Grimm's Bigfoot Story

Episode 122 “Big Feet”

The next episode will be the season finale. So this episode had a lot to do to set up for the season finale. In fact it had so much to get us ready for the season finale that solving the case almost took a back seat.

Spoiler Alert

This episode opens like many of the current reality TV shows, or the “Blair Witch” movie from several years ago. We are watching shaky hand-held camera work as a small group of young people are out in the woods on the trail of Bigfoot. Except our nearly fearless cryptozoologists find more than they bargained for. A rampaging real Bigfoot attacks them, killing two of the guys. A young lady in the group somehow manages to hide in the bushes and escapes the same fate as her male companions.

Bigfoot continues on his rampage to a coral of horses. The owner of the horses hears the horses upset in their coral. He yells and shoots to try to scare off what he thinks is a wild animal. He discovers one of the horses was wounded and calls his vet.

This is where Nick’s world and Juliette’s world start to collide. The vet called is of course Juliette. After looking at the horse the owner takes Juliette to show her  the damage to his coral. Juliette takes a sample of hair from a broken rail. They both are surprised by the size and shape of the bloody footprints. She and the horse owner track the path of destruction and blood from the coral to the two dead movie makers in the woods.

Nick is working on trying to understand the print he made from the key given to him by his Aunt Marie, when he gets the call from Juliette about the bodies they found.

At the crime scene, Nick is walking an awkward line. He tries to comfort Juliette and make sure she is okay. He is working the scene as both a detective and a Grimm. You might notice that when the young woman in hiding starts rambling about a creature and the talk begins about a Bigfoot, Nick is neither surprised nor does he try to dismiss the idea.

Monroe is awakened by a smell. In this part Grimm tries to up the boo factor by using a whole lot of sounds that really don’t have anything to do with the Bigfoot or anything else. It turns out the Bigfoot is a friend of Monroe’s Larry,  and Larry is in trouble. The horse owner’s shot did hit him and that’s not even the worst of it. Larry can not change back into his human form he is sort of stuck between forms. Larry tries to communicate with Monroe but in his Bigfoot form Monroe can’t understand him.

Monroe calls Nick to come help. While Nick is at Monroe’s, the police are using dogs to track Larry and of course the scent trail leads to Monroe’s house. Dressed in Larry’s red shirt Monroe takes off to lead the dogs away. It works, but there are a couple of complications. One, Monroe has to threaten the dogs as a Blutbad. Which sends the dogs running back whining. And second Monroe literally runs into Hank. It’s a sight that Hank is not easily going to forget.

When Monroe returns to his home he tells Nick that he bumped into Hank. Nick is concerned about this encounter but at the moment Larry takes precedence.   Larry is in agony and it’s more than the gun shot wound. He rips out a wire thing out of the back of his own neck. Despite their best efforts Larry dies in Monroe’s home. Again Nick is in the position of doing really bad things as a cop to help out his friends. He doesn’t want Monroe to be connected to Larry in any way. So the two of them move Larry’s body to the woods and stage it for the police to find. Nick reassures Monroe that the police will find the wire and drug delivery device that was in Larry, and forensics will investigate it and find out what’s going on.

Larry was seeing a psychiatrist. It turns out this psychiatrist is the connection they are looking for. Unfortunately he had other patients. Another one of his patients looses it and attacks a couple of homeless guys under the bridge. One of them is killed but the other one fights back with a burning piece of wood. He impales the Big Foot and kills him.

By this time forensics has found that the drugs being pumped into Larry were pain killers and some herbs. Nick shares with Monroe that they are herbs and such, nothing illegal. Monroe says, that doesn’t mean they aren’t bad for us.

Juliette is investigating the hair she found on the fence where the horse was attacked. She is puzzled because it doesn’t seem to fit any animal or human profile. When she gets the report from the forensic lab it’s even more puzzling. It says something about a mosaic genetics from different species.

Nick catches up with the psychiatrist, Dr. Brinkerhoff,  while he is giving a lecture from his latest book. When Nick tries to question him during his book signing Dr. Brinkerhoff nearly loses his composure. You can see him all most morph but he is under control. The Dr. tries to play mental tricks with Nick. Nick won’t fall for the game. The Dr. claims that he only uses regular therapy with his patients. That Wessen Prozac does not exist. But of course he’s lying. And it’s the drugs he’s been using on three of his patients that’s causing them problems.

All lot of this episode is about how you chose to live and how one deals with their own challenges. Wether one choses an inner or outer locus, the quick fix or the long path. It’s not just the Wessen that have this issue. Juliette is dealing with her practice and her boyfriend and his secrets. Nick is trying to juggle a multi sided life and keep all of them separate. Monroe is always dealing with his own urges as a Blutbad. But as his relationship with Nick goes on there are even more issues he is having to deal with. Several friends and acquaintances have died, some right in front him. He’s been placed in danger and more than once he has done things that are not legal. Heck, Nick even had him shoot to kill an ogre. And then there is Hank. Hank went through a lot in this one. By the end of the episode I really feared for his mental health and I don’t know that Nick made the right call. Nick made the quick decision to let Hank think that he was just seeing things. The look on Hank’s face said that he was in grave danger of losing his grasp of reality.

Larry’s body is found in forest where Monroe and Nick placed it. Hank is confused by the dead man, Larry, found. He still recalls his bump with Monroe in Blutbad form. And of course Larry doesn’t look like that now that he is in human form he doesn’t even look like he was capable of the attacks.

That night another Bigfoot attacks a couple of  homeless men. He kills the first but the second one defends himself with a burning piece of wood. It impales the Bigfoot and kills him. Again the Portland police don’t respond to the crime till the next morning. Nick notices that the impaled man has the same thing in the back of his neck that Larry had.

Monroe visits a friend, Renaldo, that holds a sort of informal support group for Wesen. Renaldo tells Monroe that a couple of other friends also went to Dr. Brinkerhoff and claimed to have found cures for their urges. Monroe calls the third friend after learning from Nick that the second one is now dead. When Monroe calls to check on Dan the third friend, he learns he committed suicide.

The police learn that Dr. Brinkerhoff ordered four of the drug pumps. Three have been accounted for in the bodies of three dead Wessen.

Monroe calls on Dr. Brinkerhoff to ask him questions of his own. Brinkerhoff is losing control. He morphs in front of Monroe and flies into his own rage. Hank and Nick arrive at the Dr.’s office in time to see him flee on a rampage in Bigfoot form.

Dr. Bigfoot enters a theatre lobby attacking anyone in his way. Then in King Kong fashion he grabs a lady and drags her into the catwalk of the theatre. Luckily she is still alive when Nick finally finds her. Bigfoot tries to attack Nick from behind. Hank shoots to protect Nick. Bigfoot falls into the theatre seats below. Hank is there to see Dr. Brinkerhoff transform back into human form as he dies.

And here is the part that really sets up the season finale. Hank is losing his mind and Nick doesn’t know how to help him. If he shares with him that he not only saw Dr. Brinkerhoff transform but so much else he opens up a whole new can of worms. But by denying what Hank saw I fear he may have hurt his partner’s ability to process most of what has been happening. Nick has been putting off dealing with being a Grimm and being a cop for the whole season. That luxury seems to be coming to an end.

The promo for next week shows that Nick finally shares his Grimm world with Juliette. I hope that he gives some serious thought to how to help Hank deal with some of the decidedly weird stuff Nick has exposed Hank to.

[Official Show Site at NBC]     [Previous recap: “Happily Ever Aftermath”]