Episode 4:16 “Heartbreaker”
[Show site at NBC] [Previous recap: “Bad Luck”]
There are six more episodes to this season. How much story can the writers get in or set up to leave the audience hanging till next season? I’ll guess the answer is a lot. Several of our main characters are getting into deeper, darker territory.
This episode felt tight. Maybe some people would have cut some of the cycling shots, but not me. I was glad to see cycling finally featured in a show shot in Portland, one of North America’s few cycling meccas.
Previous to this episode it’s been Trubel tooling around on Juliette’s bike. Juliette rode the bike home once and based on that scene, she is not comfortable on a bicycle.
This week’s Wesen is again rare. Either all the rare Wesen end up in Portland, or our team is just that lucky. I don’t know how it can be explained that such a high percentage of rare Wesen end up in Nick’s case files.
This week it’s a version of the Frog Prince story. The Wesen is called Folterseele and has a very frog like appearance. The female only woge when someone is aroused by them. Unfortunately if the Folterseele is touched while in woge their frog skin produces an extremely toxic secretion that is fatal on contact.
A cyclist, Bella, has been on a group trail ride. When they make a stop Ricky tries to flirt with her. She scorns him and rides off on her own. Zach, another guy in the group, takes after her. Apparently Ricky rattled her pretty bad and she lost her bike handling skills. She picks a bad line and crashes when she hits an indentation in the trail.
Maybe it’s because it’s the girl that crashes, maybe it’s because I remember in decades past that if a female got on a horse on TV you could be fairly certain she was going to fall off the horse. Which always rubbed me wrong. I trained and showed horses. Most of the time, I stayed on top of the horse. And even if I didn’t, there was never a hunky guy to rescue me.
Zach races to her rescue and tries in his awkward way to express his feelings for her. That causes her to woge and despite her warnings to him to leave, not touch her and so on, he does. He immediately breaks out in welts and lumps goes rolling down the ravine and dies.
Bella leaves Zach before he’s dead. I don’t suppose there is anything she could have done for him. It seems uncaring to simply ride off and leave him to die. She is one of the few Wesen we are supposed to have sympathy for. That’s a bit hard to do when someone leaves someone else to die. It would have done more to make her a sympathetic character if we’d seen that she did care about Zach and what happened to him. She comes off much more self-centered than caring. In fact there isn’t anything about her that seems to be caring.
I admit I’m being picky, but Bella is described as a pedal masher. She works at a bicycle store and it appears that a lot of her life revolves around cycling. Yet, her trail bike has flat pedals. Really? I don’t buy it. I buy that the actress may not be comfortable with clipless pedals. Thinking about all that took me out of the story wondering why an avid cyclist didn’t have eggbeater style pedals on a bike she rides on dirt trails. Also, how on earth did that little cut in the trail cause an experienced cyclist to do an endo? It also wasn’t realistic that Zach would take off his helmet before checking on Bella. I get that this is shot for camera and actors look better without a bike helmet on. So, I’ll let this one slide.
Ricky turns out to be even more of a jerk than he was on the bike trail. He corners Bella in the bike shop when she’s the only one there saying that he’s going to get from her what she never gave Zach. I don’t know, it might be because I’m female, but I don’t understand that logic at all. It sounds like twisted thinking to justify raping someone. He woges and little surprise here, he’s a Klaustreich. They are described as an alley cat and known for being jerks in the Wesen community. He also dies from the frog slime. This time Bella calls 911 just before she flees the scene.
That one act of calling help did make Bella more sympathetic. Then there’s the fact that her Mother, who bears a wicked branding scar, has been trying to protect her. It seems that the women in the family end up each bearing the brand on their face to make themselves unattractive. While that might keep some men from being aroused it wouldn’t keep someone from falling in love. There are plenty of scarred people that lead full lives with loved ones. But that goes deeper than this episode did.
This episode may mark a real change for our Wesen team. Instead of dealing either Grimm justice or societal justice they try to come up with a different solution. Rosalee creates a potion to neutralize the toxins before Bella’s skin will secrete them. For the first time side effects are discussed, along with the fact that since this is untested no one knows if it will even work.
Let’s look at Prince Kenneth. We don’t know much about him. All that we see of him in this episode is he’s handsome and violent. I wonder how it is that Sean Renard doesn’t know much about a Prince. I haven’t seen a diagram of the family tree; that would be interesting. Renard seemed only vaguely aware of Kenneth. He said he didn’t know much about his side of the family. I wonder how many sides there are in this family?
Each of the Royals we’ve met have been progressively malevolent, ruthless and cruel. Kenneth is very “hands on” with dispatching violence. He has no qualms with literally pulling the trigger. His way of dismissing Damerov was brutal. His meeting with Renard becomes hand to hand combat. That’s not how most families greet each other. Renard is going to have to get the spontaneous bleeding under control if he’s going to have any hope of taking on Kenneth again.
One of my favorite lines came from Marcus Rispoli when Adalind asked “What’s he like?” referring to Prince Kenneth.
Marcus Replied as the door is closed, “Results.” It’s a nice way of using one line to fill different meanings. She is asking what Kenneth is like. Marcus is answering with what he likes. It’s a nice play with words.
Juliette is going to be a force to be reckoned with. There’s a point here that she has not voiced; if she is going to live with a Grimm, being a Hexenbiest has its advantages. She won’t have to look to Nick to keep her safe. She is now perfectly capable of handling herself. In fact she’s probably more dangerous than he is.
It looks like Adalind and Juliette will be on the war path. That could make for some very fun watching. Trubel sent word that she’s okay. Might that mean she’ll be back before the end of the season?
