SciFi4Chicks: GRIMM Goes to the Rats

Episode 505 “Rat King”

[Photos:  Scott Green/NBC]

This episode felt like a place holder. Here we are the last episode before the mid-season finale and it’s like Grimm is waiting for something. Not a great deal happened, especially with the main characters. The police case was not part of this Wesen war that we’ve been building up to. I think the mid-season finale will have a lot of action and probably more story.

The panel: Maia Ades, Kammie Settle.

The first couple of episodes had a lot going on. To the point that it felt cramped. It was unrealistic that Nick could possibly be jumping back and forth from being present for his son’s birth to kidnapping Chavez. And yet all that got squished into one episode.

The police case is a cat and rat chase in which the rats get the upper hand. Three drunk Klaustreichs leave a house, load up in a pickup truck and head to the dump to bully Reinigen. That part of the story is ugly enough. So when the Klaustreich get their due, it’s hard to feel bad for them. Two of the three are attacked by a huge monster. The first time we only saw the monster in shadow.

Then here we are the last episode before the mid-season finale and it’s like Grimm is waiting for something.

This Wesen monster, the Rat King, looked like it was brought back from 1950’s stop motion creature features. Well, maybe not back from the 50’s. But it didn’t move or behave like a rat at all. Even if a creature is very, very large it should have a certain amount of grace and presence. Think about elephants and how they move. They’re not herky jerky. They move their bulk with smooth movements.

I think it would have been so much better if the audience never saw the Rat King. If it had been done with shadows the whole way through. Let the audience imagine the beast. Challenge them to come up with their own mental image of what this creature could be. My imagination is not limited by a budget or shoot schedule. My imagined Rat King would have been more ferocious and scary.

At the same time that Nick is working on this case he’s also dealing with Trubel being in the hospital. This was the worst part of the episode for me. The only reason that Nick would leave Trubel alone at the hospital without anyone watching over her, is to make things easier for the writers. It was out of character. It was not what he’s done before. And of course it left Trubel vulnerable. It was a simple way to move the story from A to B without having to come up with something more realistic or complicated.

Either there is something wrong with Grimm’s timeline or I need someone to explain to me how Trubel was released from a cell last week and apparently has been to multiple countries and fought multiple battles. Then she somehow finds Nick’s not so very secretive safe house and collapses in his arms. Huh?

While were on the topic of things to explain to me; why was Meisner beating up Trubel and then she’s off fighting for the resistance? Meisner is looking for her and fights off several Wesen with Nick? That was a good fight scene with the two of them by the way.

A really short scene but one that I think must have importance was the mayoral candidate, Andrew Dixon, wooing Renard’s support. I predict that this has a Wesen tie in as well. In fact I won’t be surprised when we learn that Dixon has a major part in the Occultus Liberare.

The Grimm writers have done an excellent job of crafting enough depth in most of the characters so the audience relates to some of them and cares about most of them. Please keep pushing your creativity and imagination to give your audience smart, believable (within the world of Grimm) stories and characters. Trust your audience to go on this ride with you. Grimm fans are numerous and very, very loyal.