A Messy GRIMM Finale

Episode 4:22 “Cry Havoc”

[Photos: Scott Green/NBC]

Did it feel like a season finale to you? It felt like a regular episode to me. I’ve come to expect epic cliffhangers from Grimm. Not this time; this time it ended with merely unanswered questions. Last season ended with Nick loosing his Grimm powers, the Monroe and Rosalee wedding, and Sean Renard was shot. Season two ended with a zombie epidemic. Do you see what I’m talking about? I thought they might even try to top the cliffhangers from the previous seasons. I felt let down.

This week characters acted more like themselves. Although Trubel was a bit more cavalier than usual. I have a theory why and I’ll share it later. I was looking for some explanations that I didn’t get. There are still several story points that don’t quite make sense. Was that the cliffhanger?

The Royal score card: King Frederick is dead, unless he can fly. Prince Eric is dead. Prince Viktor might be dead. Prince Kenneth is dead. Does this leave Sean Renard next in line for the throne? Would he leave Portland and take up the throne in Vienna? None of this was even brought up as a possibility in the episode. But then, Sean didn’t know that Phillip was thrown out of the helicopter. He does know that the at least two of the three other princes are deceased. Perhaps it’s bad manners to bring up your rise in the line of succession. I wouldn’t know the intricacies of royal decorum.

This week picked back up right where last week left off, with Nick screaming in agony over the discovery of his mother’s head in a box. For the record, if that really is Kelly Burkhardt’s head, then the writers did her a great disservice. There is no way that the Kelly we’ve come to know would walk in with Diana like that. She has survived for decades by being very careful and not trusting anyone. To think that she would bring Diana into an unknown situation and thus place her in potential danger is completely out of character. That’s why I’m hoping that isn’t Kelly in the box at all. Perhaps it’s a prop left there by the resistance to let Nick think his mother was dead and send him on a revenge spree. I mean, he did take Kenneth out of the equation for them.

There was a lot of running around in this episode. Nick came up with an instant genius plan to locate the Royals. He uses the Hundjager head, has Adalind place it in the hotel room and then pretend to discover it. Thus the room became a crime scene and the hotel manager gives them all the auto registration information they need to find them. With APBs out on Kenneth and Rispoli, Kenneth is taken into custody as soon as he returns to the hotel. Where Wu places him in his car and delivers him to Nick. They battle and Nick kills him, avenging his Mother’s death.

There are trips made to pick up Monroe and Rosalee taking them to Bud’s house. Then they all leave except for Bud and Rosalee, who stay to protect Adalind while they head off to the Royals to try and get Diana back. Doesn’t go exactly to plan but Rispoli is taken out. King Fredrick, Diana and Juliette leave. Only Fredrick and Diana get on the helicopter. Once they are up in the air Fredrick is shoved out the side door by Meisner. Remember him? He helped deliver Diana last season.

Renard frames Kenneth for the Jack the Ripper murders. From Bud’s house, most of the team heads to their respective homes. Nick still has his Mother’s head in the living room to greet him. Surprise, Juliette appears. They fight and it looks like Juliette is going to kill Nick when Trubel shoots her with two darts. As she fades in Nick’s arms agent Chavez shows up outside the house with a team and orders them to “Get her.”

I suspect that there is an elaborate plan going on. I don’t know how and I don’t know what Trubel knew before she returned but I think she’s in on something. I don’t think it’s coincidence that she arrived at the very same time that Kelly did. Like I said, she’s even more nonchalant than she has been. When Sean was shot, she kind of freaked out. Now, there’s the severed of Nick’s mother in a box in the living room and she doesn’t bat an eye.

Let’s look at what we know. Kelly walked into a trap. Trubel spoke to a female on the phone (while pretending to speak with Nick, thus keeping Bud in the dark) when she was in the truck with Bud. Meisner, with the Resistance, was in the helicopter and tosses the King out the side door. For some reason Juliette didn’t get on that helicopter; she doubled back to Nick’s house.

Perhaps just as important is what we don’t know. I’ll try to recap that part as well. We don’t know why Sean Renard’s first two attacks were on men. Where did Jack the Ripper’s spirit go? Why is Juliette behaving the way she is? I realize she’s become a Hexenbiest, and not in the usual way. Still, she has done things that don’t make sense given her goal was revenge against everyone she blames for her becoming a Hexenbiest. I don’t think she intended to put Diana in harm’s way and yet this plan put the child in great danger. Why, oh why would Kelly walk into the house having been summoned on the ruse that Nick was in danger? If that was Kelly that was beheaded, why didn’t Diana do anything to protect both of them?

We’ve seen Diana move things with her powers. Yet when the only woman that she’s known as mom is in mortal danger, she sits calmly in the center of the floor? Who was Trubel talking to on the phone? Why do they consider Bud’s house a safe place? The only sentry is Bud sleeping in the chair with a bat near the front door while Adalind sleeps way in the back of the house. Because clearly bad guys always use the front door.

While I’m on what bugged me about the episode, let’s include the lack of detail from our Wesen Police team. Trubel dropped the Hundjager’s head into the trunk of Wu’s patrol car. I don’t have a lot of experience with severed heads, but I’ll go out on a limb here and say that probably left some traces of blood in the trunk. They left tire tracks at the scene of Kenneth’s death, twice. They’ve left tracks from their shoes everywhere they went. They went into the Royal’s “rental” without gloves on, leaving their fingerprints everywhere. There hasn’t been any mention of the neighbors that the Verrat took out as part of the plan to nab Diana. I realize that our main police officers are otherwise engaged, but apparently no one has noticed them missing yet.

So, a lot of unanswered questions to ponder while we wait for Grimm to return in the fall. I’m happy to explore them with you if you care to leave your comments here.

[Show site at NBC]     [Previous recap: “Headache”]