GRIMM Is Mapping Its Future

Episode 510 “Map of the Seven Knights”
Directed by Aaron Lipstadt
Written by Stephen Carpenter

The larger storylines are getting tighter and tighter as this season progresses. Grimm has had some doozy cliffhangers. I get the feeling there maybe a real humdinger coming this season.

Kammie Settle was back to join me on Grimmly Speaking this week. Thanks to Dan Handley for stepping in and helping me out last week. This is the first year I’ve taken on hosting a podcast and I really appreciate the help of my friends.

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This episode was one for the books, or about the books. Felix (Rick Overton), an uncle of Monroe’s (Silas Weir Mitchell) is brought in to appraise a stash of 20 very old Grimm books. Felix calls Monroe because, of course his mother let slip that Monroe has a friend who’s a Grimm. Just a guess here, but that’s probably going to have more repercussions than a call from an uncle.

Felix comes to Portland bearing one of the books as a sample of what he has to offer. His asking price is one hundred thousand dollars. Not even a Grimm like Nick (David Giultoli) has that much money lying around.

Felix gives them 24 hours to come up with the money. Not a lot of time to come up with that much money. Felix leaves the one book with them. They take it to Hadrian’s Wall to request the funds from what ever part of the government Hadrian’s Wall gets it’s funding.

In the end they don’t need the money. Felix is killed by two Black Claw henchmen that also killed the lady handling the estate that the books originally came from. The books weren’t in the hotel room with Felix but the packing slip with the information on where the books were shipped to was. And the henchmen take that with them.

Nick and Monroe get to the freight company shortly after the henchmen. Monroe kills both of them avenging his Uncle’s death.

And that’s how they come to possess the chest, books, Grimm artifacts and hidden within the lock of the chest it’s self, three more of the elusive keys. Now they have five of the seven keys and are able to piece together enough of the map to figure out it represents part of the Black Forest.

A couple of things we didn’t talk about in the podcast were Monroe being called to the murder scene of his own uncle and the newspaper showing the corpse of the lady handling the estate. To my knowledge, newspapers do not show murder victims as they were found. They might show a photo from some previous time in their life but not their body with their throat ripped out. It’s just not done. And there is no reason for Nick to call Monroe to see his uncle Felix with his throat torn open. The only reason is to give credence for Monroe to seek revenge. That’s it. That’s very, as we say at SciFi4Me.com, handwavium of the writer. Meaning the only reason for it to be in the episode is to make it easier for the writer to get from point A to point B in the script.

Seeing handwavium is always disappointing. It’s a an easy out. It requires less of the writer. As creatives that do this because we love what we do. We ask more of those who are paid to do so. Sorry, but that’s the bar of excellence you are held to as a professional writer. We want more from you. We look up to you. You are doing what many aspire to do. Show us that there is quality work being done at the professional level. Push yourself to do the best work you can. Because, younger writers are watching what you are doing. And they need to see that it can be a craft, not just a job.

Climbing off my soapbox.

Next week should give our leads a new backdrop, the Black Forest. It looks like it’ll be Nick and Monroe on a buddy trip. Kind of like a return to how the series started with just Nick and Monroe to solve the Wesen puzzles.  Perhaps we’ll see a return to some of Monroe’s early characteristics.

Grimm airs Friday nights at 9/8c on NBC.