Saturday, February 4, 2017

Grimm 6x05 Review: “The Seven Year Itch” (When a Murderer Meets His Match) [Contributor: Alisa Williams]


“The Seven Year Itch”
Original Airdate: February 3, 2017

“When something itches my dear sir, the natural tendency is to scratch.”

In this week’s Grimm, a cicada-esque Wesen has emerged out of the ground in a local park and immediately kills (and eats) a random passerby. Something tells me this will be a case for Nick, Hank, and Wu! But first, Nick needs to deal with something a little closer to home. He’s having bad dreams about the attack that ended with him being fatally shot and the Elder Wand resurrecting him. Juliette/Eve is dealing with her own set of symptoms after her fatal wound was healed by the same ancient stick. She’s down in the tunnels beneath Nick’s apartment, in some sort of trance, scratching out strange symbols on the walls. When she comes to, her hands are bloodied and the walls are completely covered with markings.

It seems everyone’s a little worse for wear these days. Renard discovers Diana’s voodoo doll collection and the giant needle she uses on them when she wants to murder someone. His understanding of how she caused him to kill Bonaparte is growing. But he has more pressing issues at the moment — mainly, his hallucinations of Meisner are also growing, becoming more pronounced.


Then there’s Monroe and Rosalee, who decide a visit to the doctor is in order after Diana told them Rosalee had more than one baby inside her. Turns out she’s having triplets.

Meanwhile, Nick and Hank have gotten the call about the dead man in the park and meet up with Wu to investigate. The murdered guy is completely naked and has a huge puncture hole through his neck. It seems the cicada dude felt his victim’s clothes were superior to the filthy rags he was wearing when he hatched out of the ground.

As the team searches the crime scene, they hear a scream. A boy has fallen into the hole left by the cicada guy and after they pull him out, they find another body — this one’s been there a long time. They quickly put two and two together and realize their murderer must have crawled out of that hole. All these years dealing with Wesen crimes has made Nick and Hank pretty efficient with their deductive reasoning.

Cicada dude uses his victim’s credit card at a diner, where he eats a ridiculous amount of food (I guess being underground for seven years makes a guy hungry) and creeps the waitress out with his conversation skills, which revolve around discussing people he’s eaten in only slightly veiled terms. He’s gone by the time Hank and Nick get a hit on the credit card but the waitress is able to give a decent description. While there, Nick gets a call from the coroner, who was a bit stumped by what she’s found out about the victim who was buried underground. There are digestive enzymes on what’s left of her, her remaining skin has been crystallized, her bones all have gnaw marks on them, and her internal organs are missing. Seems cicada dude made the most of his human meal before coming back up for air.

Back at Nick’s apartment, Diana questions Adalind about Meisner. She explains Meisner died, and Diana tells her that Renard was shouting Meisner’s name a lot last night when she slept over, and seemed angry at him. Adalind isn’t too sure what to make of this. Diana says she remembers Meisner (he was there when she was born and helped keep her safe over the years), and that she hopes she gets to see him again sometime even though he’s dead. Before Adalind can dive down that rabbit hole, Diana casually mentions that Eve is here, inside the wall.

Adalind goes down into the tunnels and finds Eve, bloodied and pretty out of it. She manages to get her back up to the apartment. While Adalind cares for Eve, Diana goes down into the tunnels and finds all of Eve’s drawings. She lights them up with her violet-eye move and that’s how Adalind finds her — standing in the midst of purple glowing symbols.

Meanwhile, Nick and Hank visit the spice shop to research their Wesen case. Monroe and Rosalee arrive with their news about the triplets. After some quick congratulations, they get to work and discover the Wesen in question is an Ataktos Fuse, also known as a Bestia Festiva, or “party animal.” Apparently the Ataktos Fuse is immortal. They hibernate underground for seven years, come up for 24 hours during which they party it up, then grab a victim that will sustain them underground for another seven years. What a life.

Nick gets the sketch of the man the waitress saw and Monroe tells them all he’s seen this guy somewhere, and it was recently. They’re skeptical, but just then Nick gets a call from Adalind, who relays that Eve has been living in the tunnels and is in pretty bad shape. Nick takes off.

While Nick, Adalind, and Eve discuss the strange symbols Eve drew while in her trance, cicada dude is busy searching for his next victim in a bar. He tries picking up a woman who’s there with another guy. The guy is understandably displeased and challenges cicada dude to a fight outside. Bad move because cicada dude makes quick work of killing him and then heads back in to flirt with his next victim.

Back at the spice shop, Monroe is growing frustrated at not being able to figure out where he’s seen the suspect before when suddenly it dawns on him: The man is William Stillman, the founder of Stillman Park, where all the victims have been found. The Grimm books did say the Ataktos Fuse is immortal, after all.

They call Nick, who is with Hank and Wu investigating the dead guy at the bar. They explain their theory, which makes sense. If you were a rich Wesen who needed a safe place to reemerge from the ground every seven years, you’d probably donate a ton of money to create a park that you could use for your continuous feeding and punctual hatching, too.

While the team attempts to track down cicada dude, Renard pays a visit to a Wesen pawn shop owner who has the ability to find out whether Renard is truly being haunted or if it’s all in his head. They use a spirit vacuum, which is a glass case large enough for Renard to stand inside with lots of knobs and contraptions for the pawn shop owner to control. When they turn it on, they discover Renard is indeed being haunted. The pawn shop owner is knocked to the ground as Meisner’s spirit separates from Renard’s body and becomes corporeal. Meisner then turns the spirit vacuum up to full blast with Renard trapped inside. The glass of the vacuum shatters and Renard blacks out. When he regains consciousness he’s inside an empty building and Meisner tells him a mind is a terrible thing to lose. Does this mean Renard is currently trapped inside his own mind?


Meanwhile, Nick and Hank have made it to the park just in time. Cicada dude has brought the woman he was flirting with here, knocked her out and is quickly digging a hole for the two of them. The team is no match for him, however, as he’s super strong. He knocks them all to the ground and is just rearing up to do them in when his victim awakes. Apparently, she’s a Wesen, too. She wakes up woged as a giant hippo creature and makes quick work of biting off cicada dude’s head. She spits it to the ground as an amazed Nick, Hank, and Wu look on. After un-woging she laments how difficult it is to find a good man in Portland. Makes you wonder how many other heads she’s had to bite off after dates go awry.

This was a fun episode, reminiscent of the olden days of Grimm, before the plots got tangled and overly complicated. The writers also did a good job this week balancing all those flailing subplots with a solid and amusing Wesen case. Definitely the best episode of season six so far, with hopefully more good things to come as we hit midpoint in the final season.

Bonus Musings:
  • “You gonna follow me everywhere?” “I’m not following you. I’m haunting you. There is a difference.” “Well, it’s annoying in either case.” 
  • “Eve is here.” “What?! Where?!” “In the wall.”

0 comments:

Post a Comment