GRIMM’s Getting Under the Skin

Episode 515: “Skin Deep”
Written by Michael Golamco
Directed by Karen Gaviola

[recap by Maia Ades]

More classic Grimm. Hope you like it. Classic Grimm seems to be what we’re getting for the time being. I was more bothered by what wasn’t in this episode than anything that was.

What do I mean by classic Grimm? I mean most of the episode revolved around the police case(s) with bits of main character story.

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This was a different kind of Wesen attack. Usually when a person is attacked they die at the scene of the attack. This time, the Musasat Alsh-Shabab, some kind of Scarab Beetle Wesen sucks the youth from its victim, who later ages extremely fast and dies. But the benefit for the attacker is it’s very hard to tie the death to the Musasat Alsh-Shabab.

Malcolm (Jonathan Patrick Moore), the Musasat Alsh-Shabab, worked out a perfect pretense to seduce his victims. He’s a photographer of models. He approaches attractive young people, flatters them and offers to do a photo session with them. The next part I’m not sure about. It’s unclear if it’s pheromones, something in the water he offers, the way he has the photo strobe lights synched or quite how he makes the models pass out, but that’s when we woges and gets all buggy.

This was an unusual case, a Wesen using their special abilities to make money. Okay. Maybe not but, not like this. There have been Wesen who’ve robbed, or even the mask maker who made money from the Luchadores who wore his “special” masks. Malcolm used a middle man to make money from harvesting the youth of his victims. He didn’t seem to need to do this to survive. Most of the time the Wesen attack in self defense or to feed or something. The only motive here seemed to be greed. I suspect that the greed is an integral part of the make up of the Musasat Alsh-Shabab.

I have problems with details of this episode. If you listen to the podcast, you can hear mine and Kammie Settle’s beefs. We go over them in the second part of the podcast.

Nick (David Guiltoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) make the connection that it’s the photographer because that’s the one thing the two victims have in common. Rosalee (Bree Turner) and Monroe ( Silas Weir Mitchell) find out what kind of Wesen they are dealing with thanks to the books. Going through phone records leads them to Dr. Forbes. So, they send in Rosalee to pose as a patient and try to get a sample of the cream he’s using on patients. If the cream is human based, they know they’ve found their guy.

As with many a plan this doesn’t go off without a hitch. Dr Forbes has gone off the deep end and has become a monster both in appearance and demeanor. Then, to add fuel to the plan heading south, Malcolm arrives on the scene with a jar full of his last victim’s essence. Our three heroes rush in to save Rosalee.

I don’t think Malcolm had time to react to seeing Nick is a Grimm. But he also doesn’t react to being attacked by a Blutbad. The Dr. is too busy scooping up the contents of the jar that Malcolm brought that broke when the fight started. But he stops long enough to stab Malcolm in the jugular. Malcolm died immediately. Not sure that’s realistic, but that’s how it went down. Then Dr. Forbes died apparently from over use of the cream.  And that’s the police case wrapped up.

The rest of the episode was filled with bits of our main characters’ stories. Eve (Bitsie Tulloch) makes a big development that if you haven’t been following her you might not have noticed. She asked Adalind (Claire Coffee) how she was doing. Seems small, right? No. It’s huge. It’s the first small talk she has uttered since she we’ve seen her as Eve.

She has Nick come to the Hadrian’s Wall base to give him what seemed to me like a bit of information. I get the feeling she’s still testing him. The important thing is she tells him she’ll be wanting him to tell her where Sean Renard (Sasha Roiz) will be.

Which leads to the ending reveal: Eve made up her own cauldron of Grimm‘s version of Polyjuice Potion and morphs into Renard. I have several questions about this whole part but I’ll wait to see what happens next episode.

Lastly, it’s the things that weren’t in this episode that really surprised me. No clue or mention of Wu’s (Reggie Lee) fever dreams. No more Hexenbiest displays from Adalind. No Tony to torment Rosalee. No return of Trubel from her distant assignment. That’s a lot that was missing.

I have one final thought. If Sean Renard wins his bid for the mayoral office, could Sgt. Wu become the next police captain?

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