredibly poor choice, but they reconvene when she attacks Wu. Doyle tries to reason with her but she goes to attack him too, and Hank and Nick shoot her. She dies in her son’s arms, which was really sad and caused feels and stuff, despite the cheesy storyline.

When Wu gets back to his apartment, he discovers a scratch he got while fighting Mrs. Baske. He thinks nothing of it, and goes to sleep, where we see him feverish and sweating. Poor Wu, the worst things happen to him. Well, it looks like the team will have some additional incentive for finding a cure now that Wu is probably a werewolf. Maybe Rosalee will receive some Wesen Nobel Prize for inventing it.


THE SUBPLOTS


Before Nick got caught up with his Lycanthrope case, he was busy prying open the mysterious metal door that’s in the basement of the abandoned warehouse he and Adalind are living in. After much shirtless straining and sweating (thank you, Grimm creators), the door creaks open and behind it is... a hole in the ground. A very deep, bottomless pit. Not quite as impressive as the ginormous pit in Daredevil season two, but a close second.

Meanwhile, Renard is trying to hatch a plan with Adalind to get their daughter, Diana, back. They meet for breakfast where Renard reveals that the Resistance has Diana, which is news to Adalind. Renard tries to convince her to be patient about this whole thing and let him do some digging but she gets upset and accidentally reveals that her Hexenbiest powers are back. Renard asks if Nick knows (he does not), and Adalind tells Renard in a semi-threatening tone that she’d like to keep it that way, before storming out of the restaurant.

In other Renard news, Rachel is still busy trying to convince him to become the leader of Black Claw and run for mayor of Portland. Unfortunately for her, Eve has been trailing her. When Rachel leaves her townhouse, Eve breaks in, and discovers the political poster that Rachel had created for Renard. Eve reaches out to Hank and Nick to let them know that Rachel was involved in Andrew Dixon’s assassination, and they decide they need to figure out exactly how much Captain Renard knows and whether he’s involved.

This episode was entertaining and all, but I’m impatiently waiting for the show and its character to get back to investigating that Elder Wand that they spent so much time searching for. Right now it’s just hidden in its little treasure chest somewhere while Nick and team deal with regular Wesen business and miscellaneous subplots. Now, with Wu possibly becoming a werewolf, we’re going to have another subplot on our hands, distracting everyone from this wand. I’d really appreciate if the writers would reconcile a few of these outlier plots, because it’s hard to keep track of how many we have going on now.

Bonus Musings:
  • “It smells somewhat Blutbadian... but not quite.” 
  • “How did you find them?” “We followed their scents.” “Did you use dogs?” “No, we used Monroe.” “We’re not going to tell that to the DA, are we?”
  • “At least we got a full moon.” “Yeah, well, that’s the problem.”

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