GRIMM's No Kill List

Episode 2:19 “Endangered”

[photos: Scott Green/NBC website]

This episode pulled together a great police/Wesen case and followed our main characters as well. Last week the story was too big for one episode. This week the story didn’t feel shortchanged. It answers those burning questions you’ve always wondered about. Who’s behind the alien stories? What’s with cattle mutilations? And there was even time for furthering Juliette’s story.

Spoiler Alert

Rosalee is back but Hank is still on vacation. I miss Hank. The police case is interesting and Nick didn’t solve it by just going to the library at the trailer. Although of course Nick did go there and did solve the case from a book in the trailer. I’m going to forgive that because there was more to solving the case than just consulting the book.

Our newest Wesen is a glowing blue, alien looking creature. A rancher checking on his cattle spooks the blue man as he’s mutilating a cow. Oh yes, Grimm is going there. It’s gruesome and I don’t understand why a creature would waste the whole animal for just one part. I’m getting ahead of myself. The Wesen shoves the rancher, unfortunately, into a metal fence post in the back of his ATV trying to defend himself. Some how this kills the young rancher immediately. Hey, it’s TV. When it’s convenient, characters die and when it’s not they hang on and are saved. That’s the only logic I have for when someone dies and when they don’t and how quickly they die.

Back to our story. The first rancher’s father arrives on the scene in time to see the glowing Wesen running away. And thus the story of aliens committing cattle mutilations is solved. Nick is working on two mysteries: the police case of the rancher’s murder and the key given to him by Aunt Marie. The police case is the easy one, sort of. Sargent Wu goes out the next morning with Nick to the crime scene. While searching for evidence, Nick collects an odd piece of skin left on the barbed wire fence. As they leave a UFOlogist approaches and peppers them with questions. He leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Like he’s the slimiest of journalists, but he seems harmless enough.

The medical examiner can’t classify the skin as human or animal. The best she can say is it’s human with an animal response. I wonder how long before she figures out that not all is human that arrives for her examination? Wu tracks the locations of a string of reported cattle mutilations. There’s been a bunch and they have traveled from Nebraska to the current location near Portland. Wu also learns that the only part of the cows taken were the ovaries. Like I said the rest of the animal is wasted to harvest just one part. What a waste.

When the glowing blue creature, a Gluhenvolk, gets back to an abandoned barn he returns to his human form and gives the bag of cow ovaries to his partner Jocelyn, who’s very pregnant. This is one of those Grimm cases that has a lot of grey area. So on the one hand the Gluhenvolk are struggling to survive; on the other Vincent, the male Gluhenvolk is committing crime upon crime. Gluhenvolk are such a rare Wesen they were thought to be extinct. Does saving a species justify Vincent’s actions? While it was in self defense, he did kill the ranch hand. Killing someone else’s cattle is also illegal. Stealing cars, highjacking cars staying in someone’s barn or cabin without permission is all illegal. Does the end justify the means? I’m not sure. And I think it’s a slippery slope that Nick has tread upon many times in the last two seasons. He is said to be a very different kind of Grimm but he still works by his own rules and decides when it’s okay to totally disregard the law. Which as a detective working on a police force must be hard to reconcile in his conscious.

Nick visits Rosalee in the spice shop with a book detailing the Gluhenvolk. Rosalee is very excited; she believed the Gluhenvolk to be extinct. She explains all about the ovaries being for a pregnant Gluhenvolk and that considering the large number of mutilations she must be very close to delivery. Monroe comes in and at first he’s disappointed because he figures Nick being there means his date with Rosalee is off. But when he learns of the possibility of there being Gluhenvolk he is also excited. Together they map out the probable location of our wandering glowers and they head out to try and help them.

Unfortunately they  aren’t the only ones trying to locate Vincent and Jocelyn. The UFOlogist is also searching for them and his intentions are not so admirable. Nick, Monroe and Rosalee come upon the UFOlogist’s trailer. They go inside and discover he is planning to skin the Gluhenvolk while in full Vulga. He has bullets that have a formula in them to keep the body in full Vulga after the Wesen has died. His trailer is set up to skin the bodies on site. It’s a hideous thought. It also turns out he’s some kind of bird Wesen. I’m guessing some sort of bird of prey, a hawk or falcon.

Nick spies the cabin where Jocelyn is waiting for Vincent to return with more cow ovaries. The three go in with the intent to offer aid but, Jocelyn’s fear sends her into labor. Roaslee somehow knows how to deliver a baby. The two guys do what they can. Vincent enters just in time for the birth. Followed shortly by the UFOlogist with his gun drawn. In the fight Nick shoots the UFOlogist with his own gun. Meaning he will now be in full Vulga for several hours. Here’s another grey area: they send the little family off in the UFOlogist’s truck telling them to get as far away as they can. Then they set up the UFOlogist in the highjacked Bronco that Vincent stole and a SWAT team finds him. They get there just before he changes back to human form. Leading them to believe that he’s the alien that’s been reported.

The two other stories are the mystery of the key and Juliette’s journey to regain her memory. After fruitless research at the trailer, Nick unintentionally busts up a romantic moment between Monroe and Rosalee. Then presents Monroe with the key mystery. Monroe of course has information. He has antique maps that he thinks places Nick’s bit of map off the key in the Black Forest in Germany. Nick then goes to Renard with more questions. Renard seems to share what he knows. The Royal families have 4 keys, Nick has one, that leaves 2 keys unaccounted for. Renard isn’t sure what the keys’ map shows or what treasure the original 7 Grimms hid. There are several theories, the secret to alchemy, Muhammad’s sword, or the nails that held Christ to the cross. In any case, it’s something that they considered too powerful to fall into the hands of the Royal families.

Juliette is getting closer to remembering her past with Nick. She has a break through and recalls how much she loved Nick. With that knowledge she also hits up Monroe for more information. She point blank asks him what a Grimm is. I don’t like his definition. He says it’s “Someone who can see into the heart of darkness.” To me, this says that all Wesen have dark hearts. I’ll agree that everyone has a darker side. We have emotions that are not rainbows and lollipops.  But to say that all Wesen have hearts of darkness…

The promos for next episode look fun. There are just a couple of episodes left for this season. Makes me wish there were more episodes to a season.

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[Official Show Site at NBC]     [Previous recap: “GRIMM is Kind of Hot Stuff”]