'Grimm' Season 5 Premiere: Juliette Is Really Dead, and Everyone's Doubting Nick
Grimm may be a series about fairy tales, but it is very clear within the first 5 minutes of the Season 5 premiere that no one, especially not our harried hero, should expect a happy ending.
The show picked up right where we left off last May with poor half-n-biest Juliette bleeding out in Nick’s arms after Trubel took her out with a crossbow because she had finally fully succumbed to the dark side and planned to kill the boo she’d just betrayed. Oh yeah, and this all happened while his mom’s severed head looked on from a cardboard box Kenneth’s men put it in and after Nick assumed he’d lost the witch baby to the evil king.
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Suddenly, more men in black pour in, drug Nick, kidnap Trubel, steal the corpse and the head, and take the crossbow for good measure. The audience sees it all happen and knows that the order was given by FBI agent/secret Wesen Chavez, who had been poking around trying to identify Portland’s monster hunter last season, but Nick wakes up groggy and unsure who was behind the dastardly deeds. He immediately turns reckless and hungry for revenge when he puts two and two together about Chavez and her secret government agency — huffing at Capt. McChesty for telling him to take some time off, barking at the friends who risk their lives and reputations daily to cover his tracks and help him fight paranormal bad guys, almost getting in a car accident and taking out a pedestrian, and threatening said FBI agent in her place of employment in front of witnesses. He growls to Hank who suggested he tread lightly in the arena of federal felonies, “She’s Wesen. I’m taking her down.”
But getting payback for all the royal wrongs committed and spells gone sideways last season quickly becomes his secondary objective for what we can only assume is at least the first half of the season as Nick abducts Chavez and realizes something wicked this way comes. At first, she will only toss out ominously coy chestnuts like “My life doesn’t matter. There’s too much at stake” and “the whole truth would be terrifying for most people,” but eventually understands that Nick might be helpful to her cause, which she forebodingly calls a war and the rising, and interrupts him at the hospital, where Adalind’s delivery of his baby has just gone south, to set up a meet-and-greet that has to happen now or never for some reason if he wants answers. Of course, he doesn’t get much in the way of answers because it is only Episode 1 after all and because they are ambushed by a gaggle of pig-lizard-goblin creatures who gut Chavez, paint some claw graffiti, and steal Nick’s whip. She manages to hand him what looks like a chess piece and he uses her lifeless thumb to answer her high-tech spy phone and make contact with who we can only assume is the show’s latest badass-model-with-an-accent addition that Nick will team up with. (Don’t get us wrong. We aren’t complaining that they so often deal in dashing dangerous dudes!)
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What We Liked: They got straight to the action when it came to introducing this year’s new big bad, not even letting Nick have a pity party that lasted longer than a few sobs when he heard echoes of Juliette’s voice beckoning him to their love den. Likely the only funeral we will even see, which is a bit of a pathetic goodbye for the fans’ beloved Bitsie Tulloch, is the weird black-and-white drug-induced fever dream all-in-his-head version.
They also wasted no time popping out Grimm the next generation. Although it likely would have been fun to watch those two frenemies Odd Couple it in his Craftsman while she complained of swollen ankles and they attended Lamaze classes, there is something to be saluted for not dragging out the banality of pregnancy on a show that is certainly not about building families and talking feelings. Having Bud be the point person for this development, with his nervous chatter providing some comic relief, was a nice touch. Having Rosalee give Nick a pep talk about baby coming first and Adalind extend the olive branch post-delivery, including naming him in tribute to mama Grimm, was a mostly believable bridge from their old antagonistic relationship to what will likely be one of the world’s most awkward co-parenting situations.
What Didn’t Work: Given everything the Scooby gang has gone through together and every fantastic and evil thing they have witnessed, it was actually annoying that everyone was taking Nick’s story about Juliette, Trubel, and the secret society of Wesen FBI agents with “a large grain of salt.” Monroe’s reasoning? “He was fried.” Even Hank doubted him. Don’t play your savior dirty like that. Only Rosalee took the story at face value. “Nick wouldn’t just make that up and he certainly wouldn’t call and tell us that if it wasn’t true.” She was also the only one that had compassion for poor Juliette and argued that she wasn’t to blame for breaking bad. She reminded them that she only became a witchy woman because she underwent the spell to get Nick his powers back. With friends like that as they say.
The vision of multiple floating mom heads in boxes, especially when the eyes opened just as he woke up, was just plain cheesy as was the end shot of the city of bridges getting clawed. It was also kind of disappointing that they killed off a strong female character. With the loss of Tulloch and Adalind being rendered powerless last season, the show could have used the extra estrogen Chavez would have offered. Instead we get another foreign stud. (Although, again, not complaining about that, but wasn’t Portland big enough for the two of them?)
Our Burning Questions:
Of course our minds are racing most about if Nick’s baby will have powers like his half-sister and what they did to Trubel. But we still had time to once again ponder the city’s seemingly never-ending supply of dark, drippy, abandoned buildings for covert groups to meet in. I mean seriously shouldn’t the city dismantle a few of those puppies and put in another craft brewery, bike path, or park for vegans? That could possibly help trim the transient seedy element population or at least curb some of the monster master planning.
But we digress. Back to Trubel. Chavez slid open the eyehole on the cell in a creepy drippy underground hall of cells, likely under yet another defunct factory or refinery, and something rushed the door sounding like a panting snarling Trubel. She dropped another menacing statement when hot guy said there were no changes for the better. “We’re playing with fire.” Did they experiment on her? Did they make her part Wesen? Are they trying to create a super soldier? Will they try to do the same thing with Nick now that Chavez told them he too was Grimm? Or will they all band together to stop what’s coming?
And the questions keep coming: Will Adalind move in? Will they get any help from that council that isn’t fond of them or does the council have something to do with the rising? Will Nick gift Kelly with an infant machete so he can join the elite team? Will the elite team give Nick his own finger phone or does he have to carry around her bloody thumb? And how on earth is McChesty going to explain away all those dead neighbors of Nick’s?
Grimm airs Fridays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
